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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.

Imagine a man, his eyes vacant, his hair dishevelled, his walk unsteady, muttering ‘Who am I?… What am I?… What’s my name?… What am I for?…’ You’d doubt his sanity, wouldn’t you?

Next imagine a large group of such people, each sporting a blue rosette and acting in the same confused manner. Well, now you have an accurate mental picture of the Conservative Party.

The Romney bubble burst with such explosive force that the shock waves have reached across the ocean, leaving our poor Tories in a dazed muddle and on the verge of madness. By Tories I don’t mean the spivocrats in government or thereabouts – these chaps aren’t confused at all. They know exactly what they want (keeping their snouts in the trough for as long as possible), if not necessarily how to get it.

No, confusion reigns among their groupies, those who’d vote for a cocker spaniel if he had a blue rosette pinned to his collar. As part of it, they confuse lower-case conservatism, which is another word for political sanity, with the upper-case Conservative Party, which is the exact opposite of that. At their weak moments, they even think that the typographic style of the initial doesn’t matter, and the two words are interchangeable.

Witness Tim Montgomerie’s article in The Times the other day. The confusion starts with the title: Being anti-State is stupid for a Conservative. Now people who are anti-State aren’t called conservatives; they are called anarchists. No conservative, however spelled, can be anti-State by definition.

Mr Montgomerie knows this of course. He uses ‘anti-State’ the way Barroso uses ‘anti-Europe’, as a term of abuse reserved for those who refuse to accept asinine, destructive politics. Barroso’s bogeymen aren’t against Europe as a cultural, historical or geographical entity. They are opposed to the European Union, a supranational self-devouring Leviathan, a socialist project with megalomania.

By the same token, it’s not the state that conservatives abhor, but its tyrannical excesses. The state can employ or support 10 percent of the people, or 50 or 75 or 100. Somewhere along that ascending scale tyranny lurks, for once the critical mass of state dependents has been reached, the ensuing chain reaction is unstoppable.

According to Mr Montgomerie, any opposition to any size of the state is wrong because that way ‘Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic’ lose elections. I’m not aware of the existence of Conservatives in America, though I know a few conservatives, but then I’m interested in politics only tangentially.

In search of allies Montgomerie co-opts the American neocon commentator David Frum who has made the earth-shattering discovery that ‘the Republicans have won more than 50 percent of the vote in only one of the last six American presidential elections.’ ‘The situation is pretty much the same in Britain,’ sighs Montgomerie.

First, it’s not necessary to win more than 50 percent of the British electorate to carry an election. In fact, you’d have to go back to the 1930s to find a British party that won more than 50 percent of the popular vote. But leaving that aside, what’s the reason for this unfortunate situation?

According to both Frum and Montgomerie, it’s failure ‘to reassure those who are afraid of market forces.’ And who might such timid individuals be? Why, mostly those who hide from such ominous forces under the blanket of state entitlements. Such people see Conservatives ‘as a rich man’s party, worried about issues such as freedom when voters are worried about security.’

Preferring freedom to security? Perish the thought. We might be seen as espousing principles different from those at the foundation of bolshevism, and then Dave and Nick will have to console themselves with cushy jobs in Brussels. Never mind the demonstrable historical fact that it’s the freest countries that provide the greatest security for their citizens. To Frum and Montgomerie security doesn’t mean security. It means sponging on the state.

From this diagnosis comes a recommendation for treatment, the usual jumble of ‘a politics of social solidarity’, ‘blue-collar wages’, ‘dropping the anti-State rhetoric’ and so forth. In other words, Conservatives must become at least as socialist as Labour, if they aren’t already, and then one day they may win an election in the name of conservatism, or rather Conservatism.

This is opportunistic, relativist, immoral nonsense. Forgetting America for the time being, the reason Dave’s Tories failed to score an outright victory against the worst and most destructive government in British history isn’t that they are too conservative. It’s that they aren’t conservative at all.

Their patron saint isn’t Edmund Burke but John Major, who listed ‘a classless society’ among his desiderata, a notion as anti-conservative as it is ignorant. Never in history has a classless society been achieved, not even by states prepared to murder everyone without calluses on his palms. But even this elementary observation is too subtle for our Tories. 

