Politics

Nicola Sturgeon on cybernats, Farage and the SNP in Westminster

by Paul ValeLeave a Comment on Nicola Sturgeon on cybernats, Farage and the SNP in Westminster
Nicola Sturgeon on cybernats, Farage and the SNP in Westminster

NEW YORK — It was during the TV election debates in April that the new face of the post-referendum Scottish National Party was first unveiled to the British public. Following a poll-winning performance during the seven-way leaders debate on ITV, Nicola Sturgeon appeared on a five-person panel for the sequel, flanked by Labour’sEd Miliband, Ukip’s Nigel Farage, Natalie Bennett of the Green Party and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood.

Broadcast live on the BBC, the vignette concluded with the SNP leader beseeching Miliband to ally against the common enemy in Downing Street, a proposal the now-former Labour chief rebuffed. Earlier, Scotland’s first minister had instigated a testy exchange with Farage on immigration. Sturgeon emerged from both unscathed. What’s more, she exited the broadcast looking like the only opposition leader able to articulate a credible anti-establishment position.

“I didn’t go into the debate intending to engage with Farage,” Sturgeon tells HuffPost, sitting in a meeting room on the top floor of Morgan Stanley’s headquarters overlooking Times Square in New York. Instead she resolved to draw her blade only if he was “offensive.” He was and she did, capping a bad night for the Ukip boss who was earlier booed for attacking the audience.

“I think Farage was exposed in those debates,” she reflects. “Once he’d blamed the foreigners, there was pretty much nothing else. I think people saw him for what he was.”

In the days following the debate, Sturgeon’s inbox was deluged by emails from English voters asking her to stand candidates south of the border, a flood she ascribes to a “deep disillusionment about the lack of choice on offer.”

Decrying the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems as “different shades of the same thing,” the 44-year-old says the appetite for an alternative “is just as strong” in the rest of the UK as it is in Scotland. “But my goodness, there’s a market for a really social democratic party in England,” she suggests.

Yet a month later David Cameron returned to Downing Street, his tenure at Number 10 freshly unshackled from coalition. “They [the voters] opted for the devil they knew,” says Sturgeon. Her post election analysis is simple: Miliband failed to “do the deal with voters in England” and was therefore not a “viable alternative.”

The former solicitor quickly rebukes any notion that the SNP aided the Tories by splitting the opposition vote. “Labour could have won every seat in Scotland and they still wouldn’t have won the election because the failed to beat the Tories in England,” she says. “It’s not for me to answer why Labour failed in England, but that’s the question they’ve got to answer.”

Sturgeon admits the debates were “nerve-wracking” with “a lot riding on it for all of us.” Emblematic of the relief was the now-famed hug between Sturgeon and her fellow panellists, Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood, as David Dimbleby closed the show.

Yet the SNP chief suggests it was more than just respite, calling it a “vivid illustration” of how women approach politics. “Three men wouldn’t have done that, even if they felt the same,” she says, recalling the positive reaction she received “to see women represented” and how it had “changed the tone.”

The day before our interview, Sturgeon was similarly anxious ahead of an appearance on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” Despite being broadcast on Comedy Central, the show has become the sole proponent of oppositional political debate in the US, much to the shame of mainstream news outlets. As such it has a huge following nationally and around the world. Invitations to appear are not to be snubbed.

“I got through it,” she laughs, describing the show’s outgoing host as “charming and very well informed.” Her appearance was the centrepiece of a four-day tour of the US to promote business, tourism and study. Within the segment, the first minister was asked about the tribal nature of British politics and whether Blighty was becoming polarised, similar to the US.

She reflects further on this during our sit down, saying “it feels like it has” but attributes that to social media, that has given “people who want to be aggressive and abusive… ways of being heard.”

“The referendum, by its nature, had a ‘yes’ camp and a ‘no’ camp, which can make people feel as though they’re divided, but overwhelmingly the experience of the referendum on both sides was positive,” she says.

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The SNP leader appears on Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’, part of her four-day tour of the United States

Last Sunday Alastair Campbell appeared on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr” show, the former political aide decrying the so-called cybernats (a catchall term for abusive nationalists) following some rough treatment of the late Charles Kennedy during the election campaign.

