Leading article

Historical eras rarely start or finish smoothly. But the tenth anniversary of September 11th next week presents a useful opportunity to reflect on the decade since those attacks — what we have won and where we have lost. Historical eras rarely start or finish smoothly. But the tenth anniversary of September 11th next week presents a useful opportunity to reflect on the decade since those attacks — what we have won and where we have lost. In the immediate aftermath, and facing the prospect of further attacks, Britain and America acted decisively. The first phase of the war in Afghanistan, designed to remove al-Qa’eda training camps, was swift and successful.

The royal family has been accused of a great number of things, from extravagance to vulgarity. But to blame the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for limiting UK economic growth in the second quarter to 0.2 per cent — as the Office of National Statistics did this week — is a bit rich. If an extra day’s holiday for the royal wedding in April closed our offices and factories, it surely boosted the tourist industry and sent bone china manufacturers into overdrive. George Osborne would be ill-advised to bring up the subject of the royal wedding or any of the other excuses given by the ONS for the sluggishness of the economy: the Japanese tsunami, the warm spring weather and consumers — allegedly — drawing in their horns in order to save money for Olympic tickets.

As Keynes observed, the power of ideas — good ones and tragic, wrong-headed ones — is far greater than is commonly understood. As Keynes observed, the power of ideas — good ones and tragic, wrong-headed ones — is far greater than is commonly understood. The Thatcher counter-revolution in the 1980s was made possible by intellectual bulldozing a decade earlier. It took Sir Keith Joseph and Centre for Policy Studies to clear the way for Britain’s economic regeneration. The blueprint for the social regeneration now underway was written by another think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, whose ideas are now being implemented by Iain Duncan Smith.

If the government were to grant an award to the public servant who has made the greatest effort over the past year to manage expenditure, Her Majesty the Queen would be a strong contender. The royal public finances, published this week, reveal that the cost of running the royal household has fallen over the past year by 5.3 per cent to £32.1 million. Proportionally, the Queen has made more cuts in one year than George Osborne intends to do over five. The royal household is now costing the taxpayer less in absolute terms than it was in 2007. If the government were to grant an award to the public servant who has made the greatest effort over the past year to manage expenditure, Her Majesty the Queen would be a strong contender.

There was a strange juxtaposition of events on Monday. That was the day Britain launched the fourth wing of its armed services: a ‘cyber-command’ designed to protect our country against online attacks, most of which are carried out by China. It was also the day when David Cameron welcomed Wen Jiabao, the Premier of China, to 10 Downing Street for smiles and handshakes and multi-million-pound deals. Something very odd is happening to Sino-British relations. Britain is simultaneously acquiring a new enemy and a new ally. If we are lucky, the proceeds from trade with the ally may exceed the £650 million cost of online combat with the enemy. China’s problem is simple.

How we all miss the drachma! If Greece still had a sovereign currency, that currency would probably have halved in value, thereby providing cheap holidays for the rest of us. Greece would then have defaulted on its debt, in a way that would have inflicted minimum financial damage on its neighbours. A few banks would have been burned, deservedly. Like Russia in 1998 and Argentina in 2002, Greece would have got over the pain quickly. Calamitously, though, Greece joined the eurozone — so it remains in crisis, unable either to repay its debts or to devalue its currency and export its way to recovery. Britain has the great luxury of watching this from a distance. We were never fooled by the idea of monetary union, or the claim that the euro would somehow mean more jobs or lower prices.

In a way, it would be rude for the unions not to strike later this month. They are in the business of changing government policy by threatening strike action. They had planned to wait until next year, when the cuts would be biting hardest, to force David Cameron into a Heath-style U-turn — but it seems the Prime Minister’s resolve is running out faster than they expected. In a way, it would be rude for the unions not to strike later this month. They are in the business of changing government policy by threatening strike action. They had planned to wait until next year, when the cuts would be biting hardest, to force David Cameron into a Heath-style U-turn — but it seems the Prime Minister’s resolve is running out faster than they expected.

If Blake were writing ‘Jerusalem’ today, he would find an easy contemporary equivalent for his ‘dark, satanic mills’. If Blake were writing ‘Jerusalem’ today, he would find an easy contemporary equivalent for his ‘dark, satanic mills’. In our attempt to build a welfare state, we have created a national disgrace: welfare ghettoes, which scar every British city. Over the Labour years, millions of people were shovelled away in edge-of-town housing estates and paid (in benefits) to stay there. They were categorised so as to not show up on the unemployment count. They were replaced in the jobs market by an industrious immigrant class.

When you put your loose coppers in an Oxfam tin, it is tempting to think that they will be going towards a bag of grain for a drought-torn African village. When you put your loose coppers in an Oxfam tin, it is tempting to think that they will be going towards a bag of grain for a drought-torn African village. Maybe they will, but there is also a chance they will be spent on the likes of ‘Growing a Better Future: food justice in a resource-constrained world’, a pamphlet published this week. Not alone among charities, Oxfam is diversifying into the think-tank business.

Scottish readers may be puzzled to see so many newspaper headlines about drought. Parts of the country, notably the Borders and the western Highlands, have already received one and a half times their normal rainfall for May. On Monday — as the water companies proposed seasonal tariffs to discourage customers from watering their gardens and taking baths in dry summers — Rannoch Moor in the Highlands received two and a half inches of rain. Where the headlines were written, however, the drought is acute. In London, Kent and East Anglia, there has not been a full day’s rain for nearly three months. Rainfall in May over a wide band of eastern England has been less than a fifth of normal. Crops are threatened and reservoirs are emptying.

The British are a generous people. We donate more to humanitarian causes than anyone else in Europe, and by some margin. The average Brit gives twice as much as a Norwegian, three times more than a Belgian, six times more than a German and seven times more than a Frenchman. All told, British households send about £4 billion a year to overseas charities — more than any people in the world, in fact, apart from the Americans. So it is by no means clear why David Cameron believes that, in the middle of a fiscal crisis, he should extract a further £4 billion from us through the tax system and give the money to charities of his choice. The British are a generous people. We donate more to humanitarian causes than anyone else in Europe, and by some margin.