The return of Chris Grayling

GDS

It was ok from Grayling but I feel the Tories need to finesse this great argument a little better. Boulton kept on about what is the role of the government if people are making their own local decisions and Grayling was, er, unclear.

To me (military) it is obvious that what the Conservatives want to do is delegate TACTICAL and some local STRATEGIC decision making to the people who know best but retain the capacity and will to make NATIONAL STRATEGIC and GRAND-STRATEGIC decsions on behalf of the country as a whole. Logical, sensible, consistent, cogent! Where's the problem? Boulton's argumet becomes immediately irrelevant.

Why didn't he just effing say that?

I like what you say Chris but you need to be smarter about how you say it.

Yosemite Sam

I saw this interview and I was struck with the fact that Boulton could not get his head around the fact that there may be different ways to do things. This came over also with three 'experts' rolled out on WATO. Their pitch was nobody wants to be involved, and, even if they were, it would be the wrong people or they would get their priorities wrong. The Criminologist had the gall to say that wanting more police on the beat was a wrong proity! What blinkered arrogance.

Ivy Eileen

"combative" ? Thought Bolton was struggling at times as to what intelligently to say. Made a bit of a prat of himself, methinks.

Sunder Katwala

Wasn't it absolutely remarkable that there was no reference whatsover to the Grayling B&B controversy or his absence from national media since?

It seems a very reasonable hypothesis that Sky may well have agreed to that as the terms of the interview, as the only alternative explanation would be that they saw no journalistic interest in that? Worth investigating.

luke

Grayling doesnt have to worry about it, he wont ever have to implement it

Will J

Good job - well done Chris. Handling a very sceptical line of questioning calmly and with strong responses. Now let's just hope they do it.

GeoffH

This isn't interviewing by Boulton. It's arguing.

There's a subtle distinction and Boulton and his counterparts have forgotten that their role is to enlighten through debate and interrogation and not to sneer by constant contradiction.

david

The man is an arse!!

Will Rees

The Wire highlighted the problems with elected Police Commissioners- a series Chris Grayling complained the UK already resembled too much

Richard of York

Grayling will have to do a lot better than that.....he also has to catch up he is a lap behind everyone else.
Unfortunate gaff on the B&B issue compounded by the fact as any fisherman will tell you)the Grayling is a well known bottom feeder......oops

woundup

Wasn't Bolton aweful? Sulky, childlike and aweful. Needling and objurate.

Grayling did well.

Nicholas

In the context of 13 years of unrelenting infantilisation it is a difficult message but even Boulton revealed the general disdain for the stifling layers of bureaucratic and moral management pressing down on the British, but particularly the English who have no devolutionary escape from grasping Scots communists Welsh Labour windbags and unpredictable Irish extremists.

That disdain is the danger because the risk for the Tories is that to the oppressed English their ideas appear to be more of the same. I realise they want to promote a positive, constructive message but in reality they need to think in terms of sweeping away, as Cameron so passionately promised in a recent speech, before the construction stuff. Otherwise there is a real risk that the chip on the shoulder brigade, career socialists, grievance peddlers, meddlers and nose-pokers will merely sidestep into a new quangocracy for economic survival. Those parasites need to be sacked and burned, cauterised from our public life and sent packing, never to inflict their cant-driven misery on us again.

Verity

Grayling had the intestinal fortitude to voice an opinion - an opinion with which around 80 per cent of the British people would probably agree - on the forcing of homosexual guests on people who run B&Bs whether the owners of the home like it or not. (My God, once we go down that route, we'll have people like Tony & Cherie Blair, Gordon Brown and that weird wife and Jack Straw being forced on harmless B&B owners!)

Chuck Unsworth

@ Richard

Spelling.

Gaff? What, boat or drum?

GeoffH

Yorkist Richard claims the Grayling is a 'bottom feeder' in an attempt to make a weak joke.

Actually, the Grayling is a member of the Salmon family and is far, in the angling sense, from being a bottom feeder.

But then, urban Socialists rarely know anything of the natural world, except how to despoil it.

Victor Southern

Richard
Your lack of education prevents you from being able to distinguish between a gaffe and a gaff. The former is a disaster in speech or conduct, like Miliband Major and the banana. The latter is a hook such as that which Labour has had in our bodies and souls for 13 years. Some, like you, are happy to be on the hook and incapable of independent thought. Other, older and wiser, fish always evaded being caught.

Boulton was not conducting an interview. He does not do interviews. If a Labour politician is around he is obsequious, the straight man who sets up the lead-in for a peroration. If a Tory politician is in the studio he is a rather toothless and overweight Rottweiler.

Grayling was unwise to get into the B&B controversy which was set up by a Labour activist. He was however right in his instincts which told him that people must still have the right to free association and independence of thought and moral values. Labour believe in forced association and total adherence to a grey pall of political correctness.

David Ossitt

Blunkett a pompous fool with a penchant for other (better) men’s wives; Charles Clarke a weak feeble and silly man, Jacqui Smith a serial thief who is married to an onanist, Alan Johnson a post man in a shiny suit with a quiff.

Chris Grayling an honest and honourable man.