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As a progressivist of long standing, I welcome Boris Johnson into the fold. Finally, and not before time, he has had his Damascene experience.

As Boris was riding his bicycle to the BBC studios the other day, he saw a flash of lightning and heard a clap of thunder. He screamed and lost consciousness. Or is it conscience? One can get terribly confused with all those cognates.

Anyway, when Boris came to he had a vision of Barroso standing by his side. “Boris why do you persecute me so?’ asked José Manuel. “You’re a berry-berry bad boy. Don’t you know what progress means? It means Brussels, among other things.”

“Thank you, Lord!” screamed Boris. “I’ve seen the light!”

He then pushed the bike aside, jumped on the nearby progressivist horse and rode it to the studio, where he carried José Manuel’s revelations to the world.

“Before I had my visionary experience,” spake Boris, “I drank! I caroused! I dallied with loose women!! Just a week ago – one week! – I was one of the few Tory lost sheep supporting an in-out referendum. But then José Manuel came to me and he showed me the way and the truth. It’s not an in-out referendum we need for our salvation. Only a referendum menu will save us from our own wickedness! A menu of all EU laws! We look at it, say yes to those we like and no to those we don’t like! Long live José Manuel! Long live progress! Alleluia!’

Of course a distinct possibility exists that José Manuel and other EU leaders may have a thing or two to say about Britain’s piecemeal membership, such as ‘Hijo de puta inglès’. But Boris’s party will allay their doubts by finding the right question to ask in the referendum, when it comes.

They’ll let José Manuel guide their hand as they inscribe “Do you think it might be a good idea under some undefined future circumstances to ask Brussels to give us back some of our sovereignty?” Yes, that’s it. Vote yes or vote no, it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Happiness all around, salvation guaranteed. We’ll all go home singing the Progressive Hymn: “You put your left boot in, you put your right boot out! In out, in out, spinning all around! In out, in out, that’s what Boris is about.”

Seeing the spiritual light always rewards the man intellectually. True enough, his conversion enabled Boris to add the kind of subtlety to his thinking that’s beyond the reach of his erstwhile friends, infidels one and all. “With great respect to the in-outers, I don’t think it does boil down to such a simple question,” he said.

And then Boris let those simpletons have the benefit of his newly acquired nuanced thinking. If we left the EU, he explained, “We wouldn’t have any vote at all. Now I don’t think that’s actually a prospect that’s likely to appeal.”

I’d go even further and say that this prospect is likely to appal. But note the irrefutable truth in every revelation vouchsafed by Boris. If we’re no longer a member of the EU, we won’t have a vote in it. Who could argue with this? Now that Boris has said this, it sounds simple, like all eternal truths. But without him we would have stayed in the dark.

Now listen to this, you lost sheep of Brussels: “I think it would be a good thing at the right moment to settle the matter and ask people, ‘are you basically in favour of being in or out?’” That’s Boris speaking last week, before he fell off his bike. Just goes to show how a religious experience can change a man.

The march of progress rolls on, and Boris is now in step. He’ll be Tory leader one day, inheriting the throne of St Dave. But in order to get there, he ought to realise that, though the road to salvation ultimately leads to Brussels, there are many pit stops along the way, each housing a progressive issue of its own, and none can be skipped.

As a current example, consider the related issues of female episcopate and ‘gay’ (as opposed to morose) marriage. These are both virtuous, solid ideas, but the way they’ve been put forth isn’t progressive enough.

Perhaps Boris should next capitalise on his American heritage and propose a British answer to the notion of affirmative action, which has proved to be so productive in the States. It’s not enough to have women bishops consecrated, and homosexual couples married, in church – there’s nothing affirmative about it.

Boris proclaimed aim should be redressing the evil of tradition haunting our society since time immemorial. The truly progressive, and therefore unstoppable, measures would be to have only female bishops and only homosexual marriages. After all, both groups have suffered two millennia of discrimination, and they now deserve compensation.

Wouldn’t you like to see a woman bishop declaring a happy couple ‘man and man’? José Manuel and the rest of our progressive world would.

Oh yes, and of course even the natural, not just adoptive, children of UKIP members must be taken away and raised as wards of our progressive state. What a fitting punishment for apostasy that would be, and not a moment too soon.

Keep at it, Boris, carry the word to the heathen Brits. That’s how you’ll become a truly righteous man. And what is more, you’ll be a Prime Minister, my son.

 

I’ve never met Mr Utley but, judging by his work, he is a decent man without a rancorous bone in his body.

Moreover, his wife drives a London bus. Considering the pay structure at the Mail, Mrs Utley probably does so not out of dire necessity but as a hobby. If so, she ought to be saluted for proving that endearing English eccentricity is still extant. Mr Utley isn’t just a nice man, but also a lucky one.

Though self-admittedly an agnostic, Mr Utley, unlike his Mail colleague Andrew Alexander and everybody at The Times, is not a religion hater. He claims he respects the C of E, venerates the prose of its texts (those the Church itself unfortunately doesn’t venerate any longer), and he sounds as though he means it.

That’s why the questions Mr Utley raises in his article on women bishops deserve kind answers, not the contemptuous dismissal which is the lot of those whose animus towards God overrides their mental faculties.

Lamentably, many things he says, along with his conclusions, are still wrong. Some, however, aren’t. For example, he points out it’s illogical for the Church first to ordain women as priests, then refuse to consecrate them as bishops 20 years later. Indeed it is.

In fact, I know several Anglicans, as conservative now as they were then, who supported the first folly but opposed the second one. Their opposition to women bishops is therefore slightly compromised, but this doesn’t make it intrinsically wrong. To use a popular cliché, two wrongs wouldn’t make a right.

This aside, there are also important differences between bishops and parish priests. These have to do with apostolic succession, originating with the first Bishops of the Church, the twelve apostles, passing down to the bishops they consecrated, then on to those consecrated by them and so forth, to the present day.