When in opposition, they watched meekly as Tony and Gordon were running the country into the ground under the smokescreen of sharing and caring rhetoric. In the process, grounds were laid for self-perpetuation, for state dependence grew exponentially. Rather than screaming off the rooftops, the Tories hid in the cellar, muttering the same ruinous bien-pensant shibboleths, but in a slightly lowered voice.

Had they presented a clear-cut conservative alternative during their 11 years in opposition, they would have won the last election by a landslide. The planks of their electoral platform would have written themselves, with voters nodding each time: 1) The country is in deep trouble – nod. 2) It’s Labour policies that got us in trouble, not just economic but also social, demographic and above all moral – nod. 3) We fought those policies tooth and nail, but you didn’t want to know – nod. 4) Now is the time to let us pull the country out of trouble, acting on our own prescriptions – nod, nod, nod.

But of course our craven, self-serving spivocrats have neither the minds nor the courage nor indeed any convictions, other than all-conquering powerlust. And now, according to Montgomerie, having suffered acute political embarrassment, they should converge with Labour to a point where even a minuscule difference would no longer be discernible.

If this is the depth of thought we get from our analysts, there is no hope. And what’s this preoccupation with ‘blue-collar wages’ anyway, especially as it’s expressed side by side with a lament that the Conservatives are ‘stuck in the early 1980s’?

In contrast to the early 1980s, blue-collar chaps are now producing 12 percent of our GDP, as opposed to the 23 percent contributed by the City of London. It’s not immediately clear then how getting ‘more serious about blue-collar wages’ would make that much difference to election outcomes. And how can this newly acquired seriousness be expressed? We aren’t by any chance talking about nationalising industry, are we? One fails to see how else the state can increase wages there.

There is a way, of course: cutting both personal and corporate taxes dramatically, encouraging investment, removing most of the stifling regulations, greatly reducing state interference… Oops sorry, I’m sounding ‘anti-State’ and therefore ‘stupid’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since the marriage between Angela and Nicolas was annulled for non-consummation, France has been getting ideas beyond her station.

Angie, crestfallen after the break-up, has tried to sweet-talk François into having the same passionate relationship she had with Nicolas, but the fickle Gaul doesn’t want to know. Unlike Nicolas, he’s a man’s man, he claims. He won’t let Angie crush that part of his anatomy, the sole part one has to say, that defines his masculinity.

François wants to make his own decisions, right or wrong, and no butch frau spilling out of a tight jacket will tell him what to do. This just goes to show he doesn’t get the point. Or rather six points, to be exact.

Point 1: To bolster her own fragile self-image, badly bruised over the last century, Germany has a deep inner need to rule Europe.

Point 2: Rather than committing to lifelong shrink fees, she’s prepared to pay any price, within reason, to achieve that goal.

Point 3: ‘Within reason’ are the operative words. Bailing out all those Greeces and Irelands, perhaps even Spains, is a smidgen inside this range. To do the same for France would be so far outside it that even Angie would balk at the price tag.

Point 4: France therefore must tart up her economy enough to look sexy to Angela.

Point 5: France is manifestly incapable of doing so on her own, certainly not under François’s tutelage.

Point 6: The only way for Germany to achieve her mission in life (see Point 1) is to take over the French economy and whip it into shape.

Angela is perfectly willing to get that old PVC costume off the mothballs and start cracking the whip. But she has to think of her public image, badly hurt as it has been by all those Greeks bearing Nazi uniforms. So the whip must be wielded by someone else, a dog of war to let slip.

Mercifully, Angela didn’t have to look far. Her finance minister Wolfgang Schaüble, ‘Wolfie’ as she affectionately calls him every time he fetches her slippers in his mouth, filled the bill perfectly.

It was a wise choice. ‘Wolfie’ bared his fangs and told his panel of economic advisors to devise a series of measures that would bring France back into the fold.

They are facing a tall task. Lars Feld, an economist who sits on the panel, put it tactfully: ‘Concerns are growing given the lack of action of the French government in labour market reforms.’

