"The Garden of Eden" by Lucas Cranach der Ältere

For the Ariekei, who live on a distant planet in China Miéville’s latest novel Embassytown, speech is thought: “Without language for things that didn’t exist, they could hardly think them.”

In Miéville’s Ariekei language, there is no room for metaphor, no space between the thing – or the idea – and the word. As a result, the Ariekei have no concept of lying. Language is truth, rather than merely standing in for it. Quite the opposite of any human language.

The Ariekei’s form of communication is meant to echo the pre-language of the Garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Miéville plays on the idea that language itself– human language — represents the Fall. As Miéville says, maybe the adoption of language is “rather a good fall.” It’s a nice irony that the Ariekei have two mouths (as well as hooves and wings).

China Miéville

Miéville is – and I’m just learning this — one of the leading lights of the so-called New Weird generation of fantasy writers. Some say it’s only a matter of time until he busts out of his genre and wins some general fiction prizes.

Also in the pod this week: A short discussion of the word blagging, popularized by the News International scandal; why governments and aid agencies avoid using the word famine (more here). And, if you sing in French, don’t expect airtime in the Brussels metro (more here).

Photos: Stuart Caie/Flickr, Wikipedia

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Gordon Brown (left) and Tony Blair at the Labor Party Conference in 2004. (Copyright: BBC)

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said his successor Gordon Brown could be “maddening” and accused him of lacking “emotional intelligence”. In his memoirs, he called Brown a “brilliant” chancellor but claimed Brown put him under “relentless” pressure as he tried to take over from Blair as prime minster. Alex Gallafent explores this ‘special relationship’. Download MP3

• BBC coverage
• Tony Blair’s memoirs: key quotes
• ‘A Journey: My Political Life’ by Tony Blair

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MARCO WERMAN: Tony Blair’s successor as British prime minister was, of course, Gordon Brown. It was a succession that was allegedly long overdue, according to a deal the two men supposedly struck early on. Blair and Brown were bonded together in a sort of dysfunctional way. Think of the partnership between Bill Clinton and Al Gore, only much closer, and much more fraught. Now Blair has gone on the record about Brown in his memoir. Here’s more from The World’s Alex Gallafent.

ALEX GALLAFENT:  The Tony and Gordon Show is over. Neither man is in government any longer and so it might seem odd still to be thinking about the pair of them. But the nature of their relationship profoundly influenced Britain’s course over the last decade and more, as this eager book buyer noted.

FEMALE SPEAKER:  It’s that astonishing way that everybody had that dream, that wonderful dream. And I suppose it’s that fascination of finding out with what kind of went wrong.

GALLAFENT: The dream, for some, began in 1997. That year, the Labour Party won a landslide election victory. Tony Blair had shifted the party from the left to the center-left, and went on to deliver two subsequent wins at the polls. As the years went by, Brown, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, kind of like a super-powerful Treasury Secretary, fought to preserve more of the party’s left-leaning policies. Their differences cleaved the Labour Party in two, Tony’s people on one side, Gordon’s on the other. The way Blair put in an interview today, he almost made it sound as if they were a pair of feuding brothers.

TONY BLAIR: The relationship with Gordon was very very difficult. It was also very close. And even though towards the end I think frankly it was hard going, on impossible, for a large part of the time we were in government he was an immense source of strength, his contribution to the successes of the Labour government was clear.

GALLAFENT: In 2007 Blair stood down and Brown took over. And Blair’s New Labour project more or less came to end. Brown lost this year’s election.

BLAIR: I always took the view that if we departed a millimeter from New Labour we were going to be in trouble.

GALLAFENT: That’s a long way of saying told you so. Anyway, with Labour now out of power, the party is on the verge of choosing a new leader. And this is where the feud between Blair and Brown lives on.

JOHN PRESCOTT: We have a fight now between, is it left, is it right, is it new, is it Labour. Forget all that. Let’s all be Labour, get behind the new leader.

GALLAFENT: So pleads former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. The Labour Party, he says, should simply focus on defeating Britain’s new government.

PRESCOTT:  Get out and start fighting!

GALLAFENT: The trouble is, the Blairites and Brownites are still fighting each other. In his book, Tony describes Gordon as a “strange guy” who had “no instinct at the human, gut level.” He writes that Gordon was “difficult, at times maddening.” Tony acknowledges Gordon’s “enormous ability,” ticking the boxes marked “political calculation” and “analytical intelligence.” But “emotional intelligence”? Tony gives him a big fat zero. Blair, according to the book, did consider firing Brown on more than one occasion. A former press adviser to Tony Blair, Lance Price, says Blair ultimately decided against it.

LANCE PRICE: He took this judgment that, to use that famous old phrase, I’d better paraphrase it, better to have him inside the tent peeing out than outside the tent peeing in. I think part of problem actually was that he was inside the tent but still peeing in.

GALLAFENT: Blair’s memoir has freed his allies to come out of the shadows too. One Baroness Morgan, Tony Blair’s former political secretary, said this about Gordon Brown today.

BARONESS MORGAN: He did have a habit of not necessarily being around when some tough things were happening.

GALLAFENT: Yowza. Gordon Brown has yet to respond to all this. But here’s the view from his hometown, where for some he’s more superman than politician.

MALE SPEAKER: Gordon Brown is a man of steel and Tony Blair before he handed over actually said it publicly that Gordon Brown was the best man to take the job. So how can he be writing this? That’s hypocrisy.

