F rom the astonishing film of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams
together you can see at once that it is Paisley who has lost. Birthrights and messes of pottage come to mind. Smart-looking, cool-headed, smug Adams has gained respectability and power, and the chance to unite Ireland under his leadership without having to renounce any of his evil past. What has sagging old Paisley gained? A seat for his wife in the House of Lords and the exquisite discomfort of being called a ‘man of destiny’ by Peter Hain. He has weakened the Union; that is not something he would mind if, in exchange, he became the ruler of Ulster, but this will not happen. The system he will have to operate as First Minister is one in which all decisions will be shared with his hated opponents. All he will be is a wellpaid shop steward for his tribe, conceivably, grotesquely, armed with a Nobel Peace Prize. His entire standing throughout his career has depended on a sort of bigoted honesty. It has allowed him to finish off every other Unionist leader. Now he has done what he attacked all of them for doing, without having won in negotiation anything which they failed to win. His personality cult undermined the oldfashioned independence of mind for which Ulster Protestantism was known, and now his personality is compromised. One should not repine at his fall, except that his vanity has destroyed constitutional Unionism. This has left the way clear for a momentous and appalling lesson from Adams’s victory — that terrorism succeeds if only it plays a long game.
Speaking last week to the inaugural meeting of the Conservative Philosophy Group, which has been revived at just the right moment by Bernard Jenkin, I tried to investigate the phenomenon by which both sides in the argument about the nation state seem to be missing something. We Eurosceptics are quite right that the EU, 50 years old this week, is an outrage against representative democracy. The Europhiles have no answer to this, in fact they seem pleased about it, and surprised that their complacency makes them unpopular. But the sceptics have not caught up with the fact that people in general seem almost as cynical about our current forms of representative democracy as they are about the EU. In the days of such multiple, instant and precise choice about so many things, the way democracy works causes frustration and disillusionment. It needs to be rethought. It is because of a failure to think about such things that ‘Europe’ has tended to imprison both its enthusiasts and its critics. The late Hugo Young wrote an excellent, though wrong-headed, history of Britain’s relation with the EU, This Blessed Plot. It is interesting to read now because he published it in Tony Blair’s second year as Prime Minister. The book’s very last sentence is full of Euro-hope: ‘But there was now a Prime Minister ... , untroubled by the demons of the past, prepared to align the island with its natural hinterlands beyond.’ From the vantage point of 2007, it is obvious that the island has obstinately failed to perform Hugo’s alignment. Indeed, it may be that Mr Blair, by avoiding the chance to take us into the single currency, has in fact, though not in intention, done more for Euroscepticism than any other Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, the Conservative party continues its devotion to openness, localism and modernised democracy in everything except its own organisation. The party has a little-known body called the National European Forum which has come up with a plan to deny party members the right to choose their candidates for the European Parliament. It wants ‘regional selection colleges’ (dominated, naturally, by Europhiles) to vet existing MEPs before they can stay on the list of candidates for the next elections. All new candidates would be nominated by the central party organisation. The current system of regional hustings would be abolished, and so ‘one member, one vote’, a quite widely known democratic concept, but one which has had only a brief and fragile life in the Conservative party, would be no more.
Here is a recent court report. Guess the occupation of Carla and Lee. In an Asda supermarket, Lee, who was with his girlfriend, Carla, allegedly began to ogle Kelly in the cake aisle. Kelly’s boyfriend, Kevin, asked Lee ‘what his problem was?’. Lee allegedly called Kevin a ‘f****** prat’ and threatened to knock him out. Carla then allegedly called Kelly a bitch and lunged at her, ‘slapping at her, pulling at her neck and punching her in the face’. Carla admitted slapping Kelly, but said she did so only as a ‘pre-emptive strike’. Kelly’s two-yearold son witnessed the incident. When Kelly tried to defuse the situation, Lee allegedly called her a ‘f****** tart’. I am sure you have guessed correctly. Lee and Carla are both police officers.
Aletter from a reader gives a curious case of discrimination. She wanted to apply for an ‘entry-level administrative post’ at Girton College, Cambridge, considered suitable for a school leaver or for a late returner to the world of work. My correspondent is the latter, and was a mature student and has worked in education in various capacities. But then, at the bottom of the page of the application, it said that no graduate need apply, so she realised she was disqualified. It seems strange that an institution which exists to produce graduates denies them jobs ipso facto. In an age when there are far more graduates than ever before, this may be part of a wider problem: is it actually harder to get a job if you went to university than if you didn’t?
When Lord Turnbull said last week that Gordon Brown was like Stalin, the lack of outrage was interesting. If he had said that Mr Brown was like Hitler, many would have accused him of grotesque exaggeration and bad taste. This did not happen, partly, perhaps, because people really do think that Mr Brown is like Stalin, but also because, subliminally, people do not think of Stalin as nearly as bad as Hitler. Yet he was. The two are morally indistinguishable, though their characters were not the same. Stalin was probably personally the crueller of the two, but Hitler, being more fanatical, was probably even more destructive. Both loved death and absolute power and mass suffering. It is one of the great and subtle successes of the Left that they have managed to prevent Stalin from completely contaminating their cause, when really the red flag should inspire as much fear and disgust as the swastika.
Add to this column’s list of phrases which are almost unused in real life, but favoured by politicians and propagandists: ‘Britain [or other favourite subject] deserves no less’. The sentence often comes at the end of an article. This weekend, it was offered by David Davis MP.
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