If only this were the only concern. Yes, not to cut too fine a point, François, just like our own Milibandits, is in bed with the unions. That’s why France’s labour costs are among the world’s highest (at least 10 percent higher than in Germany), her retirement age among the world’s earliest (only 40 percent of those over 55 are still at work, compared with 57.7 percent in Germany) and her work week among the world’s shortest.

But that by itself doesn’t explain the country’s plight, though people my age remember the havoc wreaked by the unions in Britain back in the pre-Thatcher seventies. And ‘plight’ is the right word to describe the state of the French economy.

It’s set to slip into recession and fall far short of European deficit-reduction targets. France’s industrial output has fallen to our own risible level of 12 percent of GDP, many of her factories are shutting down, and most of her products can’t compete with Germany’s. And her share of world exports has fallen below that of Spain and Belgium, those famous muscle-bound powerhouses.

Meanwhile, France’s quango-driven public sector has grown to a staggering 56 percent of the economy (even higher than ours), the kind of millstone that can drag even a healthier economy to the bottom. Suffocated by taxes old and new, France’s wealth producers are fleeing in droves, many to our shores. It takes some impressive footwork for the British economy to look like El Dorado to the French, but to François’s credit he managed to do it in no time.

Solutions? According to Deputy Jacques Myard, ‘Only a devaluation of 30 percent against Germany can restore the competitiveness of French firms…We have to leave [the EU].’ Truer words have never been spoken. But these aren’t the words Angie wants to hear (see Point 1 above). Her index fingers are firmly lodged in her ears.

So rumours are making the rounds that she’ll go further than merely asking ‘Wolfie’ to come up with a list of recommendations. She is planning to insist that Germany be given a decisive vote on how much and on what France spends, and how much and whom she taxes. Put differently, give or take a few minor details, she wants to put Schaüble in charge of the French economy. That’ll show that fickle François who’s boss.

No doubt it will. Moreover, I’ve seen little resistance to this prospect among the French Gaullist intelligentsia. Now François is a different animal altogether. For amazingly it’s mostly the French internationalist Left that offers any resistance, however feeble, to the shocking loss of France’s sovereignty. So François isn’t going to drop his trousers and take his punishment like a man.

I don’t know how this conundrum will be resolved, only that there is indeed a conundrum. Effectively Angie wants to have more control over France than that other famous Chancellor of Germany had over Vichy – this without the benefit of military victory. For François to accept that sort of thing is tantamount to self-emasculation, and he’s as long on pride as he’s short on intellect.

Things are going to get interesting before long. Staying outside will give us the best vantage point to follow the action as it unfolds. Should you wish to take a little flutter, my money would be on Angie, she of the PVC and whip fame.

 

 

 

 

 

The jury isn’t out on the Most Rev and Rt Hon the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. In fact, it’s not even in: as I write, he has just been appointed. Yet some comments are in order.

First, I know nothing about the Most Reverend apart from what I’ve read in the papers, where the news of his forthcoming appointment has been met with responses ranging from enthusiasm to ecstasy. Now, assuming that his positions on various issues are represented accurately, and this is an optimistic assumption, my own reaction is that of cautious neutrality at best.

Archbishop Justin is being depicted as the best candidate to smooth over the divisions among the catholic, liberal and evangelical strains of Anglicanism. Amazingly this claim is largely supported by his experience as an oil-company executive, whose relevance to the doctrinal issues at hand isn’t immediately obvious.

Disregarding his stint in the cutthroat oil business and concentrating instead on matters clerical and theological, I fail to see why Archbishop Justin will succeed in the task that has defeated all his predecessors for centuries. If anything, his own allegiance to evangelical Christianity spells bad news for Anglo-Catholics. Archbishop Justin came to Christ as an adult and he’s enthusiastic about the Alpha course at Holy Trinity, Brompton. Most Anglo-Catholics I know tend to regard the Alpha course as an aberration only missing paganism by a gnat’s nose.

