Cameron’s Gay Week

  

I no longer support the Conservative Party.  My goodness, I should really keep quiet about this; my family would be outraged!  That’s not quite true.  I know my late grandfather, a life-long Tory who once met Churchill, would be sad, but mother and father have, along with me, become increasingly disenchanted.  I will always vote for decent Tories like Boris Johnson, London’s mayor; I will not vote for a faux Tory like that hopeless muddle-head David Cameron, all windmills and gay marriage. 

I may in future support a Conservative Party, and that party is the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).  I’m writing this in the wake of the parliamentary by-election in the middle England seat of Corby.  Formerly held for the Tories by the idiotic Louise Mensch – such a little mensch - , it was taken by Labour last Thursday with a comfortable swing.  You know the sort of thing – if this result was repeated across the country blah de blah de blah. 

I expected the Tories to lose, they deserved to lose, but the UKIP advance was a delight to behold, a warning, if you like, from Conservatives to the Cameroons.  Attracting over 5000 votes, some 14% of the poll, the party moved into third place behind the Tory candidate.  Even more gratifying, the pestilential Gay Liberation Front, also known as the Liberal Democrats, lost their deposit. 

It’s as well not to make too much of this sort of thing.  The boast that UKIP is now the ‘third party’ in English politics is premature in the extreme, in some ways as asinine as the ‘if this result were repeated’ mantra.  But it shows that the traditional support for the Conservative Party is in danger of haemorrhaging away to the right.  It shows just how sick and tired people are not just with the ghastly European Union but with Cameron and his feeble-minded politics.  His version of Conservatism is just another Gay Coalition Front. 

On the subject of which, I noted from a Spectator blog that Cameron is accused of misleading supporters over the possible loss of support the Conservatives would risk if the government legislated on gay marriage.  In responding to a letter by Cheryl Gillian, the former Welsh Secretary, deeply critical of the gay policy, Cameron claimed that polling data showed that it would make more people vote Conservative.  Oh, Mr Cameron, that’s a lie.  Sorry; I’m breaching parliamentary etiquette.  I should say it’s a terminological inexactitude. 

I hope you won’t mind a slight digression here but people might be interested to know that the forms of language that can be used in Parliamentary debate are governed by strict procedural rules.  It’s all rather quaint, the Speaker ruling if a particular member has crossed the boundaries or not.  Benjamin Disraeli, a former Tory leader then in opposition, was once instructed to withdraw his allegation that half the cabinet were knaves.  Half the cabinet are not knaves, came the response.

Anyway back to Cameron, who is not a knave, just a little confused.  Andrew Hawkins, director of ComRes, the company that carried out the poll, wrote to the Prime Minister correcting his terminological inexactitudes.  Amongst other things he said that “the more important point from the poll…shows both that the party loses more votes than it gains as a result of the policy, and that former Conservative voters are especially less likely to return to the fold.”

Hawkins went on to say that the policy would have a detrimental effect on the Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes if pursued – “your letter states that ‘all of the published polls have found that more voters support equal civil marriage – however described – than oppose it.’ That is simply not the case.”

It was such a gay week from Mister Cameron.  I don’t suppose he is feeling very gay at all just at the present.  

King Tony’s Head

Seemingly Tony Blair is to be honoured with a portrait bust in the Member’s Lobby of the House of Commons.  It’s difficult to see how this could be avoided, in that many other former Prime Minister are present, going right back to the beginning of the last century.  Baroness Thatcher is there, the only person to be so honoured in her lifetime. 

There are other times in history when Blair’s head might have regaled the Palace of Westminster – outside on a spike.  I know it’s wrong of me but I simply can’t take an objective view of this man, this hypocrite who drips his Christian faith, all the more hypocritical for that. 

He seems to me to be a morally debased figure, a man who did untold damage to this country, through reckless expenditure, through uncontrolled immigration and through pointless and unwinnable foreign wars.  It will take generations before his baleful and malign influence is fully assessed and understood.  He came to power in 1997 with no greater agenda than power.  His policies thereafter were based on expediency and opportunism, devoid of all guiding principle.  The Labour Party was no more than the debased vehicle of his ambition. 

He still haunts his old party, although he seems to be a less than welcome guest.  Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, apparently looks on him with some favour, though.  There was even some speculation that he may have been brought into the shadow cabinet in some role or other.  Yes, a shadow among the shadows. 

All is not lost.  Millipede intends to draw on the former PM’s experience both in governing Britain and more recently as a Middle East peace envoy in the run up to the next general election.  Governing Britain; that’s easy, just spend, spend and spend, oh, yes, not to forget the introduction of a lot unnecessary legislation, the pursuit of one politically correct chimera after another, a case of hunting the political Snark.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say

In the midst of his laughter and glee

He had softly and suddenly vanished away

For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

Middle East peace envoy, well, yes, there’s a thing, a real measure of the Blair Witch Project, flying in , flying out, casting few spells, leaving things just as they are.  Saying peace, peace, when there is no peace.  He’s accumulated lots of air miles, though; I suppose that’s an expertise of a kind. 

Britain is doubtless too little a pond for this big fish.  Apparently he sees himself as a future president of Europe, though not quite yet, not for the moment.  What a pity.  For once I actually want him to get a job; I would welcome him as Mister Europe.  My greatest delight - assuming the Europeans could be sold the package - would be for him to become President of Europe just as this country withdraws from the Union. There is that, or his head decorating the Palace of Westminster.    

Maid of Grantham, Made of Iron

One simply can’t avoid Margaret Thatcher at the moment. There she is, staring out from the side of city buses, like the ghost of Conservatism past, a constant reproach to David Cameron, the Tiny Tim of the Party, the God help us everyone Prime Minister. Actually it’s not her at all; it’s Meryl Streep looking remarkably like her in advertisements for The Iron Lady, which I saw last month.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the real Iron Lady recently, both in the light of that biopic and in the light of contemporary political developments. I’ve just read a marvellous piece in the January issue (yes, my reading always lags behind; there is so much!) of Prospect, a monthly political periodical. Entitled The DNA of a Generation it’s by John Campbell, the author of a two-volume biography of Baroness Thatcher. I have it in my collection somewhere, an orphan reproaching me for my heartless neglect. Well, in the light of Campbell’s article, it’s jumped into my consciousness, several rungs further up on my ‘to-read’ list.

