50 Years ago: Party Politics (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the B.B.C.’s “Party Political Broadcast” series the listener has been honoured recently with contributions from Mr. Churchill and Mr. Attlee. Both speeches were printed in The Listener (22/3/51 and 5/4/51) which is the source of the quotations used in this article.

Mr. Churchill commenced in the best tradition by praising Mr. Bevin who had just resigned the Foreign Secretaryship, modestly interposing: “Although I differed from him in his handling of many questions.” He then got under way in the best Churchillian manner: “My friends, our country is in a position of danger and perplexity.” It appears that at home we are divided, the re-armament programme is being muddled, to nationalize steel at this time “is playing party politics with a vengeance,” and Britain is not playing her full part in leading the world on the road to peace, and so on. In fact all those things one would expect from a Leader of the Opposition who takes from “Tin Pan Alley” his theme tune “Things aint what they used to be.” Mr. Attlee, of course, has the same theme; it is only a question of different emphasis. He denies the criticisms of Churchill and says: “the Opposition continue their usual tactics of exaggerating all the difficulties of the age we live in and attributing most of them to the Government.” Of Churchill he says, “He is out to get back to power by hook or by crook. During the last few months he has been resorting to various political tricks in order to try to defeat or harass the Government.”

There may be an election in the near future. The political pollsters whom Mr. Attlee dislikes, forecast that the Conservatives would romp home if an election took place now.

That the problems of today tend to make one forget the problems of yesteryear cannot be denied. But anybody who remembers, or has read, the records of Conservative governments in the past, can only come to the conclusion that such an action must be a negative one based on the maxim “they can’t be any worse than the present lot.”

[From an article by Guy, Socialist Standard, June 1951]

Editorial: No Freedom of the Air for S.P.G.B. (1954)

Editorial from the July 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the current argument between the Labour and Tory parties about the respective merits of commercial and non-commercial television both sides have something to say about the extent to which the one or other method will give a stranglehold to monopoly and crowd out small groups. The Labourites, in line with their general support for government control maintain that commercial T.V. would give a monopoly to large and wealthy commercial interests; to which their opponents retort that State monopoly has even less regard for weak independent views. The S.P.G.B., not being enamoured in the least of either private or State capitalism, can see no merit in either point of view. It is true that with commercial T.V. (or sound broadcasting) the capitalist rule prevails that the freedom of the air is for those who can afford to pay for it but it is also true that in all the 32 years of State controlled broadcasting in this country the S.P.G.B. case has never once been allowed to be heard.

This is not for want of trying. On numerous occasions application has been made but always some reason is found for refusing it. The latest application, made in August, 1953, has ended in the usual way. Not, of course, a blunt declaration that there is no intention to allow us to broadcast, merely polite reasons why it cannot be this time—but as these polite refusals extend over decades they add up to the same thing as a final no.

The first reason for refusal is that Party political broadcasts are reserved for parties represented in Parliament or putting forward a certain number of candidates at a general election. When we pointed out that this arrangement tests on an agreement of the large political parties and in effect gives them a monopoly to the exclusion of small organizations the B.B.C. replied saying that they resented this imputation. The exclusion of the small organizations from that series of political broadcasts did not, said the B.B.C. give a monopoly to the big organizations because there are other political broadcasts outside that series.

Fine, so we applied to come under one of them, as we have done before, and in order to fit in with the suggestion thrown out by the B.B.C. we related our proposed broadcast to the 50th anniversary of the founding of the S.P.G.B. To this we received the reply that our proposed statement does not offer a basis for a broadcast because there would not, in the opinion of the B.B.C. be sufficient public interest in the anniversary of the S.P.G.B.

So this latest attempt to get on the air meets the fate of the several earlier applications—a number of different ways of saying no.

