Watching Harriet Harman being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg on Newsnight earlier this week was a strange experience. I felt as if I’d entered a political twilight zone where nothing was quite as it seemed. Was the deputy leader of the Labour party really saying these things? I knew she was, but it seemed so miscalculated — so unwise — it was as if Harman’s body had been taken over by someone else. A mischievous political demon, perhaps. Or Lynton Crosby. The entire interview was like a nine-minute party political broadcast for the Conservative party.
By my count, Kuenssberg gave Harman five chances to admit that it had been a mistake for the National Council of Civil Liberties to grant ‘affiliate’ status to the Paedophile Information Exchange, a notorious lobby group that campaigned for the age of consent to be lowered to the age of four, and five times she refused. Why?
Harman’s argument was that, as a matter of policy, the NCCL didn’t bother to vet any group or individual that applied to join.
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