One of the main arguments against hereditary peerages is that talent and ability are not always passed down across generations. There is much to this. Students of history will know that all the great dynasties see some kind of falloff in capability. Whether the Habsburgs, the Plantagenets or the Kinnocks, the families produce a man – or occasionally a couple of men – of quality, only to see their heirs and successors squander everything.
The same rule exists in a meritocratic age. Someone in a family makes a fortune. The next generation spends it. A generation after that, the family is back to square one. Give or take a generation, and you can follow this rule in all of nature, as well as in the obituaries section of the Daily Telegraph.
When asked what his favourite novel was, he said he doesn’t have one. A favourite poem? Doesn’t have one
It occurs to me that nations behave in a similar way. A country might have a period of acquisition, led by men of ambition – sometimes overarching ambition. Then, over some less determinate period than with families, there comes a generation which decides to spend down those acquisitions. Perhaps we are presently in that generation.
Like many readers, I have spent the past week desperately trying to mug up on the history of the Chagos Islands. Like Adrian Mole at the start of the Falklands conflict, you might have missed them on the map if you were eating fruitcake during the search and dropped some crumbs on your atlas. Still, I followed what debate there was in the House of Commons with interest.
The Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick was among those to question the Foreign Secretary on his announcement about handing over the archipelago to Mauritius, which has close links with China. Jenrick was right to do so, because the question ‘Why would Britain need to keep a set of islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean?’ is just the sort the feckless younger son of a minor duke might once have asked. Today it is the Foreign Secretary who mulls on such a matter, before deciding to gamble the fortune away in any case.
When David Lammy replied to Jenrick’s question, he did so with an uncharacteristic level of self-satisfaction. ‘This deal is in our national interests,’ he said, before clinching his argument by declaring, ‘That is why it is a good deal.’ But it was the appeal to authority which followed that interested me.
Lammy continued at Jenrick: ‘That is why the President of the United States, the Defense Secretary of the United States, applaud and welcome this deal. What do they know about global national security that he doesn’t?’ One does not have to be a Jenrick-ite to be able to say ‘Probably not that much actually.’ The President has been on beach leave for much of the past year. The last time there was a rare cabinet meeting in Washington, it seemed to be principally chaired by Dr Jill Biden, who may have many qualities, but Acting President was not meant to be among them.
Even if Biden were on absolutely peak form, there is one thing that could be said of him and any other person who ever held his office – which is that if these islands were a US possession, they would not be given up, however much it was a ‘good deal’.
America is still at a level of aristocratic wealth and power where it knows that it cannot afford to sell off a single piece of the family silver. Its leadership – even its Democratic leadership, for the time being – is aware that it is very much in America’s national interests to have the occasional island.
The British government might think that an archipelago in the Indian Ocean can be given up and sold to the Chinese Communist party. But in Washington there are enough people who know that the great game of this century is going to be between America and China. Therefore, it is not a good idea to gift things to the CCP, even if you are really quite bored with the bauble in question.
It seems that Labour in power are going to govern in the same manner as the directors and boards of most museums in Britain. As I have regretfully reported here before, this country once had an era of great curiosity about the world which included the collecting, buying and sometimes seizing of interesting and important artefacts. Fast–forward to this generation, and the same institutions are largely governed by people who have little interest in the world beyond their navel and who see their role as being to disperse that which their predecessors gathered together.
I do not see either Rachel Reeves or Keir Starmer changing this trend in government. They are the sort of politicians who have so little hinterland that when asked what his favourite novel was before the last election, Starmer said he doesn’t have one. A favourite poem? Doesn’t have one. To cap the anti-inspirational tenor of the times, he was asked about dreaming and he said he doesn’t dream. Even the most soulless politician ought to know that it is de rigueur to answer such an impertinent question by replying that you dream of a better Britain or something.
After 100 days in office, commentators are desperately reading everything they can into every action of the government. Sue Gray has sadly once again become a household name. And you don’t have to be a nominative determinist to fear that being continuously obsessed by the actions of a person like this does not bode well for a country and its ambitions.
‘How long can Starmer last?’ the more excitable commentators are asking. The answer will fill many a column. But for my own part I cannot help seeing this government in the light of the aristocrats they presume to despise. These guys are the last press, the end of the line: bored, self-satisfied, unadventurous and incurious. It’s lamentable that they decided to fritter away the family fortune. Even sadder that the casino they decided to do it in is Chinese.
Comments