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Unfortunately, beauty and brains seldom reside at the same site. And though anger does sometimes improve people’s looks (women hate hearing this, can’t imagine why), it invariably has the opposite effect on their mental faculties.

Nick Clegg proved at least the second part of this observation by blowing his top the other day. What caused his ire was a very timid suggestion that perhaps now would be a good time to repatriate some of our erstwhile powers from the EU. Not all, God forbid. Some. Very, very few. That was enough to set Nick off. The kind of people who say such things are demagogues! Populists! What we should focus on is jobs! And growth! Blimey! There, there, Nick. Take it easy, mate. Look, you’re getting red in the face. Loosen your tie, sit down, relax. There, you’re looking much better. Good lad. But don’t bandy ‘demagogue’ and ‘populist’ around ever again, all right? People might talk about glass houses and stones, so you’ll get upset again. God only knows what you’d say next.

First aid out of the way, let’s look at what Clegg actually said. One can infer that, according to him, trying to reclaim some of our sovereignty from Brussels would be tantamount to no jobs and no growth. And conversely, the EUSSR equals growth and jobs. To proffer this equation at the best of times would be neither amusing nor clever. To insist on it now, when Europe is looking at the biggest economic disaster in its history, is, well… I don’t want to cause another tantrum by finding the right adjective that would do justice to this folly. And my wife says I mustn’t swear.

Since about 25 years ago, when I first took interest in the subject, I haven’t heard a single rational argument in favour of the EU that can’t be destroyed in 10 seconds flat by any averagely educated person. Lately I’ve been hearing from all sorts of people that the consequences of us cutting loose would be too awful to contemplate. We must be in the EU to trade with Europe. Right. So without signing such treasonous acts as the Maastricht Treaty we couldn’t be a trading nation. Shame they forgot to tell that to the Duke of Wellington, that notorious eurosceptic. In fact, Britain did reasonably well in that department throughout the 19th century, with no European commissioner anywhere in sight.

So suppose we left the EUSSR tomorrow. Would the French stop selling their Bordeaux and Brie (pasteurised) to les rosbifs? Or the Germans their Volkswagens and Brauns? Europe has a healthy trade surplus with us, and the burghers of either Calais or Cologne are unlikely to cut off their economic noses to spite their faces. Any reduction in trade will hurt them more than it would hurt us.

Moreover, rather than bleeding both domestic and foreign taxpayers white (an idea close to what passes for Clegg’s heart), Britain could then offer all sorts of concessions to investors and traders, turning herself into a bigger Channel Island, but one with old culture and architecture. Stop trading with us? They’d be elbowing one another out of the way to get into the queue. The resulting revenue could then be used to repatriate some of our manufacturing capacity. This even at the risk of upsetting those ‘conservative’, which is to say Friedmanite, economists who insist we can all get rich by selling houses and bonds to one another, while letting those swarthy foreigners actually make things. The first part of that theory was proven wrong in 2008, if any proof was necessary. The second part doesn’t answer the question of jobs, the kind traditionally done by the working classes. The assumption was that, once liberated from degrading themselves on the assembly line, they’d all become systems analysts. Instead they’ve become an unemployed, unemployable and brutalised lumpen proletariat, assisted in that development by education that doesn’t educate.

Wouldn’t this offer a better prospect for jobs and growth than becoming a gau in the Fourth Reich ever could? Of course it would. But it wouldn’t offer better prospects for Nick Clegg’s job and growth, and that’s the whole point. Just put yourself into the poor chap’s shoes. Chances are he’ll be out of a job at the next election, if not earlier. I’m guessing here, but the plan must have been to go back to his political roots in the EUSSR, like ‘the wind [that] returneth again to its circles.’ He’ll never be Prime Minister here, will he? But the chances for Clegg to land a top EU job would be nil if Britain kept even marginally aloof. If by then a single European state has been set up, as seems likely, with Britain not at its centre, all the cushy jobs will go to the likes of Monti and Merkel, not to any subject of a recalcitrant monarchy.

No wonder Nick is angry. Wouldn’t you be?

 

When the West was still governed by statesmen rather than spivs, John Quincy Adams said, ‘[America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.’ After the aforementioned shift took place, John F. Kennedy disagreed: ‘Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.’

The listeners were supposed to jump up and scream ‘let’s march!!!’, rather than sit back and ask awkward questions. Any price, Mr President? Any burden? Any hardship? Can we put at least some limit on those? Does the price go as high as self-extinction? Impoverishment? Social disintegration? And what if our present friends change their minds and become our foes after we’ve armed them to the teeth? Are we certain their definition of liberty is the same as ours? And when you say ‘we’, do you mean yourself, your government or all of us? What if we, ‘the people’, feel differently from the way your royal ‘we’ does?

