Boris looks headed to No 10 - maybe Andrew Neil should be drafted in

Boris seems overwhelmingly the choice of Tory MPs, winning the votes of 141 MPs. Jeremy Hunt, a Remainer who has flip-flopped so many times over Brexit, won 43 votes, and Michael Gove, despite the cocaine, 37.

27 votes apiece went to Dominic Raab, a reasonable man who resigned from the cabinet over the way Mrs May misled it and Sajid Javid, who is so boring and who is playing the class and race cards. They should drop out now. 

Shocklingly, 20 people voted for the gormless Matt Hancock, who should have been dropped from the government after his hilarious humiliation at the hands of Andrew Neil. 

Perhaps Andrew Neil should be the next Prime Minister. He is cleverer than any of the candidates, a Tory and a Brexiteer.

The selfishness and vanity of Theresa May have postponed the Tory election, at a time

Eulogy

I remember that when one nobleman and politician died in the period before 1914, another peer praised him for his faithfulness 'to his wife even though she was a woman of no great physical attraction'. These were Hansard's words. What the noble lord said was 'Even though she was a d-ned ugly old bitch.' I wish I could remember who said it of whom - I think both were former cabinet ministers.

Popes speaking impromptu is a very new thing

An interesting article in the Catholic Herald says that, well into the reign of Pope St John XXIII, the Vatican's official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, would report that a statement had been “gathered from the august lips of the Supreme Pontiff”. 

The habit of popes answering questions from journalists is a new one (but so is the habit of journalists questioning British ministers or intruding on Tory leadership elections). Pope St Paul VI occasionally made extemporaneous remarks, Pope St John Paul II started the

From an interview with Jean-Claude Juncker published yesterday

"I’ve had the impression for months now that the main interest of British politicians was to find a way to replace Theresa May, not to find an agreement with the Europeans.”

"I will not repeat that everybody understands English, but nobody understands England.”

No deal

"Although no-deal is now the only realistic way to deliver a proper Brexit, British politics has become so warped that even success risks destroying the PM. The stone cold truth is that while it is possible to make no-deal a success, it is impossible to make it a political success. The entire corporate establishment and metropolitan elite, and vast majority of MPs are against it. Being proved wrong willonly make their opposition to the government more vindictive. They will seek to wash away the embarrassing inaccuracies of their Domesday premonitions in a spitting megastorm of autocratic fury and apoplectic pessimism, the likes of which this country has never witnessed.

"Only a Trump-like figure whose whole identity is anchored in taking on the establishment could weather such a supercyclone of ruling class outrage."

Sherelle Jacobs in today's Daily Telegraph.  

She is right, though leaving with no deal has big dangers. But if anyone can be Trumpian it is Boris. And he says he will play our strongest card, which is a very strong one, the hard border that no deal makes unavoidable in Ireland, unless the EU makes useful concessions.

Why can't they let us have the Norway option, but with no more free movement for Europeans? 

Though it is non-European immigrants that are the big issue, on which the future of Europe hinges.

The Lancet argues for LGBTQ rights and abortion, opposes Italy's refugee policy

The Lancet is perhaps the world's most authoritative general medical journal. It informs doctors of medical developments but now it has widened its scope. Writers it publishes argue, for example, for a 

"progressive agenda that demands gender equality for girls and women and gender norms that promote health and wellbeing for all, including gender minorities.”

They also speak in favour of what they call reproductive rights, which means abortion, even though doctors by their Hippocratic oath swear not to perform abortions. 

Even further removed from medicine, an article by Raffaella Casolino in the latest issue of the journal attacks the Italian government's immigration policy and tells the physicians of Great Britain:

“Italy has been witnessing a rapid escalation towards racism and xenophobia since the new government came into power in June, 2018."

Quotations

“A person's life isn't orderly ...it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present's hardly there; the future doesn't exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person's life.” 
William Trevor

"False happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss." Alexander Pope

“Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.”
Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus

More fake news about Syria

I wrote on Tuesday about biassed and unreliable reporting from Syria, which makes understanding the situation so difficult. 

I, like you, am too busy to do deep research into the subject, but via the redoubtable Peter Hitchens I read this blog post by a distinguished British expert on the Middle East, Helena Cobban, which sets things straight. 

I wrote about a misleading article in the Washington Post, which said it was unsafe for refugees to return to Syria. Helena Cobban takes apart a May 30 piece in The New York Times, jointly written by a journalist in Turkey and one in Lebanon, about the humanitarian crisis in Idlib. It does not make the obvious point that the inhabitants are being effectively held captive by the rebel fighters, who are also in charge of distributing aid. The article fails too to mention the rebel forces are strongly dominated by the Al-Qaeda affiliate known as Hai’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies, or

...that under the September agreement Turkey expressly agreed to intervene in Idlib to pull HTS and its allies back from the frontline and eventually from the whole of the enclave. Russia agreed, in return, to hold its Syrian allies back from attacking the rebel positions in Idlib. Turkey has not done what it promised. In early May, Turkey’s non-performance of the agreement prompted Syria and Russia to resume their attempts to reassert Syrian government control over Syria’s national territory in Idlib through military means.