We would add, for the information of Labour Party supporters who may think that things are different under Labour Government, that we received the same treatment under Labour Government as under the present and pre-war Conservative Governments

In the recent correspondence we reminded the B.B.C. that in 1949 the Broadcasting Committee under the chairmanship of Lord Beveridge, had recommended the B.B.C. to consider the possibility of a kind of “Hyde Park of the Air,” in order to give all minorities which had a message, “religious or otherwise," some time to broadcast. (Report Para. 257). They also expressed the view (Para 259) that the allocation of opportunities to ventilate controversial views “should not be guided either by simple calculations of the numbers who already hold such views or by fear of giving offence to particular groups of listeners."

Those recommendations evidently fell on deaf ears at Broadcasting House.

TV Review: Our Masters’ Voice (1999)

Tyndall (top left) in his younger days.

TV Review from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month’s Euro election campaign is probably best forgotten—just as well, as most of the electorate appeared to have forgotten about it even before polling day. It was not that the political parties made no effort to influence the electorate, it just seemed as if they were going through the motions, well aware that wherever real political power lies in Europe it is certainly not with the European Parliament. The Party Election Broadcasts screened during the campaign must have been among the most hopeless and insipid on record.

The Conservative Party ran with a two-part playlet featuring a young, upwardly-mobile couple whose prose turned with the trivial to overtly political with all the subtlety and finesse of Yasser Arafat gatecrashing a barmitzvah. Labour’s best effort was another risible attempt at the canonisation of Tony Blair, the saintly führer.

The real British führer, of course, achieved a Party Election Broadcast of his own this time thanks to the BNP running a full list across most of the UK. Standing resplendent in front of the Cenotaph in Whitehall was the man who poses as the saviour of the white race, Mr John Tyndall, professional bigot, race hater and petty criminal. If ever there was a case to be made for lengthier prison sentences of the type advocated by the BNP, then this man must feature prominently. Even he, however, looked good next to the “vox pop” type interviews which followed, where stilted fascists posing as “ordinary” members of the public read from cue cards, turning a few minutes of nationalist rhetoric into what seemed like a lifetime of televisual embarrassment. Unusually for the BNP, their broadcast this time around did not feature Tyndall railing against all those impure elements who have taken the Great out of Britain—communists, Jews, blacks, homosexuals, liberals, teachers, Guardian-readers, social workers, feminists, etc. Rather like the Daily Mail, Tyndall now has a greater, more all-encompassing target than these minority groups: Europe itself. Britain must Get Out Of Europe he bellowed, NOW!

For those whose familiarity with the BNP extends beyond a PEB every few years, this is odd. If it is the case that opposition to all things European and support for everything home-grown and British is what now really defines the BNP’s politics then why is it that they have been happy to spend so much time in the company of European terrorists from Italy and elsewhere this last 15 years or so? Why is it that the BNP attends international gatherings in Europe where—bizarrely—other foreigner-haters from all the different nations of Europe are in attendance? And, while we’re on the subject, wouldn’t it be interesting to know how much of the money to finance the BNP’s election candidates (and hence its PEB) actually came from Johnny Foreigner? Questions, there are many, but answers no doubt there will be none.

Left, right

Also in evidence during the Euro-election campaign was that other authoritarian comedy act, Arthur Scargill and his ever-decreasing and increasingly amazing SLP. Like Tyndall, Scargill made sure the SLP put up nearly a full list of candidates so that it would be eligible for a Party Political Broadcast, and like the BNP, the SLP’s broadcast was a homily to the Little Englander political mentality, this time with a bizarre Stalinist twist. Despite their national exposure, it would appear that the SLP now presents no challenge whatsoever to Labour anywhere in the country, despite the massive display of apathy on election day from Labour’s core support. The SLP, shorn of many of the Trotskyist activists which paradoxically both gave it presence and rent it asunder, is now little more than a Stalinist sect with small followings in the faction-ridden Asian working class movement in London. Just like the BNP, it its vote was desultory for a party with national political exposure and a lowest-common denominator political appeal. Like his great political enemy David Owen, Scargill truly has the negative Midas touch: everything he touches turns to shit.