Hence, while ordination of women weakens the already disputable claim Anglicanism lays to being an apostolic church, consecration of women bishops would demolish it. This would effectively turn the C of E into another Protestant sect, one of dozens. Those who not only respect the Church as a social and political entity but also love it as a sacred institution would find it intolerable.

That the Supreme Governor of the Church is at this historical moment a woman is an undeniable fact, but one that doesn’t rate the importance Mr Utley attaches to it. Mostly symbolic anyway, this title refers to the complex interaction between the secular and sacred realms in the English constitution.

Its origin goes back to the regrettable break with Rome caused partly by Henry VIII’s libido. Mercifully, however, subsequent monarchs have had only a steadily attenuating influence on the Church, and no sacramental role too play. The whole issue is interesting and debatable, but it has little relevance to the problem at hand.

Mr Utley hails women priests’ ‘huge contribution to keeping the leaking hulk of the C of E afloat’, which changed his otherwise conservative mind on female ordination. I don’t know how closely Mr Utley follows church affairs, but those of his fellow conservatives who do would question the size of this contribution.

The more intelligent among them also tend to regard the very presence of women priests as the biggest leak, one caused by the Church succumbing yet again to faddish secular pressure. Does Mr Utley know many female priests using the KJB and the Prayer Book, whose prose he rates so highly? If not, this is further proof that female ordination is a negation of every conservative principle he holds dear, not to mention the first two millennia of ecclesiastical history.

In fact, Mr Utley himself kindly provides another proof of this by saying that the Synod vote contradicts ‘the views of most of the British public who… regard the vote’s outcome as a gratuitous and baffling insult to women.’ The fact that this argumentum ad populum can be plausibly put forth at all is sufficient to argue in favour of disestablishment, which is the only debate where it belongs.

And surely a man who describes himself as a reactionary Tory can’t possibly believe that the majority is always right? Surely an intelligent man can’t possibly think most Englishmen are sufficiently conversant with the theological, historical and philosophical aspects of the issue for their views to have much value?

Mr Utley clearly underestimates the effect comprehensive education has had on ‘the British public’. And he is mistaken if he thinks that the Church should emulate our politicians by replacing its mind and soul with focus groups. The Church isn’t yet a purely political setup, Mr Utley, though it’s undoubtedly moving that way.

The C of E is indeed the national, established Church, but it’s still run, or rather ought to be run, on principles different from those applied, say, to the British Arts Council or the Social Service. Its allegiance should be to God, scripture and church tradition – not to the latest PC fad shoved down the throat of our brainwashed masses.

Mr Utley is absolutely right when he points out that Christ first revealed his resurrection to a woman. I’d go even further and say that moreover a woman was vitally involved in the incarnation, even though an omnipotent God could have achieved the same end without her. That he chose not to emphasises the unique status of women in Christianity, which is equal, and in the case of the Virgin superior, to that of any man.

Men and women are equal before God – but it’s a logical solecism to aver that ‘equal’ means ‘the same’. They both serve God, but they must continue to serve him in different ways. Christ himself communicated this nuance by first revealing his resurrected self to Mary Magdalene but then never consecrating her as an apostle. The logical inference from this was accepted as, well, Gospel by every believer for two thousand years.

Mr Utley respects the Church. That’s why he ought to refrain from repeating the facile arguments of those who hate it. He can do better than that.

The vicious attack on Spurs fans in Campo de’ Fiori raises all sorts of questions, the most immediate one being why it took the police 10 minutes to arrive at the scene.

I can testify from personal experience that the Rome Central police station is located 50 yards from the square, if that. This I found out a couple of years ago after having been pickpocketed on a bus. The need to have insurance forms filled in took me to Campo de’ Fiori and the antediluvian police station.

‘Rubato!’ I exclaimed, drawing on my scanty Italian mostly consisting of musical and gastronomic terms. ‘Autobus?’ yawned the desk sergeant. He then uttered the Italian equivalent of ‘Well, what do you expect?’, gave me two endless forms to fill and went back to tapping something out on an ancient typewriter.

The computer age evidently still hadn’t arrived in Rome, but perhaps this little anecdote contains the answer to the original question. Breaking up an armed raid would have distracted the carabinieri from their work, which is to yawn, fill in forms and assist others in doing so.

Other questions are more interesting, and their implications more sinister. For the 50-odd masked attackers came armed not only with gas canisters, knuckledusters, knives and axe handles but also with anti-Semitic slogans. As a demonstration of pan-European solidarity they were screaming them in German. Perhaps they just thought that ‘Juden’ would be better understood than ‘ebrei’, or else they wanted to evoke the highly publicised interplay between Germans and Jews in the past.

This suspicion was confirmed last night when Lazio supporters screamed ‘Juden’ throughout the match (many Spurs fans are Jewish). They then put their sentiments into a modern context by unfurling a poster saying ‘Free Palestine’. Since for all practical purposes this slogan is interchangeable with ‘Kill Jews’, the implication came across loud and clear.

This is as strange as it is disturbing. Unlike the French, Italians aren’t known for excessive anti-Semitism. Even Italian fascism generally directed its hatred into other conduits.

Mussolini, an ardent Lazio fan himself, was personally anti-Semitic, but this doesn’t automatically mean he advocated anti-Semitic policies. For example, two of the tsar’s ablest Prime Ministers Sergei Witte and Pyotr Stolypin didn’t have much time for Jews either, the former despite (I hope not because) being married to a Jewish woman. Yet, for raisons d’état, both advocated emancipation of the Jews, including the abolition of the Pale of Settlement.

In a similar vein Mussolini didn’t discriminate against Jews and in fact welcomed them into his fascist party; until 1938 the proportion of Jews in it had exceeded their proportion in the population. It was only under severe pressure from the Germans that Mussolini introduced his anti-Semitic Manifesto della razza, stripping the Jews of Italian citizenship.

However, most anti-Jewish atrocities in Italy were committed by Germans, not Italians. The local population didn’t participate in massacres with the same gusto, or on the same scale, as in Eastern Europe and France, and in fact tried to save Jews, specifically in Rome.

