Some years ago, when then justice secretary Ken Clarke was being interviewed, the presenter said: “Rape is rape, Minister”. The politician replied “No, it’s not”. Outrage flowed from the general public. The politician was in reverse gear from there on.
Politicians are human - they will make mistakes. Some are forgiveable - others are not.
The old rule is ‘when you are explaining you are losing’. These days it seems as if politicians are forever explaining.
In Northern Ireland we are used to loose-lipped politicians with a penchant for stupid and often offensive remarks. To borrow an expression from a familiar TV ad, “we become nose blind”.
Take Sammy Wilson - we are often subjected to his ill-informed outbursts on everything from climate change to coronavirus. To his credit Wilson is incredibly consistent with his views, however his credibility is another matter altogether. He seems to think it is important to entertain his Larne support base with fiery rhetoric and funny (to them) throwaway remarks.
In parliamentary debates his face goes crimson like a Victor Meldrew on steroids. One cannot help but think that the honourable member for East Antrim would, in the words of Oscar Wilde, prefer to be talked about than not talked about at all.
The same is true of John Taylor, aka Lord Kilclooney. The former MP for Strangford seemingly laps up the attention he gets on social media. His preferred means of communication appears to be Twitter.
Twitter is a difficult platform to navigate and tends to attract a host of anonymous trolls and keyboard warriors. The largest demographic group of Twitter users (nearly 60 per cent) are under the age of 34. To put that in context. John Taylor was first elected 50 years ago - long before most of his Twitter audience were a twinkle in their father's eye!
Kilclooney, owner of a raft of local newspapers, appears to enjoy stirring the pot online with ever more outrageous comments. Piers Morgan, (no stranger to controversy) once remarked after a Taylor tweet about an English cricket player that the peer was “an old racist dinosaur”. Taylor remained unfazed. More recently he controversially referred to the ethnicity of Leo Varadkar and US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Despite a barrage of criticism, Kilclooney seems to embrace his new found infamy with zeal.
Last week another unionist found himself in the eye of a storm over his behaviour and comments. Ken Maginnis as an MP was known for being pragmatic, straight talking and fair. By unionist standards he appeared liberal. That reputation is almost certainly in tatters after he was sanctioned by the Lord’s Conduct Committee. Their report concluded Maginnis had used “offensive and homophobic” language and he had shown “very little insight into the impact of his behaviour and no remorse for the upset he caused”. The peer’s subsequent interview with TalkBack’s William Crawley was nothing short of a train wreck. As he faces an eighteen month ban from the House of Lords, it would be preferable for the 83-year-old peer to recuse himself from public life.
Unionists do not have a monopoly on foot and mouth gaffes or for the over-enthusiastic use of Twitter.
Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley - chair of the powerful Public Accounts Committee - was embarrassed into a cringeworthy apology over his “inappropriate and insensitive” tweet about the IRA murder of British soldiers at Narrow Water in 1979. Having apologised Stanley’s sense of relief was short lived, when a tweet about Leo Varadkar from 2017 resurfaced which seemed to refer to the then taoiseach’s sexuality.
Now it appears that following an interview on local radio at the start of the pandemic the beleaguered TD has also found himself caught up in a racism row. Stanley has deleted his social media accounts which is probably sensible.
But it is much harder for politicians to know when it is better to say nothing at all.
