Questions to Which the Answer is No!

by John Rentoul

  The rules of the series are policed and enforced by a frightening, but imaginary, institution that resembles the Académie Française. Known variously as the Committee, the Politburo, the Commissariat or the Executive, it admits or refuses questions to the list with what looks to the untrained outsider like caprice. Nominations made by friends of Committee members are nodded through when it is perfectly clear that the author of the question intended the answer to be ‘no’ all along, while other nominations which observe the rules scrupulously are held up in working parties or task forces for months or years.

  So popular has the series become that it was described by The Economist as a ‘cult’. Actually The Economist said it had acquired a ‘cult following’, which possibly meant that it was popular among a small number of intense and rather peculiar people. The initiation rites of the cult are not well known, but it has gained adherents in at least two other countries. The French chapter is in fact run from London, by my colleague Michael McCarthy, who reads Le Monde and spotted this question in it: ‘Des smartphones bientôt équipés d’airbags?’ Which, unless they celebrate All Fools’ Day on 16 August in France, appeared to be a serious question. The German chapter of the cult, meanwhile, has been riven by disputes over the correct translation of its name. Its first question, asked by a magazine called Stylebook, was: ‘Ist dieser Mann die schönste Marilyn?’ (Is this man the most beautiful Marilyn?) This was drawn to my attention by Jenni Thier, who said that QTWTAIN in German was FDANL, Fragen, deren Antwort Nein lautet, or ‘Questions, the Answer is No’. Others had other ideas, but I left them to it.

  After all, I had a meme to curate. (Although ‘curate’ as a verb is on the Banned List too.) Questions to Which the Answer is No has been an irregular feature of the Independent blog since February 2009. It has ignored attempts to undermine it by people asking questions such as, ‘Is this a question to which the answer is no?’ (asked by Martin Rosenbaum) or ‘You realise if one answer turns out to be yes, you’re finished?’ (Rich Davidson). Ian Leslie, another friend and brilliant blogger, even asked: ‘Do you ever think the Questions to Which the Answer is No joke might be getting stale?’ No sooner had he asked it, however, than he realised it was a question that answered itself.

  By the time this book went to press, the series had reached number 829, and an edited compilation of the best of them is reproduced here. I have kept it chronological, so I suppose you could say that it provides an eccentric view of the history of the period 2009–12. In politics it was the last year of Gordon Brown, the formation of the coalition government and its first two years. There was a lot of speculation about the outcome of the election in 2010, including one of my favourite questions, ‘Could the Lib Dems win outright?’ There was a royal wedding the next year, and the Arab spring, all against the background noise of the global financial crisis. Many of the headlines collected here, however, are just odd. There are some recurring themes, such as Doctor Who, which may reflect my interests, and the alleged persecution of Christians in coalition Britain, which may reflect those of the Daily Mail. As such, this book is like a child’s time capsule, containing an arbitrary selection of objects that provide a distorted picture of the period. If this book were the only historical source for those three years available to an alien, or yeti, he, she or it might imagine that the British media of that time enjoyed a long ‘silly season’ and was forced to resort to some desperate measures to fill its pages. But there is no quiet news season now, if there ever was. I was collecting specimens for my collection all year round.

  Much of the subject material might form a study subtitled, ‘A Typology of Popular Irrationalism in Early 21st-Century Media’. Many of the conspiracy theories are long lasting and by no means confined to the period. Aliens, yetis, anything to do with Jesus, the murder of John F. Kennedy, the death of Marilyn Monroe and the influence of ‘supermoons’ (when the Moon comes closer to the Earth and appears larger in the sky): these are enduring themes of a certain sort of journalism. A few are more contemporary, such as the wilder expanses of opposition to the Iraq war, and one suggestion (the Daily Mail again) that the swine flu pandemic of 2009–10 was a profit-seeking venture by the drugs companies, although both draw on timeless themes of the wickedness of politicians and multinational corporations.

