There is a great caterwauling among Conservatives, as James Forsyth reports on the opposite page, at the idea that Tony Blair might become ‘President of Europe’ if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.
There is a great caterwauling among Conservatives, as James Forsyth reports on the opposite page, at the idea that Tony Blair might become ‘President of Europe’ if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified. It certainly would confirm the suspicion one has that the Blair ‘project’ has all along been to create a political order in which British independence, parliamentary sovereignty and Tory culture are forbidden by law and Mr Blair can rule forever without having to bother with being elected. Lord Mandelson’s return to British politics after his European spell is surely designed to assist the same scheme. But, from the point of view of the Conservatives, Mr Blair’s candidacy would really be excellent news. If they succeeded in blocking it, by indicating to European leaders that a new Tory government would find it very hard to work with Mr Blair, that would show their power. If they failed, they would at last unite their own party against the European bureaucracy. Even the few remaining eurofanatics in the party would be galvanised to oppose whatever President Tony wanted. As Evelyn Waugh wrote of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the enemy would be ‘in plain view’.
Everyone suddenly seems to agree that it is perfectly reasonable that ministers who are in the Lords should be allowed to appear to answer questions in the Commons. Until now, this has been forbidden. The change is advocated in the name of greater accountability. As usual, people are not thinking about why these conventions exist. Also as usual, we are trying to change the constitution to accommodate the emotional needs of Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy (see above). There are two Houses of Parliament. So long as that remains the case, members of one answer to their House, and not to the other. Gordon Brown would be offering to Mandelson and others a privilege which until now has been dependent on the popular will. The Commons is not a stage, but an elected body whose Members, in virtue of their election, are all equal. If others can be parachuted in, the power of election is undermined. Mr Brown also implies that a peer is not answerable to Parliament. If that is what he thinks, why does he create them, or, indeed, permit two Houses of Parliament at all? The reason this problem has arisen in the first place is because Mr Brown himself made Mandelson a peer and gave him such important jobs. He should have thought of this difficulty before he did so. I know that Lord Mandelson has a deep yearning to become prime minister, but why should our constitution be constructed round his appetites, as if he were Henry VIII wanting Anne Boleyn?
The really strange thing about the press conference to launch Pope Benedict’s offer of an ‘ordinariate’ to Anglicans wishing to join the Roman Catholic Church was that the Archbishop of Canterbury attended it. If he had wished to support the offer as an ecumenical act, that would have made sense. But he didn’t. The offer was unilateral, and Dr Williams, as he half-complained in public, was given very short notice of it. Without consulting his own bishops, he showed up, looking uneasy. I’m afraid Dr Williams is a very bad politician. This may reflect well on his sanctity, but it confirms the sad impression that the Church of England is a body to whom news happens, rather than one which makes news itself. It would be interesting to hear the view of the news-making Archbishop of York.
In this paper last week, Michael Henderson attacked the idea of the ‘professional Northerner’. Speaking kindly of me, he said that it would be wrong to say that, because I was brought up in Sussex and live there, and have worked in London, I am a ‘professional Southerner’. Why, then, asked Henderson, is John Prescott described as a ‘professional Northerner’? The answer, surely, is that people who come from places which do not dominate the national culture are much more likely to feel the need to assert their identity than those from the dominant area. Look at the composite parts of the United Kingdom: Scots and Irish and Welsh usually want to take some position about who they are, whereas the English cannot be bothered (though I have noticed that this is now changing fast, as England declines, and the English are becoming chippily self-assertive). My guess is that if you are a Northerner, you are conscious of this problem. If you are a Southerner, you would barely think of yourself as such. I feel neither solidarity with nor enmity towards people in, say, Dorset, but my impression is that people in Yorkshire have views about people in Lancashire, and vice versa, and both tend to have a sense of exclusion about London and the southeast. In the case of Mr Prescott, he has used his Northernness to deflect attention from the fact that he is quite remarkably nasty. His politics are based on class hatred just as much as Nick Griffin’s are based on race hatred. But because Northerners can get away with ‘plain speaking’ by laying claim to cultural authenticity, he has not been fully exposed. Southerners, except, perhaps, cockneys, can’t play that card.
On one day last week (the post was working), I received the following: a letter from my bank about new Terms and Conditions required by new European rules (I could not understand a single point which it was making); a request from a solicitor’s firm which my family have employed continuously since the 1930s to come round with my passport to prove my identity (they were very sorry about it, they said, but that was the new law); a letter from my household insurance company about how it has inadvertently revealed my personal details to an identity thief in South Africa (it made no offer of compensation, and asked me to perform four separate actions in order to safeguard myself); a parcel addressed to someone in another house in the village; a forwarded bill for a magazine subscription which has been sent to the wrong address for five years running; and a note from the postman saying ‘Sorry you were out’ (we weren’t).
One would not normally take advice from Adam Crozier, the chief executive of Royal Mail and the most overpaid of all public sector workers. He does not run his business well. But when he warned the other day that the postal strikes threaten the sending of Christmas cards, I suddenly felt I had been given permission. Christmas cards are always an assault course — the collating of addresses, the choice of card, the purchase of stamps, the writing, the need to do it all before the leaves have fallen off the trees. When you add the thought that they might not reach their destination, it is too much. With apologies to friends, we shall not be sending any.
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