Political mind control of the type manifested in Party Political and Party Election Broadcasts is a difficult and inexact science, though when it works it can infect the minds of generations of the working class. Those who doubt this should take a look at Party Political Broadcasts: The Greatest Hits, a video collection of PPBs since their inception at the end of the Second World War. As you watch it, the carefully planted myths of a capitalist political lifetime unfold before your very eyes. Here are MacMillan, Wilson, Thatcher and Blair, bamboozling the working class with nationalist rhetoric and reformist promises as if their very life depended on it. It is in fact, a monument to political trickery and flummery throughout the ages. Perhaps, one day, Arthur Scargill and John Tyndall will find their way on to the sequel, bearing in mind, of course, that sequels are usually a pale imitation of the original.

Dave Perrin

Echo of a Great Fight (1951)

From the September 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Take a ringside seat as two contestants enter the political arena. On the right “Battling” Lady Tweedsmuir, Conservative M.P. On the left “Champ” Alice Bacon, M.P., and Chairman of the Labour Party. (Party Political Broadcasts, and repeated in “The Listener,” 28th June and 5th July.) The winner of the contest hopes that her party will qualify for the support of the electorate in the next General Election.

Up in the centre of the ring Lady Tweedsmuir struck the first blows at “the Government’s hesitation and drift in foreign policy. It is not their fault if other nations covet all we have ” (italics ours), “ but it is our Government’s fault if we appear so weak in foreign eyes that we tempt them to threaten. us.” The Government’s record of rearmament has been “too little, too late. . . . The Russian armies outnumbered the Allies in Europe by nine to one . . . There is so much to do, so little time while a powerful and ruthless nation strives to conquer the world.” (These words have a familiar ring; we heard them in 1914 and 1939.)

Alice Bacon counter-attacked with lavish praise for the morale of present-day Britain and the Labour Government’s achievements in social services and care of school children. She poured scorn on Lady Tweedsmuir’s “weird picture of a Britain dismembered and upside down,” and questioned whether she gets “quite the same angle on life from the windows of her Highland castle at Braemar as she (Alice Bacon) gets from the windows of a miner’s cottage in Yorkshire.”

Lady Tweedsmuir returned to the attack and reminded us that most of the “good measures in the field of social services” were drawn up during the war by the Coalition Government with its large Conservative majority, but the Labour Government had “completely undermined the whole idea with their bad management anti wild extravagancies in all directions.” This was followed by a short jab that we already have the “highest taxation in the free world.”

Alice Bacon temporarily floored her opponent with the fact that the heavy taxes fall on people with more than £40 a week. She denied the Government’s “wild extravagance" and said “The money is spent on you and your family.” (That’s us, Chums!)

Lady T. then weighed in with a flurry of tried and trusty body blows, “devaluation, meat muddle, fuel crisis, eggs in Gambia (do you know that at one time there were more officials than chickens?), sale of jet aircraft to Russia, serious muddle over raw materials, and the fearful failure on housing.”

Alice Bacon, now on the defensive, said that planning was necessary although Tories always “shudder” when the word is mentioned. “The Tory policy of unrestricted free enterprise, everybody for himself, leads merely to scramble and chaos.” She further “explained” the rising prices as due to high costs of raw materials from abroad, rising world population, 200,000,000 more mouths to feed and clothe than before file war, Korea, and hoarding of stocks. She firmly upheld the Government’s policy of bulk buying and subsidies; also their attitude to India and the Gold Coast, saying, “This is a Labour century, the century of the ordinary folk, not the century of Tory imperialists.”

Lady T. came back with a plea for free enterprise and burst forth with a literary gem that should go down to posterity. “The Conservative party has always maintained that the first need in domestic affairs is to have honest money. After all, money is only worth what it will buy.” We also heard that the Tories have “plainly stated their resolve to strive their utmost” to build 100,000 more houses per year than the Labour Government’s target. They don’t claim to “ know all the answers,” and given power their “task won’t be 'easy,” but they have “done it before, after 1931, when the last Labour Government left a trail of financial ruin and 2,750,000 unemployed.” Lady Tweedsmuir’s parting words were rather high-flown. “Life can still be a high adventure if only we are given the chance. I ask you then, when the moment comes, to adventure on with us in faith and resolution to match the spirit of our times.” (The “high adventure” is somewhat ambiguous and the word “high” a singularly unfortunate choice—it smells.)

