There was dismay in Whitehall at the way decisions on the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) were left until the very last moment. But those who were at Oxford with David Cameron explain that this is his preferred method. He collects information and views for as long as he possibly can, or a bit longer. Then he decides. They call it ‘government by essay crisis’.
The result looks awful, because there seems to be so little relation between the National Security Strategy, which sets out and calibrates the threats, and the Review, which cuts. We are in the weird position of buying aircraft carriers because of the last government’s crazy contracts, while not really intending to buy the aircraft which they are supposed to carry. It may well be that neither carrier is ever used, and that the Navy is therefore blowing £6 billion. But it is interesting that the new chiefs are less annoyed than might have been expected. They feel that they have been given time to wrestle the current chaos into the shape of the new strategy, which they support. They think the essay crisis has forced all involved to work out what they really think — something which, for years and years, has not happened.
In the latest Sunday Times, Dominic Lawson recorded his wife asking Jonathan Powell, when he had just become Tony Blair’s chief of staff, what motivated him. Powell replied with the single word: ‘Power’. If you were to ask modern prime ministers what they require to exercise that power, all the successful ones would also have a one-word answer: ‘Powell’. Margaret Thatcher had Charles Powell, in name her foreign affairs private secretary, in reality much, much more. Mr Blair had Jonathan, Charles’s youngest brother. Now David Cameron has Charles’s son, Hugh. Having distinguished himself for the Foreign Office in Helmand, Hugh is back home, and has produced the final draft of the SDSR. ‘Why is a young civil servant making the running, instead of political and military leaders?’ the critics complain (forgetting that ‘young’ Hugh is the same age as the Prime Minister). Do they not understand that, under the British constitution, Powell power is the only point at which the hereditary and meritocratic principles are permitted to meet?
The National Security Strategy is a clear and interesting document, fairly frank about potential trouble ahead. But I notice that one particular word is conspicuous by its absence — ‘Taleban’. Its omission tells you most of what you need to know about the direction of our Afghan policy.
It is 50 years since the opening of the prosecution of Lady Chatterley’s Lover for obscenity. The prosecuting counsel, Mervyn Griffith-Jones QC, is my hero. It was he who asked the jury: ‘Is this a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?’ He was, of course, execrated, and the case was lost. But I have always wondered whether he was making a joke. His was not a general remark about the effect of obscenity upon women and the serving classes, but a specific one because of the subject of the book in question. D.H. Lawrence’s novel is the story of Lady Chatterley, sexually frustrated by her crippled husband, Sir Clifford, being ‘comforted’ (as the tabloids used to put it) by the gamekeeper, Mellors. So Griffith-Jones was presenting a teasing challenge to husbands: would you want your wife and servants (if you had any) to be ‘given ideas’ by reading the book? The rational answer, surely, was ‘No’. My own learned wife had, I know, read Lady Chatterley’s Lover before I met her, and so I was rather alarmed when, on two or three occasions out shooting, we actually met a gamekeeper called Mellors. He was a very nice man, but fortunately not, so she assured me, dishy. I suppose it was a good thing, sort of, that the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not forbidden by law, but an artistic crime was committed instead. The literary establishment, flocking to give witness for the defence, declared that Lawrence was a great writer.
Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects ends this week, and deserves the praise and attention it has received. It was brilliantly counter-intuitive to put out such a visual subject on the radio, forcing anyone interested to pay close attention. I have noticed only one thing missing. On election night, I bumped into Neil at the BBC’s notorious boat party, and asked him whether one of his hundred objects was a ballot box. He said no. (The sole object relating to voting is a penny on which the suffragettes defaced King Edward VII with the words ‘Votes for Women’.) I think it would have been interesting to have seen an early ballot box (or voting booth) — not only because the franchise is such an important development in human history, but also because the method by which it is recorded matters so much. It was only when — in 1872, in Britain’s case — the ballot became secret that democracy really took off.
Not many people have taken up the chance to visit Arundells, the residence of the late Sir Edward Heath in Salisbury, and now, from 27 October, the house will close. Heath left the house to a trust to open it to the public in his memory, but did not provide enough money to pursue the trust’s objectives of musical and other education. The trust has therefore, reasonably enough, decided to sell the house to fund its work. It is a sad little story, a genteel version of ‘Ozymandias’ — ‘the lone and level lawns stretch far away’.
There was a terrible case near us in Sussex recently, where a farm-owner, trying to prevent burglars escaping, was run over and killed. It may be a case of murder. The police told the BBC local news that it was ‘a burglary which went tragically wrong’. Is there, from the police point of view, any burglary that goes right?
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