I never knew Thatcher in the days of her ascendency. I was born the year before her third election victory in 1987, so she is not in my DNA in the way that Campbell maintains she is in the DNA, love her loath her, of everyone over the age of thirty-five. She’s in my political DNA, though; I know of her legacy, her history, her commanding presence in both British and world politics.

The Iron Lady, though not a great movie, makes it clear that there was nothing phony about Thatcher, nothing of the Blair or the Cameron, small men without vision or direction. In so many ways she seems to be the last of the conviction politicians, a woman with an idea and the determination to give that idea shape in reality.

Campbell makes a point that I hadn’t really considered before, that Thatcher was not, as I had assumed, a uniquely British phenomenon. No, she was part of a global revolution against collectivism which swept across the world, bringing in its wake the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. In this country she was the expression of a massive reaction against those things which had brought us so low – labourism, Keynesianism and corporatism, all conveniently grouped under the rubric of socialism. She was also a reaction against that awful phenomenon known as one-nation Toryism, a kind of political appeasement.

In Britain the Thatcher revolution released a huge wave of enterprise and energy that seemed to swamp decades of decline. The emphasis here should be on seemed because subsequent governments, particularly that of Tony Blair, showed that it was all an illusion. Still, it was magnificent when it lasted; she was magnificent when she lasted, before she was betrayed by the one-nation euro fanatics in her own party, those wretched men like Howe and Heseltine, traitors with a lean and hungry look.

Napoleon once observed that generals need luck. Thatcher was lucky in her friends. She was lucky to have Ronald Reagan as President of the United States. It was her relationship with him, and with Mikhail Gorbachev of Russia, that gave the impression that the old wartime partnership of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had been resurrected, that Britain mattered on the world stage after so many years of irrelevance.

She was just as lucky in her enemies. What a gift to any aspiring leader to have General Galtieri of Argentina as an opponent from without and Arthur Scargill, the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, as an opponent from within. It’s almost as if a comic farce was being performed, with these two morons walking on as pantomime villains, Mr Stuff Shirt Fascist and Comrade Comb Over! Quick, a left hook to the Argies in the Falklands, a right hook to the miners on a summer strike! The result was a massive vote of national confidence in a Prime Minister with seemingly impeccable judgement.

Although her approach in economic matters was guided by those who adhered to the monetarist doctrines of Milton Freedman I don’t think that Thatcher was an ideological dogmatist. With her it was all instinct. Her thinking here was all down to her upbringing. It was all a question, you see, of good housekeeping. Frugality, hard work and discipline were qualities that she learned from her father, Alfred Roberts, a grocer and local politician in the town of Grantham in Lincolnshire. The paradox, as Campbell points out, is that her liberalisation of the British economy released a kind of ‘casino capitalism’ of which she never approved, an economic culture which began with the thrifty world of Alfred and ended with that of Mark, her unattractive playboy son, Mr Lodsamoney in person.

Hers was a rapid trajectory, a sudden ascent and a dramatic decline, almost Shakespearean in intensity. In the end it was more of a tragedy than a triumph, all the more tragic because the real enemy within was within her own government. What came after was the pathetic and incompetent John Major, who presided over a lengthy political civil war. What came after was Tony Blair, a slimy opportunist with no bigger idea than to get himself elected. What came after was Gordon Brown, a charmless Presbyterian ogre. What came after was David Cameron, the focus group Prime Minister, shallow and insincere. They all have one virtue – they make Margaret Thatcher look all the greater, all the more honest, all the more competent. It’s unlikely that her achievement will ever be matched.

A Tale Told by an Idiot

David Cameron, our Prime Minister, wanders the world with a look of bewilderment on his face, understanding nothing, changing his message to suit his audience. A mendacious Tony Blair was bad but a stupid one is so much worse. Yes, that’s what we have in this fatuous ‘heir to Blair.’ There he is, ever so 'umble like Uriah Heep, apologising and wringing his hands over past ‘errors’; apologising for the British Empire.

It’s all part of the Blairite legacy, the politics of apology, the politics of hypocrisy. Blair took it to a fine degree; yes, he was sorry over distant things, things that happened long before he was born, like the Irish Potato Famine or slavery, while sanctimoniously and self-righteously justifying his role in the death of thousands in Iraq. Cameron is shaping up, attempting to walk in those shoes, offering an apology over the partition of Kashmir, an issue over which he has not the first clue, while bombarding Libya.

The trouble with Cameron, and please forgive the crudity of the expression – a reflection of my mood – is simply this: he does not know his arse from his elbow. He understands nothing of our history, more or less telling people, telling foreigners, what he thinks will please them most, even if it means talking this country down, even if it means forgetting the very real achievements of the past.

He read PPE – Philosophy, Politics and Economics – at Oxford, a course which, as Peter Oborne wrote recently, is notorious for skimming the surface of understanding and historical knowledge. But one would think he would be better advised. This is a man who believed that Britain was a ‘junior partner’ to America in 1940, or so he told Obama, when America wasn’t even in the war. This is a man who, as I wrote recently, considers Palmerston to be one of his influences (Cameron plays Palmerston, plays Blair) clearly with no understanding at all just exactly what Palmerston represented.

Last November he visited China wearing a red poppy. Now in Britain that is a mark of respect, a token of remembrance for the dead of two world wars and all conflicts since. But in China the poppy is a symbol of something quite different – it’s a symbol of humiliation, a symbol of the Opium Wars, when the country was obliged to accept importation of a drug that was ruining the lives of so many of its citizens. It’s not the poppy of Flanders the Chinese remember; it’s the poppy of Bengal, the poppy of Palmerston. Only the most ignorant individual, ignorant of history, could fail to appreciate that. Ignorant and appallingly ill-advised by the Foreign Office, Cameron had to be asked to take it off.

