Attack dogs and class acts

IF ONLY John Reid had listened to himself then perhaps he would not be the figure of ridicule that he is today. His opening gambit was spot on. Introduced on Newsnight as "Labour’s attack dog" by the professionally rude Jeremy Paxman, Dr Reid immediately bit back.

With a sneer in his voice that must have impressed even the great sneerer himself, the health secretary seized the moral high-ground as he insisted he would not rise to the bait.

"First of all I will leave aside your insulting and patronising description of me," he said. Unfortunately, he then returned to the slight four more times in the opening seconds of his interview. Finally, having annoyed himself so much by constantly bringing up the insult he’d left aside, he went completely off the leash. "You called me an attack dog because I’ve got a Glasgow accent," barked the health secretary, with just the slightest hint of froth around the corners of his mouth.

Paxman, and it must be said the majority of the viewing public, including myself, were bemused. Until then there had been no mention of accents - Glasgow or otherwise. But perhaps the accent really was the issue: Dr Reid’s ‘Glaswegian’ brogue was so thick and impenetrable that even he had not understood what he said at the start of the interview.

So, unable to comprehend his extremely reasonable opening position, he had ignored his own good counsel, and in doing so made a complete fool of himself on national television.

There is so little substance to Dr Reid’s bizarre allegation that it is difficult to know where to start when seeking to demolish it. At the same time it reveals so much about his personal insecurities that any examination seems like an intrusion into his own private grief.

For starters, few people would say that Dr Reid’s rich voice, which is actually quite soft when he is not shouting at BBC interviewers - admittedly not that often - is tinged with anything approaching the harsh tones your average patronising person would associate with the Glasgow accent.

This is not surprising as ‘Gorbals’ Reid, as he is not known within the confines of the Houses of Parliament, was in fact born in Belshill and educated in Coatbridge - the elocution capital of Scotland. So although he does have a distinct accent, it does not belong to Glasgow, and nor does he.

This is not to say that those blessed with any form of Scottish accent do not meet prejudice from a certain type of English person when they journey down South to do important jobs of state. Michael Martin was indeed dubbed "Gorbals Mick" when he became Speaker of the House of Commons, and had to endure some terrible jibes about no-one being able to understand his pronouncements from the chair. Nor is such prejudice limited to the English.

Cathy Jamieson claimed in this very paper that as education minister she was put down by "establishment snobs" because of her Ayrshire accent. Yet even if we accept that Dr Reid does have a decent, shall we say, West of Scotland accent of the type which your average ignorant southerner would take for Glaswegian, then we still have to ask whether this is, in fact, a bad thing.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest not, and that the Glasgow accent is actually quite attractive to the ears of most normal people, including the English. There are more than 100 call centres operating within the city, between them employing around 20,000 people.

No doubt some are employed for their "attack dog" qualities, including the ability to sell conservatories to people in high rise flats. However, the vast majority are employed because people like their accent, because it is easy on the ear and it makes them believe the speaker to be a decent and trustworthy individual.

If anything Dr Reid should be playing up his accent, not playing it down. The evidence is clear, from Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in the Cabinet to Kirsty Wark, Kirsty Young and James Naughtie in the media, that it is an asset rather than a hindrance for any Scot south of the Border.

Certainly, back on his home turf there is no doubt the health secretary makes the most of the connection with local people that is created by their common tongue. He is a real crowd puller on the Labour club circuit in his native Lanarkshire. In his speeches there he revels in his tough upbringing, regaling audiences with tales of square-goes at weddings and the like. In fact, you can easily imagine him standing up in one of these smoky establishments and boasting to the audience of his hard man status within the party.

Paxman did not call Dr Reid an attack dog because he has a Glasgow accent. He called him an attack dog because he is one, and he knows it.

What the outburst really revealed is that Dr Reid, even after reaching the dizzy heights of health secretary, still has a working-class-lad-made-good chip on his shoulder - and it suggests he remains driven by that particularly nasty streak of old fashioned class hatred which still motivates a few too many within even the modernised Labour party.

Last year he dismissed the ongoing witch-hunt on the smoking poor, with some justification, as an "obsession of the learned middle class". His gripe this week was again education related: that people with Phds and posh accents from posh schools were regarded as "sophisticates", whereas people like him, who have Phds but regional accents, were not.

There again, should Paxman really have used the description "attack dog" before the interview had even got under way? If he really is a principled seeker after truth, rather than the provider of entertaining political knockabout, should he not at least start his interviews courteously, descending into his trademark rudeness only in response to evasion and obfuscation on behalf of his interviewees?

Paxman’s surprise, and perhaps our own, at the fact that Dr Reid took offence to his opening remarks says a lot about the degraded nature of political debate in this country. When interviewers such as Paxman always start from the premise "why is this lying bastard lying to me" it is hardly surprising that most such encounters produce a lot more heat than light.

I heard Paxo musing on this very issue a couple of years back when he was guest speaker at a charity lunch in Glasgow. "Perhaps we journalists have gone too far," he said, and healthy scepticism of our political masters had turned into outright cynicism. Was the viewer really getting proper service when interviews so often degenerated into the trading of insults? It was an interesting, if self-indulgent speech. The next night I turned on Newsnight to see Paxman in a fresh light. I can’t remember who was on but I do remember that they were soon treated to his trademark full-body sneer, and that by the end of the bout, for that is what it was, they had been thoroughly kebabbed.

Which just goes to show that even self-proclaimed seekers of the truth sometimes speak with forked tongue - whatever their accent.