The article, and all the articles I read in the newspapers, seem to be based on information provided by rebel activists, for the good and sufficient reason that the HTS and its allies have killed too many journalists.

Articles like these - and there are so many - are more than shoddy journalism. They are perhaps the most scandalous thing I can think of, as they inform public policy and the desire of people like Hillary Clinton and Boris Johnson to intervene in Syria on the side of Al Qaeda to remove the Syrian government. All that is needed is some intelligence and integrity from the newspapers in question to report in a fair way.

Boris Invictus

John O'Sullivan described the Tory leadership election with the wit of his 1970s Commons Sketches in the Telegraph, my teenage reading over breakfast.

'The appropriate response to these candidates is Ray Clooney’s:

“Sergeant, arrest some of these vicars.”

'My main impression of the Conservative leadership race so far is of a repertory theatre that has advertised the wrong play: a small audience has turned up for a serious drama but a very large cast of actors is performing a light farce.'

I really hate British party leadership campaigns taking place in public. Leadership campaigns used to happen among MPs in private. The campaigns we are watching illustrate the decline of the House of Commons as a clubby organism, the increase in the power of the legacy media and the Americanisation of British politics. It's becoming a semi-presidential system, which is why people ask why the electors cannot decide who the next Prime Minister should be.

I detested Tony Benn for publishing his manifesto for the Labour leadership in 1976, but they are all at it now. 

How much better had the MPs made their minds up in five days a week or two ago. Boris might have been Prime Minister in time to meet Donald Trump, as the number two candidate would probably have dropped out. 

Boris Johnson is pretty sure to be the next British Prime Minister and for all his faults there is no-one else. 

'This isn't the Britain we fought for’

I wish I had spoken to my father, who signed up for the army on 1 September 1939 (he was in the Territorials and was called up two days before everyone else) about whether England was the country he went off to fight for. He is not here, unfortunately, to ask, but it is very clear that the country his contemporaries fought for has been lost. I hope Brexit undoes some of the damage but most is irremediable.

Nicholas Pringle three years ago sent letters to local newspapers across the United Kingdom asking people who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences and asking

'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

He has published the articles in a book. 

One writer said Britain was still the best in the world, which is true. Another said that living standards, educational standards and opportunities for women had enormously improved, which is also true. At least one spoke favourably of the EU, but almost all were bleakly disappointed.

The lessons of D-Day

The 40th anniversary of D-Day was celebrated on a very big scale because by the 50th anniversary many veterans would have died. It took place the summer I went down from university and seems very recent to me. Mrs Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau, who took part, did not seem big figures then, but do now. They have been lucky in being followed by much lesser men and, in the case of Theresa May, a much lesser woman. In Trudeau's case by his very much lesser son.

People said it was unusual and pleasant to see the American, British and French leaders without Helmut Kohl being there. Nor were the Russians, who won the war, invited.

Russia dismissed the ceremonies as a ''pompous propaganda campaign''. Izvestia, the Soviet newspaper, had recently carried an article saying that Hitler and President Reagan shared the ''distorted consciousness of a maniac killer.''

Mrs Thatcher, whatever one thinks of her economic policies, which I opposed at the

Getting through the red boxes

Theresa May wanted to know the detail about all sorts of government policies, which at first made her cabinet happy, until they realised that issues went to her and stayed in her inbox. She prevaricated and postponed decisions. 

She found it very hard to get through her red boxes, unlike the Queen who always gets through hers speedily. I read that David Cameron always cleared the contents of his red box before his first meeting in the morning and that Foreign Office mandarins were surprised that Boris always mastered his brief. The Prime Minister who was best of all at this was the diligent John Major.

Theresa May was never up to a cabinet job - and it is partly a question of intellectual capacity, partly of character (lack of self-confidence and qualities of a leader). Why was she not pushed out of office by her party after the 2017 election?

Harold Macmillan found time to read Miss Austen and Trollope in the afternoons, or so he

I have not seen H.M. the Queen look so happy since David Cameron kissed hands

1.5 million Syrian refugees returned last year, so it must be fairly safe to do so

Louisa Loveluck's story in the Washington Post is behind a paywall so I can't read it (part of it is here). She says, based on what refugees and 'activists' told her, that refugees returning to Syria are in danger from the regime.

Hundreds of Syrian refugees have been arrested after returning home as the war they fled winds down — then interrogated, forced to inform on close family members and in some cases tortured, say returnees and human rights monitors.

I am sure, unfortunately, that some opponents of the Syrian government are mistreated or tortured, and especially if they were active on the rebel side, but according to UNHCR almost 1.5 million refugees returned to Syria in 2018. This is not a small number and strongly suggests that in general returning is not so dangerous. 

I know very well that the Assad regime is very cruel but also know that press repeats rebel propaganda and the CIA line, as with the fall of Eastern Aleppo. 

I'll try to find out more but it is very hard to discern the truth about the Middle East in the Western press. 

This story and others like it seem clearly to have a purpose. Miss Loveluck says that she spoke to activists and I assume that the genesis of the story came from activists, as did the false stories CNN and the Economists told about Syrian soldiers going from door to door shooting people after the fall of Aleppo. David Miliband, who thankfully never became British Prime Minister, repeated that one.