The past, as L P Hartley wrote in the opening of The Go-Between, is a foreign country; they do things differently there. But we should try to understand just exactly how they are done; we should try to have the message translated. Yes, bad things happened, yes, the legacy of Empire is not spotless, evidenced by the Opium Wars, but there was so much good also, so much that is being lost by Cameron’s muddled message.

In recent debate I argued in relation to the India that the British impact was generally positive. Amongst other things this huge country was united for the first time in its history; that it acquired a consciousness of nationhood for the first time. It was the British who ended abuses like suttee and thuggism; it was the British who created an integrated transport system. Above all it was the British who in English gave the people of India their first common language, something that has enabled the country to make an impact on the world economy in the present day. Cameron does no favours in holding out the anti-imperial crutch, the very thing that the likes of Robert Mugabe leant on most heavily as he ruined Zimbabwe.

We need a grown up leader for a grown up world, a leader who will stand up for Britain, a leader who understands our past, a leader who does not wander the world like an absurd penitent, sackcloth here, ashes there, gaffs everywhere. I tried to resist the impression for so long that Cameron was playing at politics, resist the impression that he is a weak, shallow and insincere man, a man not fit for high office. I can do so no longer. He is pathetic, a risible figure, an idiot telling a tale that signifies nothing, nothing beyond his own incapacity and lack of understanding.

Not for turning

I’ve been busy catching up with some of the things I’ve missed over the New Year break. My people have been jolly decent, compiling a little archive of clippings, news items that they knew I would be interested in. One of the more important is information about Baroness Thatcher’s period in government, all contained in official papers released under the thirty year rule by the National Archive at the end of December.

There are really no great surprises, I suppose. Opposition to her economic policies came as much from within her own ranks as without. The most revealing document is a wittering eleven page memorandum – lecture might be a better word- from Harold Macmillan, a former prime minister whose antediluvian politics might best be described as old fashioned Tory guilt, warning that her tough stand on monetary policy – this was a time when inflation was running in double figures – would lead to a “constant recession.” He goes on to berate her for abandoning “consensus politics”, in other words the lazy thinking that had done so much to undermine this country since 1945. Her actions, as he saw it, were “against the essence of Tory democracy.”

The best riposte to this silly meandering came years later when Baroness Thatcher published her post-premiership memoirs. “What great cause”, she asked, “would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?” Indeed. But Macmillan, though doddering and long out of power, was still an influential figure within the Conservative Party, which made her task all the harder, opposition to change coming even from within the government itself from an intellectually impotent old guard.

It has to be a matter of some celebration that she was neither Macmillan nor Heath, his unhappy protégé; she knew what was necessary and had enough Churchillian courage to proceed regardless. Within a few years inflation had come down from twenty-seven to four per cent, putting the country on the path of sustained economic recovery, not artificially fuelled by taxation and public spending of the Macmillan variety. The lady truly was not for turning.

The documents also reveal her admiration for President Reagan, written off in 1980 as stupid by so many of her advisors. Within a few years he was to show himself a figure of commanding political stature, in my estimation one of the great presidents, standing even among the greatest. The partnership between the President and the Premier was in large measure responsible for the spring time of the people, a revolution that swept communism away from Eastern Europe. In the end that will surely stand as the greatest achievement of all.

The Wandering Blair

Do you believe in curses? Do you believe that there are those condemned by fate to wander the world, never resting, never able to put down roots, moving, always moving? I’m sure most people will be familiar with the story of the Wandering Jew or the crew of the Flying Dutchman. Let me add a third; let me add Tony Blair, the erstwhile Prime Minister, who appears to be labouring under a similar burden, destined to become more unfortunate than either the Jew or the Dutchman; destined to pass into legend as Cosmopolitan Man.

They seek him here, they seek him there; people seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? Well, yes, I suppose he is in a kind of hell, a limbo not quite of this world; a rootless refugee, a habitué of airport lounges and luxury hotels, always on the move, haunted, pursued by his own nightmares. There he is, a figure widely disparaged in his own country, widely disparaged even in his own political party, notwithstanding the fact that he was their most successful leader by far.

The reason for his peculiar fate is not at all hard to detect. He sought to shape the world anew, a world in his own image; a brave new world that had such people like him in it. He went to war, in Africa, in Europe, in Asia . Time and again he created desolation and called it peace and human rights; he created Afghanistan ; he created Iraq ; he created Kosovo.

It was once said that all political careers end in failure. But who would have thought that Blair’s many failures would become so obvious and so quickly; who would have believed that the mirages he created would turn out to be dust. Look at the demons he associates with or conjured up. There is Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda , whom he described as a “visionary” and a “good friend”. This ‘visionary’ and ‘friend’ stands at the head of an army that has now been accused of committing a series of gross atrocities in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, atrocities against Hutus in everyway as bad as those committed against the Tutsis in the infamous genocide of 1994.

That’s one of Blair’s chums. To this magic circle one can add Victor Dahdaleh, the Jordanian-born tycoon involved in bribery allegations; there is Thaksin Shinawatra the former prime minister of Thailand, another billionaire and corrupt wheeler-dealer; there is Mummar Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator and all round oddball for whom Blair acts as an advisor, a cosy relationship that had nothing whatsoever to do with oil deals. There are murderous tyrants and shady businessmen in the entourage of Cosmopolitan Man…and there is Hashim Thaçi, prime minister of Kosovo and alleged farmer of human organs.

Last summer Blair recalled a military adventure, using a refrain with which we are all so familiar: “I did what was right. I did what was just. I did not regret it then. I do not regret it now.” He was not speaking of Iraq ; he was speaking of Kosovo. This twilight state and criminal empire is now led Thaçi, another of the Blair set, who, when he was a leader in the Kosovo Liberation Army, was known as The Snake, which might give you some clue as to his character.

In a recent Council of Europe report he stands accused of heading a mafia-like criminal network linked to organ trafficking. He stands accused of smuggling Serb captives into northern Albania where they were butchered, their kidneys removed for sale on the black market. The prisoners are said to have begged not to be ‘chopped to pieces’ before they were shot. The worst thing about this is that Western governments seem to have known of Thaçi’s actions before military intervention in the Kosovo War. Kidneys and narcotics, these were the trades favoured by this war criminal, Blair’s best friend.