Alice Bacon’s closing round stressed the opposition by Tories to increased profits tax. She said that rearmament is bound to affect our standard of living, but “it is our contribution to help to maintain the peace of the world. You won’t find us bullying or blustering ourselves into a war in the old imperialist way; but patience must not be mistaken for weakness. . . . In these critical times when it is very easy for a small spark to start the atom war, it is very important to continue to have statesmen at the helm who are patient and calm, sensible and responsible, and who bring to the conference table proved qualities of democratic leadership. With Clement Attlee and his team you can be sure of that.”

These party political broadcasts always follow the same depressing monotonous lines, the worn-out so- called “arguments” hashed and re-hashed, a wordy distracting smoke screen for the workers.

In an emergency—at home or abroad—these two parties will sink their differences, such as they are, and smoothly co-operate to keep the palsied and tottering system of Capitalism on its feet.

Do you desire to “high adventure” with the Tories or to be “led” by Mr. Attlee? Wake up, workers! Don’t be “led” anywhere, get going under your own steam and work for the obvious and only way— Socialism.

F. M. Robins

Labour’s plans for capitalism (2019)

Video Review from the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the 2019 local elections, the Labour Party released a video claiming ‘It’s just common sense.’ The video was entitled ‘Five people verses a billionaire’ (see: LINK.). Shares on social media proclaimed the video to be a better education in economics than most university classes.

The video depicts the difference between ‘giving’ money to ordinary people, via a pay-rise, a pension, disability benefits or a small business loan with giving the equivalent amount to a billionaire in the form of a tax cut.

The video then depicts all the five people spending their extra money, generating more business, economic growth and higher tax returns in their area: essentially, making the argument for a multiplier effect, whereby increasing consumer resources generates more wealth than would be spent in pay pensions and benefits.

The video asks the billionaire what they did with their money, and tellingly, he airily declares he forgot about it, but will probably send it to the Cayman Islands with the rest.

There are many problems with this short video. Firstly, the idea that economic growth is driven simply by having more commodity exchanges on the market. Circulating the wealth faster and faster does not create new wealth. Stimulating ‘demand’ by making more money available only generates growth if more wealth is produced to increase supply. Capitalist firms could just raise prices to capture more of this new demand, rather than increase production.

It neglects that the money to pay pay-rises, pensions and benefits has to come from somewhere. Of course, many Corbynistas argue for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) which says that money can just be created out of thin air (much like the old social credit fantasists of the 1930s). Money not backed by real wealth, though, is just tokens. Government must lay a claim to a share of the wealth that has already been produced in order to have tax money to spend.

A government can theoretically tax any existing wealth: all it needs to do is identify the source of wealth and apply force to claim control of it. The only limit to expropriation is the need for political support to be maintained for the government and the operational efficiency of the laws and bureaucracy of the nation.

Expropriation of wealth and monetising it can increase the value realised in an economy, in the form of windfall profits. A modern government could raid hidden pots of wealth, but this would take money out of the capital cycle which would disrupt the economy, and, at the least, be unpopular (if not actively counter-productive). Governments in a capitalist economy can only tax new wealth, to take a share of the profits generated, if they want to be sustainable. That is, they can only tax within the limits of profitability.

If the tax rates are too high, then investors will be deterred from turning their wealth into capital, and an economic crisis would ensue. The threat of a capital strike is an effective tool for the masters in the class war, and one that is largely hidden as a ‘natural’ fact, rather than a social act of self-interest. Labour’s video fails to expose this, instead simply conveying that billionaires naturally hoard wealth, rather than dutifully spending it.