Yet Sturgeon insists the invective doesn’t solely emanate from her corner of the Union, with people “on both sides” engaging in online abuse. “I could shown you the abuse that gets hurled at me on Twitter,” she says, nodding to her phone. Still, the first minister remains a fan of the micro-blogging site, which “democratises public debate” even if the tone is “impossible to control.”

“Party leaders do have a responsibility to speak out,” she says, “and I do that more than any other party leader. Even people who are professing to be on my side, I’ll call them out.”

The cybernats emerged during the bruising referendum campaign, culminating last September in a narrow defeat for the nationalists. Scotland was to remain in the Union and the groundswell of SNP support would quickly dissipate. Except, it didn’t. The momentum increased, propelling Sturgeon’s party to a landslide victory at the general election, securing 56 of the 59 Scottish seats.

Parliament started a new session and Westminster welcomed a raft of fledgling MPs from the north, some indifferent or unaware of the traditions of the House of Commons. Headlines followed in which nationalists were accused of not following protocol and being disruptive.

“We are not deliberately going around Westminster trying to annoy people,” says Sturgeon. “We’ve got people in our group that are new to politics. They don’t know what the hundred-year traditions are. Clapping is commonplace in the Scottish parliament. Who knew it’s forbidden in the House of Commons?”

Still, she remains bullish, insisting the SNP is doing “what it should be doing — asserting its position as the third biggest party in the House of Commons.” Her MPs are not there to “be disruptive or destructive,” but are there “to get things done.”

Despite general election success, Sturgeon still regards the referendum as a “devastating defeat” though she notes it quickly became clear that “something had changed in Scotland” and the country would not go “back to the way we were before the referendum.” Having tasted “what it was like to be in charge of the destiny of our own country” that appetite would not be sated.

Yet victory in May created fresh problems for the party, whose ultimate ambition remains to leave the Union. How quickly can they call for a second vote on independence? Waiting has a generational benefit (young people are more likely to vote ‘yes’ so better to be patient) however delay risks diminishing the enthusiastic support that has propelled the nationalists to lofty heights. Sturgeon cuts a middle road, describing the “deep pragmatism” of the people who want independence.

“We know we can’t rush it,” she says. “We didn’t persuade the majority [at the referendum], and there’s no shortcut. You can’t just keep asking the question over and over again until you get the answer you want. You have to build a case through patient endeavour.” In the meantime, Sturgeon is determined to “get on with running the country,” including pushing for more devolution from Westminster, even more than was promised by the post-referendum Smith Report.

“Smith was a response by the Westminster parties to the referendum result,” she says. “They need to come up with a response to the general election result. To say it’s business as usual and carry on with ‘Smith’ won’t satisfy people.”

Sturgeon is unmoved by the argument that further devolution could undercut her quest for independence, machinations she dismisses as “Machiavellian.” She is more open to idea that an EU referendum could lead to a second independence vote, though admits her preference would be not to hold an EU vote at all. “I hope the UK votes to stay in,” she says. “If that doesn’t happen we’ll have to see. But it’s one scenario that could increase demand for a second referendum because Scotland is not going to look kindly on being taken out of the EU.”

We return to Labour and the question of whether the SNP needs a robust opposition party in Scotland if only for accountability. “I think it’s healthy in any democracy to have a strong opposition but as first minister I can’t create one,” she says. “Also, I’m still a politician. I’m not going to wish for the quick recovery of my main political opponent, not when I’ve got an election in 11 months time.”

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Culture, Politics, Sport

Healthy bodies for a sick world…

by Paul ValeLeave a Comment on Healthy bodies for a sick world…

“Physical culture is in the air just now,” reflected P. G. Wodehouse in an article forVanity Fair published a year before the “gentleman’s gentleman” entered the literary canon.

The essay described how the “average man” of post-Edwardian England “now postpones his onslaught on the boiled egg for a matter of fifteen minutes,” time devoted to a “series of bendings and stretchings which in the course of time are guaranteed to turn him into a demi-god.”

