Although I tend to keep my romantic nature under wraps, every year Helena, my wife, and I go on a “luxury mini break” either to Birmingham or Manchester. By strange happenstance this always seems to coincide with the Conservative party conference and the same was true this year, thus we headed off to Birmingham with a detour via Oxford.
Normally I never wish to leave Somerset, especially without having had Sunday lunch, although this is less of a penance than normal as our cook has retired and we have not yet found a replacement, if anyone is interested… But this time I did so happily as we were taking our eldest son, Peter, to Oriel College. I feel I have given him every possible disadvantage in entering the hallowed halls of woke academia: my name, my politics and my own old school. None is fashionable in universities, so he did especially well to get in and I doubt he will dwell too much on these hardships if he writes a misery memoir.
We stayed in the Grand Hotel, which I liked, the service was excellent and the room comfortable, but I do not understand why hotels now use duvets rather than making the bed properly with sheets. I hate duvets, which are the devil’s own work. They ought to be piled up and burnt. There’s nothing nicer than a properly made bed with crisp linen.
The previous week I had been interviewed by a Mr. Tucker Carlson. He’s what the Americans call a “shock jock,” who says outrageous things to boost his ratings. When I agreed to do it, I assumed no one in England would watch it as his appeal is focused on his own country. However, his suggestion that we ought to have let Hitler win led to a degree of controversy, so I was asked about him quite a bit at the conference. To meet he is both personable and intelligent, so I enjoyed our conversation before and after filming as well as the interview itself. His views may be rather wild, but I never mind robust debate. I am sure he does it for clicks. It is the temptation of the social media age, as the more controversial the statement, the more views and revenue it generates. Perhaps he ought to use some of the profits to employ a researcher to tell him the size of the UK and Russian economies.
One of the things we did not discuss is the concept of Englishness, which seems to be a dividing line between the Tories and Reform. I think the attempt to pretend that there is Englishness and Britishness is nonsense. The English use England to cover the whole of Great Britain and only remember to differentiate when being polite to their Scottish friends. It is perfectly possible to want to stop mass immigration, legal or illegal, while believing that those who are already here have joined our nation in a spiritual as well as a merely legal sense. As one of the definitions of being English made me a foreigner, it all seems rather ridiculous and potentially unpleasant.
People always ask what the mood at the party conference is and I never really know as I tend to find them pretty positive. People are usually there to enjoy themselves, with a dose of sound politics and plenty of “browsing and sluicing” as P.G. Wodehouse would call it, the height of which was as always the Spectator party, at least in terms of sluicing. Nonetheless, this year it was refreshing to see the party being truly conservative and proposing exciting Tory policies. The dividing lines between left and right have been drawn but the election will be determined by the ability of Labour and the Conservatives to unite their own wings of politics.
It is often said that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so I snuck off from the conference for half an afternoon to visit the Oratory of St Philip where Father Ignatius Harrison showed Helena and me St. John Henry Newman’s room and library. It was a real connection to holiness and history, and the church itself illustrates the beauty of holiness. Interestingly, the more traditional orders within the church are doing well while the modernists are languishing. Similarly, attendance at the old rite mass in Latin is strong. It is good to see ecclesiastical conservatism as well as its political brother thriving.
The conference ended with a rousing and wonderfully conservative leader’s speech which made me wonder if, had we done this while in office, we might still be there. After this I drove home. Proper sheets were welcome but now I was back to normal life. This involved a call to HMRC on a VAT question. Against all my expectations the man I spoke to was splendidly helpful and had the answers to my questions. Everything was sorted out quickly and efficiently. Perhaps some parts of the British state are not broken after all.
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