Eddie Izzard and ‘Brilliant’ Britain

Now I love Eddie Izzard – really really love him – but…

It’s an appalling fudge. Noone can fault Eddie for what his values are, nor for what he saw and experienced in his multi-marathon adventure across Britain last year. But he talks about Labour as a party ‘founded on fairness’, and immediately shoots himself in the foot. Control orders – are they fair? What about ID cards? The Independent Safeguarding Authority – who’s that fair to? A policy of destituting asylum seekers and jailing ‘failed’ asylum seekers’ children – I’m not quite sure that’s fair. Were the police fair when they beat protesters and killed Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protest? How’s about the Tamils’ protest soon after when they attacked women (I’ve seen the video)?

He talks about compassion, but where’s the compassion in pre-criminalising protesters on secret databases, on holding DNA profiles of entirely innocent people, children amongst them? Was it compassionate to invade Iraq, when there was no evidence of WMD? He talks about community too, but how is it fair to promise to slash public services for the poorest in society when a Robin Hood (or Tobin) Tax could recoup money from those who caused the economic crisis in the first place? Was Labour’s utter dismissal of the online campaign by tens of thousands of people to hold back the Digital Economy Bill a demonstration of ‘community’ support?

Is Eddie unaware of these issues or does he really think they don’t matter?