A century later and physical culture once again pervades. Earlier this week, a colleague in London penned an article highlighting the growth in female sports as symbolic of a wider trend towards health and fitness in the U.K.

The U.S. is similarly bending and stretching under the spell, with traditional gyms augmented by boutique fitness centers and juice shops in the country’s great metropolises.

My colleague cited figures on the mushrooming market for women’s sporting clothes to emphasize the refocus towards personal wellbeing, while noting the community aspect of modern fitness fueled by the carbs of “celebrity and media.”

She is certainly right on the community aspect, with a strong argument that gatherings around fitness have superseded the church and synagogue — brick victims of secularism’s powerful strides. As such, health could simply be the latest expression of the human need to experience transcendental emotion beyond the individual.

The fitness center is, after all, the modern incarnation of a religious cult, one that leans back beyond Wodehouse, even beyond the “muscular Christianity” of the Victorians and into antiquity with the Romans and ancient Greeks using exercise as a preparation for war.

Yet the current flowering may have more immediate psychological drivers too. Wodehouse wrote about the push towards “physical culture” in 1914, a year bandaged by the tumult of war wrought on both citizenry and soldiery.

Likewise, the 2008 financial crash (and its economic and political aftermath) blanketed the hitherto comfortable West in doubt, insecurity and a profound sense of unease.

Whereas Europe and America’s portly middle classes once relied on a career delivering sufficient recompense to raise a family, buy a house, enjoy vacations, and save for a comfortable retirement, the 2008 meltdown broke the illusion.

Banks crumbled, interest rates plummeted, employment fell and wages stagnated. Meanwhile, restrictions on lending created a generation for whom homeownership — the most basic emblem of long-term security — was denied.

Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State abroad was paralleled by anti-immigrant sentiment at home, the rats of the far-right resurfacing from the pipes and sewers to once again spread the bacilli of intolerance and hate.

For a generation, the system’s upheaval highlighted a lack of control in the world, a psychological blow that led many to turn inwards, attempting to regain control via dominance over their own bodies.

In a society unrestrained and a future unknown, perhaps exercise regimes, healthy eating and mindfulness offered a return to the illusion or at least a way to cope with the stress therein.

Writing the year the Great War was unleashed, Wodehouse scoffed at how “the advertisement pages of the magazines are congested with portraits of stern-looking, semi-nude individuals with bulging muscles and fifty-inch chests.”

The author lived to be 93, having practiced his own daily exercise regime for more than 50 years. Were he alive today, he may well have noted the plates of healthy food, yoga poses and shirtless pull-ups similarly congesting Instagram.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Politics

Don’t understand the UK election? Here’s the simple answer…

by Paul ValeLeave a Comment on Don’t understand the UK election? Here’s the simple answer…

Britain is f*cked.

Gone are the days when power was exchanged between the main political behemoths — Labour and the Conservatives. Recent years have heralded the emergence of several smaller parties with divergent and competing ideologies, each flourishing by tapping into the electorate’s increasingly visceral scorn at the political status quo.

Britain’s “first past the post” voting system (the same used to elect to Congress) was designed to create majority governments — yet for the second election running it will yield no winning margin. That’s because neither the Labour Party nor the Conservatives will get within a piss-length of the post (let alone be the first to cross it) such has been the hemorrhage of voters to the political fringe.

Without sufficient members of parliament (MPs) to form a majority, the two main parties are fated to court potential partners, such as Nigel Farage’s fiercely Eurosceptic UK Independence Party (Ukip), Nicola Sturgeon’s pro-secessionist Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), and the Liberal Democrats, cohorts in the last coalition, led by Nick Clegg (who are likely to be decimated by voters, thus limiting their influence). The Greens, alongside the nationalist party of Wales (Plaid Cymru) and the unionist DUP of Northern Ireland, complete the undercard.

Backroom negotiations start on May 8; it’s a hand of high-stakes poker with each party gambling on how much of their own agenda they can compromise in exchange for power. The Tories and Ukip form a potential center-right alliance, Labour and the SNP a prospective center-left counterbalance. No combination therein is likely to produce a stable government, with Clegg this week predicting another general election before Christmas.

