Will Heaven

The monks of Downside Abbey in Somerset elected a new abbot last Thursday, according to sixth-century rules laid down by St Benedict. The next day, they sent an email notification saying they had voted ‘to make a new start and to seek a new place to live’. It was a shock to those who know the place. The monks will leave behind a beautiful abbey church built in the Gothic Revival style — its 166ft tower visible for miles around — a monastery and cloisters, the largest monastic library in Britain and a grand-looking public school with more than 300 pupils. It’s as if a piece of English Catholicism, like a decaying chunk of church masonry, has fallen away. But it has been a long time coming.

Edward Colston sleeps with the fishes. A mob of Bristolians has toppled the statue of one of their city’s founding fathers, Saddam-style, and lobbed the poor fellow into the docks. Other footage on social media shows protesters kneeling on his brass neck, as if he had something to do with modern-day police brutality in the United States. What on earth has caused this madness, which looked like violent scenes from the English reformation? As is obvious, it’s not really much to do with George Floyd, the man suffocated to death by police last month in Minneapolis. The controversy around Colston has been raging for years in Bristol. A mega-rich philanthropist around the year 1700, he is the nearest thing the city has to a patron saint.

We learnt this weekend that the London Bridge attacker, Usman Khan, had been jailed in 2012 along with eight other men for terrorism offences, and had close links to the group planning to bomb the London stock exchange, among other targets. If so, why was he allowed to travel to the heart of London while released on licence? It is highly likely that he would have been restricted from travel to London and that the probation service and possibly police therefore gave special permission for him to attend. The Sunday Telegraph’s coverage indicated as much yesterday. So it looks as if there has been a fatal error here: Khan hoodwinked the authorities into letting him attend an event near London bridge presumably because its theme was rehabilitation and prison education.

Recently, Fraser Nelson, Editor of the Spectator, hosted a roundtable lunch in the boardroom at 22 Old Queen Street, in association with Prudential. On the agenda was the question: ‘In our ageing society, can we afford retirement?

You need a strong stomach to be Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, as a letter from Peter Clarke — the current holder of the title — proved this week. HMP Birmingham was in an ‘appalling’ state during his unannounced visit at the start of August. ‘We saw evidence of bodily fluids left unattended, including blood and vomit… next to numerous rat droppings.’ His findings marked a dramatic new low for the prison estate. But they won’t surprise anyone who has recently worked in or visited a bog-standard English jail. When I was appointed speechwriter to Michael Gove at the Ministry of Justice two years ago, I was given a whistle-stop tour of a few of them to get a better idea of my brief.

Twenty years ago, Douai, a monastic boarding school in West Berkshire, shocked parents with an announcement that it was ‘no longer viable’. Pupil numbers had fallen through the floor — below 200 — and the sums didn’t add up. So four centuries of history were brought to an end and the boys were sent packing. Now those in the know worry about two more prestigious institutions — Ampleforth, the so-called Catholic Eton in North Yorkshire, and Downside, its more modest Somerset relation. As a former pupil of the latter I’ve been hoping the rumours are unfounded. The school, like Ampleforth, is a remarkable place that produces nice, well-rounded boys and girls. The monks, for the most part, are decent men, trying to live their vocations faithfully.

The Queen has done something quite extraordinary today: she has, very carefully, made an explicitly political intervention at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in London. She told assembled world leaders: It is my sincere wish that the Commonwealth will continue to offer stability and continuity for future generations and will decide that one day, the Prince of Wales should carry on the important work started by my father in 1949. In other words, the Queen wants Prince Charles to be the next head of the Commonwealth. No ifs, no buts. In itself, it's no surprise she supports this idea. It makes sense for Britain's monarch to lead an organisation that evolved out of what the Queen – on her 21st birthday – called 'our great imperial family'.

This morning the new Justice Secretary, David Gauke, delivered one of those keynote speeches about prisons. You know the sort: half an hour in front of a crowd of 'stakeholders' at a convenient London location. It's increasingly hard to take such occasions seriously. Not only are we on the sixth justice secretary since 2010 – meaning it will be a miracle if Gauke is in post in 12 or 18 months' time – but it's only 78 days since the last newly appointed one, David Lidington, gave his own keynote speech about prison reform. When ministers are sentenced to a spell at the Ministry of Justice, they know they’ll be out before long.