GALLAFENT: It’s not the first time someone in Brown’s camp has accused Tony Blair of hypocrisy. But then again, trading accusations is familiar territory for these two political brothers-in-arms. The Tony and Gordon Show isn’t over after all. For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent.

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• BBC coverage
• How the deal will work
• The new prime minister David Cameron

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MARCO WERMAN:  Britain’s new government has put Afghanistan at the top of its foreign policy agenda and that agenda is the product of the country’s first coalition government in 70 years.  The World’s Laura Lynch in London reports that today, those new political partners met with the press.

LAURA LYNCH:  They are the odd couple of British politics.  Prime Minister David Cameron and his new Deputy Nick Clegg were at pains to make it look and sound so cozy, choosing a gentile garden setting for their first joint news conference.  But the past came back to haunt them when a reporter posed an awkward question to Cameron.

REPORTER:  Prime Minister, do you now regret when once asked what your favorite joke was, you replied Nick Clegg?  And Deputy Prime Minister, what do you think of that?

PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON:  We’re all going to have – -

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER NICK CLEGG:  You said that?

CAMERON:  I’m afraid I did once.

CLEGG:  Oh.  I’m off, I’m off.

CAMERON:  We’re all – -

LYNCH: Clegg of course stayed and smiled, perhaps mindful of his own sharp insults aimed at Cameron during the campaign.  The new Deputy Prime Minister is predicting there will be more disagreements, but he insists this unlikely coalition will work.

CLEGG:  Until today we were rivals and now we’re colleagues.  And that says a lot about the scale of the new politics which is now beginning to unfold.  This is a new government and it’s a new kind of government.  A radical, reforming government where it needs to be, and a source of reassurance and stability at a time of great uncertainty in our country too.

LYNCH: The coalition agreement touches on only one area of disputed foreign policy, the European Union.  Cameron says it’s proof of their willingness to work together.

CAMERON:  And I think that demonstrates, you take an area like that there are differences, and we haven’t hidden them.  We’ve confronted them and resolved them and I think that is a little test, if you like, of how serious we are in our endeavor to provide this good government.

LYNCH: Before the election the Liberal Democrats were calling for a review of Britain’s strategy toward Afghanistan.  But the new Foreign Secretary, William Hague, says Afghanistan wasn’t a stumbling block in power sharing negotiations.

WILLIAM HAGUE:  There has been no disagreement about Afghanistan expressed in our coalition talks.  Although the talks to create the coalition comes concentrated on the areas of greatest disagreement.  So we knew if we could resolve those, then we had a workable coalition.

LYNCH: Yet it seems that even before the deal was done, the Prime Minister was offering foreign policy pronouncements, at least in private.  President Obama made reference to that as he praised the new man in Downing Street.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  I find him to be a smart, dedicated, effective leader and somebody who we are going to be able to work with every effectively.  He reaffirmed, without me bringing it up, his commitment to our strategy in Afghanistan.

LYNCH: In fact, the continuing commitment isn’t surprising.  It was a central pledge during the campaign.  But it indicates the new government’s desire to build strong relations with the Obama administration, and that process will start quickly.  Foreign Secretary Hague, who says he wants a solid, but not slavish relationship with the United States, will head to Washington on Friday to meet with his counterpart, Hillary Clinton.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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• BBC coverage
• In pictures: Gordon Brown’s life in politics
• The political career of Gordon Brown
• The new prime minister David Cameron

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  Britain has a new Prime Minister and he is David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party.  That’s the party that won the most seats in Parliament in last week’s election.  That vote did not give the Conservatives an absolute majority, though.  So there was considerable doubt in Britain about who would lead the country.  But today, outgoing Prime Minister Gordon Brown official threw in the towel.  The World’s Laura Lynch is in London.  She describes the end of Brown’s tenure.

LAURA LYNCH:  It was outside 10 Downing Street, where he stood outside yesterday, just yesterday, suggesting that maybe he could stick around for a little while, while they formed a new government.  Today, all hope for that was lost.  He was outside of 10 Downing Street surrounded by his staff, his wife by his side, as he announced that he was leaving 10 Downing Street and quite possibly leaving politics and here’s a bit of what he had to say.

GORDON BROWN:  My constitutional duty is to make sure that a government can be formed following last Thursday’s general election.  I have informed the Queen’s private secretary that it’s my intention to tender my resignation to the Queen.  In the event that the Queen accepts, I shall advise her to invite the leader of the opposition to seek form a government.  I wish the next Prime Minister well as he makes the important choices for the future.

LYNCH: Now it’s notable that toward the end of his rather short statement he did become quite emotional when he was talking about the job and what it meant to him.  His voice caught quite a few times, especially as he said thank you and goodbye.

WERMAN: Laura, what will be Gordon Brown’s legacy do you think?  Well I think it’s got to be considered to be an enormous one, and an influential one after 13 years in political in Britain and a large part of that as Chancellor as the architect of such a boom in the country’s economy, riding that wave.  He was the one declared the end to the boom and bust cycle.  Now of course, as well all know, that didn’t happen.  He came down with the bust.  He saw his country suffer under what the rest of the world has suffered with the economic crunch.  That’s been his burden to bear as he’s become Prime Minister and as he’s tried, unsuccessfully, to win reelection.

WERMAN: And where does this leave opposition leader David Cameron of the Conservatives?

