I’m watching Robert Kilroy-Silk on Question Time, and I think he’s doing rather well.
Kilroy started out as a Labour MP, believe it or not. But he was never really convincing in the role. The others did not like him, and he sensed that he was not one of them, was my impression. Too keen on personal advancement, and not nearly keen enough on concealing it under a veneer of class solidarity. So he stopped doing that and switched to Kilroy, one of those early to mid-morning mini-amphitheatre televised bore-ins with Kilroy himself as the roving interlocutor.
Kilroy’s basic problem with Kilroy was that he seemed to regard everyone present except himself an idiot, a feeling which must have been hard to fight, given that everyone present except himself was at the very least behaving idiotically. (I speak as one who used to appear on this show myself from time to time, until I saw the pointlessness of my ways.) Kilroy tried to conceal his contempt for everyone under a layer of somewhat overdone good humour and what I presume he thought was charm, but what everyone else called smarm.
As his show moved away from semi-intelligent debate into the territory already occupied more entertainingly by Jerry Springer – my mother is a cross-dresser, I want to have a fight with my step-dad, my twin sister is a prostitute and I am a nun and I want to have a fight with her, etc. – Kilroy’s manner became ever more off-putting and false and desperate.
But Kilroy-Silk’s manner on Question Time was downright … appropriate. Gone was the layer of smarm. And out from under it came this really quite attractive and intelligent man. He used to be hated because he was appalling. Now he will be hated because he is not nearly as appalling as his enemies would like him to be.
Most of us are familiar with the Peter Principle, the one that says that people are promoted until they arrive with a thud at their level of incompetence, at which they then remain for ever. But in politics as in life generally, I think we sometimes observe the opposite process. Sometimes, people arrive at their level of competence, having just buggered about pointlessly for the previous two decades until they reached it. Kilroy-Silk strikes me as a fine example of a man who is now, as a Eurosceptic politician with the right, the duty, and the inclination to speak his mind, at last arriving at his level of competence.
It could turn out that by switching off Kilroy the talkshow host, and unleashing Kilroy-Silk the reborn politician, the BBC has made one of its most important contributions to the EUro-debate, in favour of the NO side.
Please understand that I am talking here about competence, rather than about the rights and wrongs of it all. I generally hate what politicians do, but my point is: some of them do it very well, while others mysteriously run out of steam, seem woefully miscast, and should have carried on with what they had previously been doing.
For the opposite tendency, a perfect example of the original Peter Principle rather than of the reverse version of it which I am here offering: Glenda Jackson. What a fine actress. And what a sad, drab failure as a politician.
I thought Robert Kilroy-Silk was marvellous in last night’s Question Time… he started in facing a hostile audience – thanks to his “racist” comments regarding Arab nations not contributing much lately – but despite his occasional weakness to rant, he used the best strategy to win this vote against EU constitution… that is using simple language and generalising the issue. Yes sure, it is populist, but hey it’s a REFERENDUM on a complex piece of bad legistlation and I hold very little faith in the cross section of British public to understand what’s on stake here.
The effectiveness of his approach could be seen in the end where he won the audience over and was constantly applauded, especially when he terrorised hapless Patricia Hewitt who came off (correctly) as self righteous, patrionising, two faced, lying Blairite wench.
NO campaign take note.
I agree he was very good, turning on both Hewitt and Ancram to great effect. Dimbleby seemed to acknowledge this when he reminded KS that there were four other members of the panel who needed to have their say, and then saying to the others that they were indeed free to have their say: “Michael Ancram, you’ve been very quiet for a while!”.
One quibble though. KS seemed to go along with the current habit of using the terms “EU” and “Europe” interchangeably. This conflation of the political project with the geographical entity is used time and again by EU-philes to smear EU opponents as xenophobes.
The BBC is an especially bad offender and they ought to be picked up on it.
Of course matters are not helped by ill-judged adverstising such as the recent UKIP advert featuring a lederhosen-clad yodelling Austrian. This got featured, for example, in last week’s “Have I Got News for You” where it was introduced with something like “and this is how UKIP sees foreigners”.
Well it is not surprising that K-S did well on Question Time. After all, he is a well experienced television host and former politician. It was however rather amusing to see him wipe the floor with the other guests. K-C seemed to be able to encourage questioners to make sure the pol answered the question. This was esp the case when the silly moo tried to get back to Eurovision rather than tackle a question on the CAP.
The best bit was when Hewitt made a sneery joke about the Eurovision song contest (a good question from the floor I thought) in her attempt to be populist, and the room, detecting her patronising tone, responded with absolute silence. Her attempt at wit told you all you need to know about New Labour politicians, and the look on her face when she was greeted with silence was a picture.
I watched the “Any Questions” rerun on the computer. My biggest surprise was in the Green Party woman whom I liked. At least she spoke for a line that assumed acceptance of the referendum rather than waffliing over what it all means. [Patricia: Why, even the Wimbledon Cricket Club has a constitution.]
I’d forgotten what a nasty piece of work M. Ancrim is.
Kilroy-Silk – what a name! He should hammer harder on the waste, fraud and abuse in the E.U. as well as on the advantages of being an independent set of islands off a large, continental land mass.
Why does no one raise the question: What effect might the cheap oil discount chits floating among persons with governments deeply involved in the “regime change” question have had on their recommendations concerning inspections?
I couldn’t agree with you more on the subject of Glenda Jackson. I left the Labour Party in 2003, unable to bring myself to pay a subscription that assisted the careers of the anti-American-anti-Capitalist-anti-War group of Labour MPs (with apologetic noises to such as Ann Clwydd); Glenda Jackson was the specific face that summed up my animosity. Her assumption that she knew best and that it was SO OBVIOUS that Bush was a bloodthirsty madman and Blair his poodle made me nauseous about having backed her party at all, for a while.
James
In agreeing with me about Glenda Jackson you are agreeing with something I didn’t say. I was saying that Glenda Jackson is a failure as a politician, in the sense that even she must be disappointed with the lack of headway she has made. Whether the content of her political views is good or bad is a distinct matter.
Robin Cook, on the other hand, has been much more successful, putting across the same kind of ideas as Glenda Jackson. Success and whether one agrees are two distinct questions, and I was focusing on success.
Kilroy-Silk, I assert, looks like he is going to be a success. And one could agree with that (while regretting it) even if one were an enthusiastic pro-EUropean.
Kilroy had better succeed in his second stint as a politician. The show which replaced his BBC1 talker has already been canned and he’s had to sack 65 employees. And he still has an erstwhile “secret love child” to support.
Well, WJ – if true, how bracing that he is supporting said child – unlike hundreds of thousands of yobbos in Britain who have buggered off and abidcated that responsibility to the taxpayer. Given that there are serial fathers in Britain who have absolutely no idea of how many children they have (with no more a memory of the identity of the mother than chimpanzees have), if K-S has a child outside marriage and has accepted responsibility, these days, he’s a hero.
Brian – Yes, the bitter-looking, preachy Glenda Jackson plunged from international movie stardom to drab nonentity once she got into the political pool. Robin Cooke has been far more successful at promoting those same views – and Jackson’s the one who’s supposed to be the actor. She got into Parliament under Labour’s Famous People Quota.
A propos similar famous-person welcomeee to Labour – whatever happened to the feeble little turncoat Shawn something with the butler? Is he still in Parliament? A soul brother of Senator Flippy.