Charles Moore

As the former editor of a Sunday newspaper, I know their front pages can be rather confected. There is sometimes a shortage of news at the weekend. But I was nevertheless stunned by the front-page splash of the latest Sunday Times. ‘Revealed’, it said in red letters, ‘The truth about the peers who are born to rule’. This ‘investigation’ showed there are currently 85 hereditary peers in the House of Lords, their average age is 71, 46 per cent of them went to Eton, none is a woman and they or their predecessors have claimed £47 million in ‘expenses’ (actually mainly allowances) ‘since 2001’. It was the ‘since 2001’ which rather gave the game away.

The recently departed head of MI6, Sir Alex Younger, wants to balance China’s ideological antagonism to the West with the need for coexistence. Commenting on the government’s new ‘integrated review’, he says we must fight back with technological innovation and stronger alliances but avoid a second Cold War. He advocates ‘One Planet: Two Systems’ — a globalised echo of the Anglo-Chinese Hong Kong Agreement by which Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997 under the principle of ‘One Country: Two Systems’. Sir Alex’s is an interesting analogy, but the important thing to note about ‘One Country: Two Systems’ is that China adhered to it only for 20 years and is now trashing it. Could the same problem take over the world?

On Tuesday, I was asked to appear on BBC Newsnight to talk about the Sussexes’ interview. When told it would be presented by Emily Maitlis, I declined, on the grounds that ever since her political speech against Dominic Cummings on the programme last year, I have had no confidence in her fairness. Sure enough, she spoke on the programme that night of ‘the sense of the attempted suicide’ of the Duchess of Sussex — though Meghan had mentioned only ‘suicidal thoughts’.

I have been slow in the uptake. When I saw the Duchess of Sussex complain in her interview clips about how her son had not been given a title and then move on to the alleged racism of an alleged speculation by an unnamed but probably royal person about the possible skin colour of the child she was expecting, I did not immediately see the connection. The full interview makes it clear. Meghan is saying that Archie was not allowed to be a prince because of his skin colour. Oprah: ‘Do you think it’s because of his race?

Visiting Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1980s, I found myself warmly welcomed (I cannot remember why) by a lively group of Catholic feminists. Their heroine was Mother Cornelia Connelly. I was embarrassed not to have heard of her since she did her greatest work near us in Sussex. Hers is quite a story.  In 1831, aged 22, she married Pierce Connelly, an Episcopalian minister, in her native Philadelphia. Both later converted to Catholicism. Pierce wanted to become a priest, which was difficult, what with a wife and five children. The couple eventually signed a perpetual deed of separation so he could be ordained. While still looking after her younger children, Cornelia became a nun. Coming to England, she established a teaching order, the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.

There is a ‘pervasive presence of Chinese military-linked conglomerates and universities in the sponsorship of high-technology research centres in many leading UK universities’. When the think tank Civitas recently revealed this, Cambridge University denounced the report as misinformation and pushed Civitas to qualify it. Thus, when Civitas had referred to Cambridge’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China’s National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), Cambridge wanted it added that the MoU had been ‘signed in the wake of the UK… government’s encouragement to create a “golden decade” for the UK-China relationship. That MoU produced no research, no collaborations, no funding and has been expired for three years’.

Sir William Macpherson of Cluny has died. His obituaries praise him for his 1998 inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case. His report did indeed shed light on the failure of the police to catch the young man’s killers. It has had, however, a profound and bad effect on our law. The report’s recommendations redefined a racist incident: ‘A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.’ This definition means that absolutely anything in the world could be a racist incident, because it relies wholly on what a complainant ‘perceives’. The definition’s use of the word ‘victim’ also implies acceptance that every person who claims to be a victim is one.

‘Tencent Wykeham’ has a ring to it. It captures how easily British universities can be bought. It is the new name for what was until now the Wykeham Professorship of Physics at New College, Oxford, now acquired by the huge Chinese techno-conglomerate Tencent for £700,000. William of Wykeham founded New College and Winchester in the 14th century. ‘Tencent Winchester’ next? The problem, which Oxford seems to ignore, is that Tencent acts for the national security interests of the Chinese Communist party. It propagandises too: for Xi Jinping’s address to the 19th Party Congress in 2017, it brought out a mobile game called ‘Clap for Xi Jinping: An Awesome Speech’.

Some Leavers are perturbed that Lord Frost was suddenly stood down as the next National Security Adviser. This anxiety may be misplaced. If he gets the necessary authority in No. 10, his new job of making our European policy fit with our entire foreign policy and making both serve a sovereign nation will be just what is needed. More discouraging, though, is his replacement choice at the NSC. Sir Stephen Lovegrove comes from the Ministry of Defence but is more renowned for tweeting the hashtag of Black Lives Matter and getting generals into rainbow lanyards than for helping the armed services adjust to war in the information age. His appointment is a victory for the Blob over Boris’s attempts at reform.

