In his recent interview with our American edition, The Spectator World, Donald Trump is reported to be faced by a picture of Franklin D. Roosevelt whenever he sits at his Oval Office desk. ‘A lot of people say, why do you have FDR?’ Trump says. His answer is: ‘Well, he was a serious president, whether you agree with him or not.’ He does not state what he particularly likes about FDR, though one might guess that his capacity to be elected president four times is an attraction. Surprisingly, perhaps, FDR is not anathema to all Republicans. He even appeals to their isolationist strand, because of Yalta. At that fateful conference, it was Roosevelt who gave Stalin what he wanted, despite Churchill’s protests, thus sealing the fate of Poland and much of eastern Europe. After the war, Republicans such as Dewey, Arthur Vandenberg and Eisenhower managed to face down the isolationist strand, but it never quite went away. In the late 20th century, it was kept alive by Pat Buchanan (still with us) and has gained new pro-Russian life in the Putin era thanks to figures like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and, more witlessly, Steve Witkoff. Some go so far as to blame Churchill, not Hitler, for his ‘craven, ugly’ and ‘Zionist’ second world war. Carlson has encouraged this. Is Trump’s heart (if he has such an organ) in that camp? The peace of Europe may turn on the answer.
A Times leader on Monday was sub-headed: ‘Europe must accept that the age of protection is coming to an end.’ These words illustrate the double meaning of the word ‘protection’. In another sense, America is entering the age of protection with what can accurately be described as a vengeance.
As Holy Week approaches, spare a thought for John Perumbalath. He was Bishop of Liverpool for less than two years, but then in January was forced to resign because of two accusations, one of sexual assault and one of sexual harassment made against him on television. I emphasise the ‘on television’ bit (Channel 4 News), because both accusations had been made earlier and investigated by the National Safeguarding Team of the Church of England. The Church’s official statement on the matter said that ‘no safeguarding concerns were established’. Once Channel 4 repeated the allegations without any new evidence, however, the church authorities fell all of a heap with terror. No bishop publicly supported their colleague, though nothing was proved against him. With that lack of support, Bishop Perumbalath decided, though protesting his innocence, that he must go.
It has been a sad pilgrimage for this gentle and friendly man. Born in Kerala, the most Christian part of India, and trained for the priesthood in Calcutta, John Perumbalath came to England more than 20 years ago. One might call him a reverse missionary to the English heathen. He cannot have realised how brutal and primitive are our native church’s forms of justice, where an accusation of sexual abuse is taken as proof of guilt. Nor could he have imagined that he would be publicly denounced by a fellow bishop. The Rt Revd Beverley Mason, the suffragan Bishop of Warrington, claimed he had harassed her while in a room full of clergy. On any normal evidential basis, her uncorroborated accusation seems highly interpretive and utterly unprovable. Could it all be based on a cultural misunderstanding? Did the Right Rev Bev, accustomed to the chilly reserve of her fellow white English bishops, misread the warmer greetings of a smiling Indian? It must have been disappointing for her not to have been made Bishop of Liverpool herself (she held that role in an acting capacity at the time), but that is no reason for the high priests of the C of E to shun the man the process had preferred to her. In the current culture, you would have to be unusually brave or foolish to become a male bishop in England. Mere accusation can condemn, and no colleague dares call for due process. Given that the founder of the Church was killed on Good Friday because of false accusation, I do find this development shocking.
A similar wrong is done by the newish custom that anyone arrested in connection with a sexual crime is automatically suspended from his or her position. The Labour MP Dan Norris was also, until the latest development, the chairman of the League Against Cruel Sports, but one must stoutly resist the natural suspicion that this makes him a rapist or child abductor. Yet Labour has suspended him as if arrest equals guilt.
This column’s hero, Viscount (soon to be abolished) Stansgate, raised an important question in the House of Lords last week. It seems that funerals are happening longer and longer after death. I had noticed this trend and assumed it related to the efficiency of refrigeration these days, but Lord Stansgate’s question fastened on something else. After Dr Harold Shipman murdered his patients and then certified their deaths as being from natural causes, there was a ‘something must be done’ feeling. People called medical examiners were created by statute, as was the Office of the National Medical Examiner. The consequence is delay as the necessary information is passed from certifying doctor to medical examiner to the bereaved. Something else emerged from Lord Stansgate’s question. It seems that ‘faith groups’ – Jews and Muslims – are fast-tracked because of their religious preference for immediate burial, circumventing bureaucratic impediments. In itself, it is good that they should be dealt with expeditiously, but the authorities should not use it as an excuse to dawdle over the certification of dead Christians, atheists and agnostics. If these delays continue, it would be logical to convert to Islam on one’s death bed (Jewish conversion, I believe, has no such emergency provisions) and thus avoid the funeral traffic jam.
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