The Creed Anglicans recite in their liturgy confirms their belief in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Roman Catholics will deny their right to say so, claiming that the Church of England broke the apostolic succession by severing its ties with Rome in the 16^th century. The issue is debatable – but it’s only debatable from a High Church perspective, and even then not all that powerfully. It’s hard to see how evangelicals, such as Archbishop Justin, can argue this point against even a moderately erudite RC.

That, however, is a general point. Anglicanism, after all, contains both a Catholic liturgy and Calvinist Articles and, for the Church to be seen as anything other than a loose association of independent parishes, the conflict between the two must at least be patched up if not eradicated. It’s some of Archbishop Justin’s particular beliefs that worry me.

Prime among them is his support for the consecration of women bishops. This development, indeed even the ordination of women priests, crosses confessional boundaries, for it strikes against the very nature of any apostolic church.

Why is this even being mooted? What in the two millennia of Church history prompts such a radical violation of its traditional structure? The answer is, nothing. Christ didn’t consecrate women even though several of them were as important to him as any one of the Twelve. For the next two thousand years this quaint idea never crossed anyone’s mind, at least within any apostolic church. What then justifies going against both scriptural and ecclesiastical tradition in this case?

It’s conceivable that Archbishop Justin’s veneration of church tradition is somewhat muted – he is an evangelical after all. If so, such a position is suspect for it was tradition alone that fed the faith for some 30 years before the first Gospel was written, about 70 before the ink dried on the fourth, and several centuries before Scripture came together in its present form.

Therefore any attempt to use Scripture as an argument against the sacred significance of church tradition is at best spurious and at worst subversive. In this instance it’s also impossible, for there exists not a hint in the New Testament that either ordination or consecration of women was seen as desirable by Christ and his disciples.

So what arguments pro are there then? They are all based on premises that aren’t just secular but wrong. They also consign any rhetorical sanity to the way of all flesh.

Jesus, explain the pro enthusiasts, didn’t consecrate women because the culture of the day prevented him from doing so. The same goes for the two millennia worth of saintly or simply brilliant theologians, along with bishops, priests and laity. They have all been led astray by the culture of the day, or some 730,000 days to be exact.

Let’s forget for a moment that accusing Jesus and his apostles of being slaves to ‘culture’ is grossly blasphemous. Let’s further assume that shaping the church structure on the basis of extraneous secular concerns is wrong. Logically it follows that the pro enthusiasts, such as Archbishop Justin, are being driven by extra-cultural beliefs. In other words, the teaching of Jesus and his apostles was transient; the teaching of Archbishop Justin and the braying enthusiasts of female episcopate, transcendent.

This inference is absolutely logical, but I’m sure that our new Archbishop will wrathfully deny that he harbours any such thoughts. In that case, he has to admit that his views are a result of cultural conditioning, of the kind that revolves around ‘equality’, ‘human rights’ and, not to cut too fine a point, belligerent feminism.

It ought to be clear that Christian faith can’t be expressed within a domain defined by such categories, regardless of how one feels about them. I find them pernicious, someone else may find them invigorating, but surely we must all agree that they belong outside, not inside, ecclesia?

An apostolic church cannot, or rather should not, come up with a new theology in response to every half-baked idea emanating from the kind of people, most of them atheists, who in the relatively recent past were seen as the lunatic fringe and who are now seen as ‘the liberal establishment’. Nor should it change its doctrine to accommodate even solid secular ideas. The Church should stand above all such ideas, good or bad. When Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world, he meant his kingdom was higher than this world. No parity or ‘equal rights’ between the two was implied.

Any changes in ecclesiastical doctrine must be dictated by the Holy Spirit or the inspiration of subtle theological minds or, ideally, both. This particular change, inspired as it is by harebrained, kneejerk ‘liberalism’, will tear the Anglican Church asunder regardless of how nice a person the new Archbishop is, or how much management experience he accrued in the oil business.

I don’t know how welcoming Roman Catholics really feel to converts from Anglicanism, be that in the form of straight conversion or the ordinariate. If they really want to attract such converts, they won’t have to work very hard. Meanwhile, best of luck to the new Archbishop. He’ll need it.