LYNCH: David Cameron becomes the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and he will form his new cabinet and he will give what is called the Queen’s speech next week and that will outline his agenda for the Parliament.  Then he will, as he has promised to do, set forth a budget, a budget that he promised at least during the campaign will contain some fairly severe measures for dealing with the problems that the U.K. is facing.

WERMAN: Tomorrow of course Brits will wake up to a new government, but will they wake up to the same problems they face today and facing the new Prime Minister?

LYNCH: That’s exactly what Mr. Cameron is going to be wrestling with, the reality.  He will get his hands on the briefing books that will give him the clearest idea yet of what kind of shape the economy is in, of how big the government’s deficits and debts are, so he will be the one who is having to wrestle those deficits and debts to the ground.  Everyone is watching because as much as there is a problem with what is happening in the rest of Europe, the markets are watching very, very closely what’s going on here right now and what will be going on here in the days and weeks to come.

WERMAN: And the British public watching as well.

LYNCH: Well the British public has been captivated by politics over the last five days.  It’s been astounding.  You’ve got soccer in this country and you’ve got cricket, but boy everybody has been so taken up with every twist and turn in this amazing tale of the last five days after Britons voted and waited to hear who was going to become their new Prime Minister and now the know, it’s David Cameron and a new political era begins.

WERMAN:  Big news today in London, thanks for telling us about it Laura. The World’s Laura Lynch.

LYNCH: You’re welcome.

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• BBC coverage
• UK election results in hung parliament

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  The Europeans apparently mean business this time.  They have agreed to create a one trillion dollar financial rescue package to stabilize both Greece and the Euro.  We’ll explain the impact the plan might have on your pocketbook in a moment, but first we turn to Britain which has budget problems of its own.  Exactly who will be in charge of addressing those problems remains unclear after last week’s inconclusive general election?  One person who won’t be leading the effort is Prime Minister Gordon Brown.  He announced today that he’ll step down this year.  The World’s Laura Lynch is in London.  Laura, take us through what happened today.

LAURA LYNCH:  Marco it has been another astonishing day here, a day when there was a lot of deal making and a lot of drama in and around Parliament and the announcement of the end of the line for one of the most powerful people in British politics.  As you said, Gordon Brown who, just last Friday, looked as though he was going to try to hang onto power even though he lost the election, walked out the door of his residence at 10 Downing Street today and announced his party would soon start it’s own formal round of negotiations with the third party, the Liberal Democrats, with an eye to creating a coalition government.  Now that’s big news in and of itself.  But then, Mr. Brown did himself one better by saying this:

GORDON BROWN:  I have no desire to stay in my position longer than is needed to ensure the pass to economic is assured and the process of political reform we have agreed moves forward quickly.  The reason that we have a hung Parliament is that no single party and no single leader was able to win the full support of the country.  As leader of my party, I must accept that that is a judgment on me.  I therefore intend to ask the Labour Party to set in train the processes needed for it’s own leadership election.  I would hope that it would be completed in time for the new leader to be in post by the time of the Labour Party conference.  I will play no part in that contest; I will back no individual candidate.

LYNCH: And with that, the Prime Minister stepped back inside number 10 Downing Street and he didn’t take any questions.

WERMAN: Now two pretty big pieces of news Laura.  What has the reaction been?

LYNCH: Well one of the first people to comment publicly on this was the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg.  Now it’s no secret here that Mr. Clegg and Mr. Brown haven’t found it very easy to work together and they had some conversations over the last few days.  And so it’s really important to listen closely to what Mr. Clegg has to say here.

NICK CLEGG:  Gordon Brown has made an important announcement today.  It must have been a very difficult thing for him to say personally, but I think he’s taking it in the national interest and I think his announcement could be an important element in the smooth transition towards a stable government that people deserve.

LYNCH: “An important element”, those were Mr. Clegg’s words.  In essence what he’s signaling is that Brown’s commitment to leave office removes an obstacle that stood in the way of the Liberal Democrats making any possible deal for a coalition government.  So what’s happening now Marco is that the Liberal Democrats, the king makers, are holding formal negotiations with both the Conservative Party and also with the Labour Party trying to get the best deal they possibly can and seeing who’s willing to up the ante.

WERMAN: Now this political wrangling comes as Europe and the International Monetary Fund are wrestling with a bail out package for Greece.  So in addition to political wrangling in the U.K. will the Brits also be feeling economic aftershocks from what’s happening in Europe?

LYNCH: Oh I think a lot of Brits are watching the markets very, very closely.  Of course, even though they don’t use the Euro here, they’re still tied in to the European Union in so many ways.  But they’re also watching the pound, and today the pound jumped up and jumped back down again as every little bit and piece of news came out.  It was rising this morning on the belief there was going to be a deal between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives and then this afternoon when Gordon Brown announced that he was stepping down and that they were starting formal talks between the Liberal Democrats and Labour, the pound slipped again.  What the markets like to see is certainty; they’re not seeing that certainty here in Britain today.

WERMAN: The World’s Laura Lynch in London, thank you for the update Laura.

LYNCH: You’re welcome.

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• BBC coverage
• What is a hung parliament
• BBC election on Twitter

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  The horse-trading has begun in Britain.  Yesterday’s general election did not produce a clear winner.  The Conservatives led by David Cameron, got the most seats in Parliament, but not enough to govern alone.  Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party lost a lot of ground and came in second.  And the third place party, the Liberal Democrats, may now hold the balance of power.  The World’s Laura Lynch is following developments in London.  She says there’s a lot of political uncertainty now in Britain.

