With David behind the Times paywall from next month, there’s no point in continuing:
As CC says below, the Times is going to go paywall at the end of this month, and that seems to us like a natural point to bring “Aaronovitch Watch” to a close. Whatever the ease or otherwise of getting Aaro’s weekly column on the down-low, the fact is that with his disappearance behind the paywall he’s going to be a less influential and less important columnist – with the passing of New Labour as well, this was always going to be the case anyway.
In the wider “World of Decency”, I also feel that a historical moment has largely passed by. There are still imperial wars out there, of course, still ludicrous double standards on human rights and even the New Labour project is not 100% dead yet. And Harry’s Place and Normblog and all will presumably continue to be as ghastly as they ever were, while Nick Cohen is unlikely to shut up as he is to ever write a readable column again. And all of these baleful social phenomena will still have their crowd of cheerleaders from a soi-Decent Left perspective, with willyoucondemnathons and all. But, well, do you care as much as you did five years ago? I know I don’t. If we carry this thing on beyond its natural life, it’s almost certain to end up as another site about bloody Israel.
I’m not sure if Aaronovitch behind a paywall will actually matter all that much. His influence lies in the Westminister political and media cliques, who read The Times as part of their jobs, not with people reading him for free on the interwebs when they should be doing their real jobs. In any case Aaronovitch Watch will be missed, not just as a quick way to keep up with the English Decents, but also as a community — often the comments are the best part of the posts. But they’re probably right to quit now, as circumstances have indeed changed and the emphasis in both UK and US politics will be on economics, rather than foreign adventurism. It’s not just the Decents that have become irrelevant, but the liberal/socialist/sane tory coalition that opposed them is ending the end of its natural life as well. The wars on Iraq and slightly less so, Afghanistan were easy to oppose because we all agreed they were bad, if not always for the same reasons. With the economic crisis however you talk about core differences between liberals and socialists, if only on whether some measure or reform is enough to stabilise the system or whether or not a radical revision is needed.