Charles Moore

The great achievement of the Scottish Nationalists is to persuade people outside the borders of their own nation — including the London-based media — to equate them with the Scottish people. Obviously, they are their chief elected representatives just now, but the result of the referendum on Scottish independence quite clearly showed that the equation is false. So when Nicola Sturgeon says there has to be another referendum because of Brexit, the equation should be much more firmly challenged. There is no moral reason why the result of a declaredly UK-wide referendum should require another vote in part of the kingdom (next, UDI for London?). Nor is there a constitutional right.

Lord Heseltine has been denounced because he says he will vote against the government over Brexit in the House of Lords. It seems terrifically unfair. Has there ever been an occasion, in his long political career, when he has not been in favour of British membership of the EU (or EEC)? Why should he change now, aged 83, from that honourably held, spiritedly asserted, if wrong, position? Can’t a few Europhiles, in the mirror-image of John Major’s Eurosceptic ‘bastards’, be bastards too? The only inconsistency in Hezza’s last stand is that this is the one time in his half-century stance on Europe when he has asserted the right of Parliament to decide anything.

As Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader, has recently discovered, there usually comes a point in a British political career when you have to apologise to Liverpool. The origins of this custom are obscure, rather like the rule that the Cap of Maintenance must accompany the Sovereign to the State Opening of Parliament, but it must not be questioned. It is no good asking why Liverpool should receive more apologies than, for instance, Runcorn or Milton Keynes: you must just say sorry. Rather than having to stammer an inconvenient ‘mea culpa’ at a by- election it would be more sensible to get your apology in first.

It is almost always unwise to postpone the introduction of a big, scheduled tax change, but often tempting at the time. George Osborne, when Chancellor of the Exchequer in the coalition government, postponed the revaluation of business rates, when it was due two years ago, for obvious political reasons. So now it is happening, and it hurts worse than it would have then. The current rates are based on the rental value of business properties in 2010. Since then, the scene is transformed. The internet has called the whole concept of the ordinary, physical shop into question. Values have vastly altered and the political problem – as with the poll tax in the 1980s – is that losers are more vocal than gainers.

As we have been reminded this week, the most famous words (apart from ‘Order, order’) ever uttered by a Speaker of the House of Commons were those of William Lenthall. When King Charles I entered Parliament in search of the ‘five birds’ in 1642, Lenthall knelt to the King but told him, ‘I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me.’ It is only on that basis that the Speaker speaks. As soon as John Bercow said — of the speculative possibility that Donald Trump should address both Houses of Parliament — ‘I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and sexism’ meant that the speech should not take place, he was out of order.

As we have been reminded this week, the most famous words (apart from ‘Order, order’) ever uttered by a Speaker of the House of Commons were those of William Lenthall. When King Charles I entered Parliament in search of the ‘five birds’ in 1642, Lenthall knelt to the King but told him, ‘I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me.’ It is only on that basis that the Speaker speaks. As soon as John Bercow said — of the speculative possibility that Donald Trump should address both Houses of Parliament — ‘I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and sexism’ meant that the speech should not take place, he was out of order.

Visiting Northern Ireland last autumn, I met a very prosperous man who enthused to me about the Renewable Heat Incentive in the province. It paid him to install wood-pellet boilers and heat his rural business. After the political scandal broke, I understood why he was so happy. The RHI, as managed in Northern Ireland, had no upper limit, so there was no cheating involved in getting as many non-domestic boilers as you could manage. If you installed the boiler you got paid £1.60 for every £1 of pellets you burned, without limit. I gather there was particularly massive take-up by members of the Democratic Unionist Party, and their Free Presbyterian churches glow red day and night in consequence.