So why this outburst of anti-Semitism now? It would take total disregard not only for reason and human decency but also for arithmetic to blame Italy’s troubles on the Jews. After all, there are only 28 thousand of them out of a population of 60 million, a proportion that’s roughly one tenth of that in Britain, itself not the most Hebraic land on earth.

An interesting detail is that the raiding party, organised with military precision, included not only Lazio but also Roma fans. I don’t know if you’re alert to the nuances of the Italian football scene, but this is a bit like Arsenal and Tottenham fans joining forces in any cause whatsoever – a sheer impossibility in other words.

Lazio is traditionally fascist, while Roma is communist, and, though any substantive difference between the two creeds is slight, their exponents do tend to hate one another. Reversing this trend probably testifies to the newly emerging pan-European solidarity I mentioned earlier.

Further evidence is provided by the carabinieri who eventually dragged themselves away from their real purpose in life, filling forms, to make some arrests. According to them, some assailants were actually foreign, though their nationality was not specified. This isn’t entirely unsurprising.

All new states have to be based on some sort of grassroots consensus, so why should the European state be any different? The possible ramifications of this particular consensus are too hard to calculate and too awful to imagine, but the new state has to work with what it has got. This brutal assault just may be a taste of things to come.

The last question is less apocalyptic in its implications, but interesting nonetheless. What on earth were those Spurs fans doing drinking in Campo de’ Fiori at 1.30 am? This market square may be in the very centre of Rome, but it’s not in a good part of the centre. Even though Giordano Bruno was burned there, it’s not a nice place to be.

According to the publican, the British fans were well-behaved, and one has to believe an eyewitness even if his observation is counterintuitive. Nonetheless, perhaps next time the fans will do their boozing in the much safer Piazza Navona or Piazza del Popolo.

On second thoughts, let’s hope they won’t. Let’s further hope that they’ll stop following their teams around the world altogether. Perhaps this incident will discourage them in the future. If so, then it’s the only good thing one can say about it.

First the effrontery: today’s editorial, densely covered with the foam falling out of the mouth of its rabid author, is titled Mere Christianity.

This title is shamelessly stolen from the book by the great writer, and even greater Christian, C.S. Lewis. His Mere Christianity is one of the most cogent works of Christian apologetics, sitting side by side with Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. By a sleight of hand, The Times is now nudge-winking us into somehow believing that its effluvia on women bishops has something to do with the views of that most orthodox of Christians.

Here’s what he actually wrote – not about the consecration of women bishops but about the arguably lesser affront of female ordination:

‘I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests’ Orders. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds by the operation.’

The title of the emetic editorial thus represents cynical effrontery. But then one considers the source and realises that nothing else is to be expected.

Now the ignorance: ‘The Church of England has acted like a sect and perpetrated a disservice to the nation and other faiths.’ These hacks are either insufficiently rigorous in their thinking or too vicious in their atheism to understand that it’s their pet measure that’s bound to turn the Anglican Church not just into a sect, but a secular one at that.

Disservice to other faiths? The only faith ever so slightly set back by the Synod’s ruling is atheist progressivism. If the authors of this obscenity had ever attended an Anglican service they would know that Christians recite the Nicene Creed, asserting their faith in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

Taking their lead from C.S. Lewis, they know that Anglicanism’s claim to being part of such a church is disputed by other, indisputably catholic and apostolic confessions: Roman and Greek. Their members claim that the severing of the English Church’s links with Rome in the sixteenth century broke the apostolic succession. Therefore, according to them, all Anglican priests, regardless of their sex, are improperly ordained. That’s why, for example, no Roman Catholic would go to communion in an Anglican church, whereas Anglicans have no such compunction in Catholic churches.

Anglicans, especially those of the Anglo-Catholic persuasion, argue against this exclusion, as they would. The theological arcana involved in their case are too recondite to ponder here in any detail. But the ecclesial argument is simple enough: the Anglican Church has retained the hierarchical structure of the other catholic confessions and has largely kept the catholic liturgy, mutatis mutandis.

The critical consideration that escapes the feeble grasp of The Times is that female consecration will mean that the Anglican argument, such as it is, will be instantly and irrevocably lost. The Church would have no right to claim that it is either one or catholic or apostolic. Consequently, before long it won’t even be able to claim it’s holy.

Like a thief who runs in front of a pursuing crowd yelling ‘Stop thief!’ louder than anyone else, The Times hacks are accusing true Christians of perpetrating exactly the crime they themselves commit in every venomous word. Should women be consecrated as bishops, the Anglo-Catholics will immediately go Roman or else take the Pope up on his generous offer of the ordinariate. Many evangelicals will likewise leave for various Protestant confessions. The Church will become not so much apostolic as apostatic.

What will be left of the Anglican Church is a cowed, browbeaten aggregate of apostates happy to break up with the past, with true Christianity and indeed with true Anglicanism. Instead they’ll be prepared to accept the diktats of the church-hating atheists who run our political parties.

‘Bishops are not always direct in their public comments,’ mouths off the editorial. ‘Like their chess counterparts, they have a tendency to move in zigzags.’ Chess bishops, chaps, don’t move in zigzags – they move in straight diagonal lines. It’s reassuring to see that these hacks’ ignorance extends even into such trivial areas.

I for one am sorry to see the paper that once was the envy of the world turning into its laughing stock. A sign of the times, I dare say.

 

P.S. Yesterday I predicted that within weeks the defeated proposal will be revived, like the phoenix of the Lisbon treaty rising from the ashes of the EU Constitution. I was wrong: it has taken not weeks or hours. ‘Bishop Welby,’ hectors the editorial, should press for the proposal… to be brought back quickly.’

Even more ominously, Frank Field, MP, wishes to introduce, and his fellow member of the Labour Party Dave Cameron supports, a bill obligating the Church to comply with the secular law against sex discrimination. If passed, such a law will open the door for the Church being forced to sanctify homomarriage, much to the delight of Matthew Parris in the same issue of The Times. Nothing divisive about that, of course, but I do wish Parris had the good taste to feign impartiality.   

