As the Labour party wrestles with self-definition in hard times, I wonder if it was wise to ditch Clause 4. In 1994-95, it was important for Tony Blair to win a symbolic victory over the left. This undoubtedly helped get him into Downing Street. Clause 4 of the party’s constitution was considered a doctrinaire text of nationalisation. But the key contentious words do not have to bear that interpretation. The clause promises ‘to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’. Today, in the era of the credit crunch, the question of the ownership of wealth has returned to the centre of debate, and rightly so, because the many — to adapt a Blairite phrase — have had to pay for the rescue of the few. The great question in the debate between capitalism and socialism about how people can best obtain ‘the full fruits of their industry’ is unresolved. Labour would surely be in a stronger position if it were able to stand on the ground of common ownership and then modernise it in the least state-oriented way possible (a new look at cooperatives, wider share ownership, workers’ equity etc). The Blairites were right about the need to modernise, but their dreadfully vague talk about ‘values’ has disabled Labour from having alternative answers to the key question of who actually owns, and therefore controls, the wealth of nations.
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What terrible rents in our social fabric have been caused by the phone-hacking scandal. Last year Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse gave a private dinner party in London, at which the guests included Rebekah Brooks, then still at News International, her husband the equestrian hero Charlie Brooks, and Lord and Lady Rothermere. In the good old days, the party would have gone with a swing, but the News of the World row has fostered bad blood between the rival gang chiefs, and Lady Rothermere launched into a passionate account of what a force for good the Daily Mail was and what an absolute disgrace was News International. Robust argument ensued, with Mrs Brooks suggesting that Lady Rothermere was not Mother Teresa. Poor Mr Dunstone tried to calm things down, but this failed, and the Rothermeres left early. I do not know if the matter is related, but I see from the Daily Mail and General Trust website that Mr Dunstone is ‘not seeking reelection’ to its board at the AGM next month. PS: No phone messages were hacked in the making of this story.
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The Church of England bishops led a revolt against benefit caps in the House of Lords this week. But what has been missed — and was not declared by the bishops speaking in the debate — is their strong personal interest in the issue. Bishops are not highly paid, but are all housed, at the expense of others, in large, valuable houses, some of them palaces, in the middle of cities. They naturally resent the government’s suggestion that people who cannot pay for their accommodation should move to a cheaper part of town.
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Reading Anne Somerset’s excellent new biography of Queen Anne, I found myself returning to some of the most famous lines of Pope. In ‘The Rape of the Lock’, he says, ‘Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,/ Doth sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea’. The lines contain the perfect example of zeugma, and tell us how people in the early 18th century pronounced ‘tea’. But I focused on the ‘three realms’. Which are they? The poem, first published in full in 1714, was written well after the Act of Union, which united England and Scotland, so that leaves only two realms, Britain and Ireland. Was Pope in a muddle (which seems unlikely), or was he making a point by implying that, in his mind, despite Union, there were still three realms? That seems unlikely too, since the poem emphasises Anne as ‘the British Queen’. Perhaps the three realms are Britain, Ireland and France, because Britain still laid formal claim to the French throne. In which case, the phrase ‘three realms’ is part of the satire — not rebellious Ireland, not unhappily united Britain nor, of course, France, obeys her.
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It is customary to think of France as roughly our military equal and even to envy her as having a bolder spirit than Britain. If this is so, how is it that France has suspended all her military operations in Afghanistan and threatened an early exit from the Nato-led force there just because four French soldiers were killed, possibly by infiltrators in the Afghan security forces, last week? The idea that the death of soldiers invalidates a military operation is one of the strangest doctrines of modern times. It is precisely because death may be involved that countries have soldiers in the first place. Imagine the ignominy if a British politician took the same line as President Sarkozy when an election approached.
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My thanks to the many readers stirred by this column’s criticisms of Radio 3. Last Saturday, seconds after I had turned it on, I heard Clemency Burton-Hill say, ‘What are you doing this morning? Eating some toast? Having a cup of tea? Xerxes the King of Persia just happens to be lazing in the garden under a plane tree.’ And off we went into ‘Ombra mai fu’. It is time to name and shame this sort of thing. Please send specific, accurately quoted examples. The Editor promises a DVD of Handel’s Serse to the best (or rather, worst) entry.
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In the course of typing this column, I have experienced two power cuts. This winter (in which the weather has been exceptionally easy), we have had roughly one power cut a fortnight in our village. I wonder if Chris Huhne may succeed where Arthur Scargill failed, plunging the nation into darkness to fulfil his ideological vision — in Scargill’s case a red one, in Huhne’s, green.
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