The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

Saturday Night Live's version was slightly different

When I was at school, we learned tha tthe Nobel prizes were among the greatest expression of human achievement in the areas they were awarded. We did case studies on Albert Enstein (physics, 1921), Marie Curie (physics 1903) and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (peace, 1984) and were told how dreadful it was that Mahatma Gandhi was never awarded a peace prize.

I suppose that the prizes have always been reactions to world events and therefore it is inevitably that particularly the peace prize will be political. In 1998, the committee seriously considered awarded the prize jointly to Martin McGuiness and David Trimble – before being convinced that this idea would be so repulsive to the unionist community that Trimble would certainly be pressured into refusal.

With hindsight, John Hume – the eventual joint recipient – probably had done less to further the peace process than McGuiness but that’s the realpolitik for you; once you command IRA battalions, you sort of give up your ambitions to be internationally recognised for peacemaking. And at least Hume had done something.

I’m not a big fan of Barack Obama but nor do I despise him. There are many good things about the man – his intelligence and charisma, for one, and also the fact he provides a figurehead and role model not just for black America but for black people across the globe. It was a vital milestone in American history that the descendants of those who came to the continent as slaves should enter the White House as president. That Obama achieved this 25 years before anyone thought it would happen is an immeasurable testament to him.

But that, so far, is his single biggest achievement. I struggle to find anywhere in his programme so far – keeping open Guantanamo, increasing activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, laying off the Israelis as well as any Republican and going hell for leather to push through provocative healthcare reforms – the essence of Gandhi, Tutu or any other of the peace laureates. That’s not to say it might not happen.

The award of the peace prize to Obama then looks like a political one designed to inject new life and status into an administration that, barely 200 days old, looks pretty tired and indecisive and was mocked last weekend on Saturday Night Live for doing two things – Jack and Squat. I thought Al Gore’s award in 2007 was pretty strange – this one looks somewhat more calculated.

There are plenty of areas in the world where war rages, not of all which record the United States as a passive bystander. It is surely the role of an independent Nobel committee to award into these ignored, undereported conflicts rather than seek regard by association with Obama in the same way as our tawdry Prime Minister.