some reasonable disgust at a Facebook page called 'Raoul Moat: You
Legend', on which people have been expressing sympathy with Moat and
criticising the police. Bad move, Cameron.
Then it turned out that No 10 had commissioned a junior official to
'get in touch' with Facebook to express the government's disgust at
the page. Terrible move.
Why? Moat's murders, his vendetta and his flight from the police
cannot, of course, be condoned in any measure - although there will be
things that may explain them at least in part, and shouldn't be
ignored. In one respect Cameron was on reasonably safe-looking ground
when he slammed the pro-Moat comments on the page.
But this little episode - the worthy PMQs rant and the subsequent
phone call to Facebook (or perhaps it was a tweet) is a bad moment for
the Government. Why? Well, I've been reasonably pleased with the
Coalition so far, if not in all policy matters then at least in its
more commonsensical approach than Labour. Ken Clarke's line on
prisons, for instance, or Theresa May on 28-day detention have been
refreshingly sensible-liberal. That's been one of the best things
since the Coalition deal was struck: the volume of government has been
turned down.
Labour, for all its social transformation and progressive policies,
couldn't resist falling back on hectoring, interfering, and just
talking. The end result was a government that crowded out independent
thought by constantly jabbering, not just about government business
but about anything and everything, legitimately. It's what people
bemoan as "the nanny state".
And that's what Cameron's move sounds like to me. The government just
commenting on whatever it's asked about, needing to find a solution or
- very New Labourlike - have a policy position, a line that can be
loudly and publicly toed in order to "align" with the public mood,
regardless of the moral right or practical ability of the government
to intervene. In this case, the liberal line ought to be that Facebook
users can post what they like about whomever they wish, as long as
they're not inciting hatred or violence. This page is deeply
distasteful, but it's not (at least as I write this) falling foul of
the law. And Facebook have rightly stuck up for the right of these
thoughtless and angry people to express their views.
When the prime minister of the day starts expressing an opinion about
this sort of thing, it's government as a brand, not as a government.
What now? What are we suppposed to think about the government after
this? That they're jolly nice chaps because they had an ineffectual
moan at Facebook about something I also disagree about? Alas, no. Even
I, a Coalition sympathiser, was reminded of something much less
pleasant: the Chinese government having a go at that other ubiquitous
internet giant, Google.
Yes, I know that this Moat thing is small fry in comparison to the
Chinese all-out assault on Google. But up to now the Coalition has
been pretty much on the side of the angels - this is just an unhappy
sign that the spirit of New Labour and its infamous Grid has not yet
been laid to rest.
