What drove Theresa May to break off from a trade trip to the Middle East to chuck a half-brick at the National Trust over some Easter bunnies? Maybe Dame Helen Ghosh, the Trust’s Director General, knows. When the two worked together at the Home Office, they got along like a house on fire: there were flames, some screaming and eventually someone (Dame Helen, as it happens) left the building through a window.
Given that history, it’s probably unwise to suggest that Mrs May might learn something from Dame Helen and the Trust instead of battering them, but I’ll give it a go anyway. The lesson is about members. The Trust has lots of them: more than four million, in fact. They cough up cash and even when they’re not eating expensive scones in the café of some stately pile (Full disclosure: I spent most of my teenage weekends selling said scones for the Trust), they’re proclaiming their affiliation to the world: school-run SUVs practically come with NT window stickers as standard.
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