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

I really hope that Cosmopolitan Man is seen perpetually in the half-light, wandering from one ghastly airport lounge to another, verily unto the trump of doom.

The Lady Protector

It’s now over twenty years since Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street, the consequence of a Caesar-style assassination that surely ranks as the nadir of the modern Conservative Party, the lowest point in its history. She’s a controversial figure, she remains a controversial figure, there is no point in denying that but, my goodness, love her or loath her, she casts every other British Prime Minister since the Second World War deep into the shadows.

I read articles by two completely contrasting historians, written to mark the occasion: one by Andrew Roberts in the Telegraph (My Tears for the Iron Lady) and the other by Dominic Sandbrook in the BBC History Magazine (The Jury’s still out on Thatcher’s legacy).

Roberts is a super historian, a personal favourite, who invariably makes one see the past in fresh and invigorating terms. He is also delightfully right-wing, a refreshing contrast to the Guardian-style orthodoxy of so many in the academic mainstream. He was twenty-seven at the time of the Iron Lady’s downfall. As a mark of his personal sorrow he bought some blue flowers to take to Number Ten, there to be greeted by a crowd of jubilant lefties outside the gate. “Bad day for you mate”, they shouted at him as he handed the flowers through to the policeman. “Yes”, he replied, “but a bad eleven and a half years for you.”

And so it was: a bad time for all those who sought to undermine and destroy this country. Who else but Thatcher could have stood up with such determination to trade union blackmailers, IRA hunger strikers, Argentinean generals and European Union bureaucrats? Above all, we must not forget her proudest achievement, the part she played in collaboration with Ronald Reagan in bringing the dreadful Soviet imperium in Eastern Europe to an end, finally redeeming the shabby betrayal of Yalta.

Roberts’ article was published shortly after Baroness Thatcher won the 25th Threadneedle Street Spectator Parliamentarian Awards for “Statesman of the Era.” Her achievements are so varied, not least the example she gave to women. Although she never professed to any form of feminism, at least a theory of feminism, her struggle through the ranks of the most male-dominated party in England and through the most male-dominated profession truly are inspiring, a practical role model who broke every glass ceiling that one can imagine. How shabby it is, then, that only last September Harriet Harman’s Equalities Office left her name off a list celebrating fifty years of women in power, while including utter nonentities like Baroness Scotland and Diane Abbott.

Considering the present crisis in the eurozone, Roberts provides a timely reminder that it was the issue of Europe that provided the spur for Brutus and his cronies, not the Poll Tax, as so often assumed. Geoffrey Howe, a man who makes dead sheep look positively exciting, executed the first cut, resigned from her government precisely because she would not agree to a timetable for British entry into monetary union. It was her Commons speech of August 1990 opposing economic and monetary union that turned Howe and the rest of his ghastly Europhile gang against her, bringing the end to her premiership and beginning a twenty year crisis in the Tory Party. How grateful we should all be for her courage and foresight, courage that went so far as sacrificing her political life.

Sandbrook’s piece on the Thatcher legacy makes some cogent and persuasive points about her stature in British politics. It’s perfectly possible to write an article about the 1930s, as he says, without mentioning Stanley Baldwin, or the 1960s without mentioning Harold Wilson, but it would be quite impossible to write one on the 1980s without mentioning Margaret Thatcher;

Since we are used to seeing Mrs Thatcher as a hugely controversial figure, we easily forget how unusual this is. Twenty years after his resignation in 1976, Harold Wilson was almost totally forgotten. The twentieth anniversary of Attlee’s departure in 1951 passed off almost unnoticed, and I doubt many people will care much about Tony Blair in 2027. Even David Lloyd George, perhaps the only 20th century prime minister who rivals her as a genuinely divisive character, had become largely irrelevant by 1942…Mrs Thatcher, I suspect, will go down in history as one of those endlessly controversial characters that English history seems to do so well.

I can’t argue against his conclusion, the parallel he draws between Baroness Thatcher and Oliver Cromwell, another middle-class radical and enduringly controversial figure in our history. Here we are, three hundred and fifty years on, and there is till no consensus on Cromwell…but people are still talking. I agree that, projecting the same period into the future, that people will still be talking, and arguing, about the legacy of Baroness Thatcher. I can think of no better measure of her greatness.

A modern Boadicea

This is another of the essays I wrote for a multi-author site not long after I finished reading a biography of Edward Heath, prime minister of Britain in the early 1970s, a fairly disastrous time in our history. I think it worth preserving here, especially in the light of our present circumstances.

Having read Edward Heath-the Authorised Biography I could do with a jolly good antidote; I could do with Margaret Thatcher – the Authorised Biography. The commission was given some years ago to Charles Moore, one of my favourite columnists, and I suspect the exercise is largely complete.

There is only one small problem – it’s not scheduled for publication until after her death, something I would not advance, or wish to see advanced, by a single degree. The longer this great and wonderful lady is with us the better.

Looking back over the history of Britain since 1945 I see Margaret Thatcher standing like a political colossus, a refreshing contrast to every other prime minister, and I do not exempt Winston Churchill, whose peacetime ministry was little better than a disappointing postscript to his wartime days.

Reading the reviews of a newly published biography of Charles de Gaulle oddly enough it was Thatcher he brought to mind, because I think she occupies an analogous position in British history to his in the history of France.

Think about it; think about the position of our country in 1979. We hadn’t been defeated in war, that’s true, but objectively speaking we may very well have been, judging by the political and economic condition of the nation. Inflation was out of control; trade union barons, like medieval condottieri, were in the habit of marching in to Downing Street to dictate terms, the whole social fabric of the nation was in danger of unravelling in the face of continual political mismanagement, appalling under Labour, not that much better under some Conservative administrations.

The rot goes back to 1945. The nation was bankrupt; there needed to be a major period of economic retrenchment and renewal. Instead our capital was frittered away on ruinous welfare programmes, things we simply could not afford. So, our major competitors, who did not make the same mistake, had a march on us. The Germans emerged stronger in defeat than we had in victory. We had won the war only to lose the peace, a cliché, I know, but one that sums up the ensuing period so well.

