The last week has been bracing for me, because I have had many interesting encounters with Europhiles. Visiting Spain, I met the former prime minister, José María Aznar. In Paris, I interviewed Jacques Delors, the grand architect of the single currency. Back home, I studied the speech in Berlin by my old friend Radek Sikorski, now the Polish foreign minister, and debated with our weekend guest David Frum, the leading American journalist, who despite being eurosceptical believes that the euro must be saved. All these thoughtful people believe in European civilisation, and they are horrified by its precariousness if the eurozone breaks up. Sikorski rightly says that a currency is a matter of trust, and therefore a moral entity: its breakdown is a moral catastrophe. Their serious engagement with the issue contrasts with the British Cabinet, which this week held one of its publicity-stunt, round-the-country meetings in Ipswich, and put obesity top of the agenda. But although I fear chaos, I cannot see how you can maintain a currency which condemns half its members to permanent uncompetitiveness. Nor do I think that the necessary trust can be created. M. Delors told me that you had to get the new architecture right and, at the same time, ‘put out the fire’. But Germany wants the new architecture without having to put out the fire and the others want the opposite. Sikorski dates the birth of a functioning United States from the time when solvent Virginia stood behind bust Massachusetts. Yes, but they had just won a war. Where, in 2011, is the equivalent European bond? I agree with Owen Paterson (see page 12) that if continentals want to create a new country we must get our own country back, but I don’t believe that their new country can be created.
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In Madrid, we saw the Hermitage exhibition in the Prado. I was much struck by Rembrandt’s ‘Condemnation of Haman’ (some say it depicts David and Uriah). According to the Bible, Haman tried to kill all the Jews in Persia, but was prevented by the intervention of Esther, the Jewish queen of King Ahasuerus. Haman was hanged on the gallows intended for his victims. Rembrandt’s dark picture is of a proud and sinister man pleading for his life. Today, the computer worm Stuxnet, which is playing havoc with Persia’s — modern-day Iran’s — plans to build nuclear weapons, is reported to contain the word ‘Myrtus’ in its code. In Hebrew, Esther’s name is Hadassah, which means myrtle. This is said to show Israeli involvement. I hope it does: the worm is certainly doing the Lord’s work.
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The disruption caused by Stuxnet, and the recent assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, help to explain the attack by ‘students’ on the British embassy in Iran. What Iran calls ‘the old fox, Britain’ is suspected of being behind every dastardly plot. This context may help to explain our muted official reaction to the Iranian assault. Although the British government responded appropriately by sending all Iranian diplomats home, it did not make much public fuss about the appalling attack on sovereign premises and the insulting destruction of British royal portraits. We feel, perhaps, that our sanctions are working, and prefer to push quietly forward with them. Life is getting harder for Iran. Now an American presidential election draws near, President Obama is being forced to get tougher. What a missed opportunity that, in 2009, he was so determined to show his pacific virtue to Muslims that he failed to back Iran’s ‘Green Revolution’. It was an open door.
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I was in Madrid to collect the Luca di Tena Prize, presented to me by the charming and enormously tall Crown Prince of Spain. My hosts, the paper ABC, kindly arranged for me to see the Liria Palace, the townhouse of the Dukes of Alba. It is open to the public by arrangement, but the waiting list is two years long, so the visit was a great privilege. It is probably the most extraordinary remaining private house in any capital city in the world. Although it was sacked during the Civil War, its treasures had already been evacuated. They are stupendous. There is an Italian room, with Titian, Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, Sebastiano del Piombo, Veronese. Then a Spanish room with Goya’s famous red-sashed portrait of the Duchess of Alba, a Flemish room with a Rembrandt landscape, Rubens, Ruisdael. Then, thanks to the Empress Eugenie, who was the sister of a Duchess of Alba, there is a ballroom and dining room filled with Gobelin tapestries. Upstairs in the private apartments are English paintings — Reynolds, Romney — and a Renoir, a Picasso and a Chagall. The controversial Duchess of Alba, now aged 85, has recently caused excitement by marrying a 60-year-old man en troisièmes noces, but she has done the collection proud. We were received by her courteous, unflamboyant eldest son, the Duke of Huescar, who lives there. He showed us the most moving thing in the entire place. It is a page from a large notebook of Christopher Columbus. He has sketched out the coastline of what is now the Dominican Republic as he travels round it, and then named it, in a big, bold hand, ‘L’Ispaniola’. You can feel the exultation of discovery.
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The second worst category of state schools is officially known as ‘satisfactory’. (The worst is ‘failing’). ‘Satisfactory’ means not totally disastrous, but not nearly good enough. We all accept the need for some softening of words in formal discourse — we prefer it if our child’s school report says, ‘Wayne exhibits challenging behaviour’ to ‘Wayne is a vicious, violent slob’ — but this use of the word ‘satisfactory’ is worse than euphemism. It shows that low standards are acceptable. Michael Gove should replace the word ‘satisfactory’ with the more exact word, ‘unsatisfactory’.
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Another example of word-shift: a young friend was recently studying the Nicene Creed, and was impressed. ‘This Creed is incredible!’ he exclaimed: not normally the best praise for a creed.
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