The Spectator's Notes

Sir Keir Starmer’s piece in the Times on Monday was presumably constructed round the front-page headline Labour wanted – ‘Just Stop Oil tactics are contemptible, says Starmer’. Behind the headline, and therefore unnoticed, was his argument that the Tories are wrong to allow new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, and Labour is right to allow only old drilling. This wedge between the two main parties is relatively trivial, since both are still committed to getting rid of all new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and therefore on course to create what Sir Keir, speaking of Just Stop Oil, calls ‘chaos for working people’.  Will Sir Keir also condemn Greenpeace’s invasion of Rishi Sunak’s house in Yorkshire last week?

For the last time, on Saturday, I stuck the head of the late Queen, without a barcode, on an envelope and posted it. I have kept the two remaining stamps of my sheet as souvenirs. Stamps survive, of course, under the new King, but they are gradually becoming like cash – marginal and out of date. The letter is no longer a primary means of communication, just as notes and coin are no longer the primary means of purchase. I wonder how these changes will affect our view of monarchy. The head of the monarch, unnamed, has been the daily sight of virtually every citizen since the Penny Black arrived in 1840. The head of a monarch on coins, similarly visible to all, is more than two millennia old.

We now have a reluctant apology from Dame Alison Rose, followed by her even more reluctant resignation. Her departure is a major achievement, but the reluctance is a symptom of the problem. How could she possibly have thought she could stay after she was caught breaking a client’s confidentiality and spreading untruths about him (untruths which the BBC checked with her before publishing)? How could her chairman, Sir Howard Davies, have possibly thought that she could? And still we have nothing from Coutts, the bank that tried to trash Nigel Farage in the first place. Coutts is a B Corp, meaning a corporation which signs up to the commandments of current virtues, such as sustainability and inclusion.

Jane Portal, as she was when she worked for Winston Churchill, died last week, aged 93. Lady Williams of Elvel, as she much later became, had an extraordinary life. I encountered her story by chance. In 2015, near us in Sussex, I was told that ‘of course’ (people love saying that when telling you a surprise) Jane Williams’s son, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not the offspring of Gavin Welby, as the Archbishop believed, but of Sir Anthony Montague Browne, Churchill’s last private secretary. Of course he wasn’t, I said. I made further inquiries, however, and saw letters and heard testimony which began to persuade me. I also noticed that, when the Archbishop took off his spectacles, he did look remarkably like Montague Browne.

The story of the famous BBC television presenter who, at the time of writing, has still not been named, has all the elements of 21st-century-media madness – something allegedly sexual which may or not involve a person too young for such things; a desperate hue and cry to see who will dare to name the accused first; anonymous accusers; a clash between strong legal rules about the accused’s anonymity and the strong social media custom of ignoring them; a confusion as to whether the ‘victim’ is a victim or whether he/she even believes he/she is a victim; gabby lawyers; the Sun; an angry mum; a stepfather; ‘fresh allegations’; a ‘concerned’ government which does not exactly know what it is concerned about; show-off MPs who want to use parliamentary privilege to name the ac.

When Boris Johnson’s resignation from parliament was announced, we were in the audience for Glyndebourne’s production of Don Giovanni. Controversially, this includes a vast cake which is part of the bacchanals and then reappears, in rotting form, as the statue of the Commendatore approaches to take the antihero to his eternal damnation. Don Giovanni sprawls in the gap left by the removal of a giant slice, cramming putrescent crumbs into his mouth and necking a bottle. The news must have given great satisfaction to the director because the production’s take on the opera is, as the programme knowingly explains, the problem of ‘trying to have your cake and eat it’. Don G equals Boris. Mozart himself was against Brexit!

Last week, I visited Ukraine – Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kramatorsk. Impressions crowded in. Here are a few: Air-raid sirens sound every night at present. Almost no one goes to the shelters until actual explosions start. It is the repeated disturbance of sleep, more than risk of death, which frays people’s nerves. And not only people’s. A woman I met for breakfast brought along her poor toy poodle, frightened after a noisy night. Courage is visible in so many one meets; but a notable branch of it is those who admit they are scared of fighting. I met two such men, so far not summoned. Both have family responsibilities and do valuable work for their country and yet, they tell me, they feel ashamed. A friend showed me the result of his online Airbnb searches in Kharkiv.

