The Spectator's Notes

Few things in history can be more worth thinking about than the first world war, so in a way one welcomes the government’s plan for extensive centenary commemorations. And I do not agree with the critics that part of the purpose should be to blame the Germans: such blame is not a task for government. The bigger worry is surely twofold. One is that, over the planned four years, the commemorations will dissipate their energies in cultural trench warfare and get muddled up with the normal (and excellent) patterns of Remembrance. The other is that they will resemble those semi-apologies about any violent death in our history which have become a cheap way for political leaders to show themselves more enlightened than their predecessors.

The BBC loves nothing better than a narrative in which Tory anti-European eccentrics split their party, and a bewildered public votes Labour. It is certainly the case that some of the Tory sceptics are half-crazed by dislike of David Cameron. But the reason the subject keeps coming up is because it matters, and it remains unresolved. The Tory rebels understand this in straightforward electoral terms: the rise of Ukip threatens their seats, so they must do something about it. What is maddening is not so much Mr Cameron’s actual policy on Europe, but his patent longing to avoid the subject. His refusal to ‘bang on’ about Europe has brought about more banging on than ever.

On Tuesday night, at a Spectator readers’ evening, Andrew Neil interviewed me about my biography of Margaret Thatcher. He asked me if, after leaving office, Lady Thatcher had come to the view that Britain should leave the European Union. I said yes (I think it happened after the Maastricht Treaty in 1992), although advisers had persuaded her that she should not say this in public since it would have allowed her opponents to drive her to the fringes of public life. I had believed this was widely known, but according to Andrew, it is a story. My revelation, if such it was, came on the same day as Nigel Lawson’s piece in the Times saying that he would now vote for Britain to leave the EU. How things have changed. Even the BBC treats Lawson’s view as respectable.

It is strange how we are never ready for events which are, in principle, certain. The media have prepared for Margaret Thatcher’s death for years, and yet there was a rushed, improvised quality to much of the coverage when she actually did die. We have a curious habit of all saying the same thing, and feeling comforted by that, when really it is our job to say as many different things as possible. The BBC, which Mrs Thatcher, and even more Denis, detested, has been straining itself to be fair, but fairly bursting with frustration in the attempt. The way for it to express its subliminal opposition to her is by using the word ‘divisive’ all the time. By day two, this had become its dominant theme.

There is supposed to be a Leveson Part II, although everyone has forgotten about it. As well as telling him to look into everything bad about newspapers (‘Please could you clean the Augean stables by Friday, Hercules’), David Cameron also asked Lord Justice Leveson to investigate who did what when over phone-hacking. This was postponed because of the forthcoming criminal trials, but I mention it because it is a reminder that things are back to front. Normally when you have an inquiry, you first work out what happened and then you work out what to do about it. Leveson is the opposite, hence the resulting chaos. The problem is particularly acute if you put a judge in charge. Judges like laws, so they propose new ones.

On the BBC television news on Monday night, the first three items concerned alleged misbehaviour by the famous — Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Lord Rennard and Vicky Pryce, the ex-wife of the ex-Cabinet minister, Chris Huhne. I begin to wonder if an accidental revolution is in progress. There is no revolutionary political doctrine, just a wish to believe that anyone in any position of power or fame is corrupt and should be exposed. Sexual misbehaviour is probably the most fun way of doing this, but stuff about money or lying works too. In theory, we should welcome this. The accusations often turn out to be true. Power corrupts. But actually there is something vile about it. It is to do with the righteousness of those doing the exposing.

It was rude and impolitic of David Cameron not to sit in on the parliamentary debate on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. The whole thing was his idea and would not have come to Parliament without his insistence. Of all his measures so far, it is the one that has caused greatest grief to his backbenchers. Yet he did not come to hear their views. His absence has a symbolic significance. It embodies the fact that social conservatism is felt by somewhere between 30 and 70 per cent of the population on most subjects, and yet has no representatives among the leaderships of any of the three main parties. I don’t think this has ever happened before in our history (unless it be in the Heath/Wilson era). It is a momentous disfranchisement.

In which forthcoming by-election does one candidate’s election address boast that he was the ‘last Captain of Boats [at Eton] to win the Ladies Plate at Henley in 1960’, while one of his rivals says that, at Harrow, ‘unfortunately I did not cover myself with academic glory’? The answer is a by-election among the Conservative hereditary peers. Under the Blair reforms of the Lords, the hereditaries elected their own 92 representatives, and the then Lord Cranborne (now Lord Salisbury) persuaded Labour (who saw the whole thing as an interim measure before abolition) to permit by-elections — which was foolish from their point of view, because, without replacements, the hereditaries would quickly have dwindled away. Voting takes place within parties.

David Cameron’s long-awaited speech on Europe this week falls 50 years to the day after the death of Hugh Gaitskell. Gaitskell, who died in harness, was the last leader of either main party to oppose entry to what people then called the Common Market. In his last party conference speech as Labour leader, in October 1962, he set five conditions for British entry to the EEC (for which the Tory government was then negotiating). These included retaining national economic freedom and an independent foreign policy. Joining would mean ‘the end of Britain as an independent nation state, the end of 1,000 years of history’, he declared.

Poor Nick Clegg keeps trying to change the constitution and keeps being balked (the Alternative Vote, Lords reform). At last, he believes, he will be able to fulfil his ambition to force the first-born child, of either sex, to ascend to the throne, and to be able to marry a Roman Catholic (though not, oddly, to be a Roman Catholic if she/he does actually become queen/king). Perhaps he is carried away by being married to the lovely, fascinating, Catholic Miriam, and is horrified that members of the royal family are deprived of such joys. This speaks well for his ardour. But surely the best constitutional changes of the past 350 years have been those which increased the power of Parliament at the expense of the executive.