Ian Harrow 1945 - 2022

Ian Harrow, who was a constant inspiration for this Blog and a highly stimulating companion, died this morning. Ian and I first met in 1956 when we joined Form 1 at Heaton Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, thereafter progressing to the 6th Form after which our respective careers diverged and we lost contact for nearly 50 years. Having reunited about 13 years ago we have, until recently, met every week to discuss everything of importance.  This was published in the Spectator, 22 January 2022:

Last Word But One

The vanity of your insistence

that there is still time remaining

to speak what words can't say

on these most wishful of days

when, for you, the dying part is near

and still you want to believe

the conversations will go on

as you rest your hand

like the hallucination of a hand

on files that nurse the latest

shortfall in everything you made

                                                    - Ian Harrow

Mushroom's Conservative Leadership Vote

 

Mushroom has cast his vote in the, apparently, never ending mudslinging and self-destruction of the Conservative brand.  The Labour high command must be laughing all the way to the bank having saved themselves a fortune from their campaigning budget.  Meanwhile, Starmer’s speech writers have been presented with a treasure trove of embarrassing political faux pas, all to be deployed against the Conservative Party as the next election approaches.

In the early rounds of the contest, I constructed a matrix of essential and desirable criteria for leadership and marked off each prospective candidate accordingly.  Unfortunately, the candidate who emerged top of my scientific evaluation, Suella Braverman, failed to impress enough honourable members and didn’t make the cut.  Instead, as we are reminded by the always excellent Rory Sutherland, “we get to choose between someone who studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Lincoln College Oxford, and someone who studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Merton College Oxford.”  How lucky we are.  Sutherland remarks that he finds “the very idea of an undergraduate degree in politics alarming.”  He concludes, “it’s one thing to theorise on the basis of practice; quite another to practise on the basis of theory.” 

Quite so, and as the various hopefuls were eliminated the two remaining had managed to say something that ticked every box in my Excel selection matrix.  So much for science!

But this contest is much more than a political game.  As Allister Heath points out in the Telegraph today, we are faced with, “looming power cuts, rocketing bills, water shortages, dysfunctional public services, sky-high taxes and a failing economy.” Heath, dammingly, blames, “a quarter-century of political, intellectual and moral failure in which most of our political class has been complicit.”

Oddly, the looming crises, offers an opportunity to choose a different path to the technocratic consensus of cakeism and political compromise.  Of course, neither candidate has dared to suggest that we should spend less, least of all on the NHS money-pit.  However, it seems clear that more of the same will not do – we must take the chance of doing something different.

I like Rishi Sunak but I have concluded that he is one of the technocratic consensus and that his solution of squeezing inflation whilst reassuring the work-shy that help is always at hand will not work and will be a certain recipe for defeat for the Conservative Party when the next election comes.  Of course, Liz Truss does not have a magic wand for inflation and the economy but she does seem to have the breadth of vision to, potentially, enact some more radical polices to increase growth and productivity from which economic equilibrium may be restored.  With the election still 2 years away, there is still time to restore the reputation of the Party.

But the game changer, for me, is that Liz seems to have appreciated that we need stand up to Russia and treat China more firmly than hitherto.  She seems to appreciate that this means spending more on defence – not just repeating the meaningless NATO target of 2% of GDP but serious expenditure to fund the military capability we need to promote our foreign policy.

So everywhere I look I judge that we could not be any worse off by giving disruption a try concurrent with beefing up our defences in an uncertain world.  It’s Liz for Mushroom.

RAF Order of the Day

 Following a complaint by a member of the Green Slime, the SAS has told special forces personal  to cease using demeaning and humiliating nicknames such as “Rupert “ or “Doris,” Accordingly , in the Royal Air Force, the practice of referring to Army Officers as, “Pongos” is to cease forthwith.  In future,  all Pongos are to be referred to as Army Officers. 

Lose - Lose for the Conservative Party

Whatever happens next in the Boris Johnson story, it seems, the outcome will be lose-lose for the Conservative Party.  Either the Prime Minister limps on, in which case the populist knee-jerking designed to keep him in power will continue at the expense of coherent conservative policy, or he will go and replaced by someone else from the cast of nonentities apparently waiting in the wings.  Declaring an interest, I had better admit that my judgement in predicting the worth of recent Prime Ministerial candidates has been hopelessly wrong – how could I have imagined May as a unifying force or that Johnson would lead us to the sunlit uplands of post-Brexit opportunity?  Fortunately, the cast have little to recommend themselves so, unless someone with the apparent good sense of Lord Frost can be persuaded to join the race, I will refrain from trying to pick a winner.  What on earth could any of them change that would reverse the fortunes of a demoralised membership? Indeed, the winning candidate will turn out to be a loser since it will be a case of suicide for the Conservative party, replace Johnson or not.

Whilst, as I say, I won’t venture an opinion on any of the candidate’s potential for success, I will point out why one of them, in particular should be disqualified at the starting gate.  I refer of course to Tom Tugendhat and his violent studs showing challenge on Roger Scruton when the great philosopher was grossly wronged and misrepresented by George Eaton of the New Statesman. Conduct unbecoming of an Officer and a Gentleman.

