Why did the election happen?

A special election was called following the death of Ted Kennedy in August 2009: Kennedy had served as senator for Massachusetts for nine terms totaling forty six consecutive years in office. Up until 2004 such an election would not have occurred; however in 2004 the Massachusetts General Court altered the law that had previously permitted the state’s Governor (then Mitt Romney) to appoint a senator should an unexpected vacancy arise. Thus Governor Deval Patrick scheduled the special election for January 19 2010; the Democratic party put forward Martha Coakely the state’s Attorney-General, the Republicans selected Scott Brown, a state senator.

Why was the Democrat loss such a shock?

When the results came in the polls demonstrated a clear Republican victory: Brown took 51.9% of the vote to Coakely’s 47.1%. This was a catastrophe for the Democrats on two fronts; in the first instance because Massachusetts is widely considered the be one of the ‘Bluest’ of the blue states, Barack Obama took 61.8% of the vote there in the Presidential Election in 2008. The state is famous for being the spiritual home of the Kennedy political dynasty; Ted Kennedy took over his seat from his brother John when the latter became President in 1960. In a broader sense the Republican win in Massachusetts is a disaster for Democrats across the country. With Brown’s victory the balance in the United States Senate has shifted to a Democratic majority of 59-41, as opposed to a previously filibuster-proof majority of 60-40. T

his means Senate Republicans can now obstruct any legislation – particularly healthcare reform – should they so wish.

How did Martha Coakely lose?

Martha Coakley was widely considered to be a shoe-in for the seat: it was almost inconceivable that a Republican senator would be elected in Massachusetts – let alone to Ted Kennedy’s former seat. This complacency is seen to be at the root of the upset, Coakley seemed to consider herself the Senator-Elect and accordingly made little effort to campaign; she even took a holiday in the middle of the election campaign. When a local newspaper asked her whether she thought she was being too passive in the campaign she responded with indignation: “As opposed to standing outside Fenway park? In the cold? Shaking hands?”. Not only was her campaign complacent, it was also incompetent: she misspelt ‘Massachusetts’ in one of her election broadcasts.

How did the Republicans win?

In contrast to the seeming inevitability of the Coakley campaign, Scott Brown was an easy target for political satirists across the country. Brown became infamous after the media got hold of a nude photo shoot he did for Cosmopolitan in 1982; in addition Brown’s daughter had been a successful candidate on American Idol. However, Brown ran an astute and dynamic campaign. He attracted populist appeal in televised debates with lines such as “this Senate seat doesn’t belong to any one person or political party. It belongs to you, the people”. He also courted anti-Obama sentiment by forging an alliance with the Tea Party Express and condemning healthcare reform: in his victory speech he committed himself to opposing healthcare reform in the Senate stating that reform “would raise taxes, destroy jobs and increase debt”.

What is the significance of the loss for healthcare reform?

In the worst-case scenario Brown’s victory could be the death-knell for Obama’s ambitious healthcare reform package. The Republicans in both houses of congresses have up until now adopted a policy of obstruction without having any real ability to actually block reform. With this one extra seat the specter of the filibuster has been raised and, should they so wish, Senate Republicans could either kill the bill or hold Obama hostage in exchange for political concessions. Some Democrats have prematurely adopted fatalist positions; Anthony Weiner a Democratic congressman from New York stated that “I think you can make a pretty good argument that health care might be dead”.

What was the reaction in the White House?

Republican strategists intentionally framed the special election in Massachusetts as a referendum on the Obama administration and in particular on proposed healthcare reform. Republicans were jubilant following Brown’s victory, now nicknamed the ‘Massachusetts’ Miracle’ which many read as a good omen for the Congressional elections taking place later in the year. The White House has reacted calmly to the Republican victory with Obama promising not to ‘jam’ healthcare legislation through the Senate before Brown can take up his seat.

The news of Brown’s victory came exactly a year after Obama’s triumphant inauguration and in an interview the President reflected that he might have become too involved in getting health care reform passed and “lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people”.