LAURA LYNCH:  Voters gave no one party an outright majority and that means the country doesn’t know who is going to be in charge, but as you said, it is now the third party, the Liberal Democrats, who are the king makers here.  They hold the balance of power and the ability to build a coalition.  So their leader, Nick Clegg, spoke first today and talked immediately about changing a system that saw his party win more votes than ever before and still manage to lose the number of seats it held in Parliament.  Here’s Nick Clegg this morning.

NICK CLEGG:  This election campaign has made it abundantly clear that our electoral system is broken.  It simply doesn’t reflect the hopes and aspirations of the British people.  So I repeat again my assurance that whatever happens in the coming hours and days and weeks, I will continue to argue not only for the greater fairness in British society, not only the greater responsibility in economic policy making, but also for the extensive real reforms that we need to fix our broken political system.  Thank you very, very much.

LYNCH: Now that is Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.  He’s named his price for his cooperation and he also promised the Conservatives, the party with the most votes and the most seats, is going to get the first chance to make a deal with him.

WERMAN: You know, Laura, I just have to ask this; it doesn’t seem logical that the Liberal Democrats, who ran on a platform that seems to parallel that of Liberal Democrats’ capital d here in the United States, they joined forces with the Conservative Party.  Explain that or are we just looking at a fairly elastic set of principles here?

LYNCH: Well I think that’s what you’re going to see in the coming days, how elastic those principles are.  It’s going to come down to the talks between the parties and how far they are willing to compromise or not in the name of making a deal.  Here’s what happened next today, before Mr. Cameron got a chance to say his piece about what he thought of what was going on and what kind of a deal should be made.  The Prime Minister, he’s still the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, got out there and he made a point of getting out there in front of Downing Street to show everyone that he still is the Prime Minister and he still is the resident of Downing Street.  He also made it clear that if Mr. Clegg can’t make a deal, he’s willing to talk to him and then Mr. Brown made an offer that he hoped Mr. Clegg can’t refuse.

PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN:  Clearly, should the discussions between Mr. Cameron and Mr. Clegg come to nothing, then I would, of course, be prepared to discuss with Mr. Clegg the areas where there may be some measure of agreement between our two parties.

LYNCH: And so here’s what Mr. Brown is putting on offer: he is saying that he will hold a referendum on electoral reform, something that the Liberal Democrats have long demanded.  The other thing that was interesting about what Mr. Brown was saying today was he was telling Mr. Clegg and Mr. Cameron take your time, take all the time you need, you discuss it and then if it doesn’t work out, come and talk to me.

WERMAN: So as things get sorted out here, Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats kind of cast as the king makers.  Gordon Brown is still the Prime Minister.  Where does this leave David Cameron on the Conservatives?

LYNCH:  Well, he’s the guy who’s got to try and make a deal now and as we were just discussing, for his party, it’s a tough call.  There are several areas where they do disagree with the Liberal Democrats on several issues.  Immigration they’re not together.  When it comes to Europe and the degree of cooperation with Europe, they’re not exactly in sync.  Mr. Cameron, when he met with the media finally, he tried to gloss over those differences in the name of building a coalition.

DAVID CAMERON:  I want to make a big, open, and comprehensive offer to the Liberal Democrats.  I want us to work together in tackling our country’s big and urgent problems, the debt crisis, our deep social problems and our broken political system.

LYNCH: Now, Marco, just quickly, when Mr. Cameron speaks of fixing the broken political system he doesn’t go as far as Mr. Brown in offering the Liberal Democrats a referendum.  He only talks about having a commission look into the problems with the system.  So there is so much at stake here between the parties over the next little while as they try to see who can make a deal.

WERMAN: You know Laura, this isn’t exactly the stalemate in Florida in 2000, but I’m just wondering how do Brits feel with this kind of sense of uncertainty?

LYNCH: Well I guess, Marco, you’d have to maybe think that because of the way they voted maybe this is exactly what they were voting for.  Maybe they did want to have parties who were going to have to cooperate with each other toward a common goal.  Now, do they feel better when they see the pound taking a tumble on the currency markets?  It has rebounded somewhat.  Do they feel better about the uncertainty on the financial markets around the world when this is happening?  I’m betting probably not.  So they would probably like to see a deal done sooner rather than later.

WERMAN: And as I understand it, when and if that transfer of power changes the Queen will actually be Prime Minister for all of one hour.

LYNCH: It is a another quirk of this, what must seem, a terribly quirky system to a lot of Americans, but this Parliament is going to be a very different Parliament, unlike one that people have seen here in a generation.  The last time you saw a Parliament coming in in this fashion was in 1974 and under the very same kinds of circumstances with a great degree of financial instability.

WERMAN: Wild times.  The World’s Laura Lynch in London.  Thank you so much.

LYNCH: You’re welcome.

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• BBC coverage
• UK elections could bring hung Parliament
• Candidates focus on economy

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  It’s the last day of campaigning in Britain and the tightness of this race has politicians racing around the country in a last minute effort to grab votes.  It’s been an intense four weeks of campaigning, full of unpredictable and unscripted moments.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports from London.

LAURA LYNCH:  With no party poised to win an outright majority, the leaders of the three main parties are borrowing a page from the American political playbook; round the clock campaigning.

MALE VOICE 1:  Vote for your future and see Labour as your best home and your best hope.  Please vote Labour tomorrow.  Thank you all very much.

