30 March 2017
Family Matters
An old fashioned virtue
by J.R.Thomas
There is an expression popular in the media, the “Westminster bubble”. It is one those pithy phrases that seems to summon something up, even though nobody ever seems quite sure what it is. Whatever it means, the effect of living in that Westminster bubble does seem to do something odd to those who ply their strange trades round that crumbling palace by the Thames.
The last couple of weeks have seen a series of incidents which must make the outside world regard what goes on at the bottom end of Whitehall as some sort of unreality show, the particpants’behaviour dreamed up by a team of scriptwriters deprived of sleep and kept alive only on coffee and peanuts. We had News at 10 – not the ITV version but the Downing Street version where sources at No 10 revealed that they had strongly warned about the lack of clarity and vision in the Chancellor’s National Insurance proposals, but that the silly man had gone ahead and done it anyway. Sources at No 11 said that No 10 had been at all times fully involved and utterly approving of some light mulcting of the self-employed and that it was fully in accordance with the Conservative manifesto for the 2015 election (which anyway was not signed off by us, guv). Anyway, they continued, they are all economically illiterate next door. Have to get us to work out the milk bill for them. Don’t even have batteries in their calculators.
Mr Timothy, who is the man who carries Mrs May’s second handbag, the one with the steel club in it, has not, we are told, taken this well, and although Mrs May and Mr Hammond were careful to sit close together in the Commons last Wednesday and endorse each other’s views that the reversal of the NI proposals was all part of a strategic tripping up of Mr Corbyn (it certainly succeeded), and to laugh at each others’ jokes, it was noticeable that Mr Hammond was careful not to turn his back on Mrs M, and word is that there will be no shared pizzas for supper for a while.
But our interest in this matter is not in the shambles in the policy making which seems to have occurred. It is in the aggression and rudeness of the parties involved. We all know the old adage about your enemies being behind you in the Commons, and your opponents being those opposite, and it is true enough; but one of the features of Parliamentary life, indeed British life in general, is that a superficial politeness and elegance always prevails except in the most extraordinary circumstances.
Ms Sturgeon did not get the memo on that one, or maybe it was thrown unread in the bin by Mr Salmond, but here rudeness about her neighbours may in be a product of the increasingly difficult position she is in politically. The ScotNats are a natural party of protest and it is possible that they had not prepared for actually running Scotland. Even after ten years of on the job training they don’t seem to have learnt much. Certainly, things have not gone their way since they took on the governing role, what with the Referendum going the wrong way (not that Referendum, the 2014 version), and the oil price collapsing. And they have suffered, probably of more immediate interest to Scottish voters, a series of minor disasters in domestic matters – over-running projects, the startling decline in the Scottish educational system, the messed up merger of the Scottish police forces. Even the much applauded reopening of the Waverly railway line, the largest passenger railway reopening in these islands, has run at nearly twice budget and the railway has the worst punctuality record in the country. So one political solution is to find a distraction, and what better than another referendum on Scottish independence, and a chance to throw rotten cabbages at the woman next door? It might not excuse the rudeness, but everybody understands the need.
Unlike the Hogg Case, as we might call it. Ms Hogg is undoubtedly very bright and has had a noticeably successful career, with the ultimate banker’s accolade of a position at the Bank of England. Then came the Deputy Governorship, a seat on the Monetary Policy Committee, and a nod that the Governorship might be hers when Mr Carney returns west, or wherever he might go next. But Ms Hogg has two big crosses to bear. Firstly, she is a member of a famous dynasty which has achieved much in public life; and second, she is not a monetary or indeed any other type of economist. There is not much she could do about the former; and she has never claimed to be the latter, though she might have been prudent (given the first factor) to make very clear the second. At the hearings of the House of Commons Treasury Committee on her appointment, she forgot to mention, has forgotten at all relevant times to mention, that her brother is a director of Barclays Bank. Not surprisingly, perhaps, as he is not a board director, but simply holder of a director title, something used widely by City banks to make its staff seem more important than they are; Barclays is said to have a thousand of them and at RBS and Lloyds there are even more. He was not relevant to Ms Hogg’s job or her proposed elevation – in fact the Committee might more interestingly have asked why a member of such a distinguished dynasty has not risen higher than that. Unfortunately she was caught on the hop by a technical question on quantitative easing (a question which we suspect many members of the Treasury Committee could not have answered without a bit of careful brooding). But Ms Hogg is not an economist, she is an operating type and that is how she has risen. She is good at making things work, which is something the Bank needs as Mr Carney sighingly reminded everybody after the matter had run its course. Nobody alluded to this though; her failures, which are not really failures, have simply been the excuse for a massive amount of rudeness, verging, or rather more than verging, on invective regarding nepotism and lack of economic talent. Much of that sounds like jealousy of her talent and a demeaning of the capabilities of her sex. Exit Ms Hogg; exit a talent sorely needed by the Bank; and exit an example to minority strugglers everywhere of how to break though City glass ceilings.
And so it goes on; the really awful stuff expressed about Mr Trump, much of it coming from persons who regards themselves as civilised and educated (or Hollywood celebrities, which is not the same thing at all). You may not like Mr Trump, you may think he is going to be a disaster, but he is the democratically elected head of state and representative of a nation, so at least be polite if you can’t be nice.
And the other Referendum Campaign, the 2016 one, not the 2014 one. Was there any need for all that bile and nastiness? It was a key decision affecting our futures. It deserved serious and thoughtful debate, not two choruses of mutual vituperation. We have all got to get along with each other as we go through the next processes, we should not end up a nation divided by bad language and vulgar slanging. You don’t have to be nice, you don’t have to pretend (much) but at least be polite.
So time to make nice guys and gals learn the old fashioned courtesies, behave as grandma would like. Read John Major’s elegant intervention on Brexit last week, a model of how to make a dissenting case without rudeness. Watch Harold MacMillan and Harold Wilson elegantly disagree; listen to Churchill or Reagan dispatch with humour. Time to recover our manners, please. Pretty please?
If you enjoyed this article please share it using the buttons above.
Please click here if you would like a weekly email on publication of the ShawSheet