Any spending done with tax will return less in new profits than the sum extracted from profits through taxation (because any of that spending will have to give a share to wages or paying for capital invested already in goods and services).

The government could instead borrow money from the wealthy, this, however, acts in much the same way as taxation, directing wealth away from the capital investment cycle, and reducing the production of new output. It further adds to the capitalists’ control over the economy, since the state is now committed to paying them back, and it can only carry out policies that will securely honour its debts.

In the specific instance of where the capitalist (the billionaire) would prefer to export their wealth rather than spend it in the country, taking this money and spending it would increase the sum of domestic demand. However, the reason the billionaire would be declining to invest and instead export their wealth is because there isn’t enough profit in the market to induce them to invest in new production. Taxing the profits of the billionaire reduces rather than increases their incentive to invest.

This is just a return to the Keynesian fantasy that the economy can be ‘pump-primed’ by taking idle wealth that is uninvested, and turning it into consumer demand. Even worse, it is the mirror image of the Tory line that a ‘well-managed economy is vital to the delivery of public services’ (i.e. that stringent government restraint to allow firms to grow leads to tax revenue and money to spend on services).

In both cases, human need is subsumed to the need to successfully exchange commodities in a market place. They both rely on a systemic logic that puts the owners of commodities in first place within the economy, and makes everyone else dependent upon fulfilling their interests. Put another way, for all the radicals proclaiming Labour finally coming out in favour of the ‘multiplier effect’, this video radically disarms the electorate, and the working class.

The knowledge that wealth is produced by our labour, and the interests of the property owners hinder it being put to the service of our needs leads to a very different set of conclusions: that we need to take ownership of the productive wealth for ourselves, and bypass the market entirely.

The propaganda of the Labour Party under Corbyn is as much a barrier to spreading the message needed for working class self-emancipation as it ever was under Blair. The Labour Party, far from progressing the interests of the working class, is about trying to use state power to make the market work in favour of people, and that is like trying to put a mad bear to work in a shop. 

Pik Smeet

It's just common sense. pic.twitter.com/ULko6MjPXW

— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) April 29, 2019

Socialist Euro-election Campaign (2014)

Party News from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In last month’s festival of xenophobia that the European elections were the Socialist Party mounted its biggest election campaign yet, emphasising by contrast the world nature of any solution by putting ‘World Socialist Movement’ on the ballot paper alongside our name . We contested two regions, South East England and Wales. Contesting Wales entitled us to our first ever Party Election Broadcast. This can be viewed on Youtube here:



The South East Region is the largest in the country with an electorate of over 6 million in 4 million households. Royal Mail delivered election leaflets to 984,000 households in 20 selected constituencies such as Oxford, Brighton, Southampton, Reading, Canterbury, and Dover. A further 16,000 were distributed by members and sympathisers. In Wales Royal Mail delivered our manifesto to 342,000 households in 9 constituencies with a further 8,000 being distributed by us. In all, a total of 1.35 million, the biggest ever campaign to publicise the case for a classless, stateless, moneyless world community without frontiers.

There was some good media coverage, especially from local TV and radio stations in both regions.  One fall-out from our standing was that one of our candidates was interviewed on BBC2’s Daily Politics Show, which would have had a much wider audience than our election broadcast in Wales. It can be seen at



Press coverage was more patchy but a number of local papers did give us a chance to present our case in more than a sound-bite. A couple of examples can be read here:

Canterbury Times

www.carmarthenjournal.co.uk/gets-Euro-vote/story-21065363-detail/story.html

We got 5454 votes in the South East and 1384 in Wales.

A Partly Satirical Broadcast (1997)

TV Review from the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

In covering the General Election campaign we this month present our cut-out-and-keep guide to Party Political Broadcasts (all channels, most days). We will brook no dissent on the matter, fully realising that underneath the veneer of contempt affected by the working class, the population at large actually prefers its five-yearly beanfeast of PPB's to normal scheduled TV. and other fripperies like food, sleep, alcohol and sex. Well, probably.