MALE VOICE 2:  When you put that cross on the ballot paper, it might be a small cross but it will be a big step towards a fairer, a better Britain.  And this time you can make the difference.  Thank you very much.

MALE VOICE 3:  The Conservative Party has got its sleeves rolled up, it is working hard, it’s taking nothing for granted.  It wants to serve our country but it wants to wins people’s trust in doing so.

LYNCH: This was the election that saw Britain finally join the debating club that originated in the U.S.  And the leaders’ debates here changed the political landscape, broadening the campaign to a three way race with a new focus on the men at the top.  But in so many other ways, British elections are delightfully different from U.S. Presidential contests.

DAVID CAMERON:  Now the chicken how are you?  My friend very good to see you.  Has everyone met my new friend from the Daily Mirror?  My favorite daily newspaper?  Let me unveil you, who is it?  Oh!

LYNCH: Conservative leader David Cameron masterfully unmasking a man dressed as a chicken, sent by a newspaper to challenge Cameron’s alleged reluctance to submit to an interview.  This kind of in your face encounter is typical of British campaigns, unlike American election marathons, this is a short, sharp, month long contest that features politicians bravely plunging into crowds with mixed results.

CAMERON:  That is terrible in our country.

CHLOE:  I don’t think that’s going to change with your government though.

CAMERON:  But it will change with our government.

LYNCH: Cameron may have won round one with the chicken, but he met his match in a university student named Chloe.

CAMERON:  It’s the Conservatives who’ve got very radical education policies because we’re not happy with the status quo. It’s not right that opportunities are so unequal in our country, okay?  Good to see you.

CHLOE:  I don’t believe you.

CAMERON:  Well I do my best.

LYNCH: And so much for an attempt at a choreographed town hall with voters.  Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s dust up with a young voter gave him a kind of campaign credibility.  Suddenly he was a leader worth confronting.

NICK CLEGG:  Of course, of course it’s demotivating.

STUDENT:  They know they can do the job, they got the qualifications to do the job, but there isn’t a job out there for them and that is far worse than not having the qualifications.

CLEGG:  But what is the alternative?  What do you want to do?  Just have people sitting at home every two weeks?

STUDENT:  You shouldn’t be asking me that question.  I’m asking you what the alternative is.

CLEGG:  No, no.  But, well I’ve given you, I’ve given you . . .

LYNCH: Not very nice, but there are plenty of stiff upper lips here, a readiness to keep going back for more.  And so it was that Prime Minister Gordon Brown strolled up to meet one Jillian Duffy.

GORDON BROWN:  For six months . . .

JILLIAN DUFFY:  You can’t say anything about the immigrants because you’re saying that you’re, well all these eastern Europeans are all coming.  Where are they flocking from?

LYNCH: Then Brown slipped into his car and forgetting he was still wearing a live microphone, proceeded to insult the woman he had just tried to court.

BROWN:  They will go with it.

MALE VOICE 4:  What did she say?

BROWN:  Everything.  She’s just a bigoted woman.

LYNCH: But the final insult of a tough campaign for the Prime Minister came courtesy of one of his own.

MALE VOICE 5:  Now Mr. Sood you are the Labour candidate in the constituency you’re standing.  Do you stand by those comments that you think Gordon Brown is the worst Prime Minister ever?

MR. SOOD:   Yes I do.  I think he is the worst Prime Minister that we have ever had in the history of this country.

LYNCH: More proof of the unpredictable, sometimes bloody-minded sport that is politics here.  But it’s not just sport.  Campaigns are simply great theater, and this one ends as a cliffhanger.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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• BBC coverage
• On The World: British election campaign heats up
• Gordon Brown’s apology

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  One week to go, but there’s still no certain winner, or even clear leader, in the British election.  Tonight the leaders of the three main parties square off in the last of three televised debates.  This one is on the British economy but it might not be that illuminating.  That’s because all three candidates have been accused of not coming clean on the looming crisis in the nation’s finances.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

LAURA LYNCH:  Listen to the three main leaders on the campaign trail and see if you can spot the problem.  First, Prime Minister Gordon Brown who claims to be the most qualified to steer Britain out of its economic troubles.

GORDON BROWN:  We’ve got to move into a stronger recovery. That’s why all our policies are geared on making 2010 a strong recovery year.

LYNCH: Then Conservative Leader, David Cameron, trying to make a virtue out of the party’s plans to cut public spending.

DAVID CAMERON:  I think we’ve gone further and faster than any opposition in British political history in saying here are tough things that need to be done.  And also, we’ve said that we accept that is still not enough.

LYNCH: And finally, Nick Clegg, of the Liberal Democrats, claiming to be the best of a not very forthcoming bunch.

NICK CLEGG:  Yes, of course, all political parties need to provide more detail on how we’re going to deal with this black hole in the public finances, but notwithstanding that, of the three main parties, we have provided more detail than the others on the steps that we’ve set up so far.

LYNCH: The problem is in the details, or more precisely, the lack of them.  An independent think tank, The Institute for Fiscal Studies, says Britain is facing the deepest cuts to government in more than three decades.  All the main parties have plans, but The Institute’s Robert Chote says something is missing.

ROBERT CHOTE:  What’s really striking from the plans that the parties have set out is how little detail they’re giving of where the cuts in public spending are going to come from.  They’re relying on those cuts to do most of the job.

