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Charles Moore

Wednesday, 23rd April 2008

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

Vera Baird says that the right of males to succeed to the throne before females is ‘a load of rubbish’. ‘I have always thought that what we have to do with the royal family is integrate them as far as possible into the human race,’ she adds. Who is Vera Baird, you may very reasonably ask. She turns out to be the Solicitor-General, one of what she accurately describes on her own website as ‘the Law Officers of the Crown’. So she is paid as the Queen’s Minister, charged with upholding the Queen’s law. I wonder if she sees no faint incompatibility between her attitude and her post. If she had said that she wanted to integrate black people/homosexuals/Muslims into the human race, she would (rightly) have been dismissed from office; but she can insult the formal source of her authority, and nobody seems to notice. Mrs Baird’s interests include ‘travel, reading, running and Zack, her rescued Bedlington terrier dog’ and she is the author of several books, including one called Rape in Court, but is she quite sure that she knows more about the human race than the woman who has reigned over us for nearly 60 years?

I strongly suspect that Max Mosley is telling the truth when he claims that there was no Nazi element to his sado-masochistic orgy recently exposed by the News of the World. He is the victim of a game newspapers play when they want to run a sex scandal. (This column noted it two years ago in relation to John Prescott.) They know that allegations of this kind are libellous, but they also know that a libel is only a libel if you have a reputation among what the law calls ‘right-thinking people’. Once a sexual misdemeanour is established, your reputation in that area is undermined, and so the newspaper can make up more lurid accusations about your sex life, believing that you won’t dare seek legal redress. This is the ‘inverted pyramid of piffle’ of which Boris Johnson (see above) once complained — at the bottom of the inversion is a bit of truth, and the piffle is piled on top. In this case, the News of the World would have seen that if they could link the Mosley name with anything Nazi that would sell more papers and provide a bogus moral justification for their story, so they stuck it in. Mr Mosley defends his private sexual behaviour ‘provided it doesn’t hurt anybody’. That does not seem the mot juste — surely sado-masochistic activities are supposed to hurt somebody. But he is brave and right to fight this battle. Having spent a life trying to escape from the effects of his father’s politics, why should his career be destroyed by a false application of them to him?

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DougS

April 24th, 2008 8:04pm

Chuck: You're an old fave now among Speccie writers, but I just have to disagree with something you've said.

You suggest that Ms. Baird's statement about the Queen is somehow a put down and that it wouldn't be tolerated if she said it about minorities. That's true, but you've got the reasoning all mixed up: She's saying that about the Queen in the sense of wishing to make her more accessible, i.e., "lowering" her, so-to-speak, with the implication being that she is now "above" mere mortals (and she is, by God!).

If those words were used about minorities, people would understand that she was saying that they were lower than others. And, of course, it would all be considered inappropriate . . . and rightly so.

She's not saying that about the Queen. The words implicitly recognize the Queen's exalted status, and while the words are a bit informal to use in connection with the monarchy, my sense is that they have an affectionate element.

But in no way do they denigrate the monarchy.

Generally love your stuff, though . . . .

Frank

April 30th, 2008 7:41pm

In simpler and better times not long ago, you had to be twenty-one before you were allowed to vote. You also had to remember the name of the candidate you preferred, because you voted for a person and not a party

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