 

 

It’s a measure of the importance I attached to yesterday’s vote in the Synod that last night I tuned to BBC News, a programme I’m under medical orders not to watch for fear of apoplexy.

The screen lit to life just in time to be filled with images of weeping priestesses. ‘Why are they all so fat and ugly?’ asked my wife, much to my displeasure. Such cattiness, such lack of chivalry and Christian mercy are simply not on. How much kinder it would be to say that most of the ladies made the Vicar of Dibley look svelte. And in a film on Biblical themes, any of them could be cast in the role of the Sinai desert.

One is loath to draw interconfessional comparisons, but most Catholic and Orthodox nuns one sees look gaunt and emaciated, the colour of their cheeks bespeaking night vigils in the service of the God they love. The visages of our ruddy lasses bespeak nothing but an inordinate affection for post-service cakes.

Not being an academic theologian, I can’t say for sure that there’s no scriptural support for servants of God stuffing their faces. There must be – about as much as for the idea of women being either consecrated or ordained.

And speaking of weeping women, Dr Williams, the outgoing Archdruid, was inconsolable. He spoke of his “deep personal sadness” and warned ominously that “This vote of course isn’t the end of the story.” Not to worry, Your Grace, I’m sure the Druids allow female shamans. Most pagan cults do.

But Dr Williams’s warning must be heeded. After all, the atheistic, anti-Christian measure so dear to his bearded heart draws its inspiration from some of the most pernicious secular fads. It stands to reason that its champions should deploy the tactics of the same provenance. Specifically, they should appeal to the EU for guidance on how to reverse offensive votes.

What could be easier? If the vote goes against you, you tell the electorate they didn’t get it right and will have to vote it again until they do. Teachers do that sort of thing in school, or rather they used to until they were told that there is no such thing as right and wrong – it’s all down to personal choice, innit? But in the old days they’d say, “No Johnny, this isn’t how you spell ‘can’t’. I want you to stay after school and write ‘can’t’ a hundred times on the blackboard.”

The Times, which had been waging a hysterical campaign for female bishops, says this vote ‘does a disservice to half the population’. By inference, it then does a service to the other half, so, on purely arithmetic grounds, this should be all right, zero sum and all that. Yet anyone who thinks that is missing the point: the half that welcomes the vote is the wrong half, and the other one is right.

For those in the right half this is indeed ‘a sad and shameful day for the Church of England’, in the parlance of The Times. Leaving apart the lexicographic fact that ‘sad’ is a modifier usually attached to animate objects only, why is it such a disaster?

Oh yes, you see, this tragic failure “will be felt keenly too by those not involved with the Church but who nonetheless see it as a leader for reform and justice.” Now that’s something one can understand. Atheists hate this decision because it went against them. Fair enough. As to atheists seeing the Church “as a leader for reform and justice”, I’d like to see factual support for this assertion.

In the absence of such, one is tempted to observe that the Church hasn’t acted in this capacity for the best part of 500 years, and good job too. It’s not the Church’s role in life to lead, or indeed follow, every moronic idea extruded out of the bowels of atheist, nihilist modernity.

The amazing thing is that those who’ve never seen the inside of a church are so interested in its toing and froing. You don’t play the game, you don’t make the rules, I’d say. Rather than praying to God, they’re supposed to worship at the altar of democracy. If so, they are guilty of apostasy.

Just listen to The Times, that tireless supporter of democracy in every tribal backwater on earth. “This decision was not the one wanted by the majority of the Synod… It was blocked because there were just enough members of the laity to do the blocking. And these people were not representatives of those who line the pews on the Sabbath.”

Chaps, have you ever heard of democratic constitutions? In every halfway civilised country a profound constitutional change requires more than a simple majority to pass, usually two-thirds, as in our established Church. This motion was blocked democratically, constitutionally and fairly.

As to those opposed not representing “those who line the pews”, it’s just sour grapes. How would The Times hacks know this anyway? Do you think whoever wrote this malicious drivel gets up early every Sunday to partake in the Sacraments? I very much doubt that.

“The first thing to do is to bring back a simpler, clearer proposal and win,” advises the editorial. Ah, so that’s what the Archdruid had in mind. Changing a word or two would give these sore losers a pretext for reintroducing this abomination not in a few years but in a few weeks.

The title should be changed too. It has to be something like ‘Equality and Justice’ rather than ‘Female Episcopate’. You know, if ‘the EU Constitution’ doesn’t go through, rephrase, call it ‘the Lisbon Treaty’ and resubmit. If that doesn’t work, keep changing the punctuation, you never know your luck. Yes, that’s it, a perfect model to follow.

Nothing can be ‘simpler, clearer’ than yesterday’s vote. Do we want women bishops? The Church said no. And when no isn’t taken for an answer, it’s called rape. Which no doubt awaits the Church in the near future. Meanwhile, we can be excused a little Schadenfreude watching the bastards squirm.

Tim Montgomerie’s harangues in The Times are getting tiresome. In the latest one he attacks ‘political entertainment’, as exemplified by Fox News in America and the unnamed Mail in Britain.

By itself there’s nothing wrong about that: all media these days gravitate towards the light intellectual end (note to Mr Montgomerie and his sub-editors: ‘media’ is plural in English). Where his article, Don’t Get Frothed into a Right-Wing Bubble, is deficient is in what he sees as the serious, balanced counterweight to ‘many of our best-read newspapers’, which is the lawyerly for The Daily Mail.

Mr Montgomerie calls himself a conservative, but he seems to have a very vague idea of what the word means. He is, however, crystal clear in what he dislikes: real conservatism, which he attacks with demagogic weapons borrowed from the arsenal of those who still think that Lenin was fundamentally correct if occasionally too hasty.

One of those weapons is ascribing to one’s opponents words they never uttered. Thus, ‘[The Mail, still unnamed] believes that you can cut the foreign aid budget or the Whitehall payroll and the deficit problem will largely be solved.’

