From Nicola Sturgeon to Shami Chakrabarti: the Most Dangerous People in Britain
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Version 0 of 1. Who is the Most Dangerous Person in Britain? Both the Daily Mail and the Sun have wondered aloud during this election campaign whether the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon might be the Most Dangerous Woman in Britain – and decided in the end that yes, they think she is. On Monday, Piers Morgan went one further, arguing that Sturgeon is: “emerging as the world’s most dangerous woman that few outside Britain have ever heard of”. Her claim to dangerousness lies in her party’s project to dismantle the UK and, if she gets a chance in Westminster, to veto the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. This is “terrifying” in Morgan’s opinion, and “utter madness” according to his only source for it, his brother. Sturgeon will surely disagree in the strongest terms. She has no desire to be “in Britain” anyway, after all. Previously Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, was declared Britain’s Most Dangerous Woman by shock jock Jon Gaunt in his Sun column in 2007. (The threat she posed, by advocating things such as free speech and the right to trial, was subtler than Sturgeon’s, but no less genuine.) Inevitably, perhaps, there are more contenders among the men. Ian Bone, who distributed an anarchist newspaper in the 1980s, was the Most Dangerous Man in Britain, according to the Sunday People, although we seem to have survived his ravages. In 1974, Kingsley Amis said the same of Tony Benn, but somehow we have lived through his too. After the last election, with some help from the Telegraph’s headline writers, columnist James Delingpole surprisingly concluded that Chris Huhne, the new Liberal Democrat secretary for energy and climate change, was also a contender, since he would be able to “bring the British economy to a standstill with his fanatical pursuit of CO2 reduction targets”. The proven dangers of climate change, of course, have never worried Delingpole too much. Speaking of proving things, the scientist Richard Dawkins has also been put forward for the Most Dangerous title by the Mail, on the rather unterrifying basis that he is an atheist and said he would contemplate human cloning. Perhaps the most serious candidate might be Tony Blair, who does at least have the deaths of thousands of people to bolster his case. When the Sun nominated him in 1998, however, it had nothing to do with Iraq and all that. Rather, they argued that his enthusiasm for the euro endangered the economy. On which, to be fair, they were proven right. Blair’s most dangerous days are probably behind him now, which leaves no clear Most Dangerous Man, or Person. The country’s leading promoter of drinking, smoking and poor diets, whoever they are, is probably ahead, but we need certainty. How much longer must we wait for the Office for National Statistics to begin monitoring British dangerousness and producing league tables? The people have a right to know. |