Alas, moderntiy breeds a populace incapable of asking such questions forcefully enough, if at all. Whether such unquestioning docility spills out into a tuneless rendition of Stars and Stripes or a mighty roar of Horst Wessel is only a matter of the time, place and response desired by the demagogue.

Thus Americans, and we along with them, nod their assent when fed reassurances that we aren’t fighting Islam. We’re fighting Islamism, of the kind that makes its adherents fly planes into tall buildings. Such reassurances are either mendacious or ignorant, or usually both. In any modern war, agression is initiated by the impassioned and empowered elite, not the people at large. It wasn’t, for example, the German people who started the war, but the Nazi elite. But this irrefutable consideration didn’t prevent that original Eurosceptic Sir Arthur Harris from doing what had to be done.

What would John Q Adams do if he were alive today? Assuming he still kept his principles, he wouldn’t embark on the futile task of building nations at the cost of thousands of American lives — and millions in the nations being built. He’d also know enough about the history of Islam to know it’s an aggressive creed, with world domination built into its doctrinal DNA. That hasn’t changed in the last 1,400 years and is unlikely to change in the next thousand. What has been variable is the West’s ability to ‘champion and vindicate’ its own freedom. This is now at its lowest ebb, and the current bellicosity of Americans assisted by their satraps (well, us) only serves to underscore this fact, not to deny it.

If they set themselves the task that’s sound ethically, intellectually and morally — that of protecting their rather tasteless architecture against planes cum bombs — they could do a much better job of it by relying on punitive prevention rather than sanctimonious, laser-guided lessons in democracy. It would be simple enough to declare that the West is not going to take issue with what goes on within the Muslim world. If they choose to castrate their women, maim their thieves or stone their adulterers, they should by all means go ahead (we can’t stop them anyway). But any act of terrorism against any Western country will result in massive, and Harris-style indiscriminate, retaliation. That could take the form of confiscation (rather than merely freezing) of all Muslim assets in the West, massive bombing raids on the sites dear to their rulers’ hearts, occupation of the oil fields, economic blocade (as opposed to limp-wristed sanctions), you name it. Whatever works.

The lines would be clearly drawn, the measures prepared in advance and put into a trip-up mode, we’d all know where we stand. But to act this way the West has to regain its erstwhile self-confidence, its certainty that it stands for the God-given truth, not something as transient and nebulous as ‘democracy’. Yes, and pigs will fly, though of course not to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking of founding a new lobby, the Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism. Can I count on you as a member?

 

Sorry, this headline is just a cheap trick to catch your attention. I’m not suggesting the tents outside St Paul’s or Westminster Hall should be shot up, although the idea isn’t without some theoretical, purely aesthetic attraction. But in practice not only such a measure would be inhuman, but, as the Americans prove, it is also unnecessary. The other night New York’s finest, taking their cue from similar actions in Oakland, California, and Portland, Washington, managed to wipe out their own obscene eyesores without resorting to anything heavier than batons, floodlights and pepper spray. In the end, they didn’t even have to use the spray.

But then of course they didn’t have to worry about Vince Cable and the Archbishop of Canterbury telling them, as they tell us, that the tent dwellers have a point. Which point is that, other than that of those scrofulous youths being as feeble of mind as they are infantile of emotion? Contextually, it has to be that capitalism is to blame for our present misfortunes. Therefore we must have no, or at least less, capitalism and more, much more, socialism. How much more, exactly? At present HMG spends close to 50% of our GDP, about 75% in the Celtic fringe. Should it be as high as in Stalin’s Russia (85%)? Higher? But there such tents really would have been machinegunned, with all the dwellers’ families shipped off to concentration camps. Would the St Paul’s youths take this kind of rough with the smooth of socialism? Those of us who, unlike the youths, pay taxes tend to pay about 60%, all in. Should it be 100%? But then, if Arthur Laffer is to be believed, as in this case he should be, no one would work and HMG would get no revenue at all. Even the 50% marginal tax rate has produced a loss of revenue, though Vince thinks it ‘sent an important message’. The same message, one supposes, as that sent by the tents.

It isn’t capitalism but socialism that’s the immediate culprit in our current plight. Specifically, it’s the morally corrupting and financially unsustainable levels of public spending, promoted by our spivocrats. Ever since they discovered the trick of buying their votes with our money, there has been no stopping them. The calculation is simple: in the absence of moral restraints that can in the West only come from Christianity, there will always be more non-working wealth consumers than hard-working wealth producers. So give them what they want, squeeze the producers, and our spivocrats will have jobs for life, here or in the EUSSR. And if there aren’t enough homegrown freeloaders, then we can always import millions of likeminded outlanders — salt strewn on our civilisation to make sure nothing else will ever grow again. Give them a few years to become voters, and they’ll never have to become workers. Will they vote for a party that inscribes small government on its banners? Fat chance.

