The Spectator's Notes

Writing this column in 90˚F heat on the edge of a normally bleak and chill Yorkshire moor, I reflect on the relationship between political culture and weather. Montesquieu, who attributed great importance to climate and geography in the political spirit of nations, thought that heat contributed to despotism, suppressing the active disposition of a people. But might it not, by the same token, make despots idle? The bureaucrats of oppression are no more likely than ordinary citizens to bestir themselves in the dog days, indeed rather less so. Certainly in Britain the effect of heatwaves is to remove people’s already slight interest in public affairs and in most forms of work entirely. I have often wondered why it does not have a similar effect in hot countries everywhere.

Because everyone can see that the government can no longer do anything worth doing, there is a widespread assumption that its days are numbered. But this is a non sequitur. In the past, Labour governments could do things only in the short gap between their election victory and their sterling crisis. Conservative governments had a slightly longer effective life, but the Heath administration was pretty much disabled after the failure of its industrial relations legislation in 1972. The period between 1979 and, roughly, 1989 was quite exceptional in having a government that had ideas about what it wanted to do and the political ability to do them. Implosion does not necessarily produce defeat.

This week, an alliance of bodies concerned about ‘heritage’, led by the National Trust and including English Heritage and the National Heritage Memorial Fund, launched a campaign called History Matters. It is designed to ‘raise awareness of the importance of history in our lives’, with the strong implication that our public culture — and our current government — ignores this. As if to confirm their view that history is pushed to the sidelines, the media preferred to concentrate on football and Wimbledon, and gave the star-studded (Boris Johnson, David Starkey, Tony Benn, Stephen Fry) opening presentation little attention. I have a local story which confirms the problem.

A listener to the BBC on Tuesday might have concluded that the Palestinians were about to recognise the state of Israel. This was because, as I heard on the PM programme, it said so. But then it was over to Jeremy Bowen in Jerusalem. He spoke excitedly of ‘movement’ but explained that he had not seen the document in question and that it would not make any mention of the recognition of Israel. The point was that Hamas, or rather a part of Hamas, was talking of accepting a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and therefore, by implication, of recognising Israel in its pre-1967 borders. It is like the claim that the Palestinian Covenant was rescinded by the Oslo Accords — when you looked, you couldn’t really find that it had been.

As a parent of GCSE children, I now see clearly that modern education has abolished the summer term. In all the teenage years except the first, there are public exams to be done. These are spread out, beginning in May, and are pretty much finished this week. The run-up to them is dominated by the ever-growing burden of coursework and, naturally, by revision. As soon as the pupils finish their exams they are sent home, since no power on earth can make them stay. For those of us who pay boarding fees, this early departure means that the cost per child of time actually spent on the premises is now £1,000 per week.

Major Bruce Shand, father of the Duchess of Cornwall, who died at the weekend, was a man of great charm. He had a very attractive combination of enough confidence to put you at your ease and enough diffidence not to seem arrogant. In old age he had a lovely, interesting, funny face — creased, like a more military, bucolic version of W.H. Auden. Although he did not seem in the least bitter, it hurt him a great deal that the press persecuted his daughter — bringing grief also to his wife — for so long. But he stuck to the old principle, which he referred to as ‘FHB’ (‘Family Hold Back’), and never said anything in public.

Isn’t it time now that the Conservatives fulfilled their new leader’s pledge. Although we send 250 police in search of possible terrorists in east London, our government takes a completely opposite attitude to the subject whenever it’s Irish. After the IRA was involved in the murder of Robert McCartney and the robbery of the Northern Bank, the US government last year reimposed the ban on Sinn Fein fundraising in the United States. At the time Mr Blair supported this, but now we are in the extraordinary situation in which the Americans, who since 9/11 have tried to be consistent in their attitudes to terrorism, object more strongly to the IRA than does the nation in which they have done most of their killing.