Oxford is responsible for how I have spent my working life. I was one of the first three undergraduates to embark on the three-year Maths & Philosophy course in the supposedly rabble-rousing year of 1968 (a very small rabble was roused in sleepy Oxford). By 1970 I had a boyfriend with a particularly generous father. As a result, I was treated to many a superior meal and indeed my first journalistic billet was as restaurant correspondent of Isis.

As with so many people who end up devoting their lives to wine, it was a glass of red burgundy that made me realise how wonderful it could be. In fact more than a glass, a shared bottle of Chambolle-Musigny, Les Amoureuses 1959; a wine that would be far too expensive for me ever to order in a restaurant nowadays.

‘It was heady and sensual on the one hand but on the other I could tell that there was something rewardingly cerebral about it too’

One sniff was enough to show me just how very different this liquid was from student plonk. It was heady and sensual on the one hand but on the other I could tell that there was something rewardingly cerebral about it too. This single liquid was expressing history, geography, psychology, economics – and maybe even maths and philosophy.

I was especially lucky at St Anne’s to know Alison Forbes, who was in the then very unusual position of having been brought up with wine. Her father was a member of The Wine Society, and had encouraged her to assess wine in an intellectual way. She would buy two half bottles of wines that were similar but different and show me how they varied.

I even remember standing in front of Oxford wine merchant G. T. Jones in the High Street (do people still call it ‘The High’?) chanting the bottle colour mantra ‘green for Mosel, brown for hock’.

‘The subjects of wine and food were viewed as irredeemably frivolous by undergraduates of the early 1970s’

I did not get up from the table at the Rose Revived resolved to become a wine writer. The subjects of wine and food were viewed as irredeemably frivolous by undergraduates of the early 1970s. It would have been seen as a waste of my Oxford education to have pursued a career in either of them, however much I wished to. I frittered away three years organising holidays because I liked travel, and then, as was the prevailing fashion, dropped out.

I then spent a year in Provence, and came back resolved to look for a job in either food or wine. In December 1975 was lucky enough to be taken on as assistant editor of a wine trade magazine.

At the interview, the publisher had told me they had had many applicants for the job. ‘Either we have to take on a wine expert and teach them how to write,’ he explained, ‘or we get a trained journalist and have to teach them all about wine. You of course are neither of these things. But nevertheless you’re the favourite for the job.’ I tried not to look anything like as surprised as I was.

I immediately embarked on wine courses that would eventually culminate in my becoming the first-ever non-trade Master of Wine. After I’d been there a year, I asked the publisher why he had chosen me. Was it my glorious career on Isis? My temporary job with the Good Food Guide? My year in France? None of the above. Was it, I asked hesitantly, the fact that I had worked temporarily for a London wine merchant? (Technically true but in fact I was just a barmaid in a City wine bar they owned.) No it wasn’t. Apparently what had clinched it was that I had been in charge of the skiing side of Thomson Holidays and they thought that I was obviously such a good organiser that I would organise myself to learn about wine.

If he had thought during the interview to ask me whether I could type, my life would have been very different.

Jancis is offering readers of Cherwell a special discount on a year’s subscription to Purple pages, the meatiest bit of www.JancisRobinson.com. Usual price is £69 but those who enter the promotional code STU2210 at https://www.jancisrobinson.com/static_pages/join will get 12 months’ unlimited access to ‘the wine website worth paying for’, according to the Los Angeles Times for just £49. But there is much to explore on the free pages too.

Simon Singh is speaking at the Union at the invitation of the Invariants, Oxford’s maths society, and well he might, having popularised subjects as diverse as cryptology and Fermat’s Last Theorem in his books. Yet tonight he is here to talk about a very different book. Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial – ‘in retrospect,’ he muses, ‘the subtitle was a bit unfortunate’ – has sparked a fiery debate that has spread across the whole field of libel law. The world is watching: the Goodman Library is packed to the rafters, and a queue stretching halfway down St Michael’s Street has to be turned away.

Everything started with an article he wrote in The Guardian to accompany the book’s release in 2008. He took on the world of chiropractic, calling the claims of some chiropractors to be able to cure ailments ranging from asthma to ear infections ‘bogus’, and denouncing such practitioners as ‘fundamentalists.’ The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) was distinctly unamused, and threatened a libel writ. Although they were offered the chance to refute Singh’s article in the paper, the chiropractors declined and began an action that has dragged on for almost two years and sucked in £100,000 of Singh’s money.