I’ve never heard such an asinine view expressed by anyone, and certainly not by any Mail writer. What I have heard from many is that this foreign aid serves not to help what Mr Montgomerie describes as ‘the hungriest people on the planet’ but to beef up the offshore accounts of the nastiest people on the planet.

Does he think that neither foreign aid nor ‘the Whitehall payroll’ should be cut? If so, we’d be interested to hear his arguments, as distinct from demagogic rants.

Another gripe is about ‘the… columnists who can’t mention the EU without resorting to Second World War imagery – one [this is the lawyerly for Simon Heffer] most recently suggesting that Angela Merkel wanted to create the Fourth Reich.’

Mr Heffer surely can see for himself the differences between the German-dominated EU of today and the German-dominated Europe of yesteryear. He also no doubt feels it’s his duty to point out the worrying similarities.

Does Mr Montgomerie think that no similarities exist? Then he ought to be prepared to make a case for a single currency pegged now as it was then to the German mark, which benefits Germany only; Germany’s political and economic diktats to the rest of Europe; political structures retaining only a veneer of local autonomy but in fact dominated by Germany. Mouthing off is no substitute for thinking, Mr Montgomerie.

Then, exactly as he wrote a couple of days ago, he accuses right-wing ‘ideologues’ of not even beginning ‘to speak to the anxious voters who fear big business and market forces more than a helping hand from the government.’

Speaking to people who prefer handouts to hard work, while shunning those who create wealth, has produced the present crisis of world economies. Does Mr Montgomerie think this is how it should be? Really, his conservatism isn’t so much wet as drowned.

Talking to his fearful darlings isn’t cheap. Does he think we can sustain trillion-pound debts and a massive welfare state ad infinitum? If so, I for one wouldn’t mind an elucidation – but one based on facts and understanding, not girlish gasps.

Mr Montgomerie and his ilk are rearing scapegoats to blame for the likely defeat in 2015. Their argument is that the Tories failed to score an outright victory against the worst government in British history, and will probably lose against the very same bunch next time, because they weren’t sufficiently similar to Labour. It’s not that they didn’t offer enough of an alternative but that they offered too much.

I congratulate Mr Montgomerie for having found a perfect forum for his views in The Times, that scrupulously unbiased, if lamentably moribund, paper. Featured immediately above his harangue is a stupid and offensive cartoon showing a small missile fired by Hamas meeting in mid-air a much bigger one fired by the Israelis in the opposite direction. Both have ‘Because all we want is peace’ written on them.

The message is that both sides are bad, but Israel is much worse. This is consistent with the paper’s unremitting campaign against the only civilised country in the Middle East and for ‘the legitimate rights’ of terrorists. The Jews, if you read The Times, now drink the blood of Hamas babies, rather than Christian ones. The immediate proximity of the cartoon to Mr Montgomerie’s article has to be seen as divine providence.

And speaking of divine providence, The Times has been waging an equally vociferous campaign in favour of women bishops. Its intellectual content matches anything Mr Montgomerie is capable of, though I may be underestimating him.

In the same issue one can find refreshingly ignorant comments by Ruth Gledhill, religious correspondent. Ignorance about religion has to be a necessary qualification for her job, but surely it can’t be the only one? Yet this is the impression one gets from Miss Gledhill’s musings.

Every time she mentions, all in a purely unbiased way of course, a hypothetical  Anglo-Catholic bishop, she attaches a pejorative modifier, such as ‘camp’. Traditional Christianity ‘was bitchy and biased, chiefly against women’. The case against, according to this ignoramus and also today’s editorial, can be argued neither by the Anglo-Catholics on the basis of tradition nor by the evangelicals on the basis of Scripture.

What then should be the basis of an argument? Why, women’s rights, diversity, equality and other such wonderful things. If Miss Gledhill doesn’t realise that these have nothing to do with Christian doctrine, she should consider a career change.

Today’s unbiased editorial states unequivocally that ‘The Church will be strengthened by the consecration of women bishops.’ No doubt it will, if they mean the Roman Catholic Church that can expect a stampede of converts, should the vote go against believers in God and Christian orthodoxy and for believers in pandering to every half-baked secular idea.

The same woolly, ill-informed, unprincipled thinking, as exemplified by Mr Montgomerie, will do a similar service for UKIP, already a haven for conservatives who don’t want to be Labour in disguise. Real conservatives, either political or Christian, can’t win votes in the face of rampant modernity. But they can punish the stupidity and ignorance of those in power.

 

 

 

  

Reading the Culture sections of our broadsheets brings back fond memories of Yekatirina Furtseva, Khrushchev’s Culture Minister and reportedly mistress.

The Soviets had a fervent affection for proletarians, which didn’t prevent them from murdering millions of them and enslaving the rest. But then we always hurt the ones we love, as the popular song goes.

Still, acting on the underlying emotion, they promoted amateur arts, in the certainty that art should be useful to the whole society, not just the hoity-toity elite. Never mind the skill, feel the ideology. The culture vulture Furtseva was supposed to spearhead that effort.

Once she sat on the jury of an All-USSR Festival of Amateur Arts. At the closing ceremony Furtseva gushed, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that a simple turner can be Hamlet and a common weaver Ophelia! It’s not long before amateur companies will oust professional theatres!’ The great actor Nikolai Mordvinov sitting next to her was overheard muttering, ‘Idiot! When you give birth, are you going to go to a turner too?’

What brought on this nostalgia trip? Oh yes, our Culture sections, which have on me the same effect the word ‘culture’ had on Dr Goebbels.

Nonetheless, the title of Richard Morrison’s article in The Times (Art School: an Oxymoron Past its Time?) caught my eye. Here was a kindred soul, thinking, as I do, that our art establishment has become totally subversive, producing and rewarding nothing but a load of Pollocks, at best.

Tragically ignorant of who or what Mr Morrison is, I dug in. Soon, mild curiosity gave way to enthusiasm: ‘What’s the point of art schools?’ asks the article. ‘Wouldn’t the next generation of [artists] learn just as well by apprenticing themselves to established practitioners?’

