Charles Moore’s thoughts on the week
We all know about spin in theory, but we are slow to notice it in practice. The approved version of the release of Gillian Gibbons, the ‘teddy bear’ teacher in the Sudan, is that the Sudanese government has seen reason thanks to the mission of two Muslim peers, Lord Ahmed and Lady Warsi. But is that so? Is it likely that the Sudanese government had no hand in the original, preposterous charge against her, and did not plan the game which followed? Is it credible that the demonstration calling for fiercer punishment for Ms Gibbons was not approved by the government? Was there any real concession in releasing Ms Gibbons after eight days rather than 15? Lord Ahmed is highly sympathetic to Islamist views. In 2005, for example, he hosted the book launch of an extreme anti-Semite in the House of Lords. Lady Warsi (see last week’s Notes) opposes Muslim moderates because they are ‘off the map’. It will have suited the Sudanese government to have empowered such Muslim intermediaries and snubbed official British government interventions, without conceding anything of substance itself. Now the pressure will be on our government to sneak away from its promises of helping the task force in Darfur in the interests of good relations with the murderers in Khartoum.
It is not proving helpful to Gordon Brown that he is the ‘son of the manse’. The transition from Scottish Presbyterian minister in one generation to Prime Minister in the next was never likely to appeal to the majority. And now that scandal has engulfed Mr Brown, his holy background becomes the object of satire. An additional difficulty, I suspect, is that very few people in England know what a ‘manse’ is.
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