The Americans committed an extra-judicial killing this week, violating the sovereign territory of a friendly power, and reaching bin Laden’s lair because of information obtained outside legal process at Guantanamo Bay.
The Americans committed an extra-judicial killing this week, violating the sovereign territory of a friendly power, and reaching bin Laden’s lair because of information obtained outside legal process at Guantanamo Bay. And a good thing too, in the circumstances. But it is fascinating how little protest there has been from the people who are usually noisiest about any infringements of international law, and of human rights as currently interpreted. This must be because the perpetrator is Barack Obama. He has behaved exactly as George W. Bush would have done — ruthlessly, violently and unilaterally — but without the odium from the BBC, Channel 4, the Liberal Democrats etc etc which Mr Bush would have attracted. There was a theory, shorthanded as ‘Nixon Goes To China’, that only the right could do a deal with the communist world. There should now be an equivalent, called ‘Obama Goes To Abbottabad’, for how only the left can kill terrorists.
As one gets older, one reviews the course of one’s life. I am exactly the same age as Osama bin Laden, so his death provokes reflection. Anyone with any streak of egotism must feel slightly envious of bin Laden’s great fame and mage-like mystique, but on the whole I am grateful not to have had his career. Many of us pseudo-intellectuals, when young, have dreadful ideas about violently improving the world, but in a decent university education, these urges are channelled harmlessly. Bin Laden had the misfortune to attend King Abdel Aziz University in Jeddah and to fall under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood and the teaching of Abdullah Azzam, a jihadist theologian. The rest is bloody history. At Cambridge, potential fanatics like myself were influenced by thinkers like Maurice Cowling and Edward Norman, and ended up doing nothing more noxious than editing things and writing splenetic columns. That is how civilisation works.
After considerable research among guests and participants in Westminster Abbey last Friday, and among what newspapers call ‘informed observers’, here are your columnist’s findings, in roughly ascending order of importance:
1. ‘Fascinators’ are not fascinating: they are now, rightly, on the way out.
2. Tara Palmer-Tomkinson ‘looked like a bottle of Harpic’.
3. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have benefited from a haircut.
4. Mrs Cameron should have worn a hat (personally I disagree on this point, because I thought her three Erdem studs, or whatever you call them, were elegant, but I am reporting what women tell me).
5. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown should have been asked, but it was marvellous that they weren’t there.
6. The Dean has a long-standing policy of ‘quelling’ any attempt at clapping in a service. As the couple walked down the aisle, a few foreigners and a Catholic bishop had an attempt to get it going, but luckily they failed.
7. Although it was perfectly true that ‘all walks of life’ were well represented, there was a block pretty much full of the Prince’s Eton friends (plus girls) and therefore referred to as ‘College Chapel’. It is interesting how close-knit this set must be, because the gossip columns and photographers have almost completely failed to crack their omertà.
8. It was the celebrities rather than the grandees who had the fiercer sense of entitlement. When Sir Elton John found himself in a position of insufficient prominence, his civil partner, David Furnish, was seen to remonstrate with an usher. A more visible position was found for the couple. On the way out, a friend heard Sir Elton complain: ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly the Oscars, was it?’ No, it wasn’t, Deo gratias.
9. The BBC, though perfectly pleasant in tone, was grossly short of good information. One reason Huw Edwards kept pointing out Sir Elton and the Beckhams was that he didn’t seem to know who anyone else was. Yet the viewer is eager for all sorts of minor information. Who was that man standing beside the Beckhams in the queue? (Answer, not given by the BBC: Lord Tollemache, Lord Lieutenant of Suffolk). Who were those nuns who sat beside the couple for the address? (Answer, ditto: Sister Judith and Sister Annalise from the Community of the Sisters of the Church, Ham Common; Sister Judith is chaplain to the Abbey). When you watch racing on television there is always someone who knows all the runners and says useful things like ‘He came a good third at Haydock last season’. Why cannot the BBC bother with the equivalent?
10. One friend present at the service who had already seen Kate Middleton on official engagements was struck by a realisation as the service proceeded. ‘She’s got the job she wanted,’ he said to himself. He did not mean that she had been pushy. He meant that she actually understood and welcomed the role now being laid upon her. An American friend noticed the same thing. She compares the Duchess of Cambridge with Mrs Obama — a woman so confident in her modernity that she feels nothing wrong in being the wife.
11. The feeling of goodwill was overwhelming. Everyone thought what was happening was right. Even those who deal with weddings professionally, and might therefore be blasé, noted that the couple, though rightly nervous, were at ease with one another throughout. There was a lovely feeling that they were equal: they perfectly knew what they were doing, and wanted to do it. It was happy because the words of the Book of Common Prayer meant so much. It was happy because it was serious.
The Economist, published on the day of the wedding, covered it only thus: ‘A young man and his fiancée were expected to get married in central London on 29 April. Millions of Britons took advantage of the opportunity to take a foreign holiday.’ Strange how the cleverest often miss the most.
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