West London holds its breath over Lib Cam Ron’s reckless test of a policy
World-wide condemnation has followed this week’s report that Notting Hill — the last Eton-governed state on earth — has tested a Conservative policy. Western intelligence services cannot yet say what the policy is, though CIA analysts insist that it is not lower taxes or any change to the NHS.
Whatever it is, it is a breach of the Conservative Policy Non-Proliferation Treaty (CPNPT), to which Notting Hill has been a signatory since the country was taken over just under a year ago by its youthful leader, Lib Cam Ron. The North Korean foreign minister commented, ‘This is a grossly irresponsible act. Notting Hill has no need of a Conservative policy. Cameroonism is perfectly sufficient. The test will destabilise the entire west London region, thus bringing Notting Hill into potential conflict with North Korea.’ President Bush said, ‘Sanctions cannot be ruled up. I mean, ruled down. Or if necessary, out.’ The test is believed to have been carried out in the Ladbroke Grove area. American satellite surveillance detected the probable venue as a Sunday evening dinner party in a kitchen with a pine table. A guest is said to have asked, ‘Don’t you think it’s time you said something vaguely right-of-centre, Dave?’ The test lasted about two minutes.
The world powers are clearly in disarray as to what to do about it. Notting Hill has traditionally been a Chinese sphere of influence. A majority of its restaurants are Chinese. But Japan cannot stand idly by. Sushi is now widely practised in the area.
Notting Hill is probably the most isolated country in the world. Its leaders seldom have anything much to do with non-Etonians. The masses are held down by a colossally high standard of living involving frequent weekend trips to Wiltshire — Greater Notting Hill. They till the land in what are known as ‘Chelsea tractors’. They have no contact with the outside world. Until now, this has meant that they will acquiesce in whatever the leader says is Conservative policy. Last week Lib Cam Ron implied at a mass rally that the Conservatives had invented gay civil partnerships. They were content to take his word for it. No one knows how the people will take to anything vaguely right-of-centre.
Why, then, would the leadership want to equip itself with a Conservative policy? The explanation could lie in the generally accept ed view of experts that the Notting Hill Etonians have designs on neighbouring Britain. They want to win a plebiscite to be held in Britain in two or three years’ time; known, according to regional usage, as a ‘general election’. If they win, Britain would be incorporated into Notting Hill.
But Notting Hill has a rival for control of Britain. It is Scotland. The British finance minister and interior minister are Scottish and both seek to become the British prime minister. Analysts are confident that the Notting Hill Etonians can beat the finance minister, but the interior minister is another matter. He has taken to making right-wing remarks. He has come out in agreement with a former interior minister who has said that Muslim women should not wear veils in public. Notting Hill women, especially in summer, wear hardly anything in public. But that is irrelevant to the main issue, which is the unpopularity with British voters of Muslim women’s veils. Notting Hill’s leader has so far said nothing about this issue. His policy of saying nothing much in general has put him ahead in the British opinion polls. The question now is how long he can maintain this policy. Hence his search for a right-wing answer if one is ever needed; though first he must search, if likewise it is needed, for a right-wing question.
Alittle-noticed anniversary, at least in Britain: 200 years ago this week — 14 October 1806 — there took place one of history’s most influential battles whose consequences ceased being influential only in 1945. It might be influential still.
Early on that day French reconnaissance patrols, advancing from the west and deep in central Germany, spotted the Prussian army. The previous December, Bonaparte had won his greatest victory, at Austerlitz; defeating the Austrian and Russian empires, but not the Prussians; they were not yet at war with him. As Bonaparte moved east, with blandishments, Prussia confidently rejected them. The only Germans he had beaten were the lax Austrians. The world knew that modern warfare, with its tactics and ruses, had originated with the Prussian Frederick the Great in the mid-18th century.
But by 1806 Prussia had not kept up with the latest military ways. On that October day Bonaparte eventually rode to the nearest town and wrote his dispatch, correctly claiming an annihilating victory. By tradition, the battle was named after the town: Jena. Paris has a Pont Jena. Simultaneously another French force, under Davout, annihilated the Prussians a few miles away from Jena, at Auerstadt. Prussia, of all countries, was militarily swept from Europe. Bonaparte made her emperor his client.
The world assumed a French Europe. But the Prussian army reorganised. The Prussians called it ‘the nation in arms’. The French thought that that sounded suitably post-revolutionary; nothing to do with the old Prussian order.
But it had more in common with that order than with the French Revolution. Liberalism became bound up with the French occupation, and was therefore unpatriotic. Still, only a minority of Prussians were authoritarian nationalists seeking to create a united Germany, a majority of them being intellectuals and students. The rest of Germany accepted that the country would remain in pieces as it long had been. Goethe had no interest in German nationalism, and remained Francophile. A German resistance movement never troubled the French.
Prussia revived to become victorious at the ‘Battle of the Nations’ at Leipzig in 1813; Leipzig being in that year the birthplace of Wagner, the embodiment of 19th-century Germany. But again, France underestimated Prussia. In 1870 Prussia defeated France, forming the German Empire, which France realised she could only defeat in alliance with Russia and Britain. But after 1918 Germany was allowed to remain a threat; though this time that was not France’s fault, but Britain’s and America’s. The Allies did not make that mistake after 1945.
The lesson for today, perhaps, is not to underestimate a loser: such as, say, Russia. History might decide that, while understandably concerned with Muslim terrorism, we failed to win over the Cold War’s loser, Russia, as we won over West Germany. But will Germany remain won over? Russia’s gas contracts might capture her still. After 1806, Russia became Prussia’s ally. Perhaps Jena’s influence will live on.
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