BODY POLITICS
The British government and media spent the week obsessing on the body. It started with the tendentious announcement that fashion magazines and skinny models were responsible for eating disorders - following last month's Downing Street summit when editors were brought in for a wigging from the Prime Minister. A more likely contributor to such disorders is the increasing preoccupation with 'healthy eating', that make diet a problem in young people's minds. New government guidelines on eating were announced on 2 June by Health Minister Yvette Cooper, drawing the comments from the Food and Drink Federation that 'the ciabatta and sun- dried tomatoes set's patronising approach does not work'.
The media were spell-bound by health negligence cases in Sheffield, where a hospital computer error meant tests for Down's syndrome in mothers-to-be were not processed, and Kent, where gynaecologist Rodney Ledward was accused of maiming women with cavalier surgery. Meanwhile the AIDS charity Body Positive announced closure because of insufficient funding - a sign that the health preoccupation once special to the gay community has become so mainstream that Body Positive must take its chances in the competition for donors along with all the rest.
The visceral appeal of the politics of the body is that it strikes at people's most intimate fears and anxieties - where traditional political issues like patriotism and terrorism seem like far off concerns. Over time the press and government have learned what are the issues that get under your skin.
WINNING OVER SCOTLAND
Cardinal Winning condemned the Scottish parliament as a failure, for following an exclusively liberal agenda. Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) had ignored the results of a private 'referendum' conducted by Stagecoach executive Graham Souter. Nearly four million ballot papers were sent to Scots to vote on whether to endorse the MSPs decision to replace the anti-gay clause of the 1988 Education Act, known as 'clause 28'. On a 34 per cent turn out, Scots voted 86.8 to 13.2 to 'keep the clause'.
Radicals, who have supported the case for Scottish devolution for decades, are disappointed that the issue on which Scots differ from England appears to be bigotry. It is true that Scotland is marginally more conservative over family values than England. More pressing though is the credibility gap between the new institution of a politically correct Scottish parliament and the 'unreconstructed' Scottish people.
Defenders of the parliament object that Souter's poll was unrepresentative, with only a million out of four million voting against the clause. Even on the questionable grounds that all three million who 'abstained' are supporters of gay equality, the vote is not much less representative than the poll that established the parliament.
The only way to win the argument against Clause 28 is to trust teachers to deal with issues of sex outside of government diktat. Acting independently teachers can manage the difficult negotiation between social norms and individual rights.
But trusting people to sort things out for themselves is alien to this government. Instead they struggle to 'find a replacement' for clause 28. There is no need to replace clause 28. Teachers have blushed and mumbled their way through sex education for years without too many disasters.
New Labour's ham-fisted attempts to develop new guidelines for family values are bound to be rejected in favour of the Cardinal's more traditional version.
EUROPEAN RUMBLINGS
The British government is to appoint Sir Stephen Wall - currently Britain's representative at the EU - as 'European enforcer', coordinating policy on Europe at cabinet level. Last week's off-the- record briefing war between Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown blew up as the former favoured joining the single currency sooner, the latter later. Remembering how the issue of Europe split the previous Conservative government, Prime Minister Blair wants to keep the tensions under control.
The European dilemma is usually thought to be an economic question. Certainly American commentators have been pouring scorn on Germany's 'old economy' preference for industrial growth, and the falling value of the Euro against the dollar. In fact it is dotcom speculation that is artificially forcing up the dollar and the pound.
More important though is the political emergence of stronger European political institutions around the French/German axis. Last month's speech by German Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer, looking forward to a beefed up European parliament, with a second chamber drawn from national parliaments was welcomed by French counterpart Hubert Vedrine as the way forward.
Fischer's views seem to strike a chord with popular opinion in Europe. 'More than 7 in 10 EU citizens are of the opinion that the European Union should have a common defence and security policy and more than 6 in 10 feel it should have a common foreign policy'. (Eurobarometer, public opinion in the European Union, Report 52, European Commission, April 2000)
For all the rhetoric in Britain about the dangers of a European superstate 'trust in the European Commission has increased by 5 percentage points to 45 per cent' since the spring of 1999 (Ibid.). What's more 'support for the European Union is now apparent among more than half of the EU population' and 'Six in ten EU citizens support the single currency'.
Appearances are deceptive, though. The relative increase in popularity of the European Union is more indicative of the declining status of national parliaments. Only because of lowered public expectations of indigenous governments does Europe seem more attractive to the public. That is what is forcing the pace of political integration (while economic union is made more problematic by the divisions between the stronger finances of the north-western states and the weaker southern and eastern ones). And as in the Middle Ages, European elites feel stronger ties to each other than they do to their own citizens.
The dilemma facing the British cabinet is the age-old one: face insignificance outside the tent, or a second row seat inside. -- Jim heartfield