Geoff Arnold

CD of the week: "An Audience with Tony Benn"

I know, I know: you see "CD of the week" and you expect music. Not this time. An Audience with Tony Benn is a double CD that I picked up in Oxford recently. It's simply a recording of the former MP and Labour politician Tony Benn on stage, speaking about politics and answering questions from the audience over the course of a couple of hours. Sounds boring? Anything but.

Tony Benn retired from Parliament a few years ago "to spend more time with politics", and listening to him one remembers that politics is about ideas - big ideas, about how we organize and govern our lives, and how power is acquired, transferred, and controlled. It's a refreshing - and somewhat wistful - realisation. To most people, he's identified with the label "left-wing extremist", or "socialist". While that may have been his assigned role in the bizarre game of day-to-day politics, here he simply talks about common-sense, uncomplicated ideas, with the clarity that marks a superb thinker and orator.

A couple of years ago, while visiting England, I turned on the TV late one evening and found myself watching an hour-long conversation between Tony Benn and Michael Portillo, the former candidate for the leader of the Conservative Party. Here were two prominent politicians from opposite ends of the political spectrum, having a quiet, civilized discussion about the state of politics in Britain over recent years. Obviously they disagreed about many things, but they agreed on many more - on the responsibility of those in government, and the dangers of the "politics of personality", among other things. They clearly liked and respected each other, and enjoyed the interplay of ideas. Voices were not raised, slogans and sound-bites were eschewed. It was wonderful. I thought of American politicians, and tried to imagine such an exchange occurring. Mario Cuomo and Newt Gingrich? Ted Kennedy and Bob Dole? Alas, my imagination wasn't up to the task.