Bishop Tobin has outraged a lot of people by saying Catholics should not celebrate 'LGBT Pride'

"Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ “Pride Month” events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals" 

You might think Bishop Tobin's tweet an uncontroversial statement of the obvious, but it turned out that the opposite was the case.

It provoked a huge outcry on Twitter, including from famous moral theologians like Mia Farrow. 

The Boston Globe likened him to Donald Trump, which it did not intend as a compliment. 

The Guardian reported that the Bishop apologised, which he did not. He politely said he was sorry to have caused offence, which is a different matter. He retracted nothing and said: 

"As a Catholic Bishop, however, my obligation before God is to lead the faithful entrusted to my care and to teach the faith, clearly and compassionately, even on very difficult and sensitive issues."

On the other hand, he did say

"I hope that the event will be a safe, positive and productive experience for all."

This is hard to understand and mealy-mouthed. How can he think it could be positive, given that he says it promotes a culture and encourages activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals? 

The Bishop is also called 'homophobic' in the press, but this neologism means bearing malice to homosexuals whereas - obviously - the Bishop is inspired by love for them and wants to save them.

This might be false outrage but it actually seems genuine. Yet everyone knows what the Catholic Church teaches on the subject of sex, so why outrage?  

Because, I suppose, as it was bound to be, homosexuality is the place where traditional Christianity and the new quasi-religion of human rights conflict. Other conflicts, over feminism or abortion for example, are less clear.

What would Jesus have thought? Some years ago I finally got round to reading historian Robin Lane Fox's Pagans and Christians, a good account of religion in the Roman empire,

'Catholics should not support LGBTQ “Pride Month”'

Right Scholarship added,

Bishop Thomas Tobin @ThomasJTobin1

A reminder that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ “Pride Month” events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.

6:49 AM - 2 Jun 201

15,000 people liked the Bishop's tweet above. 4,500 people retweeted it but I do not know how many did so with hostile comments. It got 67,000 comments. Most of the ones I saw were very negative, though someone who looked at them said about a fifth of them were positive. 

Among the positive comments were these from the brilliant historian Professor John Charmley. 

The Bishop of Liverpool is a preposterous ass

The Anglican Bishop of Liverpool Paul Bayes is an ass. On BBC Radio Four today he criticised Donald Trump, on the ground that 

“I don’t think it’s right to build walls."

Yes. He thinks walls are bad.

“He says he is a Christian but Jesus said you know people by their fruits. And this is a guy who seems to me to be saying walls are good, people from other cultures are bad, we must not welcome people, we must exclude them – I don’t believe these are Christian positions.”

Unfortunately, among the shrinking numbers of Anglicans many, especially young ones, still take their cue from bishops and think this sort of nonsense is Christian doctrine.

Bishop Bayes went on to say he was not comfortable with Mr. Trump being described as leader of the free world. (Has anyone done so?)

“I think the free world by definition does not need to be led in an authoritarian way."

How do people like this get promoted? By saying these sorts of things, unfortunately. 

Donald Trump has many very obvious defects, but he is not an authoritarian - or at least very much less of one than Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron or Angela Merkel. 

I wonder whether the Bishop's dislike of authoritarianism extends to admiring the US First Amendment which protects free speech and prevents hate speech laws.

Mr. Trump's state visit is going to be a comedy of the highest order, I expect, like his last visit. Gets popcorn, as they say nowadays.

The British army is suspicious of patriotism

A leaked confidential British military document from 2017, entitled “Extreme Right Wing (XRW) Indicators and Warnings”, tells officers how to spot extremists in the ranks. Soldiers who describe themselves as patriots are suspicious, as are men who “use the term Islamofascism”, make “inaccurate generalisations about the Left” and talk about "threats to so called national identity”, as well as people sporting tattoos with “overt and covert XRW iconography”. Adding -istan to place names as Melanie Phillips did long ago with her book Londonistan, is a sign. Referring to political correctness as a left-wing or Communist plot is another, even though it is. 

Dia Chakravarty, the British Bangladeshi Brexit Editor of The Daily Telegraph comments on this:

It is interesting that the Conservative candidate who felt able to simply state “I love my country” in his leadership pitch was Sajid Javid, the son of Muslim Pakistani migrants. Whether any of his non-BAME rivals would get away with such a declaration without courting controversy is, amazingly, not an unreasonable question.

I met a nice young upper class lieutenant in Edinburgh last August, giving out leaflets to try to win recruits for the army. I told him how nice it was that in modern Britain the armed forces were the one institution that still embodied hierarchy and the class system. He replied, apologetically, that they were trying hard to be more diverse.

Quotations

Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Strictly I should define loyalty as that devotion which is due when the moral debt is infinite. To God, to his parents, to his country, no one knows what he owes.
G.K. Chesterton

Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.
Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus

False happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.
Alexander Pope

Money

'Sir, all the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil, show it to be a great evil. You never find people labouring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune.'

Dr. Johnson

'Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.'

Gerald Brenan

'There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.'

Robert Graves