Anthony Browne Fan Club: Nick Cohen

From "London's Quality Newspaper":

"A concern for fact and a hatred of conventional wisdom have marked his progress from journalism to the Conservative think-tank Policy Exchange, and now on to one of the most powerful jobs in London."

Facts? Hatred of conventional wisdom? Judging by his stuff he did for the Times and Spectator, Browne's journalistic speciality was the assertion of conventional wisdom regardless of facts. Anyway...

"He says he's fighting 'political correctness', but here his use of language lets him down. Like many on the Right in their thirties and forties (and perhaps more people on the Left than you realise) he's a liberal."

Some mistake here? Surely, "(and perhaps more than people on the Left realise)"? But these days, who knows?

"The last thing he wants is to force women back into the kitchen or to go back to insulting 'pakis' and 'coons'. He accepts the liberation of women and the campaigns for racial and homosexual equality - how could he do anything else when there are more gays in the London Tory party than Old Compton Street?"

Well, that last argument doesn't necessarily follow, you know. There have been plenty of gay Conservatives for years, but campaigning for equality was never on the party's agenda. What's happened is they've had to accept that the Left has won the argument. Still, thanks for the insight into Browne's enthusiastic support female equality. Must talk to those women I know who've worked alongside him to find out if they noticed it.

"It's not political correctness he (and they) are against but the perversion of liberalism by Whitehall and the BBC, which holds that it is somehow wicked to talk about racial attacks on whites, anti-Semitism or tensions between immigrants. After the hysterias of the Livingstone administration, his arrival in City Hall ought to be a welcome sign that London is at last moving on and becoming a more honest city."

Thank you, Melanie. And of course, we're all in favour of honesty.

Comments

[Guano]

What does Cohen mean by the "hysterias of the Livingstone administration"?

[Simon]

Cohen seems to have changed his tack. This is what he said about Browne in 2003:

"This line of cant has been developed by Anthony Browne, an occasional contributor to this paper, and a writer for the Times and Spectator, elite journals both. "Blair's epidemics" of Aids, TB and hepatitis B are being spread by asylum-seekers, he has asserted to great acclaim. You can understand the reasons for the applause. Browne has moved the debate on. Asylum-seekers are not only scroungers and terrorists but plague carriers, like the rats that brought the Black Death.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200302240018

[OneHopeOneChoice]

That last paragraph is wonderful, its like a "full-in-the-blanks" attack on which ever group the Veronica/Dacre have marked out for a savaging. It's even better because with a couple of replacements, you can turn it on its head:

"It's not centre-right thinking I (and the progressives) are against but the perversion of patriotism, morality and "middle England" by the Daily Mail and Evening Standard, which holds that it is somehow wicked to talk about asylum seekers' rights, feminism or climate change. After the hysterias of the Gilligan era, his sacking from Veronica's bunker ought to be a welcome sign that the Standard is at last moving on and becoming a more honest paper with higher journalistic standards."

Oh, only in my dreams.

[Guano]

The new version about "hysterias" makes more sense to me than the original version!