By the time Labour left office in 1951 the damage had been done. A new orthodoxy emerged that welfarism and the mixed economy was a ‘good thing’, an orthodoxy that was to go by the name of Butskellism, combining the names of Rab Butler, a Tory Chancellor, with Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party prior to Harold Wilson. Perhaps if Churchill had been in the vigour of life, perhaps if he had taken a greater interest in domestic economic management rather than foreign affairs, things might have been different. Unfortunately they were not.

Then came the age of the two Harolds, MacMillan and Wilson, a time when Butskellism reached its high tide, a bogus age, a dishonest age when underlying problems were simply ignored, problems like the ever increasing rate of inflation and poor productivity, only disguised by a favourable international situation. The whole illusion was sustained by the hocus-pocus of Keynesian economics, the belief that the state can regulate the economy for the benefit of all, forever, and ever, and ever. Well, it can’t.

For a time it looked as if Heath was set to change direction, to break this dreadful consensus, on the basis of the Selsdon Programme, but he turned out to be worse even than the Harolds; he turned out to be the greatest exponent of state management ever; the greatest socialist who was not a socialist.

By 1979 the lies and deceptions that had sustained the country through the previous three decades could no longer be ignored. What was needed was a revolution in economic and social policy; what was needed was a revolutionary; what was needed was Margaret Thatcher.

She swept away all of the illusions of the past, the thing I admire most about her. She was as courageous in the face of adversity, often coming from within her own party, as Heath was cowardly. She was no theoretician but her common-sense approach to economic questions harmonised very well with monetarism. Her belief in markets over the state gave new life to the economy. She broke the power of the union condottieri, broke the power of the enemy within as she broke the power of the enemy without. Once again Britain had standing in the world after years of declining prestige.

For all these reasons and more I believe her to be the greatest living Englishwoman, greater, by far, than all her male contemporaries. Her legacy will shine far into the future.

The worst political memoir ever

I loath Tony Blair. There you are; I’ve said it; I simply can’t be objective here. I believe that American people are surprised by just how disliked he is on this side of the Pond, as he remains a popular figure in the States. I really could go on at length about this but I think it sufficient to say that his government served my country so ill a foreign occupier could not have inflicted much more damage. As a student of political history, casting my eye all the way back to the eighteenth century, to the point where the British parliamentary system began to emerge in its modern form, I can think of no worse ministry than that of New Labour, no worst prime minister than Tony Blair.

I make these comments in the light of the publication last week of A Journey, Blair’s political memoir. I had no intention of buying this book, a decision that was – temporarily – weakened by its reception on one of the late evening news bulletins. The reporter said that it was a “good read” and then proceeded to demonstrate how good it was with selective quotations. I assume the passages in question are among the ‘gems’, the usual practice, which made the whole thing all the more shocking, because they were downbeat, shallow, self-pitying and stunningly banal.

“That’s it”, I thought, “I will have to buy it and review it if this is the kind of thing one is to expect.” I no longer have to; the kind of assessment I would have written has been penned by Bruce Anderson of The Spectator. Even Bagehot in The Economist, generally appreciative, has pointed to what he refers to the “weirdly rootless” prose, references by Blair to his press aide’s “clanking great balls”, to one of his ministers as “fully simpatico with the direction of change.” But it is Anderson who delivers the killer under the heading The worst-written memoir by a serious politician. Here it is in its entirety;

It is bizarre. As he often demonstrated in the House of Commons, Tony Blair knows how to use words. He could also have mobilised a team to help him write his memoirs. Instead, it is all his own work, and the words mutinied. This book is not just badly written, it is atrociously written. For almost 700 pages, Tony Blair stumbles between mawkishness and banality.

Prime ministers send soldiers into combat. Some of those soldiers are killed. That is a subject which would lead the least sensitive of men to reach into their souls and craft language out of emotional depth. This is Mr Blair's version. "The anguish remains. The principal part of that is not selfish. Some of it is, to be sure. Do they really suppose I don't care, don't feel, don't regret with every fibre of my being the loss of those who died?' Yes, they do. They know that the "every fibre" line is a thoughtless cliché. Many, many of the fibres of his being were otherwise engaged.

This is not just a pedantic point. If Tony Blair was to write on this topic, he was obliged to write sincerely. The passage continues: "And not just British soldiers but those of other nations...' He then proceeds to list them, as if anxious to leave no-one out. He concludes: "I am now beyond the mere expression of compassion. I feel words of condolence and sympathy to be entirely inadequate." There, we can agree. His words are not only inadequate. They are a pathetic, tin-mouthed babble, and anyone who can refer to a "mere expression of compassion" has a tin-mouthed soul.

This does not prevent him writing about religion. He tells us that for him, it has always been "a passion bigger than politics". Alastair Campbell once said "We don't do God". Judging by these pages, his wariness was justified. Mr Blair certainly cannot do passion. 'So that's my new life", he tells us at the book's end. "What makes me optimistic? People. Since leaving office, I have learned one thing above all: the people are the hope". You could not make it up.

It is as if Tony Blair set out to do the parodists' work for them. Apropos of the UK's Olympic bid, he tells us that: "We also put David Beckham into the mix. David is a complete pro - he did what he was asked to do with no messing about and generally sent Singapore into a twitter, which is exactly what was required'. Twitter is the word; reading this guff, one has to remind oneself that this man is trying to describe an important premiership. Instead, he has produced much the worst-written memoir ever twittered by a serious politician. It will inflict lasting and deserved damage upon his reputation.

What more needs to be said? The memoir is clearly in character, in character of this infantile, shallow man, disingenuously honest, sickeningly phoney. There is one other thing. Blair, I understand, is now a Catholic. He therefore, I assume, accepts the dogma of hell. Personally I hope that is where his journey ends, the hell to which he consigned so many others.