This is simply democracy working, you’re no doubt squealing at the screen. Yes — a coalition government can (in theory) mean a broader range of interests is represented in Westminster. However, the core vision of Ukip is to take Britain out of the European Union, while the SNP is determined to beak up the United Kingdom.

Current Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron has promised to hold a referendum on Britain’s continuing membership of the EU by 2017. The increasing popularity of Ukip, to whom the Tories have been leaking members and MPs, allied to a general suspicion towards Britain’s European partners makes an exit all the more likely, an economically ruinous outcome for both the U.K and the continent.

On the economy, the U.K.’s budget deficit is stuck at 5 percent of GDP and though the last coalition (the Tories and the Lib Dems) cut unemployment, this came at the expense of living standards, with declining wages and soaring house prices disproportionately affecting Britain’s young.

Labour leader Ed Miliband has promised to tackle the deficit with smaller, less painful strides, allied to tax increases for the wealthy, including a levy on houses priced at more than £2 million. All very progressive, but to enact these reforms he’ll need the support of the SNP, who look set to become Britain’s third largest party.

Although the nationalists are unlikely to push for an independence vote in the next parliament (last year’s vote was defeated 55 percent-45 percent) their increasing power makes a second referendum and Scotland’s eventual dismemberment somewhat inevitable — again, with huge economic implications for the U.K. and beyond.

So here’s Sophie’s choice for Britain: leave the EU or end the UK. Think upon that the next time you’re getting charged up about Hillary’s donors or Ted’s hosts.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Politics

The world consists chiefly of the vulgar

by Paul ValeLeave a Comment on The world consists chiefly of the vulgar

During the 1964 presidential election, Democratic incumbent Lyndon Johnson released a vulgar campaign advert equating his Republican opponent Barry Goldwater with nuclear annihilation.

The spot, which became known as “Daisy Girl,” represented political theatre at its most base, playing on the pervasive and real fear of Armageddon to corral voters on polling day. Such was the controversy it only aired once. That was enough with Johnson’s securing an historic landslide to return him to the White House.

Half a century later and the attack on Goldwater still resonates. Last week Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Goldwater decent within the Libertarian family, announced his intention to run for the presidency.

On the same day a conservative group attacked Paul with a similarly vulgar $1 million TV campaign that played like a modern update to Sixties nuclear vignette. In the attack, the role of Soviet bogeyman was played by Iran, with President Obama (a Muslim fifth-columnist to many on the American right) cast as the facilitator via the nuclear agreement currently being whittled by Iranian and Western diplomats.

Yet unlike its political forebear, the attack on Paul did not originate from the Democratic Party but from a shadowy group tied to the GOP. To clarify: on the day Paul announced his bid for the White House, a group from within his own political stable unleashed an advertising campaign suggesting his candidacy could lead to a nuclear attack.

The group responsible for the spot is the Orwellian-named “Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America,” a hawkish nonprofit cabal whose status allows it to conceal the donors that paid for the advert. Not only was the senator attacked by his own, he was mugged in the dark, his assailants delivering kicks from the political void.


Paul is a divisive politician, beloved by younger Republicans, untrusted by religious and social conservatives and feared by the party establishment. Yet it is his non-interventionist worldview that represents the biggest threat, particularly to the neocons for whom perpetual war offers the healthiest returns.

The Libertarian has been softening his isolationism in recent months, moving towards the Republican mainstream. However, he has abstained from the GOP push to sabotage the Iranian nuclear deal, a move compelled by reasons running from blind allegiance to the Israeli right to a rabid need to scupper Obama’s legacy. To the neocons any appeasement towards Iran is unthinkable, and certainly won’t be tolerated in a prospective Republican presidential nominee.

In comparison, the negative campaigning for the forthcoming UK election looks almost childish, despite the efforts of a few dilettantes at Conservative Central Headquarters exploiting a YouTube loophole to create anti-Labour online fare.

At least it’s the opposition attacking Ed Miliband and not a shadowy faction within his own party. What’s more, the nature of the British system means that any attack on a party leader, no matter how cutting, has little meaning across the constituencies. The electorate votes for their local MP rather than a party head, thus limiting the effectiveness of national character politics.