  Indeed, if this book had a serious purpose, it would be to make fun of conspiracy theorists, and especially of newspapers that pretend to engage in fact-based journalism. One of my favourite leading articles in the Daily Mail appeared in July 2010 and declared: ‘The Mail has a healthy scepticism of conspiracy theories.’ Some people complain that Paul Dacre is overpaid for what he does, but satirical writing of that quality is without price.

  One of the consistent themes of conspiracy theorists, as it happens, is that they are ‘just asking questions’. They are not saying that we are ruled by lizard people from the lower levels of the fourth dimension – we have a healthy scepticism of David Icke’s beliefs, after all – but we just ask the question: why is David Cameron so reluctant to condemn reptiles? As David Aaronovitch explores in his brilliant book, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, ‘just asking questions’ is one of the great defences of paranoid delusions through the ages. Conspiracy theorists often pretend to be oblivious to the implication of ‘just asking the question’. Thus one conspiracy theorist asked me whom I ‘represented’ in expressing the view that David Kelly, the Iraq weapons inspector, had committed suicide. When I objected, he said: ‘I did not accuse you of representing anyone. I asked you who you represented – a very different thing. It’s a question you still haven’t answered.’

  Fortunately, this book does not have much of a serious purpose. It is at this point that the author of a more serious work might suggest to the reader to what use he or she is expected to put it. You do not need to be told how to use it, but one of the best ways would be this: gather a group of friends in a cheap restaurant; stand on a table; read out the headlines collected here one by one and invite the company to shout the answer. Close proceedings with a rousing chorus of ‘Jerusalem’, in which everyone will know what to do at the end of every other line. ‘And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon England’s mountains green?’ And so on. Or, you could pretend to be Kirsty Wark or Jeremy Paxman introducing a Newsnight discussion that turns out to be rather shorter than the producer intended, if you read out a headline and a friend pretends to be the expert in the studio who replies, after a slight hesitation to think about it, ‘No.’

  I hope you like it.

  1. Alastair Campbell, blog, 16 October 2009.

  2. Ian Betteridge, ‘TechCrunch: Irresponsible journalism’, Technovia blog, 23 February 2009.

  3. Tony Blair, A Journey (London: Hutchinson, 2010), p463.

  4. The Banned List (London: Elliott & Thompson, 2011), and updated periodically at www.bannedlist.co.uk

  Daily Mail, 6 February 2009. The story quoted Edna Andrews, the family’s housekeeper, who said that Bishop Williamson’s mother thought that his father, a hosiery buyer, had been denied promotion at Marks & Spencer because he was not Jewish. Which is why you should never read on after a headline like that: you know that the story can only be a disappointment.

  Sun, 20 February 2009. The Sun reported a mysterious pattern of criss-cross lines (below) apparently shown by Google Earth on the North Atlantic ocean bed. The BBC reported a statement from Google the next day: ‘What users are seeing is an artefact of the data collection process. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.’

  Daily Mail, 28 February 2009. The online version was more heavy-handed, although this meant that it contained more explanatory material, for those of us not so familiar with the private lives of popular entertainers: ‘Is Madonna still in love with Sean Penn, the man who beat her up with a baseball bat?’

  The Wardman Wi
re blog, 4 March 2009. Twitter was quite new then.

  Fraser Nelson, Coffee House blog, 26 March 2009. Several Questions to Which the Answer is No have an ‘end is nigh’ theme; this one referred merely to bad things happening to the economy after a Bank of England auction of Government debt failed to sell completely. Nelson thought this might mean that the Government would be unable to raise money to finance its vast deficit. Actually, it was a glitch caused by uncertainty over the pricing of gilts, as a result of the new policy of Quantitative Easing, a fancy way of saying ‘printing money’.

  Janet Daley, Telegraph blog, 1 April 2009. An offensive and unnecessary question, I thought; the refuge of the over-expressive commentator. It was offensive and unnecessary when Matthew Parris asked it of Tony Blair, in The Times, on 29 March 2003: ‘Are we witnessing the madness of Tony Blair?’ Parris meant, ‘I really, really, really do not agree with the war in Iraq.’ I suppose Janet Daley’s question, at the time of Brown’s G20 meeting to ‘rescue the world’, meant, ‘I am a Conservative.’