Absolutely. What’s the point in attending schools where students are taught self-indulgence and abstruse theorising rather than basic craft? Images flashed through my mind of a future genius, spending years, just like his Renaissance ancestors, at the feet of a master, learning how to mix paints before being allowed to take brush to canvas. I felt like a girl looking for a soulmate, finding one in Mr Morrison and feeling ready to be seduced.

Yet the very next sentence made me feel like a girl first seduced and then cruelly jilted. ‘After all, from Michelangelo to Damien Hirst there’s never been a shortage of artists willing to take on assistants.’

Damien Hirst? The only thing his apprentice could learn would be how to synthesise formaldehyde, but there’s no need – there are plenty of warehouses selling industrial chemicals premixed and ready to be used in the service of high art.

According to Mr Morrison, ‘Young creative talents should be responding directly to the world around them, not slavishly studying past techniques.’ Such a direct response could take, for example, the form of an obscene graffito or perhaps screaming ‘ref is a wanker’ at a stadium. The advantage of such responses is that they can be effectively delivered with no formal training whatsoever. I used to think that responding to the world artistically does take a modicum of such training, but obviously I was wrong.

To Mr Morrison’s credit he is not so hubristic as to depend on his own judgment only. He drafts as support the artist George Shaw, once short-listed for the Turner prize, the one awarded for the greatest damage caused to art in the past year: ‘If artists are going to move art forward and upset the odd apple cart, imagination should come first and skill afterwards.’

Upsetting the apple cart isn’t the purpose of art, Messrs Shaw and Morrison. It’s an incidental bi-product of greatness, which is above all a bi-product of professional skill. When an artist sets out to upset the apple cart, using mainly his imagination, he ends up producing a pictorial equivalent of the kind of stuff one occasionally has to scrape off one’s shoe sole.

Another Turner aspirant Yinka Shonibare, approvingly quoted by Mr Morrison, does think British art schools have something going for them: ‘It’s a broad cultural education – especially since the 1980s, when everything from anthropology and psychology to semiotics and post-colonialism has come in.’

Poor old Giotto and Velazquez didn’t know what they were missing. Had they had a crash course in post-colonialism, they would have learned how to upset apple carts and move art forward.

Tracy Emin, on the other hand, is unhappy about the Royal Art College. This ‘artist’, whose talent is only exceeded by her beauty, much prefers Maidstone College of Art, where she had obtained her first degree. It ‘was guided by a Marxist doctrine, so we were given social and political skills [acting as] a passionate spiritual guidance through creativity.’

As a result of her schooling in such essential disciplines, the absence of which held the likes of Vermeer so far back, Miss Emin has learned how to leave her bed unmade and construct ‘installations’. A photo of one such adorns the article, making one regret that Miss Emin didn’t become a builder, an occupation for which she is Eminently more qualified. In due course she could have become a union activist, taking advantage of her training in Marxism.

‘Well, it’s true that not even its greatest supporters… would describe the RCA as Marxist,’ rues Mr Morrison. ‘But the place has exemplified the philosophy that artists should be useful to society.’

Thank God for small favours. Add to this Marxism and post-colonialism, and our artists could meet the exalted standards of usefulness set by Miss Furtseva, and Messrs Lenin and Stalin before her. The useless ones, skilful professionals, could then be sent to uranium mines to improve our energy supply.

Lest you might think it’s all about social utility, think again. Some formal training is essential as well. ‘Imperfect they may be but art colleges are more essential than ever [for without them artists wouldn’t be able to learn] computer fabrication or additive manufacturing.’

Really, in a sane society this lot would be dangling off one of Emin’s installations. In a humane society, they would be merely locked up in a loony bin. And in our society they pontificate off the pages of formerly respectable broadsheets.

 

 

I don’t know if God punishes atheists in the next life. In this one they punish themselves – by sounding downright cretinous whenever they try to make a shrill case for atheism (Richard Dawkins, ring your office). This, irrespective of how bright they are to begin with.

That’s why intelligent atheists, and amazingly they do exist, either steer clear of the subject altogether or broach it with utmost care and respect. This is a tax faithlessness pays to faith, and punishment for evading it is instant and brutal.

As his recent Mail column suggests, Andrew Alexander could tell you all about it, except that I’m not sure he’s capable of realising how severely he has been punished. But judge for yourself.

‘The world of Islam [is] convinced that it is under threat from the West. It resorts to counterattacks… The arrival on the scene of the suicide bomber is certainly a product of religion…’ This is absolute gibberish, and ignorant gibberish at that.

The world of Islam is convinced of all sorts of things, few of them true. This one certainly isn’t, and it’s not counterattacks Muslims launch against our buildings and buses but vicious and unprovoked assaults.

Nor is the phenomenon of suicide bombing a product of ‘religion’, for no ‘religion’ exists. There are only specific religions, each with its own beliefs, dogma, morality and, well, just about everything else, from culture to social and political organisation, from required standards to resulting behaviour. It’s not ‘religion’ in general but Islam in particular that produces suicide bombers. Until a Buddhist or a Franciscan has flown a plane into an office tower, we must regard this propensity as specific and not all-encompassing.

‘Religion also made a significant contribution to the Cold War… John Foster Dulles brought us close to nuclear Armageddon with his fanatical hostility to ‘atheistic Communism’.’ More deranged, ignorant gibberish.

Religion made no contribution to the Cold War whatsoever. Dulles, and the presidents he served, opposed Communism not out of religious conviction but in the knowledge that it represented a clear and present danger to the West. During Dulles’s own lifetime (d. 1959) Communists murdered hundreds of millions in their own countries, and Russia’s stance vis-à-vis all others was consistently and increasingly aggressive. His therefore were the actions of a statesman, not a believer. Privately, he no doubt saw a link between the evil of Communism and its hysterical hatred of God, but that’s neither here nor there.

