Yes, it was right of the police to announce quickly that they did not think terrorism was the motive in Monday’s Liverpool horror, thus heading off potential riots. The police also said the person arrested was a white man. If he had been a black man, would they have said that? If not, why not? Watching film of the incident, I felt uneasily reminded of the scene in Belfast in 1988 when two British soldiers in civvies drove out of a side road and found themselves in the middle of a Republican funeral cortege. The suspicious crowd began to threaten the car. The soldiers lost their nerve, one drawing his pistol, and the two men were dragged out and foully murdered. I wonder if the driver in Water Street feared that the boisterous Liverpool fans, one or two of whom were banging his windows, might do him or his car a mischief. The way he drives looks more panicky than murderous. Was the whole thing a terrible misunderstanding?
The politics of welfare is complicated because people – sometimes the same people – both hate it and want it. But, on the whole, it is surely socialism, more than conservatism, which should want strict welfare rules. High-welfare countries tend to have a strong tradition of social solidarity, often reinforced by ethnic homogeneity. The Scandinavian welfare states, for example, arose in countries with low immigration, almost universal membership of state Protestant churches and common behavioural assumptions. It is interesting that Denmark, a model of welfarism, understands the need for welfare discipline and therefore imposes exceptionally rigorous immigration controls. For similar reasons, it now proposes to increase the state pension age to 70 by 2040, the highest in Europe. This is logical, given that the age of working capacity is so much greater today. (In 1909, when state pensions were first introduced in Britain, life expectancy was 52. Today, it is nearly 82.) We are more diverse than Scandinavia, but if Labour could ensure that its welfare policies went to the right people, it would win election after election. To do this, it would need to be much fiercer about immigration and, as Liz Kendall wants, about the enforcement of welfare rules. Its problem is that most of the party’s left revels in the social change – or, as many others see it, degradation – wrought by uncontrolled welfare and immigration, which is partly why the Democrats lost in America last time. The Labour right understands the problem but is scared. The potential savings are huge, e.g. roughly an annual £10 billion by increasing the state pension age by a year, and accurate targeting would satisfy the sense of fairness which lies behind welfarism. Labour is hamstrung by internal disagreement. So it will eventually be brought down by the vast costs of welfare and immigration systems it dare not rein in.
Andrew Norfolk, the brave journalist who uncovered northern ‘grooming gangs’, recently died, sadly young. He began his exposure shortly after he had become north-east correspondent of the Times. In that job, he went on to reveal the Rotherham gangs. One effect of the online age has been the loss of regional correspondents of national newspapers (and the collapse or contraction of many regional and local newspapers). Is modern newspaper culture capable of producing a second Andrew Norfolk? If the answer is no, who will trouble to unearth future iniquities of this kind?
When I was a boy, there were, in common parlance, two types of tea, Indian and china (the word ‘china’ was initial lower case and was preferred to ‘Chinese’). Now, when I ask for Indian tea in cafés and hotels, I find people have never heard of it. The only phrase they recognise is ‘English breakfast’. If I were the Indian ministry of trade, I would be worried. After all, India produces nearly a quarter of the world’s tea, so it should try to gain credit where credit is due. It had better hurry. Cornwall is now growing tea in sellable quantities. It cannot be long before so-called Yorkshire tea is not only blended there but actually grown in the dales.
How long, by the way, before India insists on being known by its subsidiary name, Bharat? For complicated reasons, the name expresses a romantic Hindu conception of the country – rather as our name ‘Albion’ conjures up vaguely Christian Arthurian thoughts. Modi’s men are pushing the name ‘Bharat’. I bet the West will accept it, just as we cravenly accepted the change from Bombay to Mumbai, thinking it was righting a colonial wrong and unaware that it was urged by militant anti-Muslim Hindu nationalists.
While in Kyrgyzstan recently, I grew a beard, on the grounds that it was too wearisome to heat up water in the camp and crouch before a makeshift mirror to shave. I would not recommend the experience. It tickles and makes one feel permanently dirty. It is also extraordinarily hard to shave off, as I realised when I tried it at home. (It has now gone, though photographic evidence remains.) On the other hand, I can see its attraction as casting off a past persona. You become different, masked. Tommy Robinson has just emerged from prison bearded and suddenly looks quite nice. I, on the other hand, looked villainous. Indeed, my five-year-old grandson, whom I see on average every three days, did not immediately recognise me on my return. Margaret Thatcher had a morbid horror of men with beards, which is called pogonophobia. Among all her many private secretaries only one, a very nice ex-Treasury official called Paul Gray, was brave enough to keep his beard while in her employ. I think she associated beards with 1960s leftism. It is a different world nowadays, and a beard is almost compulsory if your conservatism is inspired by J.D. Vance.
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