As a postscript to the above I’ve just discovered that a Facebook group has been formed, now with close on 4500 members, made up of people committed subversively to moving Blair’s memoirs to the crime section of book shops- www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=150746811621277. I would have preferred the comedy section, or placing it alongside such gems of romantic fiction as the Mills and Boon paperbacks of Barbra Cartland, but – what the hell – I’ve joined. I’ll do anything for a spot of fun, anything to make this man look ridiculous.

The blasted Heath

After reading close on six hundred pages of Edward Heath, Philip Ziegler’s recently published biography, I discovered that the former prime minister and I have one single point of mutual sympathy: we have no time for the novels of Jeffery Archer. As for the rest let me just say that last November I finished P. G. Maxwell-Stuart’s Satan: a Biography with greater sympathy for Old Nick than I now do for Grocer Heath!

Ziegler’s book is certainly a commendable effort, scholarly, thoroughly researched, well-written and judicious. He gets close to his subject but never too close, maintaining a proper standard of objectivity. He does his best to be fair to Heath but, my, what a difficult task he set himself, trying to present anything in any way pleasant about this thoroughly unpleasant man, conceivably the worst, least gentlemanly leader the Conservative Party ever had.

As Ziegler mentions, after Heath was appointed as a Knight of the Garter in 1992 Peregrine Wosthorne writing in The Sunday Telegraph referred to Lord Melbourne’s famous comment on the honour, saying “there was certainly no damned merit about Heath…not only was he a rotten Prime Minister but also a most disgraceful man…his un-chivalrous conduct towards Mrs Thatcher is a case book study of boorishness unequalled in the annals of British public life.”

His boorishness was compounded by spite and petulance. When Mrs Thatcher came to see him after her success in the leadership election of 1975 he went around piling books on all of his free chairs so that she would have nowhere to sit – she simply removed them and sat down anyway. There are plenty of other examples of this kind of rudeness in the book, including the time when he simply shrugged his shoulders when President Richard Nixon, initially well disposed to him, suggested they play a piano duet together when he came to visit the White House.

I have to say that my initial reaction was to ignore this book because I simply don’t find the subject all that prepossessing. I was persuaded otherwise by a review in The Spectator by William Waldegrave, a former Conservative minister who knew Heath well, where he wrote;

…so much more complex than current Conservative mythology allows; maddening, touching, intermittently horrible, very nearly very great; self-created; self-destroyed. Hugely more interesting than Wilson or Blair; and though he would have anathematised me, not for the first time, for saying so, the essential precursor of Thatcher.

Yes, well, all I can say he was the essential precursor of Thatcher in the sense that Thatcherism was an essential antidote to Heath; an antidote to the socialism and unparalleled levels of state intervention that he embraced in the latter part of his disastrous ministry. Heath once made reference to the “unacceptable face of capitalism”, his only memorable phrase, which perhaps goes right to the heart of his personal ideology, insofar as this man can be said to have had anything as coherent as an ideology.

I have not the least doubt that Heath was the unacceptable face of Conservatism, a Robert Peel for the twentieth century. He clearly did not like the party. He made no attempt to cultivate its grass roots or even his own back benchers. The dominating question for me, one that Ziegler does not really answer to my satisfaction, is how could this man ever have been elected leader in the first place?

It’s as well to remember that he was indeed the first elected leader in the party’s history. Prior to 1965 they had simply ‘emerged’ by some mysterious nod and wink process, the prerogative of party grandees. The answer seems to be simple enough: there was no alternative. Rather the alternatives were just hopelessly unacceptable; the notoriously lazy Reginald Maudling or the maverick Enoch Powell, no better illustration of the contention that great wits are closely allied to madness.

So Heath it was, a man of relatively humble social origins, the grammar school boy, the man for the times, the answer of a ‘reformed’ Conservative Party to Harold Wilson and the egalitarian spirit of the 1960s. Oh but what a calamity he was. He lost three out of four elections. And how much better it might have been for us all if he had also lost in 1970.

How can one best summarise the Heath ministry of 1970 to 1974? For me it simply has to be debacle, followed by appeasement, followed by abject retreat; surrender to trade union bullies, surrender to socialism, surrender to state control. I can not think of a single redeeming feature. His one ‘triumph’ was to take Britain into Europe, partly on the basis of deceptions over the impact on national sovereignty, as Ziegler makes clear, a fulfilment of a task once entrusted to him when he was Lord Privy Seal under Harold MacMillan, himself a ‘Heathite’, though with the saving graces of a gentleman.

A poor politician, a dreadful leader, a misogynist, a bore, a man with no social graces whatsoever, that was Edward Heath; the man of the long sulk, the man who heathed around for years, waiting for the elusive ‘Churchillian call’; a man who cultivated noisome dictators like Mao and Saddam, while behaving treacherously towards the leadership of his own party. Fuming around, Heath on the blasted heath, the old king driven mad by the perceived ingratitude of others. It’s not an edifying sight; it was not an edifying life.

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, called you children,
You owe me no subscription: then, let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.

Battles long ago

People mindful of Winston Churchill’s later reputation might be surprised to learn that he was not a figure who inspired a great deal of confidence within the Conservative Party in the 1930s. He was not, if I can put in these terms, 'one of us', having a reputation of changing parties to suit his mood, which meant that his power base was relatively weak. More than that, he had a reputation of being a maverick and a lover of unorthodox schemes; a man whose judgment was not entirely 'sound'.

Even his skill as a speaker could not make up for the lack of confidence in him, widely shared among the Parliamentary Party. His rhetoric, often of a 'maximalist' nature, full of exaggeration and alarm, only served to increase the distrust in which he was held. For example, in March 1933 Herbert Samuel observed;

Churchill makes many brilliant speeches on all subjects, but that is no reason why we should necessarily accept his political judgment. On the contrary, the brilliance of his speeches only makes the errors of his judgment the more conspicuous...I feel inclined to say of him what Bagehot wrote of another very distinguished Parliamentarian [Disraeli]: 'His chaff is excellent, but the wheat is poor stuff.