LYNCH: Britain’s deficit has been ballooning as it struggles to deal with the fallout from the financial crunch.  Equity fund manager, John Moulton, sees strong parallels with the 1970′s when the government had to turn to the IMF for assistance.

JOHN MOULTON:  Well, at the moment, for every dollar the U.K. government gets, it spends one dollar thirty six.  All we’re doing is borrowing and borrowing and borrowing.

LYNCH: Moulton too, laments the lack of specifics from the politicians.

MOULTON:  That’s the extraordinary thing.  The size of the hole we need to fill is somewhere not less than 80 billion dollars, real money.  Nobody has come up with a way of dealing with that.  We have to shrink the size of our state, or we have to tax our population truly to death, or, we have to let our currency collapse and inflate the debt away.  All of these are pretty unattractive and nobody seems to have the political will to deal with it.

LYNCH: Those who work here in London’s financial district are savvier than most when it comes to the bottom line for the government.  They may not like what’s ahead, but they want their politicians to at least own up to how bad it’s going to be.

MALE VOICE 1:  Well I’d like them to be up front and not try and gloss it over.  But I don’t think they’ll do that because it’s not in their nature.

FEMALE VOICE 1:  I think everyone knows that cuts are coming and I think everyone has a fair idea in themselves, at least, within the financial services sector, what is going to be required.

FEMALE VOICE 2:  I think it worries me that there are real systemic problems and I’m not sure any of them truly have the, don’t know if it’s guts, or the courage to really tackle what I think is at the base of so many of the problems.

LYNCH: Today it emerged that the governor of the Bank of England told and American economist that the election winner will have no choice but to impose severe cuts, ones that would make the government deeply unpopular, even unelectable.  That may explain why there is little chance any of the three candidates will spell out specifics in tonight’s debate.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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• BBC coverage of the UK election 2010
• On The World: British election campaign launched

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JEB SHARP:  The man who would be Prime Minister debated a range of foreign policy issues last night.  British voters go to the polls on May 6th and the unprecedented TV debates appear likely to play a role in helping them decide whom to vote for.  The American style face offs have injected extraordinary energy into the campaign.  They’ve also helped elevate the Liberal Democrats into the thick of things, largely because of the showing of party leader Nick Clegg.  Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute, a think tank in Washington and London.  Patrick, there’s often a bit of paralleling back and forth between elections in the two countries.  What do you see happening this year?

PATRICK BASHAM:  Well the question that’s hanging out there is who is the British Obama?  David Cameron who is conservative stayed very carefully studied and have followed President Obama’s path to the White House and they’ve got with a change campaign because the incumbent, Gordon Brown, is unpopular, the country has been in recession and they haven’t really fleshed out a lot of specifics about what change means.  They have a young, family friendly, telegenic candidate and it was assumed that this Obama-like British candidate would win.  But here comes Nick Clegg who looks kind of David Cameron, has much the same personal profile, and he has perhaps stolen this change mantra.  With Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats surprising everyone by being an actual player in this election, it appears, all bets are off because most people, particularly in the United States are going to have to do their homework very quickly as to what is Nick Clegg all about, what is his party all about?

SHARP: Yes and Nick Clegg last night was actually accused of being anti-American by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.  Let’s listen to that.

GORDON BROWN:  I’m afraid David is anti-European, Nick is anti-American, and both of them are out of touch with reality.

NICK CLEGG:  I have a very simple attitude towards our relationship with America.  It’s an immensely, immensely important special relationship, but it shouldn’t be a one way street.  We shouldn’t always automatically do what our American friends tell us to do.

SHARP: So Patrick Basham, what do you make of that?  Is Nick Clegg anti-American?

BASHAM: Nick Clegg isn’t anti-American in the traditional or historic sense of many Europeans who have been instinctively against a lot of what America stands for as well as a lot of what America does.  Gordon Brown’s remarks come specifically out of comments that Clegg made recently where he questioned the special relationship, as its become known, between the United Kingdom and the United States, suggesting that it wasn’t a relationship of equals, but rather it was the United States telling the United Kingdom what to do and the United Kingdom doing the Americans bidding.  The status quo works for the Obama administration.  If you’re talking, of course, to Republicans here in Washington on Capital Hill, they, I think, would be much happier if David Cameron were to win.

SHARP: And how do you think the Republicans view Nick Clegg?

BASHAM: The Republicans don’t view Nick Clegg very favorably.  He is a moderate in British politics, but he is on the center left, if you were to place him in American politics.  And what concerns Republicans is not his domestic policy, obviously, regarding the United Kingdom, but it’s his foreign policy.  And Nick Clegg led U.K. is going to be a far less reliable military and diplomatic ally than Gordon Brown has been, Tony Blair was and that David Cameron would be.

SHARP: And Patrick, just briefly, what are you most going to be watching in the next few days?

BASHAM: I think the reaction to Thursday night’s debate to see whether Nick Clegg’s bubble begins to burst.  Does David Cameron, has he found his feet again?  And is it over for Gordon Brown?  Can he pull some sort of rabbit out of the hat in the final week or two or is it really now between his two opponents, Clegg and Cameron?

SHARP: Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute, a think tank in Washington and London.  Thanks very much.