The police have said sorry for arresting anti-monarchy protestors under the wrong legal rubric on Coronation Day, but is that really a lead news story, as it was on Tuesday’s Today programme? If the police had failed to contain the mini-mob and a couple of them had, as they intended, obstructed the processional route, there would have been a huge and justified outcry. Coverage like that of Today makes no allowance for the fact that these protestors are not ordinary citizens. Protest is their full-time job, as is making a monkey of the law. Every week, I receive notice in my inbox of protests by this coalition of organisations which explicitly promises trouble. As I write, I am looking at one which says, ‘Animal Rising Declares Intention To Disrupt The Derby Festival’.

Perhaps we have not focused enough on the fact that we are crowning a king, rather than a queen, as monarch. It is nearly 90 years since this last happened, so no one alive today has an adult memory of what was expected. There is a further difficulty, in that the coronation of Charles III occurs in circumstances almost diametrically different from those of the coronation of George VI. In 1937, what was happening had not been foreseen before December of the previous year. It was Edward VIII’s coronation that everyone had been expecting, and although those in the know were aware of Edward’s inadequacies, these had been kept from a public most of whom found him very glamorous. With the shock of Edward’s abdication came the arrival of the shy Duke of York, George VI.

On 25 October last year, Thérèse Coffey became Defra Secretary. On 2 November, Sir James Dyson wrote to her. The famed inventor, who is the biggest owner and active farmer of agricultural land in Britain, outlined the problems of producing food sustainably and profitably, inviting her to visit one of his farms and meet him. No reply. A week later, Sir James’s office contacted Ms Coffey’s office and were assured her reply would be sought. None came. On 8 February this year, his office tried again. Two days later, her special adviser told the Dyson team that the original letter had been lost. Sir James re-sent it. On 24 February, having received no reply, his office checked once more. Ministers would review the draft reply next week, they were told.

Easter Monday marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. One of the most interesting things ever written by its most famous architect, Tony Blair, appeared (in the Sunday Telegraph) at Easter 1996, two years earlier. The piece, largely devoid of his vague boosterism, suggested he had thought about his subject. Under the title, ‘Why I am a Christian’, Blair wrote of Pontius Pilate: ‘The intriguing thing… is the degree to which he tried to do the good thing rather than the bad. He commands our moral attention not because he was a bad man but because he was so nearly a good man. One can imagine him agonising, seeing that Jesus had done nothing wrong, and wishing to release him.

When you read the Guardian free online, a yellow notice appears asking you for money (‘Will you invest in the Guardian?’) to support its fearless journalism. But now arises a donor’s dilemma. After two years’ work, the paper has just produced a full report on and apology from its current owner for its founders’ involvement in slavery. The historian David Olusoga, part of the project, says that what the Guardian owes the descendants of slavery for this is ‘an unpayable debt’. The paper is attempting to pay it, however, setting aside £10 million for the purpose of restorative justice over ten years. So for the conscientious Guardian reader (is there any other kind?

Obviously it is not the fault of Ofsted that a headteacher, Ruth Perry, killed herself after her school, formerly rated ‘outstanding’, was downgraded to ‘inadequate’ by its inspectors. Suicide is, by definition, the decision of the person committing it. It is also true that second-rate schools and teaching unions detest inspections precisely because they keep them up to the mark. Nevertheless, Ofsted does need to think carefully about the impact of that word ‘inadequate’ when linked, as it was in the case of Ms Perry’s school, with another word, ‘safeguarding’. I saw what happened when the same charge was laid against Ampleforth College. ‘Safeguarding’ is a word that contains many things.

There are 20 BBC Singers and they cost less than one Gary Lineker. Unlike Lineker, they have broken no rules, but the BBC want to close them down. They have worked in a cave in Maida Vale for a hundred years and it is quite possible that top BBC executives, much too busy to listen to the Corporation’s own cultural output, know almost nothing about the Singers. They probably do not know, for instance, that the BBC Singers have a nice line in singing the Match of the Day theme tune. The Singers are a prime example of the sort of thing which justifies the BBC’s unique privilege of raising money through the licence fee. They are central to Britain’s musical ecology and keep our great choral tradition alive by commissioning new work in a way no commercial organisation could manage.

The Sue Gray phenomenon fascinates me as an example of the perils of thinking you are good. (A related case study is that of Sir Keir Starmer.) It strikes me again and again that the most self-deceiving people in modern public life are those who publicly set themselves on the side of virtue. You see this in senior civil servants, judges, university vice-chancellors, NHS administrators, green businesses, heads of big charities and aid organisations. ‘We do good, so we can do no wrong’ is the great non-sequitur of the age, and the proliferation of ‘standards in public life’, ‘propriety and ethics’ committees, experts on ESG, diversity, inclusion, decarbonisation, transparency etc only makes things worse.