As the eurozone totters, David Cameron risks imitating those western politicians in the late Eighties so worried about instability that they wanted to prop up the Soviet Union. He ought to recognise that Europe’s difficulty is Britain’s opportunity. He should not be investing money or political capital in the survival of the eurozone. Since everything is changing so fast, he should say so. As with his powerful Munich speech about refusing to engage with Islamist extremists, he should choose a platform on the Continent. There he should set out the future of a Europe which learns from its currently compounding mistakes and charts a different course. At present, Mr Cameron seems too anxious about the adverse reaction of Liberal Democrats at a time when even Nick Clegg is privately exasperated with the way the EU is going. He has within his own party — indeed among his own ministers, such as Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove, Owen Paterson, Nick Herbert — a fund of ideas. If he doesn’t tap it, he will create an irreconcilable enemy within, and go the way of John Major.
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Hounds usually have traditional names like Ruthless or Ranter, but one in our hunt is called Sarkozy. He is a black-and-tan hound with a bit of blue mottle, small and sharp. He is a young hound, entered last year. When he was named, the French President was a fixture on the international scene, but after the current crisis I suspect that the dog will have a longer career than the man.
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Reviewers of P.G. Wodehouse, A Life in Letters, edited by Sophie Ratcliffe (Hutchinson) seem perplexed that a man of such talent lived so quietly and was naive about politics. What they tend to miss is that Wodehouse was a true artist, and therefore had no desire to lead an exciting life. Although the letters are, of course, funny about everything, their greatest interest lies in what he has to say about writing. Here, for instance, Wodehouse tells a fellow novelist how he has ‘let myself in for one of those stories which lead up to a big comic scene… and it looks as if it is going to be hard to make it funny’. Bertie Wooster has to describe a village rugger match, which is tricky for Plum to write because ‘It’s damned hard to describe a game you know backwards through the eyes of someone who doesn’t know it’. The editor helpfully prints the eventual result (from ‘The Ordeal of Young Tuppy’): ‘I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end, and that, in order to squelch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to his fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in fourteen days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench.’ On almost every page, you can learn how a great craftsman works.
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It may turn out that smoke from a firework display caused the crash on the M5, but we should be cautious in accepting the police claim. The public authorities always hate fireworks because they are an expression of human freedom. Our part of Sussex is very strong on fireworks and bonfires, and many of the best moments of my childhood involved collecting huge piles of bangers, waiting until they fizzed and then throwing them at people. Official disapproval has long since removed this pleasure, and now fireworks are all organised, adult-controlled displays. This bonfire night, I noticed, as our house was surrounded by merry explosions, bureaucratic disapproval seemed to have fallen silent. I concluded that the authorities had run out of propaganda ideas. Then came the M5 crash. Blaming fireworks provides the perfect excuse for a wave of repression.
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A reader from Bristol updates me on its equivalent of the St Paul’s occupation. The protestors, indulged by the local council, are encamped on College Green, which is the cathedral close and ‘the one bit of grass in the neighbourhood into which 10,000 children are brought every day’. The police weakly ‘allowed the tents to be pitched the night before the Michaelmas Legal Service, so the whole establishment had to be smuggled into the cathedral in its robes, wigs and plumes + maces and swords, via the back way, rather than confront half a dozen uncertain crusties’. Now the crusty numbers have swelled, demanding lavatories, power supplies and protection from the drunks who have joined in. They talk of the legal right of ‘sanctuary’ which the Church traditionally affords. My check with Church House brings a firm answer that this right was abolished in the 17th century. I am glad someone has looked this up before the next bit of trouble starts.
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It is good news that my old friend Ken Costa has been asked by the Bishop of London to try to reforge ‘the link between the financial and the ethical’. His long experience of banking and the Church qualifies him well, as does his subtlety of mind. But his best weapon, though I haven’t yet suggested it to either of them, would be his son Charles. Charles, whose stage name is King Charles, is a rising rock star (‘This dandy in the underworld is part of a tradition of uniquely English, psych-infected pastoral whimsy’, Guardian). His hair is a sort of cavalier version of crusty — long and matted, but also elegant and abundant — and he is exceptionally nice. St Paul’s should make him its pied piper to charm the anti-capitalists out of the precinct.
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‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’ is the title of Jeanette Winterson’s new memoir. It was what her adoptive mother said to her when she was 16. We are supposed to think it was bad thing to say, but in fact it is a good question. Being happy is a wonderful thing, but not something one can achieve by trying. Being normal, which can be attained by effort, is a service to one’s neighbour, from potty-training onwards. ‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of normality’ is a motto which, paradoxically, would produce more happiness than the original wording.
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