The Spectator's Notes

I’m afraid I have a deep faith in the Democratic Unionist Party’s capacity to cede an issue of principle in return for more gold, baubles, Renewable Heat Incentives etc. It may well give in, after receiving some bung, in a few days. But its resistance, at the time of writing, to the idea of ‘regulatory alignment’ with the Republic, seems wholly justified. This is not a pernickety matter solely for the province — it should apply just as much to the entire United Kingdom. If we agree to align trade rules with EU ones (as opposed to each recognising the other’s rules), we are sacrificing the economic point of Brexit, which is competitive advantage.

We are congratulating ourselves and the royal family on overcoming prejudice by welcoming Meghan Markle’s engagement to Prince Harry. But in fact this welcome is cost-free: Ms Markle’s combination of Hollywood, mixed ethnicity, divorced parents, being divorced herself and being older than her fiancé ticks almost every modern box. It was harder, surely, for Kate Middleton. She was simply middle-class, Home Counties, white, and with no marital past — all media negatives. Her mother was a former flight assistant. People made snobby jokes about ‘cabin doors to manual’. There was nothing ‘edgy’ about Kate that could be romanticised.

Windsor Castle on Monday night sounds like a children’s party magnified. The rooms were filled with golden-leaved trees. A giant block of ice carved with the initials of the Queen on one side and the Duke of Edinburgh on the other dominated the reception room. Her sons wore their Windsor coats. A magician made a table levitate and move unsupported round the room. As with a children’s party, there were no speeches, and everyone was pleased and excited. After 70 years married, the two nonagenarians involved presumably felt, among family and friends, that they had earned the right to be unserious. The occasion must have been sweet for Prince Philip. All those years ago, he was patronised.

Although we all see rather too much of the present Mr Speaker, it was a good innovation that he and Lord Fowler, the Speaker of the House of Lords, laid wreaths at the Cenotaph on Sunday. It seems odd this never happened before: a parliamentary tribute is fitting. Since we shall soon, God willing, recover our parliamentary sovereignty, it is right to start paying more attention to the sovereign institution. I was amazed, listening to the PM programme on Tuesday, that the BBC led with an unadorned report of the latest Commons debate on Brexit. It was such a broadcasting novelty. For years, the media have given the most perfunctory attention to what the people we elect actually say in the chamber to which we elect them.

Theresa May’s style of negotiating with the European Union is coming spookily to resemble David Cameron’s. She is in the mindset where the important thing is to get a deal, rather than working out what sort of a deal is worth getting. The EU understands this, and therefore delays, making Cameron/May more desperate to settle, even on bad terms. Eventually, there is an inadequate deal which the British government then has to sell to a doubting electorate. Mr Cameron was punished for this at the referendum he had called. Mrs May is inviting punishment at a general election. It is interesting how moderate politics cannot get a hearing just now.

The Catalan nationalists surely chose this October deliberately for their attempt, now faltering, at UDI. It is the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the separatist vanguard is the hard-left party, the CUP. Even more vivid in their minds will be Barcelona’s own ‘October Revolution’ of 1934. The then Catalan Nationalist leader, Luis Companys, announced that ‘The monarchical and Fascist powers which have been for some time attempting to betray the Republic have attained their object’ (by the entry of the Catholic party CEDA into the Spanish government). He accordingly proclaimed ‘the Catalan State of the federal Republic of Spain’ and called for a provisional government of all Spain in Barcelona. This revolt failed.

You can see why Theresa May said in Florence that the British wished the European Union well in its plans for greater integration, while choosing a different path ourselves. There is no point in causing antagonism over what we cannot prevent. But in fact greater European integration will do great harm to all Europeans, including us. The rise of AfD in the German elections was caused almost entirely by Mrs Merkel’s extraordinary decision to admit a million Middle Eastern migrants in a year. The spread of the Schengen area — proposed by Jean-Claude Juncker — combined with recrudescent migrant pressure can only confirm freedom of movement as the impossible issue of our time.

Sir David Norgrove, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), is an honourable man. When he publicly rebuked Boris Johnson for his use of the famous £350 million figure about our weekly EU contribution, I am sure he was statistically, not party-politically motivated. But two points occur. The first is that Sir David was, arguably, mistaken. He thinks Boris said that, after Brexit, Britain would have £350 million a week more to spend. He didn’t. He said ‘we will take back control of roughly £350 million a week’. This is correct. So long as we are in the EU, that £350 million a week is out of our control, because even our rebate, which forms part of that figure, is EU-dependent. When we leave, it will all be under our control.

We went to the first night of the Proms last week. Thinking it was all over, we left the auditorium just before Igor Levit came back on for a delayed encore in which he played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (transcribed by Liszt) as an anti-Brexit gesture. We loved Levit’s earlier rendering of a Beethoven piano concerto, but were spared his political views, so it was a perfect evening. Two nights later, Daniel Barenboim took advantage of the Proms conductor’s podium to make an unscheduled speech in which he deplored ‘isolation tendencies’. All good Brexiteers deplore isolation tendencies, which is one of the reasons we don’t like a European Union with a tariff wall, but of course Brexit was the great conductor’s target.

For some time now, banks have wielded hamfistedly the concept of the ‘politically exposed person’. They have withdrawn bank accounts from — or refused them to — not only kleptocrats from crazy dictatorships but also blameless citizens of parliamentary democracies like our own. Now, I gather, they have started to persecute the fringes of the British royal family. One such royal person tells me that he had to resign from the board of a charity before the bank thought it safe to let it open an account. He adds that he has two royal relations who have been refused accounts. In the case of an American bank, it declined the customer because it wanted nothing to do with ‘present or past non-US officials, their families or close associates’.