He will not retreat. Everything about him seems geared for combat: his trademark squarish spike of hair is bristling, and he speaks with the electric energy of a young debater. This is no longer just about his own pride, though: he is a figurehead for Libel Reform, an alliance lobbying to make cases like Singh’s simpler and fairer for the defendants. Libel Reform – whose supporters include the likes of Stephen Fry and Carol Ann Duffy, alongside politicians from all the major parties – have picked out crippling problems with the British system for libel law.

‘For a start, libel law is unique in that the defendant is assumed guilty until proven innocent’

For a start, says Singh, libel law is unique in that the defendant is assumed guilty until proven innocent. In his case the judge has ruled that his article called the BCA dishonest – ‘they’re incompetent,’ he says, before conceding, ‘they don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re not dishonest’ – and he is on the back foot from the first ball. Libel action in the UK is so easy for the plaintiff that we are attracting what Singh calls ‘libel tourists’; foreigners who wish to sue foreigners and do so in London’s courts. ‘London has become the libel capital of the world.’ Worse still is the cost: he shows us a graph with a British spike almost as striking as his hair. The average case costs two million pounds, about a hundred and forty times the European average. This is a price only the richest can afford, and so principles are in danger of becoming a luxury. For Singh and Libel Reform, this is a struggle for freedom of speech.

‘There is a huge amount of misinformation, disinformation about alternative medicine…there are bizarre claims being made’

Just how rude about alternative medicine is he? I have brought along a bottle of tincture of St John’s Wort acquired at a high-street chemist. It smells like Calpol, costs £5.99 for 50ml and undertakes to lift my mood. I was hoping that Singh would say something offensive about it, but he’s too reasonable: ‘it might work, but be careful of side effects such as reducing the effect of the birth control pill.’ ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ This is not clear from the bottle, though, and this is what gets to Singh. ‘There is a huge amount of misinformation, disinformation about alternative medicine…there are bizarre claims being made.’ One of his colleagues was sued for libel after questioning whether a vitamin pill could really cure HIV, and spent over half a million pounds in legal fees.

‘People say it’s natural, so it must be safe. Arsenic is natural, cobra poison is natural, and they’re not safe. It’s been around for thousands of years so it must be safe? So has blood-letting’

Singh is forthright about the failings of the industry: ‘people say it’s natural, so it must be safe. Arsenic is natural, cobra poison is natural, and they’re not safe. It’s been around for thousands of years so it must be safe? So has blood-letting.’ He looks again at my bottle of stardust. ‘There is some evidence that some herbal medicines are effective, but they’re complex cocktails of chemicals. There are serious side-effects.’ He believes he is presenting these scientific facts about the efficacy of these products for the good of the consumers, and that the suppression of such statements is an infringement of his basic freedom of speech. ‘I’m being sued for libel for writing for the public’s benefit.’

‘If I lose this case it will be the worst thing I have ever done’

There is, of course, a flipside to Libel Reform’s proposals. The word ‘democratisation’ has a comforting ring to it, but an inevitable consequence of opening up libel cases to the public is that it will be easier to prosecute as well as to defend. In the dog-eat-dog world of student journalism, this could mean that writers have to walk on eggshells to avoid provoking lawsuits every time they put pen to paper. Every Union hack could threaten to call in his lawyer at even the faintest insinuation from Auntie Evelyn. Singh freely admits that his lobby could result in a ‘litigation society’ like America’s, but believes that people in Britain are ‘basically reasonable’ and that freedom of speech is worth the risk.

The stakes are high. While only four libel cases take place each year, hundreds of threats are issued, and this leads to a ‘chilling effect’ as journalists become more timid about writing things they could end up having to retract later. If he wins, Singh thinks, this could be a great step towards the democratisation of libel law. If he fails, he runs the risk of setting a lethal precedent for others like him. ‘If I lose this case it will be the worst thing I have ever done.’

If you would like to support Simon Singh and his campaign, you can sign up at www.libelreform.org/sign