BASHAM: My pleasure, thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Question: what happens when a court gags a newspaper? Answer: The gag sags, 140 characters at a time. That’s what happened this month when micro-bloggers tweeted what The Guardian couldn’t report. Plus, they tweeted that The Guardian couldn’t report that it couldn’t report, thus making this a “super-injunction“. The case invovled multinational oil company Trafigura, which has been accused of dumping toxic waste at various sites in Ivory Coast. Trafigura secured a ruling in a British court enjoining The Guardian from reporting on the issue in the event that it come up in parliament. The issue did come up, and The Guardian duly didn’t report on it. But editor Alan Rushbridger (pictured) did let the blogosphere know that it was being gagged from reporting on a parliamentary matter. That’s when human rights activist Richard Wilson got to work online. He and then thousands of others microblogged about this. And low and behold the gag order was broken, and then lifted. Which goes to show that in the age of the social networking, it’s much tougher to suppress speech. Or put another way, if a government or judiciary wants to suppress speech, it has to suppress the internet.

In the days after the twitter-outing of Trafigura’s gag order, many members of the British parliament voiced outrage over this attempt to block public access to parliamentary speech. Now Gordon Brown’s government is moving to put a stop to the most egregious super-injunctions.

Next in the podcast, a group of Beijing and expat artists discover a Chinese word that seems to convey the state of China today. The word is 凑合 or in pinyin, cou huo. It means…well, it’s difficult to translate. But it conveys construction on-the-go, assembling something through improvisation, making do. It has both positive and negative attributes, and the artists explore both. The exhibit traveled around Beijing in an appropriately makeshift tent, as artistically rendered above.

Finally, two segments on endangered languages. First an interview with French linguist Claude Hagège who’s written a book about the death of languages. Then a report on the near-death of the native American Lakota language; its potential rebirth comes with an assist from a German rock star.

• BBC coverage
• Audio slideshow: A father’s tribute to UK Trooper Jack Sadler who died in southern Afghanistan

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. The British government says it’s willing to send 500 more troops to Afghanistan. Prime Minister Gordon Brown made the announcement in parliament today. But first he opened the session by reading the names of all 37 British soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan since July. Brown ended his reading of the list this way:

GORDON BROWN: And from number 34 Squadron Royal Air Force Regiment Acting Corporal Marcin Wojtak. Nothing can erase the pain for their families. Nothing can be greater than the pride we take in their contribution to our country and our sadness at their loss.

WERMAN: As for sending in more troops the British prime minister said he’s responding to requests from his military commanders in Afghanistan. But he added certain conditions must be met first. The extra British forces must have proper equipment and training he said. The Afghan government must commit to training more local forces and Brown said other NATO member states must also commit to sending reinforcements of their own. The key decision there of course is the one President Obama will make. He’s reviewing US troop levels right now. We’re going to spend the next few minutes speaking with a couple of veterans of the war in Afghanistan. First retired British Army Captain Beattie who won the Military Cross fro Bravery in Afghanistan in 2006. He returned for a second tour of duty in 2008. Mr. Beattie, 500 more British troops doesn’t sound like a lot how important is this?

DOUG BEATTIE: It sounds quite meager doesn’t it? But actually it’s very, very important because actually the headline figure that you have for British forces in Helmand, in [INDSICERNIBLE] Afghanistan is of the 9000 that we have there now something in the region of only 2400 are actually frontline combat troops, so-called boots and bayonets on the ground who are grinding away at the Taliban on a day-to-day basis. So these extra 500 troops will actually be a huge boost to that force and will give us the ability to dominate ground that we have taken and had to hand back to the insurgents on so many occasions.

WERMAN: Right. Helmand is that where you were?

BEATTIE: Yes it was. Yes. Which is in the south just adjacent to Kandahar Province.

WERMAN: Right and so when you were there did you see signs of just how the British mission was suffering because there were too few troops on the ground?

BEATTIE: Well exactly and that was the problem. And the very common term that we were using was called cutting the grass. We would go into an area in the Upper Sankin Valley or the Upper Giresh Valley. We would clear it out insurgents but we wouldn’t have the force levels to be able to stay there to dominate the ground. We would have to withdraw. And the moment we withdrew the insurgency would come back again, hence the grass would grow. With these extra troops it means that we can take ground and now we can hold it.

WERMAN: Stay with us Mr. Beattie. I want to go to Washington DC right now to have Kyle Flynn join the conversation. Flynn also did two tours in Afghanistan as a US Special Forces non-commissioned officer. Now Mr. Flynn you served in Uruzgan Province. Shed some light for us on why this type of counterinsurgency campaign is so labor intensive. I mean here in the States we’re talking not 500, we’re talking tens of thousands potential new troops.

KYLE FLYNN: Well if they’re switching to the population center and counterinsurgency strategy then the idea is to get in work and live in the heavily populated areas. In Afghanistan that’s particularly difficult because of the rural terrain and the geography and the villages are so spread out. We were working in a small town called [PH] Dayraoud which is in the southwest corner of the province right where Helmand and Kandahar meet. In this situation we went in trying to work by with and through the local forces. We were not going to do any unilateral missions if we could avoid so.

WERMAN: I mean to get in and live among the population, that sounds like you’re aiming to win hearts and minds. Adding forces like that will they have to have those kinds of capabilities to live in and among the population as you’re saying?

FLYNN: Right. I think the idea is you just have to provide some level of security before you can accomplish anything else including any type of development, any type of governance. There has to be security before any of those other things can follow suit.

WERMAN: Well let me ask you both about a long war in Afghanistan where success seems so elusive. When you were there can you tell me about one experience, each of you, that you think was successful and what made it happen? Mr. Beattie.