It did not help his standing among his Parliamentary colleagues that he fell out with Stanley Baldwin, the Tory leader, over the issue of Dominion status for India. His hostility to any concession to the movement for Indian independence occupied his energies for a good bit of the early 1930s, just as his warnings over German rearmament were to do in the later part of the decade; and he dealt with both issues with equal degrees of rhetorical fire; equally unrestrained and equally alarmist. He dismissed the Indian Nationalist leaders as "evil and malignant Brahmins", with their "itching fingers stretching and scratching at the vast pillage of a derelict Empire." Striking Phrases, yes; but all this exaggeration and hyperbole over an Act that went nowhere near meeting the demands of Gandhi and the Congress Party. Quite frankly, by the time the Act was passed in 1935, people were bored with Churchill and his unrestrained alarmism.

So, given this background, it comes as no great surprise that when the siren started to call out over Germany he was largely ignored. On this greater issue people simply did not want to listen because few in the mid-1930s wished to entertain the possibility of another world war. Almost everyone- on the left and the right -wanted to reach some accommodation with Germany, to meet the country's just and reasonable demands, a policy later condemned by the label of appeasement. But at the time it was immensely popular.

Besides, Churchill's warnings were not about the danger to peace offered by the growth of Fascism; they were, rather, a nationalist warning about the possible revival of German power, a quite different thing altogether.

You see, Churchill, in the shape of Cassandra, seemed not just unnecessarily alarmist but so terribly old-fashioned, representing the mindset of a different age. Leo Amery talked of him as a 'mid-Victorian', but I would go one step further, taking him right back to the eighteenth century, to the age of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, or William Pitt the Elder. As they saw France so Churchill saw Germany. It was this that people could not take seriously, especially when you consider his views on the aggressions perpetrated by Germany's present and future partners.

If Churchill’s warning about the new forms of imperialist aggression had been comprehensive they might have commanded greater moral authority. But they were not. He effectively condoned Japanese aggression in Manchuria; he approved of Mussolini, and his view of Italian aggression in Abyssinia was far from heroic. His position on these issues served to divorce him from those who were beginning to see in the world situation a clash not of power, but of ideologies. This was something beyond Churchill's comprehension, allowing him to praise Mussolini as a 'great man' as late as October 1937, by which time he and Hitler had created the Axis.

So, given all this, it is really no great surprise he was not taken seriously. In the end history proved him to be right in one respect at least; and that is really only because Hitler decided to wear the wig of Louis XIV.

Grocery List

I’ve ordered Philip Ziegler’s recently published Edward Heath, a biography of the former Conservative prime minister. Why? For two simple reasons: first, I really do need to know more about the man and, second, he is the one Conservative leader that excited the most contempt and suspicion in my family, one with a long tradition of support for the Party; he is the one that I learned to hate, if I can put in such melodramatic terms!

Again the question why comes. I suppose it’s because he promised so much and the end delivered so little. He was the man who backed down when faced with a serious challenge. He was also the man who took us into Europe without making the nation aware of the full cost of membership and the future hazards that would be encountered along the way, the hazards that have led to our present terminus, where our national sovereignty is under threat from an unrepresentative and nightmarish bureaucracy.

It’s always a good thing to challenge preconceptions and prejudices but it was William Waldegrave’s review of the book in the latest issue of The Spectator that prompted me into placing my Amazon order. Himself a former government minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Waldegrave knew Heath as well as anyone. It was the conclusion of his review that I found particularly compelling. He says that Heath was;

…so much more complex than current Conservative mythology allows; maddening, touching, intermittently horrible, very nearly very great; self-created; self-destroyed. Hugely more interesting than Wilson or Blair; and though he would have anathematised me, not for the first time, for saying so, the essential precursor of Thatcher.

How could I resist after that? I shall read, digest and review at the earliest opportunity, disguising it in plain covers in case daddy catches me and assumes that I’ve been overcome by a fit of political madness!

Let me add, having lived and grown to political consciousness through the years of the ghastly Tony Blair, the original snake oil salesman, I feel, on reflection, that there may be something to be said for Edward Heath after all. A failure, yes, a disappointment, certainly, but he was a grown-up politician for a grown-up nation. Of the two I would take grocer Heath with all of his faults than phony Tony with all his polish.

Losing the Peace

By 1918 Lloyd George had won the war so it was reasonable to assume that he would win a general election. He did, handsomely. By 1945 Winston Churchill had won the war so it was equally reasonable to assume that he would win a general election. He lost, dismally. Why should this have been so, why did the nation turn its back on one of its most successful war-time leaders? The answer is simple: it comes down as much to party as to personality, or, better said, it comes down to a mixture of party and personality. “It was not Churchill who lost the 1945 election.” Harold Macmillan once wrote, “It was the ghost of Neville Chamberlain.”

There is a good piece in the latest issue of the BBC History Magazine by Martin Pugh reflecting on some of these points. The problem for Churchill in 1945 was that his personal popularity, buoyant as it was, was simply not enough to compensate for the perceived failings of his party. There was the record of Appeasement that had still to be lived down. A number of sitting Conservative MPs had links with pre-war fascist organisations and one, a certain Captain Ramsay, had actually been interned with Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. For once it was the Labour Party that was able to play the patriotic card, not the Tories.

There are other factors to be added to the mix. Churchill had never fought an election as party leader. He simply wasn’t ready for a contest that he probably did not anticipate until the spring of 1946 at the earliest.

Also he clearly had no idea how to tackle his Labour opponents, some of whom had been close associates in the wartime coalition. Rather than looking to the future he returned to the old bruising contests of the past. In possibly the most inept speech he ever gave he suggested that a Labour government would need the support of a Gestapo. The reaction was quite the opposite of that intended: people simply refused to take him, or this kind of scaremongering, seriously. One Labour candidate, Ian Mikardo, had his chairman introduce him at public meetings as Obergruppenfuhrer Mikardo, which always managed to raise a laugh.

Also people had enough of the wartime message of blood, sweat, toil and tears. Although the conflict in the Far East still had some weeks to run, the electorate were already looking to the kind of post-war future promised in the 1942 Beveridge Report. It was the first general election in ten years, moreover, and an unusually high proportion of the electorate were first time voters, including the vast bulk of those in the armed forces, infected, to a significant degree, by a spirit of egalitarianism.