It was Dulles who had to deal with the Berlin blockade, the rape of Eastern Europe, the Communist takeover of China, the Korean War, the massacre of popular uprisings in East Germany, Poland and Hungary, the massive military build-up of the Soviet Union. From Mr Alexander’s remarks one can infer that opposing this escalating evil was wrong, and Dulles’s hostility to it ‘fanatical’ and therefore misplaced, only attributable to his Christian faith. Had he been an atheist like Mr Alexander, there would have been no Cold War. This is cloud cuckoo land.

As to ‘nuclear Armageddon’, no such danger existed in the 1950s, for the United States enjoyed an overwhelming nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. The Americans knew it, the Russians knew it, too bad Mr Alexander doesn’t know it. But perhaps, once he has calmed himself down, he’ll realise that it was Soviet global aggression, not Dulles’s Christianity, that was responsible for the still on-going Cold War.

‘The fact is that religions offer differing degrees of silliness and are not a solution to anything.’ Too bad Lenin’s League of the Militant Godless is no longer in business; Mr Alexander would find much sympathy there and perhaps secure employment for life.

‘Silliness’? ‘No solution’? ‘Fact?’ Never mind the joy and solace billions of communicants find in their faith. Even the staunchest of atheists, provided they aren’t culturally deaf, dumb and blind, feel elevated whenever they pass by a sublime Gothic church, listen to a glorious fugue, look at the masterpieces on show in our museums. Why, some atheists even read the King James Bible for its prose.

The greatest creations of the human spirit are a direct product of Christianity, and they include the civilisation of Christendom, based as it is on the uniquely Judaeo-Christian commitment to the self-importance of the individual qua individual. Without this foundation of Western civility and polity, chaps Chesterton described as village atheists wouldn’t be able to talk to village idiots for fear of arbitrary arrest.

Seriously, Mr Alexander ought to have his head examined: such irrational hatred can destroy what’s left of his mind. In fact one of my good atheist friends is both a psychiatrist and a journalist; he’d be happy to help a half-colleague who is in such dire trouble.

Religion, according to Mr Alexander, is an ‘urban myth’, whereas his own ignorant, half-crazy rants represent ‘the real world’. It’s evident that his grip on reality is tenuous at best – my psychiatrist friend would have plenty to work with.

I’m certain that his first recommendation would be that, to keep his disease in remission, Mr Alexander ought to enlarge only on subjects he understands, such as the perils of the euro. He makes sense on those, and they don’t make him overexcited. However, venturing beyond that scope clearly triggers a flare-up, necessitating psychotropic drugs, if not yet electric shocks.

One can only regret that Britain’s sole surviving conservative paper sees fit to publish such deranged drivel. Perhaps its editors ought to ponder what it is that they wish to conserve.

It’s ‘out of principle’ that George ‘strongly supports gay marriage.’ Not much of a principle, you’d think, but enough to give young George a sense of pride: ‘I’m proud,’ he writes in The Times, ‘to be part of a Government that will introduce a Bill to allow gay marriage.’ Well, at least he found something in this sham government to be proud about.

And let’s not forget George’s stated commitment to ‘the current abortion laws’. Though falling just short of a principled stance, it still qualifies as a strong feeling, springing no doubt from aesthetic considerations. Perhaps he just happens to like the sight of a recognisable little person being scraped out piece by piece. Well, de gustibus… and all that.

Nor are these just abstract ideas, devoid of any practical significance. For George believes that this egregious betrayal of the most fundamental conservative tenets will win the Tories the next election, all in the name of conservatism of course. This is one lesson George has learned from Obama’s victory which he, along with his boss, cheered in a most fawning manner. There are also others.

‘First, the incumbent government was re-elected despite a historically weak recovery.’ You sure it’s ‘despite’, George? Not ‘because’? Obama was re-elected because he started out with about 75 percent of the Hispanic vote and an almost 100-percent support among the blacks, who would have voted for him even if he had started another Great Depression. To offset this in-built advantage Romney needed to get about a 10-percent lead among the whites, and he only managed seven points. Though a landslide, this proved insufficient.

What Osborne means is that Obama has shown it’s possible to pass all blame for the pitiful state of the economy on to the previous administration. Sure enough, Dubya’s tenure was hardly a success, and the $10-trillion public debt he left behind hardly a nice legacy. Yet this doesn’t explain why in his four years at the helm Obama, rather than reducing that figure, managed to add $6 trillion to it. Nor does it explain why during the same period unemployment increased to a level threatening social cohesion.

Would the same trick work for the Tories here? I doubt it. The British, thoroughly corrupted by decades of mendacious socialist propaganda, are naturally inclined to vote Labour – unless the Tories give them a compelling reason not to. Mrs Thatcher, as she then was, gave them such a reason: before winning her first term, she had explained how she’d sort out the mess left behind by Labour. She then proceeded to do just that, winning her subsequent elections as a result. ‘Ain’t my fault, Guv’ won’t cut the same ice.

After this lesson, which he oddly divides into two, George becomes totally confused, and he isn’t the only one. ‘Third, the Republican message about fiscal responsibility… gave Mr Romney a small poll lead on economic issues.’ But we’ve just been told that such issues don’t matter much. Nor does this explain why Mr Romney still lost to a candidate who even his own mother would say preaches the exact opposite of ‘fiscal responsibility’. Really, I’ve often thought that an Oxbridge education is overrated these days, and George is living proof.

‘Fourth, the Romney campaign ultimately did not convince voters that he was on the side of ordinary hard-working… Americans.’ Actually the Romney campaign ‘ultimately did not convince voters’ that he was on the side of ordinary non-working welfare recipients. However, acting on this lesson here would contradict the previous one on fiscal responsibility. Therein madness lies, not just a most lamentable deficit of logic and economic literacy.

The fifth lesson has to do with George’s solitary principle, that involving homomarriage and barely pre-natal abortion. Hail those, and every Millwall supporter will pin a blue rosette to his home strip. Somehow I don’t believe this, though I’m sure George has stacks of focus-group data to support this firm if fleeting principle. Focus groups, you understand, have obviated the need for our politicians to think seriously and act courageously. Just find out what people want to hear and say it – what could be easier than that?