As a political scandal rolls on, people always seem to fasten on the wrong reason why the minister concerned should resign. It is surely good news that John Prescott and his team were playing croquet at Dorneywood on a Thursday afternoon. What has happened to our traditional admiration for finishing the game and beating the Spaniards too? Admittedly, Mr Prescott is not taking on any latter-day Spaniards, and his aides made everything worse by saying that their game was constantly broken into by mobile telephone calls, important emails and other rubbish. But the fact that he can be relatively out of mischief for an hour or two is to be applauded. Trouble only starts with John Prescott when he tries to do anything.

As I write, no one knows what the result of the local elections will be, but it seems safe to predict that the turnout will not be high. Politically minded people tend to worry about low turnout because they find it hard to understand that someone might just not care very much who represents him or her in Parliament or council. Yet, in a reasonably well-run society, it is rational to conclude that it doesn’t greatly matter who wins, and leave it at that. The right to vote, which is essential, only translates into a duty to vote in extreme circumstances (hence the traditionally high turnout in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, when the balance between unionist and nationalist could be tipped either way).

Yes, the BNP is unpleasant and hate-filled. But why does everyone feel the need to say it so much? Or rather, why don’t people say it about all the other hate-filled organisations in this country, as well as about the BNP? The Socialist Workers Party is hate-filled; so is Respect, so is Hizb ut-Tahrir, so is Sinn Fein, so are some in Greenpeace and some in Ukip, and so is John Prescott in relation to field sports and Ken Livingstone in relation to Israel, America and Britain’s imperial past. The BNP, like the now resurgent old Labour party, finds the basis of its support in resentment. Old Labour expresses that resentment in terms of class, the BNP more in terms of race.

On Good Friday 1613, John Donne found the direction of his journey on horseback in conflict with the duty of his soul. In his poem ‘Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward’, Donne writes that ‘I am carried towards the West/ This day, when my soul’s form bends to the East’ (where the sun/Son will rise, and where Jesus was crucified). He says, though, that he prefers to face the other way, to avoid ‘That spectacle of too much weight for me’: it would be unbearable to see ‘The seat of all our souls ...Made dirt of dust’. He imagines his back, as he rides, being regarded by Christ, turned towards Him to receive punishment. This allows Jesus to ‘Burn off my rust, and my deformity’.

When Bill Clinton was threatened with impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky affair, I was keen that the Daily Telegraph, which I was editing at the time, should add fuel to the flames. A little earlier, I had edited the Sunday Telegraph and our Washington correspondent, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, had done brilliant work — better than anyone even in America itself — in exposing the shadiness of Clinton’s Arkansas connections. I thought (and I still think) that Clinton was a bad man. It seemed right that he should get his come-uppance. To my surprise, though, our then proprietor, Conrad Black, sounded a warning note. Would it really be a good thing for the presidency, he asked, if its occupant could easily be thrown out because of such allegations?

The Dunblane massacre took place ten years ago. Its effects on the families of the victims are so terrible that it seems dangerous to speak about them. But there were secondary effects as well. In the aftermath of the horror, the then prime minister, John Major, invited the other party leaders, Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown, to join him in visiting the town to pay tribute and meet the bereaved. The idea, surely right, was that this should be a grief which united people across politics. Watching the scene on television, I was struck for the first time by Mr Blair’s way of parading feeling, while everyone else, including the bereaved, was showing restraint. He appeared to move about more than other people, contort his face more, upstage those near him.

As so often with people in public life, the career of David Mills is beyond satire. If an anti-Blair left-wing playwright invented him, critics would accuse him of improbability. Mr Mills seems to have done almost everything which traditional Labour supporters hate. He has made a career of advising people, including the loathed Silvio Berlusconi, on how to create offshore tax-shelters. He has given questionable court evidence for him, allegedly for money. He facilitated a £300 million sale of tanks by Ukraine to Pakistan. He administered a company in the Isle of Man. He lobbied to prevent the ban on tobacco advertising in motor racing because of his former directorship of Formula 1 Team Benetton.