EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

            

 

In praise of… Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner

Together they endured exile, arrest, hunger strike, harassment, humiliation, ill health and enormous personal loss – but their memory will surely endure

 
As a couple, Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner achieved more for human rights in their country than any other. He, one of the greatest Soviet physicists and the youngest member of its Academy of Sciences, became the politburo's most implacable opponent. Introducing him to the wider dissident movement, she became his ferocious gatekeeper. Together they endured exile, arrest, hunger strike, harassment, humiliation, ill health and enormous personal loss – but their memory will surely endure Bonner's death last week. Brought back from Gorky by Mikhail Gorbachev, courted by Boris Yeltsin, she retained an instinctive distrust of opportunists who conscripted the memory of her husband for their cause. Post-communism was to rob the final decades of Bonner's life of a redemptive ending. By 1996, she had fallen out with Yeltsin so badly over Chechnya and the grand theft of the oligarchs that she said democracy had turned into "dermocratia" (shitocracy). Under Putin, she spent more and more of her time with her family in Boston, but lacerated him for human rights violations. In a letter read out to a rally against racism and ethnic violence in Moscow last year, Bonner described herself as a Moscovite, Jew and Caucasus national. "Consider that I have come, again to save my homeland, although my legs cannot carry me." She had cried once for her father, who was shot in 1937, cried again for her mother, who spent 17 years in the labour camps, but had never, it seemed, stopped crying for her country.

 

British politics: Raspberries all round

A generally negative mood may now be reasserting itself as early optimism surrounding the coalition drains away and the media becomes bored

In Wonderland all could have prizes. In polling land all just get raspberries. Today's Guardian-ICM opinion poll is tough reading for each political party. Labour, narrowly in the lead on 39%, are nevertheless badly adrift from the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition on the key issue of the economy, while Ed Miliband's personal ratings continue to slide. The Conservatives, though holding on to 37% support, now head a coalition that is slipping deep into negative ratings after an early honeymoon, while David Cameron is unpopular overall for the first time since the election. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, now plumb their lowest recent level of support, 12%, at a time when Nick Clegg also has the worst negative rating of all the leaders. Across this whole land of lost political content only one party has currently got much to cheer – Alex Salmond's rampant Scottish Nationalists.

It is possible that this generally negative mood, except in Scotland, is part of a continuing plague-on-all-your-houses sentiment of the kind that swept through politics during the expenses scandal, and that may now be reasserting itself as early optimism surrounding the coalition drains away and the media becomes bored. This anti-political mood undoubtedly exists and should not be dismissed.

The poll suggests, however, that the woes of each of the parties are particular, rather than general. Labour, for example, has bounced back from its 2010 general election low under Gordon Brown, largely at Lib Dem expense, but its wider support level is still fragile, as the local elections showed. Part of the evidence for this is in Mr Miliband's low ratings, in this as in other polls. As Mr Salmond proved positively and Mr Brown negatively, a leader's ratings can be crucial in an election contest. By that yardstick, Mr Miliband, running 11 points behind his party, risks holding back any Labour recovery. But it is Labour's poor showing on the economy that ought to alarm not just Mr Miliband but his whole party. The stalled economy, the rise in inflation and the cuts in public services ought to be Labour's great opportunity. Instead Labour is stalled. Until it can make a more persuasive case on the economy, Labour will lack election-winning credibility, whoever its leader.

This is some comfort for the government parties. But not much. Though the coalition continues to run ahead of Labour on economic policy, slow growth and high prices mean it is no longer master of the economic argument in the way it once was. Levels of economic confidence are low. George Osborne's reputation as chancellor has lurched downwards, at the same time as Labour continues to struggle. A slide in coalition ratings from –5 to –15 in three months marks a real hardening of public scepticism, with large numbers of both Conservative and Lib Dem voters now saying the coalition is doing a bad job. It is hard to see this changing significantly any time soon.

It would be far too crude to say that the country wants to see Labour values alongside coalition policies. But it is increasingly clear that, having rejected Labour a year ago, the country is now in turn losing confidence in the coalition parties – but not yet to Labour's advantage. The polls suggest that this is a country that accepts the case for tough choices on fiscal and economic policy – including on public sector pensions, ICM finds today – but one that recoils from much of the peremptory toughness of the coalition's solutions. In this sense the Archbishop of Canterbury was right. There is a mismatch between what the parties are offering and what the country wants. The U-turn on health, widely popular, is one sort of response. But it would be far better to have a government which from the start could combine truthful diagnosis, strategic credibility, pragmatic solutions and a reflexive sensitivity about inequality. Unfortunately, this is not currently on offer anywhere – even in Scotland.

Syria: the national monologue

Bashar al-Assad presented himself as the fulcrum of change, but in reality the ironwork is firmly jammed

President Bashar al-Assad yesterday addressed the nation for the third time since the uprising began three months ago, promising what would have been, 98 days ago, an ambitious and far-reaching programme of reform. He continued to call the demonstrations a conspiracy fomented by foreign enemies. To the growing list of epithets he has used in the past to describe the people being shot at – vandals, saboteurs, Muslim extremists, wanted criminals – he added another one: "germs".

But yesterday he acknowledged the regime's inherent weakness, and the legitimacy of some demands. He promised to set up a national dialogue and a law which would see the emergence of a multi-party democracy. He even appeared to promise accountability, saying he held those who had shed Syrian blood responsible for their actions. As the first person to appear on that charge sheet would be his brother, Maher, who commands the fourth division and the presidential guards – responsible for the worst atrocities – no one took this seriously.

If his audience inside the hall of Damascus university, where he made his speech, erupted in ecstatic applause, Assad's audience outside took to the streets in 19 different cities around the country. People said they were infuriated by his patronising tone, and of the dreamworld he inhabited. He was a man in denial, not someone capable of seizing Syria's defining moment. Hailed in advance as groundbreaking, this speech broke no new ground. If the main demand was that he order troops back to their barracks, his response was to fluff it. He merely said he would like to see them go back to their bases.

For some weeks, the Syrian opposition has been saying that a point of no return has been reached. The fury the speech generated among Syrians at home and abroad appears to confirm the view that the uprising is indeed unstoppable. Assad can inflame passions, but no longer has the ability to quench them. On the day he called for a national dialogue, the idea of dialogue is dead. Nor can Assad persuade some of the 10,500 refugees in Turkey to return home. After the fighting at Jisr al-Shughour, where streets were raked with indiscriminate machine-gun fire, the idea that security forces exist to protect residents, rather than mow them down, is treated with derision.

Senior army commanders will eventually decide Assad's fate. But they are not there yet, and Assad will continue to think all he has to do is to dangle vague promises of a brighter future. Yesterday, he presented himself as the fulcrum of change in his country. The reality is the ironwork is firmly jammed, and will not move again until he goes.