I suspect what George really means is that most chaps at Islington dinner parties support homomarriage – even though it’s unlikely to produce abortions, which has to be the downside in their eyes. George’s CV suggests that he has never ventured outside this or similar groups, with nary a Millwall fan anywhere in sight. 

It’s a pity the Tories won a share of the last election. Had they lost, Labour would have had to face the cacophonic music they themselves had made, doubtless driving the country further into the abyss. That would have given the Tories a chance to regroup and find real conservatives to lead the party out of the wilderness, and the country out of its morass. This way we’re stuck with George, his frankly idiotic lessons, and the catastrophic likelihood of a Labour comeback. All those lessons notwithstanding, I’d say he rates an F, and I’m being generous.

The Tories must win as Tories, not as Labour Lite. If they eradicate the last vestiges of difference between themselves and the loonier left-wingers, it’s not clear why anyone should vote for them. Left-leaning Brits would vote for real Labour, rather than a me-too pastiche. And true conservatives would probably opt for UKIP – in fact most of my conservative friends do so already.

Meanwhile George and Dave will be on their way to Brussels, leaving behind a poor, despondent nation struggling to find any hope or indeed perceive itself as a nation. Or else perhaps George will devote himself to writing a history of the Obama administration. Paula Broadwell can give him another lesson, in hagiography.

 

 

 

 

 

   

Americans, especially those of the neocon persuasion, tend to dislike the French, whom they call ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’. This tendency intensified in 2002, when the French wisely refused to send their troops to Iraq.

But even the most passionate American Francophobes have to realise that they have much to learn from the French in at least one aspect of human behaviour: conducting a discreet extramarital affair.

Rumour has it that, when Moses descended from the mountain, he told the Israelites, ‘I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, I got him down to ten. The bad news is, adultery stays.’

True enough, this misdemeanour commandment says ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’, not ‘Thou shalt not get caught.’ Also true, however, is that neither the Israelites nor many people of other nativities have since followed the seventh commandment with unwavering piety.

If we accept this simple observation, then surely the insouciant French culture of a cinq-à-sept is preferable to the tawdry spectacle starring Gen. David ‘Peaches’ Petraeus. If a little dalliance is worth doing, it’s worth doing with a modicum of decency and style.

The press is portraying Petraeus as a martial genius eclipsing the combined talents of Hannibal, Marlborough and Napoleon. Apparently this old dog of war came up with some new anti-insurgency tricks during the ‘surge’ in Iraq, putting the ghastly terrorists to flight and himself on a fast track to the White House. After all, if Gen. Eisenhower could become President, what’s Gen. Petraeus? Chopped liver?

I don’t know about that. The salient difference between the two men is that Eisenhower won his war and Petraeus didn’t. Neither historians nor electorates  elevate to greatness commanders who personally did well in a losing effort, such as the ill-advised American action in the Middle East.

The two men do have something in common: both had wartime mistresses, though, if Kate Summersby’s 1976 memoir is to be believed, Ike wasn’t a patch on ‘Peaches’ in the virility stakes. Then again, he had a dodgy heart and didn’t run a marathon every morning before his cornflakes.

What is striking about this whole affair isn’t so much its immorality, nor even the possible security breaches involved, as its utter, unmitigated vulgarity. A salient feature of our post-modernity is that it’s mostly vulgarians who achieve prominence. This seems to be an ironclad requirement communicated to celebrity candidates at job interviews. ‘Yes, Sir, but how vulgar are you? On a scale of one to ten? Do you have references? I have reports here that say you’re only a seven, not the ten you claim…’

What kind of man, never mind a military genius or, come to that, head of an intelligence service, can be so stupid as to leave a small library of pornographic e-mails on his computer? As a matter of fact, what kind of man, even if he doesn’t occupy a sensitive position, would send such messages? Sex under a desk may be part of life but it doesn’t belong in the epistolary genre. And surely a four-star general must rate a sofa at his command post?

Admittedly this is tame stuff compared to a President of the United States sticking a cigar, presumably unlit, into a girl’s genitals or masturbating while talking to her on the phone (I suppose that’s what Miss Lewinsky meant when talking about ‘phone sex’). Still, it gives tastelessness a bad name.

And look at the other actors in this comedy of bad manners. Like the muscle-bound Paula Broadwell, a PhD candidate at King’s College, no less, setting up dummy e-mail accounts to harass her presumed rival for Peaches’s affection. I’m amazed she didn’t beat her up in a dark alley – why not put all that narcissistic fitness to work? I don’t know if they teach vulgarity at King’s College, but if so the academic standard is high. (What they obviously don’t teach is writing, for Paula had to have her hagiography of Peaches ghosted.)

Of course, another possible way out of this triangle would have been to invite Jill Kelley to take part in a threesome – after all, sharing is at the heart of President Obama’s programme for his second term. Or perhaps even a foursome, also including the investigating FBI agent who, rather than flashing his shield, was sending Mrs Kelley half-naked snapshots of himself. And let’s not forget Gen. Allen, another leader of men and lover of women… No, that sort of stuff would have been too French, in the worst sense of the word.

What now? The participants will probably have mixed fortunes. Mrs Kelley is likely to persist with her ‘we’re just friends’ denials until a tabloid has offered her a shot at celebrity for admitting something slightly naughtier, true or false. The FBI agent, he of the seductive torso, will be transferred to traffic duty. Petraeus’s career is finished, and so probably is his marriage. But Paula, once she has emerged from hiding, is clearly on the upswing of a career curve.

She has a bright future in publishing, and I can recommend two projects straight away, both guaranteed bestsellers for our refined times. One would be Paula’s Guide to General Fitness, the other Peaches and Cream: Paula’s Guide to Sexual Gratification.

Before another ghost writer gets his quid in, I volunteer. And if she wants to list Petraeus as a co-author, it’s fine with me. If I didn’t fear being accused of indulging in infantile innuendo yet again, I’d say Peaches has struck a blow for all waning sixtyish gentlemen. Son of a gun, he deserves to have his name on the cover.