That’s the real logic behind the welfare state, and never mind the mock-Christian noises about looking after the less fortunate. Those truly bereft of fortune die of neglect in our welfare state’s hospitals or freeze to death in their welfare state’s flats. We’ve always had the poor (‘the poor always ye have with you,’ went the un-PC adage of that formerly popular proto-conservative). But never in the past did we have governments that self-perpetuate by trying to impoverish the whole population.

Is that the message, Mr Cable? Is that the point, Archbishop?

After ordering the clearout of Wall Street occupiers, Michael Blomberg, New York’s mayor, said something no European politician would ever utter: ‘Given the choice between human rights and public safety, I’d choose safety every time.’ A simple message, unadorned by any ‘gosh-crikey-jolly-hockey-sticks’ twitches we find so endearing in our own politcians. I wonder if he’d fancy the job of Mayor of London. Or that of Archbishop of Canterbury. Yes I know Mr Blomberg’s isn’t a Christian, but then Dr Williams isn’t much of one either. 

Neither are men. However, some women are qualified to hold high judical jobs. So are some men. Some women are better qualified than some (or even any) men. Some men are better qualified than some (or even any) women. Now, societies in which such primordial truths have to be enunciated are in deep trouble. And societies in which Ken ‘Kenneth’ Clark can be the Justice Secretary and Lord Neuberger the Master of the Rolls are in deeper trouble still.

Mr Clark wants priority to be given to women and ethnic minorities when it comes to top judicial jobs. He agrees with Lord Neuberger that the current proportion is ‘worryingly’ small. Both refer to Section 159 of the 2010 Equality Act as a justification for their unjustifiable worries. Both accept the Act’s provision that ‘A [must be] as qualified as B to be recruited or promoted’ ahead of B. Let’s ignore that, if an Equality Act talks about hiring A ahead of B, it ought to be more appropriately called Inequality Act. It’s logic and semantics I’m talking about, not politics.

What worries me is the modern tendency to treat people not as heterogenous individuals but as homogenous groups. This propensity goes against the grain of what used to be called Christendom — and is one of the reasons why Christendom ‘used to be’, but no longer is. That each person is a free, autonomous and unique entity was a founding truth of our civilisation when we still had one. But I don’t wish to take Messrs Clark and Neuberger out of their depth by referring to such matters. Instead, they ought to consider observable, empirical facts.

Such as that it’s borderline impossible to find two equally qualified candidates for any high-level job. At least, I never saw such a pair in the 20-odd years that I was in a position to hire. It is possible to find two similar CVs. But CVs don’t do the work — it’s people who do that. And all sorts of imponderables come in when two persons’ ability to do a top job is being considered, the kind of things one can’t put into a barrister’s CV: strength of character, firmness of convictions, ability to work with others, sternness leavened with mercy and so forth. (I know all this sounds too trivial to mention, but I’m trying to make the point for the benefit of Messrs Clark and Neuberger so even they can understand.)

It takes much sagacity and experience to weigh all those factors to choose the right candidate. Thus a candidate’s belonging to any group defined by sex, race or complement of limbs is an utter irrelevance, one that needlessly encumbers a process that’s devilishly difficult to begin with. Such group identity should not even be a remote consideration in a country ruled by law, where top judicial appointments ought to be the most critical of all.

But in a country increasingly ruled not by laws evolved over centuries but by diktat from the EUSSR, perhaps such appointments really have little significance. So perhaps Messrs Clark and Neuberger have a point after all. Do let us have judges who are all black, lesbian cripples appointed to the job specifically because they possess those characteristics. It doesn’t matter any longer. But, for old times’ sake, can we at least make sure they all have law degrees?

US and EUSSR politicians are making bien-pensant noises along the lines of ‘Egypt’s future will be determined by Egyptian people.’ In other words, by a democratic process. A laudable idea, that. And it would be even more so if proponents of democracy über alles were to consider the substance of what they are proposing, not just the form. For what matters isn’t method of government but the kind of society it produces. So what kind of society is democracy likely to produce in Egypt (and elsewhere in the region)? We don’t know for sure. But do let’s listen to what the Egyptians are saying.

According to a recent Pew poll, 82% of Egyptians regard stoning adulterous women as just, 77% approve of chopping off thieves’ hands, 84% favour the death penalty for apostasy from Islam, 59% describe themselves as fundamentalists. A question arises: Following perfectly democratic elections in Egypt, how long before we develop nostalgia for Mubarak?

