Free speech baloney and the party of personality politics

Must have been aired quite widely by now as it's amongst the most read on the Guardian at the moment. Even so, it deserves a mention here:

A row between the fast food giant Burger King and one of its major franchise owners has erupted over roadside signs proclaiming "global warming is baloney".

The franchise owner's marketing president justifies their posture (though not their science) in the following way:

McNelis added: "The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. Notwithstanding a franchise agreement, I could load a Brinks vehicle with [rights] I've got so many of them. By the time the Burger King lawyers work out how to make that stick we'd be in the year 2020."

He continued: "Burger King can bluster all they want about what they can tell the franchisee to do, but we have free-speech rights in this country so I don't think there's any concerns."

More here.

So. It's a question of free speech. The subtext perhaps is that even under Obama, private property continues to mean something.

In this case, a verbal baloney of quite monumental proportions.

Verbal baloney is quite the order of the day. The BNP is simply symptomatic of how disgraceful ideas can reach a twisted state of grace. When papers like the Guardian begin to write stories which include "genteel" and "neo-fascism" in the same headline, so it is that the normalisation of the abnormal and stomach-heaving ends up taking place.

Nazism was always part of our political DNA. The prejudices against Jews and other ethnic groupings were shared - gently perhaps but nevertheless persistently - by many people at the time. There has to be a Petri dish for any culture to take hold. Many people formed that Petri dish and allowed that culture to take hold. I even remember my grandfather expressing certain views about international finance which I found hard to stomach. He was a lifelong member of the Labour Party.

Now British Nazism has a European-funded voice. Whether the BNP is right- or left-wing is beside the point (though some would continue to engage in a childish battle of name-calling). It is extreme and feeds off the anger of both ends of the political spectrum. It is also a sign of how ineffectual our mainstream politicians are becoming.

It is an awfully explicit metaphor for how the Labour Party has failed to lead the country. Even as Brent and Sheffield show that local leadership can make a difference, at a national level there is really nothing further to be said.

Sterile debate is leading to sterile decisions, as the party which would be the party of policy politics becomes - in quite an entrenched way - the party of personality politics.