It also has to be said that Tory arguments against ‘socialism’ were less effective than they might have been in the past, since the country effectively had a planned economy since 1940 and people had not yet come to resent rationing quite as much as they were later in the decade The counter argument, of course, is that the country was almost bankrupt; that a period of retrenchment, reinvestment and renewal was necessary, not lavish schemes of public expenditure, which would only serve to compound the problem. But who in the summer of 1945 was ready for that argument? Thus it was that Churchill was given, to use his own words, the order of the boot.

Defending the Indefensible

Is it possible to mount a defense of the indefensible? Is it possible to mount a defense of Neville Chamberlain and the policy of Appeasement? Putting her head into the mouth of the lion, Ana answers in the affirmative!

We have come a long way since the publication of Guilty Men, the self-satisfied 'I told you so' polemic of the 1940s. No serious historian would now consider dismissing Chamberlain and Appeasement in quite the same terms as the Cato conspirators. History is not created in looking back but in working forward. Appeasement has to be viewed from the perspective of 1919, not 1939.

Yes, it seems obvious from the standpoint of 1945, when history was torn up by the roots, that one had to be terribly deluded to attempt any form of reasonable compromise with people quite as monstrous as the Nazis; but at the time of the Munich Agreement this was not the common view. What was the alternative to Munich? Should a half-ready Britain and a half-hearted France have gone to war that could have had an outcome even more disastrous than that of 1940? For the Fall of France is unlikely to have been followed by victory over the skies of Britain.

By the 1930s most people in Britain had come to accept that Versailles had been an 'unfair' settlement: Appeasement thus has to be viewed in that context, a reversal and a remedy to the supposed errors of 1919, which denied the Germans the right of self-determination, granted to so many others. There was nothing to suggest in 1938 that Hitler wanted war for the sake of war, and every indication that international diplomacy could be pursued down normal channels.

But even while Chamberlain talked with the dictator he speeded up British rearmament, though such a move had been vigorously opposed by the strong domestic pacifism movement and the demand for disarmament, embraced by people like Michael Foot, one of the Guilty Men authors.

Appeasement could conceivably have continued after March 1939, when Hitler unilaterally occupied Bohemia and Moravia; at least this is the view promoted by A. J. P. Taylor in The Origins of the Second World War. But for Chamberlain it was a step too far, and the British guarantee to Poland followed.

Appeasement bought time, though this was not really Chamberlain's chief intention, which was to solve a problem, redress a wrong and secure the peace. Since the 1960s, and the controversy surrounding Taylor's book, scholars have made serious attempts to analyse the whole thrust of British diplomacy in the broadest possible terms, free of the glib judgements and moral outrage of the past. I would particularly commend The Realities Behind Diplomacy and The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, both by Paul Kennedy.

Here we have three principle grounds for the rationality of Appeasement: Britain did not have enough skilled workers to produce rapid rearmament without endangering the whole process of economic recovery; military chiefs advised the politicians of the country's lack of preparedness for a major international conflict; and public opinion was consistently opposed to a strong stand against the dictators outwith the League of Nations. The whole rationale is simple enough: there was nothing to be gained for England economically, strategically or politically in fighting a Second World War, a conclusion fully borne out by what followed after 1945.

I have to say that my favourite treatment of the whole subject is Maurice Cowling's The Impact of Hitler, partisan and hugely entertaining! Cowling places the whole thing in a far broader explanatory context than had been attempted hitherto. In his estimation Appeasement was a policy that made perfect sense, because it was the only way to preserve the integrity of the Empire and British power in the world. It's an interesting perspective, though the chief emphasis shifts away from international relations towards domestic economic concerns.

For an alternative view one could do no better than refer to the work of David Dilks. Here Appeasement is essentially a consequence of the failure of the peace of 1919; or the failure, to be more precise, in securing the peace against a possible resurgence of German power. Chamberlain's action was thus informed by two things: recognition of German grievances, and an equal recognition that Britain lacked the economic and military resources for war. In Dilk's words he "hoped for the best and prepared for the worst." He talked, he compromised and he rearmed. In the final months before the war British spending on armaments reached a peacetime record. Chamberlain was no dupe; Appeasement made sense.

Stanley and Edward

Stanley Baldwin, prime minister of England at the time of the Abdication Crisis, was a very cautious man, taking advice at almost every stage as the 'King's Great Matter' progressed. He came to rely, in particular, on Sir Donald Somervell, the Attorney-General, as well as Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary and a former Attorney-General. Somervell took the view that it would be unconstitutional for the monarch to marry contrary to the advice of his ministers. It would effectively turn the English constitution backwards, to the situation prevailing prior to the Glorious Revolution in 1688, which placed firm limits on the prerogative powers of the monarchy.

On the possible morganatic solution Edward initially treated this with distaste, though finally agreeing that it be worth trying as a way of keeping him on the throne, with his wife without the position of Queen but with a title, such as the Duchess of Cornwall. When the proposal was put to Baldwin he was non-committal, but agreed to refer it to the Cabinet. But he remained unconvinced. Somervell confirmed that the whole thing was quite hopeless, telling the Prime Minister what he already knew, that "the wife of the King is Queen", and that it would require an Act of Parliament to prevent such a result. It would, Somervell said, be an odd Act, which, if honest, would have to start;

Whereas the wife of the King is Queen and whereas the present King desires to marry a woman unfit to be Queen, Be it hereby enacted etc. etc.

The matter was placed before the Cabinet, as Baldwin promised, but was greeted without enthusiasm, most feeling, as Neville Chamberlain noted in his Diary, that it would simply be the prelude to making Wallis Queen. In the end Edward was told that the proposal was impossible.

I simply cannot conceive of any situation in which Edward would have married unilaterally. Even he, limited as his intellect was, would have been aware that the constitutional crisis that would have followed may have come close to destroying the monarchy itself, or at least forcing on him the same fate as that of James II. Yes, there probably would have been those who would have supported the King in all circumstances, not a political outcome, I think, that would have settled well with most British people. If he wanted to marry Wallis he had to abdicate; there was no other way.