  Mail on Sunday, 12 April 2009. Reported in the Mail on Sunday on this occasion, but repeated in all newspapers from time to time, in all good bookshops and on The History Channel. The ‘after all’ was a particularly deft touch, suggesting that the Mail on Sunday understood that any sensible person knew that the shroud was a fake, but that some new evidence had come to light that unexpectedly suggested that the fruitcakes had been right ‘all along’.

  Fox News, 16 April 2009. As Barack Obama began to put his healthcare plans through Congress, his opponents held up the British National Health Service as a nightmare vision of America’s future. Sarah Palin said that decisions about entitlement to treatment were made in the UK by ‘death panels’, and Fox News interviewed Jerry Bowyer from the National Review, who explained why the NHS is easily infiltrated by terrorists. Because it is a bureaucracy, apparently.

  Daniel Finkelstein at the Times blog, Comment Central, 20 April 2009. For this one I broke my own rule, that the author of the question had to imply that the answer was Yes for it to qualify for inclusion in the series, on the grounds that Finkelstein was asking the question on behalf of the owner of the X-ray, who had put it on eBay claiming it was of Hitler’s skull.

  Independent, 20 May 2009. After Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons, announced his resignation, my own newspaper responded with its own brand of hyperbole, as if it were the Prague Spring and the lifting of the Labour jackboot all in one. I thought it was quite a bright day for Parliament, as it was likely to acquire a better chairperson. As for a ‘new dawn’, (a) we weren’t exactly living in the feudal age before and (b) you must be joking.

  Richard Shulman, examiner.com, 26 May 2009. This was from Richard Shulman, an ‘examiner’ for examiner.com, ‘a dynamic entertainment, news and lifestyle network’. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, had apparently acted on Blair’s suggestion that he should hand over to the Palestinian Authority the sales tax that the Israeli government collected on its behalf. Still, it was better than the more usual question, the other way round.

  James Delingpole, Telegraph blog, 5 June 2009. Again, he was not asking the question himself, as he is sceptical about human-made climate change, but on behalf of Russia Today, the English-language channel, which suggested that ‘severe weather conditions’ had caused the crash, off the Brazilian coast, four days earlier.

  Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail, 11 June 2009. A persistent question, first asked by Ephraim Hardcastle, the fictional Daily Mail diarist. Peter Mandelson was, and still is, a life peer, an appointment which, as he said, ‘is for life’. Although there is no bar to a peer becoming Prime Minister, there has not been one since Lord Salisbury in 1902. The Bill that included a provision to allow life peers to renounce their peerage fell in the pre-election rush in November 2009.

  Daily Express, 24 June 2009. An awkward one this, because one of my early Questions to Which the Answer is No was ‘Is the Express a newspaper?’ I had formulated an arbitrary rule that its headlines did not count. But what are rules for, if not for changing?

  Ynetnews, 14 July 2009. ‘A Hamas police spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Islam Shahwan, claimed Monday that Israeli intelligence operatives are attempting to “destroy” the young generation by distributing such materials in the coastal enclave.

  ‘A number of suspects have been arrested. The affair was exposed when a Palestinian filed a complaint that his daughter chewed the aforementioned gum and experienced the dubious side effects. “The Israelis seek to destroy the Palestinians’ social infrastructure with these products and to hurt the young generation by distributing drugs and sex stimulants,” said Shahwan.’

  You could make it up. But you would be condemned as an Islamophobic smart alec.

  Neil Durham, editor of Healthcare Republic, 18 August 2009. As I said, Twitter was still quite new.

  Daily Telegraph, 26 August 2009. A picture of something that actually looked like a giant squid had been spotted by a security guard as he browsed the digital planet. A similar question had been asked by the Telegraph six months earlier, on 19 February, about the picture below: ‘Has the Loch Ness Monster emigrated to Borneo?’

