Mairi Clare Rodgers

Best of 2008
 
The best event of 2008 could very easily have fallen into the worst category. In June of this year I watched a towering Labour rebellion demolished by the bullyboy tactics of the party whip system. Six weeks without charge passed the Commons, with the help of those honourable men of the DUP, by just nine votes. A measure deemed counterproductive, unnecessary and downright wrong by opposition parties, Labour backbenchers, bishops, spooks and police scraped through with the help of bribes, blackmail and browbeating. It took the Upper House in October to deliver this Bill the humiliating defeat it so deserved and give us back the faith that, sometimes, politics can work.
 
Worst of 2008
 
One of the worst – and saddest – developments of this year has to be the hardening of political rhetoric around immigrants, asylum seekers and other vulnerable minorities. In hard economic times, there is nothing the public likes more than a scapegoat and, boy, haven't our politicians been quick to deliver? In the blue corner we have the leader of the opposition's tough talk on his party's plans for cutting the number of immigrants into the UK and in the red corner we have the minister for Borders and Immigration suggesting that migrants must earn the right to claim benefits and 'show that they are worthy of being a citizen'. As the slump is set to continue, we must be on our guard against such populist politicking in the New Year. With an election looming, we can expect to see more of this shameful playing to the gallery from our politicians.
 
 
Book of 2008

Although not new, a book that moved me deeply this year was Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved. A ferociously intelligent book, full of truths about men, women and the gaping chasm in between. Part intellectual lecture, part old-fashioned page turner, What I Loved engages, provokes and disturbs. She presents uncomfortable statements that ring true; at one point a character observes that they've 'always thought that love thrives on a certain kind of distance. That it requires an awed separateness to continue. Without that necessary remove, the physical minutiae of the other person grows ugly in its magnification.' An uneasy thought, yet utterly familiar. What I Loved is a compelling read which will stay with you long after you have turned the last page.

Mairi Clare Rodgers is press officer of the human rights organisation Liberty and current UK and Ireland Young Thinker of the Year