Elephant in the room

Gstaad

Sorry to bore you, but more about Poles. In all the years I’ve been writing ‘High life’, no column of mine has had such a positive response as ‘Pole position’, of three weeks ago, which is a record for yours truly. Poles in general and Taki in particular are not everyone’s favourites, but this time it seems we’re suddenly the cat’s whiskers. Even here in Gstaad, the Mecca of the nouveaux riches and almost-famous, people have come up to me and thanked me for writing that the Poles are the best and bravest people in Europe. (I thank everyone who has written so kindly, especially Andrej Zatuski, who enclosed his very good book The Third Estate.) When Michael Howard recently said on Desert Island Discs that his grandmother perished in a Polish concentration camp, he meant a German-run camp in Poland, but his lax language had the opposite effect. Never mind. Howard has his own problems, starting with the EU. As long as he dithers, the Tories will remain irrelevant. Fish or cut bait, as they say in piscatorial circles, but when was the last time a politician gave a straight answer?

Diplomats, and Saudi diplomats in particular, are no better. Diplomatic immunity was never intended to shield child molesters, but this is what it’s come down to. The Saudi ambassador should hand the alleged molester over to the fuzz and be done with it. If the man is innocent, all well and good. Otherwise he should have the book thrown at him. (There will be more about a European child molester later on; for the moment I am gathering evidence from lawyers.) Like many people, I have Arab friends, but political correctness being what it is, I tremble every time I put pen to paper.