  Gene, Harry’s Place blog, 30 August 2009. Gene at Harry’s Place was having a go at Victoria Brittain, a journalist for the Guardian, who was a member of the council of Respect, George Galloway’s party, which is not so much anti-war as pro-war on the other side.

  Mail on Sunday, 6 September 2009. This was asked by Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair’s half-sister, writing in the Mail on Sunday. Something to do with the Princess of Wales’s campaign against land mines.

  Jonn Elledge, Liberal Conspiracy blog, 9 September 2009. As with so many of these questions, the words of Kenneth Clarke come to mind. He was intercepted by a camera crew at the 1999 Conservative Party Conference, who put Margaret Thatcher’s words to him, that ‘in my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe’. Clarke looked disbelieving, repeated ‘All our problems?’, and said: ‘Well, it’s a theory, isn’t it?’

  Daily Mail, 11 September 2009. Another gem of the genre, given away by the supplementary question, which was also one in my series: ‘And are the US and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?’ Well, it was a theory, wasn’t it?

  Daily Mail, 21 September 2009. Hats off for the opening paragraph, which quoted the BBC’s Watchdog programme as saying that this man is ‘a menace’, before continuing to describe how one of the newspaper’s ‘most cynical’ reporters met this ‘controversial healer’ and ‘her scepticism began to waver.’ An example of the have-cake-and-eat-it Mail at its best. Rebecca Hardy scoffs at ‘the most controversial healer in Britain’, Adrian Pengelly, but then wonders if there might be something in anti-science superstition after all.

  Christopher Booker, The Real Global Warming Disaster, 17 October 2009. A Question to Which the Answer is No asked, at book length, by Christopher Booker in The Real Global Warming Disaster (Continuum), with this question as its subtitle. I do like the quotation marks around ‘climate change’, just in case anyone suspected that Booker thought there was something in it.

  Peter Oborne, Daily Mail, 31 October 2009. Peter Oborne wrote that there were many times when Blair had to choose between ‘doing his best for Britain’, or ‘creating a good impression with potential future employers in the European Union’. Only one thing wrong with this otherwise persuasive thesis. On the most famous occasion when Blair faced this choice, over Iraq, he chose to go against the policy favoured by the leaders of most of the large EU countries.

  Ed West, Telegraph blog, 10 November 2009. This was a question that West asked in response to a sensible comment by Tim Montgomerie at Conservative Home. Montgomerie wrote:

  The ‘EUSSR’ thing is just one of the wholly inappropriate comparisons that often come up in debates. Other classics are Bush equals Hitler, Israel equals Nazi Germany and Britain-under-Brown equals Zimbabwe-under-Mugabe. Every comparison devalues debate and, mo
re importantly, cheapens the suffering of the people who did live under the USSR, Nazi Germany and Robert Mugabe.

  Tim Montgomerie: living proof that there are intelligent Conservatives on the internet.

  Adam Boulton, Sky News blog, 19 November 2009. Adam Boulton asked this question on the morning of the European Council’s meeting to appoint Herman van Rompuy, former Prime Minister of Belgium, as its first President. Blair had been the bookmakers’ favourite until two weeks earlier.

  Boulton was not alone. Benedict Brogan wrote on his Telegraph blog that morning: ‘Why Tony Blair should not be written off quite yet.’ Mike Smithson asked at the Political Betting website: ‘Is Blair back in the frame again for the EU job?’ And James Forsyth on Coffee House wrote: ‘Why my money is on Balkenende.’

  Daily Mail, 21 November 2009. Well? Have you?

  Peter McKay, Daily Mail, 30 November 2009. Early version of another frequent flier in this series. Far easier to ask the question, so that Daily Mail readers who hate Blair could fantasise about it, than to look at the law, which would be rather dull and from which any reasonable person would quickly conclude that there is no prospect of Blair, or any other politician or official, facing any kind of trial over Iraq. No matter how often I tried to explain this, and in how many different ways, the question kept recurring, with subtle differences of wording.