Douglas Murray

Nobody is ever 'invited' to appear before Margaret Hodge and the Commons public accounts committee. They are always 'hauled' before her. Thus it was with a whole phalanx of BBC executives, past and present, this afternoon. There are really two things which came out of the appearance of Lord (Chris) Patten, Mark Thompson et al. The first is the obvious reminder that the BBC has become a strangely upside-down organisation of late. Rich in senior management, it has spent recent years farming out major portions of news and other programme-making, apparently so that it could concentrate on the really important task of management. Of course the BBC is not the only public body to have suffered this upside-down-itis.

Readers may be interested to know that I have a piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal on the House of Commons vote last week on Syria. David Davis MP has a piece in the same edition making some broadly similar points. For me the conundrum of Syria now comes down to one particular problem. That is one which the House of Commons stumbled over last week and which the US Congress is likely to stumble over in the week ahead. The West has now given ample warning to President Assad of its intention to strike at some point. President Obama has famously drawn a red-line over the use of chemical weapons. The problem then is this.

What is the one consolation for an MP who has beaten all their colleagues to the top job? It can hardly be the luxury of having your life, circle and income open to alternate snorts of envy and derision. Nor can it be the quagmire into which nearly all attempts to solve the nation’s domestic problems now fall.  Only one thing allows prime ministers of a country such as Britain to feel they have power. That is exercising it. And nothing exercises power more than deciding which wars to fight. In opposition, David Cameron did not much like the idea of war, and derided his colleagues for their admiration of Tony Blair. Yet in office — as Syria is revealing — he is treading a very similar path.

Back in the 1960s, the producers of the Tonight programme had a running joke for linking the show’s segments. They would use lines like: ‘And that item commemorated the 23rd anniversary of….’ Or: ‘On Tuesday Mr Jones would have been 73.’ There is something about anniversaries, however audaciously crowbarred in, that always gives the illusion of order amid the chaos and relevance among the accidental. But today anniversary-itis has not only stopped being a gag. It has become a bore. What are, after all, merely accidents of the calendar have in some places become the dominant factors in our national life. Sometimes it is anniversaries of major world events, at others a coincidence of an individual birth, marriage or death.

It may not have been the smartest move to detain David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of Guardian ‘journalist’ Glenn Greenwald, under the Terrorism Act.  But the explosion of righteous anger over the episode is ridiculous. Starting with the outraged claim that Miranda was arrested only because of his connection with Greenwald. Wrong. Greenwald himself has previously told journalists that his partner assists him in his work. That present ‘work’ consists of engineering the leak of massive amounts of classified intelligence from a source – Edward Snowden – currently granted asylum in Moscow.

As though the sunny weather and the royal baby were not enough, here comes yet more good news. The European Union has finally banned the military wing of Hezbollah. This is something I have argued for often, including here, here, and here. After recent trials of Hezbollah operatives and Hezbollah operations – including the Bulgaria bombing – on European soil the decision did seem inevitable. Yet there is a cloud on the silver lining - which is that the EU, in somewhat characteristic fashion, has only managed to do a partly good thing. While they have banned the ‘military wing’ of Hezbollah they continue to allow the ‘political’ wing to fundraise and recruit in Europe.

The weekend brought the sad news of the death of Kenneth Minogue. Intellectually and physically active to the last, he died on Friday at the age of 82, while returning from a conference on the Galapagos Islands. Spectator readers will remember his essays and reviews for the magazine stretching over many decades. Some may have been fortunate enough to have been taught by him at the London School of Economics. Ken was, needless to say, one of the most brilliant conservative political thinkers of his generation. He was also the most wonderful man. He had that rare mixture of great intelligence and twinkly, irrepressible good-humour.

As an addendum to yesterday’s post I thought I might remind readers of something about Keith Vaz. The chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee has of course just applauded the banning of two American authors from Britain because of their criticism of Islam. So I turn to Joseph Anton – the illuminating fatwa-memoir released last year by Salman Rushdie. It contains a remarkable anecdote of the moment immediately after the news arrives of Ayatollah Khomeini's order of murder. Rushdie (incidentally writing of himself in the third person) describes walking into his literary agent’s office in London. His agent gives him an astonished look. ‘He was on the phone with the British-Indian Member of Parliament for Leicester East, Keith Vaz.

According to the Home Office if you are a non-Muslim and you make the following statement your presence will be deemed ‘not conducive to the public good’ and you will be barred from entering the United Kingdom: ‘It [Islam] is a religion and a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society. Because of media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.