It would be dangerously premature to say that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia, but Russia is undoubtedly doing worse. Ukrainian ingenuity and courage are outsmarting Russian mass. Ukraine has the advantage in technology, especially drone technology, and morale. The Black Sea fleet is held in port and Russian-occupied Crimea is now insecure. This is becoming apparent even on the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg. So what, I wonder, will western apologists for Vladimir Putin, led by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, say if his situation worsens further? Will they still back him as the upholder of Christian values against the decadent West and champion of Russia’s historic territorial rights and its need for security? Or will they realise they overestimated his power and have been abetting the last and most idiotic war of imperialist aggression fought on the European continent? Will Trump, whose own power is now fading, keep urging a peace on Putin’s terms? Back in Britain, this shift makes life harder for Reform, a party which, though aspiring to government, still does not have a defence spokesman. Its isolationist ideology expressed in the phrase ‘Kent not Kyiv’ already looks pretty silly when the Russian shadow fleet can be spotted from the white cliffs of Dover. If Kyiv, which favours the West, prevails, the slogan will be in the dustbin of history.
Andy Burnham’s ideas for economic regeneration stand in the tradition of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse, Boris Johnson’s Levelling Up, Sir Keir Starmer’s Pride in Place, perhaps even Margaret Thatcher’s Action for Cities. All these schemes do some good. They attract friendly attention to neglected places. Their net effect tends to improve infrastructure and increase public and private investment. They do not, however, fulfil their stated intention of empowering the places they seek to help. This is because, whatever the politicians say, Westminster and Whitehall, being in charge of the money, retain ultimate control. That is, sort of, how a unitary state in which government is accountable to parliament is supposed to work. Mr Burnham’s remedy is a ‘No. 10 North’, which will come and live in Manchester. If the money power remains the same, though, No. 10 North will be a mere vice-royalty of 10 Downing Street, SW1, implementing, however benignly, decisions made in London, just as the BBC, though big in Salford, is actually run from Broadcasting House, W1. If the money power truly shifts then we shall need a different constitution, because we shall be breaking up the unitary state. In his speech, Mr Burnham referred approvingly to the German Basic Law, which describes the German state as ‘federal territory’ rather than ‘German national territory’. But does he actually want this? He may think two Andy Burnhams will do the trick. In Manchester, he can wear his T-shirt like some peacenik President Zelensky, and, in London, a suit and tie. Whatever his virtues, that is not democracy. The leadership cadres of great cities will be his satraps, not independent actors. He declared in Manchester that our cities will have ‘a new sense of agency’. No: they will just have a new set of agencies.
Overexcitedly, Mr Burnham declares that ‘The job of No. 10 North will be to make power flow into the Midlands, into the south-west, into the east of England and, yes, into London…, as much as the north-east, Yorkshire and the Humber and here in the north-west’. Why move anyone to Manchester to do that? This has no appeal to non-Mancunians. As a resident of the south-east (which he does not mention) and therefore a net contributor to all these schemes, I can see no possible benefit. He rightly asks, ‘If councils can’t fix potholes, what chance do they have of bringing forward major regeneration schemes to get growth going?’, but he does not answer his own question.
Since we live in an age of mad, internet-based conspiracy theories, may I propose my own? When Peter Murrell, the now estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon, stole more than £400,000 from the party he ran, he took it from the SNP’s war chest for the second independence referendum for which they were campaigning. Why pick on that particular fund? Cynics might say that he did so because he knew the referendum would not happen and therefore the money would lie undisturbed. But my mad theory whispers that he was acting on behalf of the Deep State to defend the Union. Secret documents which I cannot possibly reveal and have not seen, and which indeed may not exist, show that the hidden hand of Thames House held the keys for his £124,550 camper van.
It was moving to read the recent obituaries of John Basinger. A child of foster homes, he specialised in unusual feats such as walking from New York to San Francisco and teaching music to the deaf. His most prodigious achievement was in retirement. He taught himself the whole of Paradise Lost and recited it in public performances. The greatest of all English epic poems is about 80,000 words long, the length of a standard novel. It is an unqualified good to learn poems by heart and declaim them, but Basinger also picked the most suitable possible poem. Listening to it, rather than reading it, dispels the widespread illusion that Milton is arid and pompous. I learnt this myself, aged ten or so, because I encountered the poem’s sensuous qualities before the theology. My mother read (though not recited) to me the passage in Book VII which describes the creation. I was particularly struck with the lion, who comes just after cows: ‘The grassy clods now calved; now half-appeared/ The tawny lion, pawing to get free/ His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds,/ And rampant shakes his brinded mane.’ I could see it happening in my mind’s eye. I do hope Basinger’s performances are on tape.
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