We can argue the pros and cons of democratic method till the fundamentalists come home. But it’s clear that at times, and in places, there is madness in it.

 

 

According to Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, surface-to-air missiles will be deployed to protect the 2012 Olympics. Since by then our armed forces will have dwindled away to nothing, I wonder who’ll fire the rockets should the need arise. Presumably it’ll be social workers, the only public servants this side of HMG/EUSSR who have secure job prospects. I do hope they’ll be trained to tell the difference between a jumbo jet descending on Heathrow and one about to crash into Wembley stadium. Just in case, remind me not to fly during the Games.

I apologise for the title: the pun is too obvious. It is, however, appropriate. ‘Cadres decide everything,’ taught Comrade Stalin, and the comrades who run the EUSSR obviously agree. This is laid bare by the appointment of the former European Commissioner Mario Monti as Italy’s new PM. Euro apparatchiks are now at the helm in Italy, Greece and Britain (for the time being only as Deputy PM). Does anyone seriously think these gentlemen will pursue national interests? Just like in the EUSSR’s role model, ‘national’ leaders are selected, not elected. But didn’t Comrade Marx teach that the proletariat has no motherland? What matters isn’t parochial interests but bigger ones: the good of the apparatchiks. I hope someone cancels this obscene show.

The Tory MP was wrong in saying that ‘David Cameron is the worst politician in British history since William Gladstone’. Dave ‘David’ Cameron has ways to go before he can challenge for that prize. Given enought time, I’m sure Dave will get there; he has taken a highly promising start. Dave (I wonder how long before he begins to pronounce his name as even a more vote-winning ‘Dive’) also has the right qualities: understated intelligence, overstated arrogance, absence of principles, no will power in any area other than self-promotion, incompetence even at winning votes (not scoring an outright victory against the party that had steered Britain to economic disaster takes some doing). The boy is clearly going places — but he hasn’t arrived yet. For now, Tony ‘Anthony’ Blair stays way ahead. His leadership position is being maintained even out of office: Glottal-Stop Tony said the other day that we may still want to join the euro in the future. Now here’s a man who has the power of his no convictions. Dave has to work harder before he can unseat Tony.

‘I was wrong’ usually claims this distinction. If so, then Andrew Gowers, the former FT editor, ought to be applauded for his fortitude. He did admit, in the Sunday Times, that he was wrong when agitating for Britain’s entry into the euro 10 years ago and in general cheerleading for the ‘European project’. But there are words that are much more unutterable than admitting one’s mistake. These are ‘I am stupid’, closely rivalled by ‘I am ignorant’. The problem is that those who qualify to makes such admissions are ipso facto incapable of making them. Nothing personal and all that, but Mr Gowers falls into that category. Otherwise he would have known from the word go that the ‘European project’ was wrong historically and culturally — an attempt at creating a federation even out of the culturally, ethnically, religiously and linguistically close states of America led to the bloodiest war in the nation’s history. Closer to home, the contrivance called Yugoslavia had to break up with much bloodshed, even though the differences between, say, Croatia and Serbia were minor compared to those between, say, Greece and Holland. It was wrong politically — as Western governments are supposed to derive legitimacy from public consent, who in his right mind would expect the Finns and Italians to agree on major policies? It was wrong morally — in the absence of public consent the EU can govern only by coercion, blackmail and bribery, even if for the moment it is refraining from the use of violence. And, more appropriate to Mr Gowers’s stock in trade, it was wrong economically — well, you can see why. Now, ‘I told you so’ are possibly the easiest words to roll off one’s tongue. My friends and I, who have been saying all this since before the ‘project’ kicked off for real, are variably successful in restraining ourselves. So here’s my undertaking: if Andrew Gowers says the really hardest words, I promise never to say the easiest ones.

Our venerable Business Secretary has declared that he has ‘sympathy with the emotions that lie behind’ the St Paul tent city. ‘Some of their recommendations aren’t terribly helpful, but that’s not the point.’ I agree: never mind ideas — it’s emotions that count. Driven by his noble feelings and nonexistent ideas, Mr Cable himself ought to move into one of those smelly tents, doing on the floor of St Paul’s what he is doing to the British economy. It has to be said that, in choosing emotions over thoughts, Cable has form. Not so long ago he defended the 50% tax rate by saying that, though the financial effect of it is negative, it does send the right message. Again I agree; it does. And the message is that the likes of Cable ought not to be allowed within a mile of Whitehall — not even as tourists. But not to worry, Vince. There are plenty of opportunities at the EU for bright, emotional men like you.