alexlockwood.net

Third of Conservatives don’t accept climate change

Yesterday the Guardian published figures showing that a third of Conservative MPs don’t believe, or don’t know what they believe about, climate change. This on the same day that Gordon Brown gave the keynote speech to the Guardian’s ‘Climate Change Summit: how to beat Green Fatigue’ conference.

Writing in yesterday’s Guardian, Brown says climate change “is a challenge that inspires rather than daunts me.” Currently critical columnists (there’s a mouthful of cs) of Brown agree: Jonathan Freeland agress that “Brown sees this vast horizon: Cameron and the others can barely glimpse it.” Yet Cameron is for the Guardian “Britain’s most influential politician”.

Another view, this morning in the New Statesman, is that Labour would do better by leaving the coming economic downturn in the hands of Cameron, as it could mean another 20 years of Labour if the Conservatives get it wrong. More »

Tags: climate change, David Cameron, environmental reporting, media, politics

Is incoherency the Republican ticket?

Lots of questions this week on why John McCain is ditching his green credentials and environmental strategy to deliver a mix of messages to the American public.

Earlier in the week Grist and Politico both commented on the launch of McCain’s new environmental TV ad coming on the same day as his call for the lifting of restrictions on offshore drilling (this to an audience of Big Oil in Houston). Commenting on this, Lester Feder at the Huffington Post suggests that:

McCain’s wholesale abandonment of a month-long environmental PR strategy is more than a knee-jerk response to a new peak in oil prices. It is a sign that the McCain campaign’s efforts to define the 2008 election narrative are in disarray.

And Feder quotes a number of political commentators who see this reversal as McCain “grasping at straws” to re-focus his campaign on the economy, in line with American voters’ views.

But I wonder if, at some deeper lever, McCain and his campaign are ingrained into an incoherency (it’s in the title of Feder’s article) that won Bush the last (two?) elections. Is incoherency a card the Republicans have become too used to playing in sowing doubt in the minds of the voting public? More »

Tags: climate change, McCain, media coverage, politics

Men’s magazines: the intellectuals

As reported by The Observer on Sunday, today sees the launch of the much anticipated Standpoint, a new monthly magazine with a relatively unambiguous editorial position.

According to its editor, former Telegraph assoicate editor Daniel Johnson, Standpoint will “defend and celebrate Western Civilisation”. In an interview with the New Culture Forum, Johnson says that “I think there is a much larger constituency for a reassertion of western values such as free speech, the dignity of the individual and the rule of law than cynics on the Left or the Right suppose.”

Left and Right
Although he pairs cynics of the Left and Right together, for The Observer Johnson rejects the idea that Standpoint will be only for the Right. This, despite the fact that anticipation has been coming from and heralded from, specifically, the Right (for example). Indeed, Johnson suggests “the world’s changed beyond recognition. The old left/right categories don’t work any more.” As The Observer comments:

That is a familiar argument that has been played out endlessly in recent years, making unlikely allies of American neo-conservatives and European liberals, and it is a discussion that will continue on the pages of Standpoint.

Inside the magazine
So what will be on the pages of Standpoint? Will it deliver politically agnostic intellectual stimulation? Will it steal readers from The Spectator or, even the dwindling leftist magazine, the New Statesman? Johnson suggests writers such as Alain de Botton and Andrew Marr show the magazine reaches out to “anybody with an ounce of intellectual curiosity”. So who and what is in the launch issue? A sample:

• Alain de Botton on faith ["intellectual cotton candy", "a philosphical pub crawl" ]
• Jung Chang and Simon Sebag Montefiore on Mao and Stalin
• new poetry by Robert Conquest [Margaret Thatcher's speechwriter]
• Andrew Marr on the Telegraph cartoonist Matt
• Tim ‘vote UKIP’ Congdon on why we shouldn’t scapegoat the bankers [really?]
• Eton educated Telegraph columnist on Prospect’s 100 top public intellectuals
• Michael Burleigh on the war on terror [Telegraph writer, dislike for all things Islamic]
• Douglas Murray on censorship [author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It]
• Alasdair Palmer on family courts [Better Rough Justice than another 9/11]
• Emanuele Ottolenghi on how Europe has betrayed Israel [and the Palestinians?]

So, that’s settled then: a balanced world view if ever I saw one.

Final word: will it survive?
Magforum has a great overview of the ‘intellectual’ business/politics market and the likelihood of survival for any new magazines entering the market. For Standpoint, both the ‘left’ and ‘right’ are in general agreement that Standpoint is coming along at the right time–the Cameron’s Conservative renaissance–and timing, as we know, is everything.

Well, not quite everything. What’s more interesting from The Observer article, although only touched on superficially, is the political economy (and economics) of the magazine: how ownership, control and advertising are the drivers of new magazine launches, of course, not the ‘intellectual curiosity’ of the readers. I’ll be looking at this tomorrow in the context of late capitalism’s rise of the luxury brand.

Tags: left/right, Monocle, new statesman, politics, Prospect, Standpoint