The veracity of the attack on Paul is as suspect as its sophistication. Yet the Senator is not just a hapless victim. Only hours after Hillary Clinton announced her intention to run on Sunday, the Paul campaign released a vulgar spot rehashing parts of a conspiracy theory suggesting the former secretary of state was responsible for the Benghazi attack in Libya in 2012.

Just because it isn’t true doesn’t mean it won’t be effective. “The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances,” said the Prince, “and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Culture

Pews give way to the saddle

by Paul ValeLeave a Comment on Pews give way to the saddle

The congregation stands at the door of the chapel, hands clenched around bottles of water, feet balancing on horseshoe clips soon to mount pedals.

“Is it like spinning?” a woman behind me asks her uninitiated companion. “No,” she replies. “This is Soul Cycle.”

The priest, a young man with a tailored beard and a defined physique, beckons the worshippers in. The pews are freshly wiped; white towels decorate the handlebars. Each bike is occupied; hopefuls on the waiting list are turned away.

The priest sits by the altar choosing a hymnal from a computer perched on a table protruding from the wall. Under the music, the noise of locking machinery vies with chatter.

Riders select their bike before the class ensuring a demarcation of devotion — skeptics at the rear, fanatics at the front. The bikes immediately facing the priest are reserved by the most loyal — booked in the hope of receiving a look of favor or a nod of recognition from the leader. Some congregants attend church daily, some more than once a day.

It’s a ’90s nightclub, an ’80s aerobics video, a self-help convention and a liturgy. It’s a mass of steam pipe-sweaty believers all moving in primal groupishness — forward, back, left, right, always on the beat, always on the beat, always on the beat.

The riders mirror the movements of the priest at the altar, each motion choreographed immaculately with the music.

Across the notes, the priest shouts mantras of mindfulness, mutterings shorn from self-help cards and as opaque as the horoscope: “We ride, we struggle, we change, we grow, we conquer.”

The message condensed is that fitness means confidence and confidence means happiness, all delivered in fortune cookie prose: “Ride from the soul and find the happiest, fittest, most confident you in every aspect of your life.”

Through moving as one, individuals experience “self-transcendent emotions,” feelings of something greater than themselves; tribal and uplifting, the same euphoria derived from amphetamines and EDM or singing in a choir.

The priest finally reveals why we are all there: “Together we will escape the difficulties of our lives and become a part of something bigger than ourselves.”

It’s an easy sell. In a world in which corporations reduce individuals to a daily function, the church provides more. It says you are greater than your role, more than a number on a spreadsheet vying for a few additional dollars at the end of the year, more than a hungry dog snarling over scraps at the corporate feeding bowl.

You are more than a reluctant psychopath, forced to compete for approval from above whilst treading on those below lest they move ahead at your expense. You are a human. You are more.

Candles surround the priest like Anglican evensong while scripture ornaments the wall — “Athlete, Legend, Warrior, Renegade, Rockstar.”

Throughout the service God is praised, praised by the priest in branded shorts, the human God, you, the rider, all the riders, the congregation and the collective endeavor it submits — all praised by the priest in branded shorts.

The service ends and the pews empty. The congregants leave weary, fitter and closer to happiness. “Tough class” a man says to a woman removing her shoes. “Yes, he really pushed us today,” she replies. “It was like a different world in there.”

The hope is that conviction bleeds from ritual into the real world. Riders just have to keep coming back. Founding a church, it seems, is as easy as riding a bike.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Politics

Nigel Farage delivers barnstorming speech to some empty chairs

by Paul ValeLeave a Comment on Nigel Farage delivers barnstorming speech to some empty chairs

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Nigel Farage delivered a barnstorming speech to an empty room on Thursday, telling several banks of chairs the West must “stand firm” and defend its “Judeo-Christian culture.”

The Ukip leader, in America to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference some 20 miles from a frosty Washington D.C., told attendees that had Britain and the US not stood together during the Second World War, “much of the world would not be free.” He then reaffirmed both nations’ shared heritage in “common law, not Sharia law.”

