The lone defender
From Stuart Allison Sir: I was disappointed to read that the government's programme of creeping republicanism — the removal of the Crown from Treasury notepaper, the police force dropping its oath of allegiance to the Queen etc. — is just going through Parliament on the nod (The Queen fights back', 27 March). Apart from Mr Johnson going to see Chris Moncrieff in the press lobby, in a lone effort to denounce it all, we can only wonder what the rest of HM Opposition is doing all day. When did we last hear Mr Howard, Mr Letwin, Dr Fox or Mr Bercow stick up for the 'old Britain' so robustly defended by the MP for Henley-on-Thames? Even with the prospect of Giscard d'Estaing's European constitution swallowing us all up, and opponents of the EU being detained under the new European arrest warrant into the bargain, Michael Howard pledges nothing stronger than a desire to 'unpick' this measure. Surely the Opposition can muster a bit more sound and fury than that? It seems to me that the Conservative party has all but given up, and that the country must suffer in silence as Blair's commissariat runs amok through what remains of Great Britain.
Stuart Millson West Mailing, Kent From P. G. Urben Sir: Loyalty to the UK is logically indivisible from sporting loyalty, suggests Boris Johnson. Not at all — whatever the flannelling fools at Westminster may claim. During my later years in academe, it was the habit of the patriotic college chaplain to offer up private prayers for the speediest possible defeat of UK teams in all international sporting contests whatsoever. He did not consider the muddied oaf and his (often racist) creed any part of the eternal values of Britain — a view which had considerable support in the senior common room.
Many patriotic Spectator readers will sympathise. Supporting (but not playing) sports, soccer in particular, is the first resort of the scoundrel — vide Robert Maxwell passim. Football fanaticism is very much part of New (and Old) Labour.
PG. Urben
Pittenweem, Fife
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