The Times is changing its style of describing people. ‘We will no longer be according people courtesy titles at the second mention on Times news pages,’ say the paper’s new rules. Thus Lord Adonis would become, on second mention, ‘Adonis’, and ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby’ would dwindle to ‘Welby’. Until now, the first would have remained ‘Lord Adonis’ throughout and the second would have been ‘Mr Welby’. In the old style, Severus Snape would have appeared thus at first mention, but become ‘Professor Snape’ at second. Now he has his professorship at first mention and afterwards becomes merely ‘Snape’.

A seemingly obscure battle in an ecclesiastical court could threaten the security of every historic monument in the care of the Church of England. As reported in this column last year, Jesus College, Cambridge, is trying to extirpate the memorials (while keeping the money) of its greatest historic benefactor, Tobias Rustat. Rustat was a loyal servant of King Charles II who helped him escape from the battle of Worcester, looked after him in exile, and became his Yeoman of the Robes after the Restoration. He also gave huge sums to Jesus (as to St John’s, Oxford, the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, St Paul’s Cathedral and the University of Cambridge). His sin was investing in the Royal African Company, one of whose activities was trading in slaves.

‘Postcode lottery!’ people scream when one area feels less well treated than another in a public service — in this case, the rollout of the Covid vaccines. It is a silly phrase, if you believe in the devolution of power and the importance of locality. The point of local health trusts, councils and so on is to let local people run most of the things that matter to them. The logical result is that — even within a national set-up like the NHS — there will be differences. If there were no differences, it would not follow that everyone was getting the same high-quality service. It would much more likely show that the service was uniformly bad, because all convoys, to remain in convoy, must go at the speed of the slowest. Visible difference is a spur to improvement.

Domenica Lawson, daughter of Rosa and Dominic, the former editor of this paper, has Down’s syndrome. She is classified as ‘extremely clinically vulnerable’ to Covid and has therefore been living with her parents since October. When Rosa was briefly not around to interpret last week, Domenica opened a letter to herself from the NHS: ‘You are considered to be at highest risk of becoming very unwell… you are someone with Down’s syndrome, and so the government now considers you to be in the highest risk category.’ This shocked Domenica. ‘I have spent the last year trying to protect her from the worst of the news and now she is more scared than ever,’ Rosa tells me.

Have you heard about John Price destroying a stretch of the river Lugg? If not, you have led a sheltered existence.  This month, Mr Price, who lives in the Luggside farm he was born in 66 years ago, in Kingsland, Herefordshire, has been attacked by the BBC (who ran denunciations of him unnamed), the Wildlife Trust (‘extreme vandalism’), Monty Don (‘it breaks my heart’), the Daily Mirror etc. He is said to have destroyed habitats by dredging, and by laying waste the bank on one side.  Something about the media unanimity aroused my suspicions, so I followed up. Mr Price, clearly a determined man, has spoken out in the Herefordshire Times.

Many ingenious ways of evading Covid-19 have been devised to assist commerce, fewer to assist worship. In our next-door village, however, is Darvell, a large, longstanding Bruderhof community, part of a worldwide Anabaptist movement. Always welcoming to neighbours, they normally hold a carol concert in Advent. This year, such a thing is forbidden. Instead, the brotherhood devised a ‘Christmas Drive Through Darvell’. I slightly feared a gigantesque version of the dropsical Father Christmases and reindeer which people stick on their roofs, but I was wrong. At dusk on Saturday, we arrived with three generations of our family. The drive stretches well over a mile before exiting into another lane.

My inbox is crowded with messages from Old Etonians attacking Simon Henderson, the headmaster of Eton. They are furious that he sacked a master, Will Knowland, for putting on YouTube his talk to boys about masculinity, and then refusing to take it down. As one complainant puts it: ‘Eton and Woke are both four-letter words, but they should have nothing in common beyond that.’ I agree, but the case is more complicated. In disciplinary questions, one must ask: ‘What else could the boss have done?’ Suppose I, when a newspaper editor, had told a staff journalist that he could not publish an article he had submitted, yet he went ahead and did so. I think I have would have been right to punish him severely, even if I had been wrong about the merits of his piece.

Last week, I wrote about ‘Frost & Lewis’ (David and Oliver), leaders of our country’s team at the Brexit negotiations, guarantors of our Brexit intentions. It is they who have throughout maintained the essential position — that we are becoming an independent state and therefore will not trade sovereignty for market access. It is them, therefore, whom the EU wishes to neutralise. Hopes have risen in Brussels after the Downing Street ‘Carrie coup’ against Dominic Cummings. Frost & Lewis now lack a close friend at the court of King Boris except, possibly, the King himself. So it may be a good thing that Covid isolation forced them to return to London at the end of last week. They are negotiating from their base, close to their leader.