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Farage told some seats that ‘ISIS is the greatest threat to the free world’

“We must stand up and fight for liberty, freedom and democracy and not be cowed by political correctness,” he thundered to a deserted ballroom, adding: “We have all in the West mistakenly and in a cowardly manner pursued a policy of multiculturalism, rather than pursuing a policy in which we all come together.”

Explaining Ukip’s success in the UK, the prospective parliamentary candidate for South Thanet said that his party had come to “represent a group of people completely left behind,” blaming corporatism for the disenfranchisement of a great swathe of the UK electorate.

“We [Ukip] have become the party that stands for aspiration,” he told the vacated space. “Over-regulation and big global politics aren’t working… Ukip has crossed the class divide of UK politics.”

Daring to dip his toe in the piranha-infested waters of American politics, Farage chided the current Republican leadership for failing to appeal to the type of “patriotic” and “aspirational” voters that Ronald Reagan once inspired.

farage

‘Over-regulation and big global politics aren’t working’

His warm-up act was erstwhile vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. It was ironic quirk of the schedule; the Englishman offered an unsubtle warning against the extremism that has come to characterise much of the American conservative movement over the past decade: “If the Republican party is to win the next presidential election, it needs to get the people voting for it that were doing so 30 years ago… and I don’t think the Republican Party is attracting those kind of people.”

He also took issue with foreign policy decisions made by Washington and London, governments he lamented were “joined at the hip.” Farage said: “We’ve been engaged in an endless series of overseas wars and it’s time to asses whether that has been successful.”

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Farage is the man in the grey suit in the background

The Ukip leader told the desolate hall: “Every time we invade [a country], we’re told it is to make the streets of London and New York safe. Far from doing that, we’ve actually stoked the flames of militant Islamism.” He then assured the small American crowd that he wasn’t blaming them, calling the Islamic State the “greatest threat to the free world today.”

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Palin warmed up the crowd… who all left after she finished speaking

Farage said that defeating IS militants would not be done with American or British troops, but by regional armies with “boots on the ground.”

The Ukip chief left the conference destined for the less savage temperatures of Margate and his own party conference ahead of May’s crucial vote. Farage earlier indicated that he had come to America to learn how to win elections. Yet at a convention that prominently featured Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, the Ukip leader may well have taken a wrong turn somewhere over the Atlantic.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Culture, Politics

Why some American politicians deny basic science

by Paul ValeLeave a Comment on Why some American politicians deny basic science

NEW YORK — During a foreign policy think tank discussion in London on Wednesday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a likely presidential candidate for 2016, was asked whether he believed in evolution.

To a British audience, it might seem an odd question to pose to a sitting governor of a US state – akin to asking whether the Earth was round, or if he believed apples fall to the ground because of gravity.

Yet the Republican demurred, unable to answer – much to the delight of the journalists in the room, who not only had a story but one that could be duly soaked in a dye of cultural snobbery.

In his defence, it was not that the governor didn’t have the correct answer. Like everyone in the room, he knew full well that evolution is a watertight scientific theory. However, it is precisely because Walker has presidential ambitions that he found himself unwilling to answer, forced to look preposterous in front of the mocking crowd.

But what witchcraft is at work that requires a man bent on becoming leader of one of the most scientifically advanced nations in the world to deny a theory so universally accepted?

Put simply, politics.

A Pew poll in 2009 found a majority (54%) of Republican voters believed in evolution.Similar polling in 2013 found far fewer Republicans (43%) believed in evolution. In just four years, disbelieving Republican voters had switched from a minority to a majority.

That’s not to say more Americans had come to question evolution. The overall percentage of disbelievers remained that same – a still staggering 40%. It was that more people that reject evolution had come to identify with the Republican brand.

But why? Pew found that older Americans are far more likely to reject Darwin’s teachings, as are white evangelicals. In recent years the Republican Party has increasingly come to rely on these twin demographics – older voters and evangelical Christians.

Most Americans still believe in evolution. It’s likely most Republican politicians believe in evolution, albeit quietly. But increasingly the party’s base, those that turn out to vote in presidential and midterm elections, do not. To remain in power, some politicians must pander to this base, regardless of how discordant it makes them look to the rest of America or indeed the Western world.