Simply keep this page next to your TV listings magazine throughout the campaign (that is presuming that you are not so keen that you already know the times of each PPB in advance and by heart). Then match up the on-screen happenings with the readymade guide below, keeping a careful points tally as you go. Points awarded are for observations during regular five minute broadcasts. Sightings made during the full crash-bang-wallop ten-minute versions only score half the points, this due to the operation of the market principle of increased supply over available demand, which causes devaluation.

Anyway, here we go. During Election 1997 keep your eyes peeled, your ears skinned and your senses sensitive to any of the following, scoring as you go: Tony Benn's First Principle of PPB's. Pioneered by the old lag in 1959 when he was Labour's first Peter Mandelson, this is where the broadcast starts with magnificent views of the British countryside, and is accompanied by suitably stirring classical music excerpts of the Blake or Elgar variety. It is intended to lull the audience into a false sense of security before the voice-over intrudes with the message that all this glory will be ruined by the Tories or Labour if they get in. Used at least once by all the main parties in 1992, presumably on the basis that listening to a bit of Major. Kinnock and Ashdown was better than listening to them and having to watch them as well, (one point)

Soft-focus shots of mumsy Harriet Harman badgering sick pensioners in old peoples' homes before going on to explain how Labour built up the health service, the welfare state and comprehensive education without support from the other parties (not actually true) and that only Labour can be trusted with such national treasures as they are the only politicians who choose to use them (also not true), (three points)

The Liberal Democrats devoting at least one of their broadcasts to 'vox-pop' type interviews with Lib Dem voters in an apparent attempt to convince themselves that they are not merely a repository of protest or tactical votes and that somebody, somewhere, must have genuine enthusiasm for their quirky brand of reformism, (five points)

Labour and the Conservatives in a competitive battle about who can scare the pants off Middle England the most with lurid and frightening broadcasts about the other's hidden tax plans.each of whose broadcasts could have been made by the other party without anyone being able to tell the difference, (one point)

A reappearance for the Conservatives' tried and tested formula designed to rekindle memories of the 1979 Winter of Discontent under Labour, exploiting the entirely misplaced belief that this was somehow caused by Callaghan. Healey and the IMF being 'soft' on trade union members. Deployed by the Tories in every single general election since; watch out for pictures of uncollected piles of rubbish in a wintry Trafalgar Square; out-of-focus film of dodgy leftist types with facial hair, standing on a picket line warming their hands around a brazier.and the famous shot of an airport flight destination board with "CANCELLED” next to all the flights, (no points at all for this, but 20 if it is not shown once during the campaign)

A PPB by the Militant Tendency, achieved solely on the basis of their fifth name change, this time to 'The Labour Party’, in which they outline the honest and principled stand which makes them the true heirs and successors of Marx and Engels, (ten points)

A broadcast by the BNP which doesn't feature two union jack flags behind the chosen fuhrer, a retired old soldier who fought the Nazis in WWII and who can't stand Jews, blacks, commies, queers and trade unionists, but which coincidentally does show lots of footage of jack-booted skinheads doing 'Seig Heil!’ salutes and spitting at black children in the street, (fifty points)

Tony Blair telling the viewers that they should vote for him because even though he cannot solve unemployment, poverty, crime and insecurity, he can smile nicely to camera and tell lies more convincingly than Major, (a thousand points)

Add up your total, and if you think that your high score may be a winner, send it to us at the usual address. Anyone scoring over a thousand points and who isn't imbibing large quantities of hallucinogenic drugs will win a special prize. Happy viewing!

Dave Perrin

Between the Lines: Much ado about nothing (1987)

The Between the Lines Column from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

There now follows . . . 