A Royal Memory

 

I have never, unfortunately, had the honour of an introduction to the Queen.  Of course, a framed scroll on my office wall reminds me that Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of GREAT BRITAIN and NORTHERN IRELAND and of Her OTHER REALMS AND TERRITORIES QUEEN, HEAD of the COMMONWEALTH, DEFENDER of the FAITH, addressing me as “Our Trusty and Well Beloved,” appointed me as an Officer in the Royal Air Force.  On the eve of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations I recall, about the time of the Silver milestone, the closest I came to Her Majesty.

The late 1970s were turbulent; industrial action including petty wildcat strikes was widespread, inflation was rampant, unemployment was pitifully high and the economy bumped along on the bottom as Great Britain lived up to he title of “the sick man of Europe.”  Wages lagged well behind prices, particularly in the Armed Forces.  It was said that a front-line fighter pilot earned less than a guard on the London Underground, whether at work or on strike.  At Royal Air Force Marham, where we happily stationed at the time, the Station Commander was shocked to receive a letter from a highly qualified Corporal technician begging the Group Captain to support his application to be released from his engagement because, on his present wages, he could not meet the basic outgoings for his family. Nevertheless, even as we approached the “Winter of Discontent,” morale was surprisingly good and was boosted when Her Majesty paid an official visit to the Station.

For those of us not scheduled to meet the Queen during the tour, the highlight of the day was an official lunch in the Officers’ Mess attended by the Station executives, Officers, and their Ladies.  Lunch was delightful and went like clockwork, thanks to the superb Mess staff we had in those days.  After lunch, unusually, Her Majesty consented to joining the Station Executives for a group photograph.  Peter Beer, OC 57 Squadron at the time but formally and Equerry to Her Majesty was probably responsible for pulling strings and setting up the selfie of a lifetime!

So there we were, arranged in pleasing order at the West end of the Ante Room, with 5 of us standing at the back and 4 seated at the front with a vacant seat in the centre, all ready for her arrival.  Her Majesty duly arrived and took her place.  Immediately, the Corporal photographer pressed the shutter release and took one step back to indicate that his work was done.

“Is that it,” inquired Her Majesty?

“Yes Ma’am,” replied the Corporal, adding, “I’ve been told to get it right first time.”

“I think you’d better take another one,” replied the Queen, “just in case don’t you think?”

A wonderful memory of a very special day and I hope you have a lovely weekend Ma’am!

 

Conduct Prejudicial

 

I have received a warning from Oliver Dowding, the Conservative Party Chairman, reminding me, as a Party member, to uphold the highest standards and that I am bound by the Conservative Party’s codes of conduct.  Refreshing on the document, I note with interest that, “Bringing the Party into “Disrepute,”” means causing the Party to be held in low or negative esteem as a result of a member’s behaviour or actions and that suspected cases will be investigated using an objective test - an “evidence based approach.” The case against the Prime Minister, based upon the evidence of current opinion polls, is slam-dunk.  But what is even more disreputable is the hundreds of Conservative MPs who are fearlessly cowering in the trenches, unwilling to commit to principle and decent behaviour as being fundamental to their trusted position.  Perhaps they are waiting for the results of the upcoming by elections before daring to move?  In which case, when the bandwagon really gets going, ever serve them right!

Boris Johnson is not The Man for the Moment

 

I have given up trying to understand what this Conservative Government stands for.  The heady days of the get Brexit done 80 seat majority are well behind us and in front of us we see a mediocre bunch of sycophants desperately buffeted by an increasingly effective opposition, the press and, of course, social media.

Today’s scandal of yet another shirt-lifting Tory will likely be “brushed aside” because, as the PM’s spokespeople will point out, “the public are far more concerned with the cost of living crisis (or was it crime or was it illegal immigration)?”

Boris is prone to brushing aside what he finds inconvenient.  Quite content to hand out nuclear guarantees like prizes at the school sports day, when told by people who know about these things that he really must spend more on defence, he “brushed their concerns aside.”

Meantime, the clamour for a windfall tax on the wicked profit hungry energy companies becomes politically irresistible, according to the press and the focus groups, that is.  But hang on a bit!  There is a lot that could come out in the potential unintended consequences of establishing the principle of retrospective taxation.  Why stop with fat cat industry?  What about all those who earn a bit more than the rest of us?  Imagine what a Labour Government would do once the principle of retrospective taxation had been conceded? 

Yet here we are, 6 years after the EU Referendum, and still negotiating the terms of departure.  Whilst we should be embracing our new freedoms to increase, for example, agricultural production through gene editing, using state aid to promote innovation and growth, and extracting the energy we need from indigenous resources, we are languishing in anguish, torn this way and that by focus groups and media campaigns.  And that is before the monstrous waste of HS2 and the economically emasculating, nay suicidal, agenda in pursuit of net zero.

We desperately need some leadership and sense of direction if we are to avoid some of the dire economic and social consequences of the current shocks to our cosy world.  But looking at the present front bench (and the opposition), I’m not sure I would trust any one of them to run a kebab franchise, let alone a sovereign nation with so much potential in the world.  The twin threats of Putin inspired nuclear destruction and potentially Weimar-like inflation ravaging the whole world, leave little room for optimism.  What we don’t want is the seriousness of our situation to be brushed aside in favour of some unrealistic cakeism - Boris Johnson is not the man for the moment.