Feral media, what feral media?

Tony Blair today gave one of his last speeches as PM and used it to criticise the media. The speech, which took place at a special Reuters event for journalists (heh heh) attacked the current style of political reporting:

...[it has] sapped the country's confidence and self-belief; it undermines its assessment of itself, its institutions and above all else it reduces our capacity to take the right decisions in the right spirit for our future

In many ways, he's right. But though he admits that Labour are 'partly' to blame, I don't think he truly recognises the impact of characters like Charlie Whelan and Alastair Campbell on the culture of political journalism in Westminster. In many ways, all that has changed is that newspapers are now more willing to publish details of incidents which twenty years ago would never have left the fancy dining rooms of Belgravia. The fact that Labour abandoned ideology in order to gain power - and the fact that the Conservatives look likely to follow suit in response - say a lot more about the way that Britain has lost any true sense of self-assessment.

Then again, perhaps there's something in it. Yesterday, the world's most odious columnist, Richard Littlejohn, published a humorous column in which he claimed that Blair, Brown, Labour, the BBC and everyone else he doesn't like are "the main recruiters for the BNP". Stuff and nonsense, of course. Look at the fabric of Littlejohn's pathetic articles and you can see what sentiments they are designed to elicit. He constantly claims that Labour are forcing people to join the BNP because of their abandonment of the 'white working class' (in favour of those nasty black people from overseas). In almost every article he writes, he posits the problem and the solution that 'many people are choosing'. The problem is Labour and, to a certain extent, David Cameron. The solution people choose is joining the BNP. He never offers any other solution to the 'problems' of mainstream politics and thus, though he may claim that he dislikes the fascists, he presents them as the only realistic option for white, working class Britons.

Littlejohn represents everything that is nasty about Britain. Small-minded, ignorant, bigoted, puffed up, parochial, demagogic, fallacious and race-proud: he is the number one recruiter for that gang of thugs, the BNP. Not, in case you didn't guess, Gordon Brown.

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