The increasing polarisation of American politics is also at play. A general mistrust of science has come to represent the default position of many Republican voters, hence similar obfuscation on matters of climate change. The longer this persists, the more entrenched these views become.

Which leads us back to Walker, forced to sit on a London stage and embarrassingly “punt” on a question, knowing that delivering an honest answer would alienate him with the very supporters he needs to corral for a White House bid.

Walker’s party has compromised on truth to retain power. It won’t last; relying on an ageing vote is unsustainable. Yet until the party itself evolves, Republican politicians will continue to be laughed at around the world.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.

Politics

London – the place Republicans go to die

by Paul ValeLeave a Comment on London – the place Republicans go to die

London has become the elephant’s graveyard. It’s the place where Republicans go to die.

In less than a month, three of the GOP’s main presidential hopefuls have sojourned in the British capital for what should have been rudimentary exercises in statesmanship.

All three have subsequently left having soiled their credentials.

In January, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal gave a speech to a British think tank in London in which he echoed discredited Fox News reporting that said Muslims have been allowed to establish autonomous neighbourhoods in British cities run under Sharia.

He then repeated the claim on CNN, insisting he was “speaking the truth”.

Next up was Chris Christie, whose burlesque three-day trade visit to the UK peaked when the New Jersey governor said parents should have “some measure of choice” in whether their children are vaccinated (thus undercutting the entire edifice that has proved so effective in eradicating childhood diseases).

The comments ignited a firestorm in the US, which was suffering a measles outbreak, and left Christie snapping at journalists for the remainder of his trip.

Then there was Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, who was roundly mocked on Wednesday for choosing to “punt” rather than answer a question on evolution. Speaking at a British foreign policy think tank, Walker was asked: “Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution? Do you believe in it?”

“For me, I am going to punt on that one as well,” he said. “That’s a question politicians shouldn’t be involved in one way or another. I am going to leave that up to you. I’m here to talk about trade, not to pontificate about evolution.”

This was greeted by mocking laughs from the assembled press corps, and subsequent headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

And let’s not forget Mitt Romney, who travelled to the capital in 2012 to attend the Olympic games, an event for which he questioned the host’s preparedness. Romney was savaged in the British press; the London curse had struck again…

It’s 18 months before Americans go to the polls, so more prospective Republican candidates are likely to make the trip across the water. As such, the HuffPost UK has put together the following handy cheat sheet of questions and answers for any GOP candidate visiting our shores.

REPUBLICAN CHEAT SHEET:

  • What are dinosaurs?

Correct answer: A diverse group of animals that first appeared during the Triassic period and lived for around 135 million years.

Incorrect answer: Big lizards created by God that lived around the time of King Arthur.

  • Do childhood vaccinations work?

Correct answer: Yes.

Incorrect answer: Vaccines are dangerous. The government and the media have conspired to cover this up.

  • How old is Earth?

Correct answer: 4.54 billion-years-old.

Incorrect answer: By adding up the genealogies of the Bible, we know the world was made 6,000 years ago.

  • What happens if you keep sailing west?

Correct answer: You’ll eventually hit land. If you sail around it and repeat the process you’ll end up back where you started.

Incorrect answer: You’ll fall off the edge of the world or be eaten by sea beasts.

  • Is the average temperature of Earth’s climate system rising?

Correct answer: Yes.

Incorrect answer: If the climate is warming, where is all this snow coming from?

  • What’s the best way to stimulate an economy?

Correct answer: Increase government spending and cut taxes on the middle class.

Incorrect answer: Huge tax breaks for the wealthy.

  • What would be your advise to the parents of a sick child?

Correct answer: Take the child to see a trained medical professional.

Incorrect answer: Fall to your knees, singing ‘When I Survey The Wondrous Cross’.

  • What should you do if a tooth falls out?

Correct answer: Put it in the bin and make a dental appointment.

Incorrect answer: Put it in my pocket until nighttime, and then leave it under my pillow for the fairy.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post. The original article can be found here.