Am I just getting more fed up or are party political broadcasts getting worse? One has only yo hear those words, "There now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of . . . (Don't try turning over because we've stuck them on all channels)" to know that an insult to the public intelligence is about to be perpetrated. There was a time when these affairs were pretty simple efforts: Harold Wilson sitting behind a desk puffing lies in a fatherly sort of way or George Brown looking into the camera with the sincerity of a man who showed signs even then of ending up an SDP member of the House of Lords. In those days they would deliver their messages as abbreviated speeches and get off the screen. No we are in the age of hi-tech lying: video edited, maximum visual impact porky pies.

Take the Labour PPB of a few months ago where an actor stood next to a big globe and pointed at it with an imposing looking stick while talking about how the Tories are leaving the damned place undefended with their lack of expenditure on conventional bombs. This was drama, not politics, the medium was the message; vote for us if you like my shiny medals and big stick (This is the way to win the Harvey Proctor voters over). Then there was the Tory pre-local election PPB (5 May, all channels). This one had dire pictures of people in pain whom it was soon explained were in fact ratepayers in Ealing and Waltham Forest — of course, why didn't I guess? — whose rates had been put up by Labour councils. These rates, we were told with the aid of horrific graphics, were to support gay centres (there are simply hundreds of them in Ealing and Waltham Forest, don't you know) and anti-police campaigns.

Norman Tebbit came on at the end warning voters in hysterical terms that voting Labour would lead to suffering beyond conception. Perhaps my awareness of the inanity of it all was heightened by the fact I coincidentally watched the BBC2 version of the broadcast put out for the deaf with subtitles. You can watch TV politics and think it's twaddle and you can an article by a politician and think it's twaddle, but there is nothing quite like watching and reading it at the same time to confirm that it is pure, unadulterated twaddle.

Much ado about nothing

This Week, Next Week (3 May, 1pm, BBC1) had a bad dose of election fever. No election was announced, but that did not deter the producers of this little roll-in-the-mud from insisting upon a pre-election shove-around in the studio. So, in were brought Bryan Gould and Lord Young, two men whom few people had heard of a year ago, but who look like being the election faces of the year. It seems that, in the tradition of all jolly good public school pranks, Labour's Bryan Gould had written and had a published a Tory manifesto which looks just like the 1983 Tory Manifesto (Tee hee!) Lord Young was angry because Labour had nicked their design. Pushed to promise that the Tories would not do the alleged deeds Young wisely declined to commit his party to not doing anything. Also in the studio was an Alliance spokesman and a rubber plant.

Benn falls in love

With Peter Ustinov and Tony Benn as guests, Wogan looked worth watching. (29 April, 7pm, BBC1) After all, both are eloquent men who have been known to have more to say for themselves than Wogan's usual guests. In fact, the appearances were disappointing but that is not important: guests on chat shows quite frequently sell themselves short, simply because of the pressure placed by the format of such programmes to push your personality, as if the latter is something you slip into in the morning like your shirt.

What was striking from this programme and it has never been apparent (at least to this writer) in the past, was that Tony Benn had fallen in love with Russian state capitalism. Gorbachev's reforms are the greatest thing in 40 years . . . the Russians are a peace-loving people who are determined to avoid war . . .  the problem is that we have all these lies in the West about Russia. Benn sounded like a fellow traveller, pouring out all sorts of half-open hints of friendship in defence of one of the greatest tyrannies in the modern world.

Perhaps it was inevitable that an isolated Labour leftist, never really at home among the non-ideological void of Kinnockism, should finally drift towards the illusion of Stalinism. But it was sad to perceive. Benn said he was more optimistic now about the prospects of world peace than he had been in decades; the Gorbachev weapons reduction proposals were magnificent. If he believes that he'd believe . . . well, I suppose he does.

Right royal rubbish

Aren't Charlie and Di a fine couple? Isn't it lovely to see her changing her frock every fifteen minutes? Doesn't he do fine work to help the poor? Wasn't it pleasant to see him walking around the grounds of one of his palaces talking to the plants? No to all questions, and that is why I, like others of sound mind, switched the nauseating parasites off after twenty minutes and went up the pub. (4 May, 8pm, ITV, The Prince and Princess of Wales: In Public, In Private.)

Steve Coleman