BEATTIE: Well you know many victories that we have there or many successes are always tinged with a slight degree of failure. But I remember when I served in 2006 we were extremely light on the ground with troops but yet we went down to a place called Garmsir in the south of Helmand. We were able to take it and we were able to hold it using indigenous forces to be able to hold that place. The US marines moved in there subsequently and they’ve had what they’ve termed as a catastrophic success where they’ve completely swamped the area. They’ve taken control. The population are flooding back into the villages. To me that’s an outstanding success brought about from very small means to a major operation.

WERMAN: And Mr. Flynn do you have a similar story?

FLYNN: Ah yes. We landed boots on the ground in [PH] Arusgan in [PH] Dayraoud in early October 2007. Our main objective was to go and secure and by doing so we built numerous checkpoints in the area. We fought. We cleared the land and now we were training host nation indigenous forces at the same time to man those checkpoints. And as we ended up clearing that area – it took us about five months of fighting – and now the last three months of the tour there was not a single shot fired.

WERMAN: So what happens then if the naysayer to raising the troop levels in Afghanistan come back and say well look at these two examples. I mean if you do this cleverly we can control territory. We can win this.

BEATTIE: The problem you have Marco is the territory is so vast you really are talking about huge open deserts with small pockets of population spread amongst it. Or if you go to the River Helmand sort of nearly tropical lush green along either side of the bank. You need the forces to be in there because if you’re not in there influencing the local nationals and having effect on the enemy well the truth is the void would be filled by the Taliban themselves or the insurgency. So it’s either British boots or American boots in particular villages in areas. And if it’s not them then it’s going to be the enemy. So we need the numbers to dominate.

WERMAN: Now the Obama Administration of course is in the midst of an intense debate about the best way forward in Afghanistan. There are experts including apparently Vice President Joe Biden who say boosting the number of troops in a big way would be a mistake. Others say up to 60,000 additional US troops are needed. Kyle Flynn what do you think about that?

FLYNN: It just depends on the mission what they’re actually trying to accomplish there. Sixty thousand troops, will that even be enough? I don’t think anyone really knows at the moment. It depends on how we utilize those troops and where we place them throughout the country. I even think with 60,000 there are still large [INDISCERNIBLE] of territory that we would have to seed to the Taliban.

WERMAN: Doug Beattie, Prime Minister Gordon Brown also said today that a safer Afghanistan means a safer Britain. President Obama has said something similar here in the US. Why do you think the mission in Afghanistan has been a tough one with the public in both countries?

BEATTIE: I’m not really sure what it’s like in the US but certainly in Britain I don’t the government in Great Britain has articulated well enough by saying it makes a safer Britain. I mean it’s a very sweeping statement and I think they need to get down to the fine detail and explain exactly what they mean. For me if I look at it I think sometimes when I look at Afghanistan it’s maybe even a sideshow to a whole regional piece because just next door its neighbor, Pakistan, has got its own major problems and that’s a nuclear country. So by securing Afghanistan it gives Pakistan a breathing space to deal with their insurgency. And if you can imagine actually if the Taliban were resurgent in Pakistan and threatened, the nuclear sites there, I mean what would Iran be doing now? You know they’re already calling for nuclear weapons or that capability. They would have a justified reason to have it. What would India do if the Taliban were going to take over nuclear weapons in Pakistan? Would they stand and watch while their neighbor falls to the Taliban?

WERMAN: And Kyle Flynn why do you think the US is there? I mean is the 9/11 no haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban still kind of the best case President Obama can make?

FLYNN: We believe that that is the reason why we’re still there – to deny al-Qaeda a sanctuary from which to train and operate. I also think that now we were getting into the sensitive are of nation building which no one seems to want to talk about in length.

WERMAN: I’d like to know from both of you what your kind of assessment of the Taliban is at this point. I mean why do you think they’ve been able to have so much success, gains to get so much traction on the ground in these parts of Afghanistan? Kyle Flynn.

FLYNN: I believe that they use a level of fear, intimidation, and violence that not even the allies can match and they coerce the local Pashtun population into supporting them.

WERMAN: And Doug Beattie what do you think?

BEATTIE: Well I think Kyle has really hit the nail on the head. He’s absolutely right. But I think there’s something deeper than that as well is because in truth we call them the Taliban but that’s really just a flag of convenience. The Taliban are mixed up with a variety of different groupings from Taliban to al-Qaeda to Islamic fundamentalists to the farmer who believes we’re in their country eroding their way of life or in their country about to take away their means of supporting their family which is the poppy. And they’re grouping together to form what is a really exceptional light infantry which is hard to root out when they’re fighting amongst a population and your hands are tied behind your back trying not to have civilian casualties and yet the enemies and amongst them they’re extremely versatile in the way they do business.

WERMAN: And are you both saying then that the Taliban and al-Qaeda can kind of group together better than the allies can? I kind of heard that from you Kyle Flynn.

FLYNN: I think the relationship has grown closer since 9/11 and I’m not sure if al-Qaeda itself is operating in Afghanistan which we’re assuming that’s what we’re hearing or if they’re still operating primarily in Pakistan across the [PH] Duran line. But I believe the ties are much closer now than they were after 9/11.

WERMAN: Former US Special Forces non-commissioned officer Kyle Flynn on the line from Washington and former British army captain Doug Beattie speaking to us from New Castle, England. Gentlemen thank you both very much indeed.

BEATTIE: Thank you.

FLYNN: Thanks.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.