Philip Hammond is no kind of saboteur
Widdecombe
IF I hear one more description of Philip Hammond as a “diehard Remainer” I shall throttle the chap who says it. I know the Chancellor and know that he is and always has been a Eurosceptic, whose decision to vote Remain was marginal rather than enthusiastic. I spoke to plenty of people in the course of the referendum campaign who similarly said they wanted to leave but were worried about the economic impact. I was worried myself but decided it was worth some short-term problems to be free of Brussels.
The latest nonsense about the Chancellor wanting to “sabotage” Brexit is based on a letter he sent to Nicky Morgan in her capacity as chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, setting out the possible consequences of Brexit. Actually she calls herself the chair so I can only suppose she wants to be sat on, a fate probably lying in store for a lot of those who do not accept the verdict of the British people.
Hammond always accepted that verdict, stating from the outset that it meant leaving both the single market and the customs union. As for the letter, now the source of so much Tory angst, it is a storm in a teacup.
WE SHOULDN’T RETREAT FROM HISTORY
THE Bank Holiday weekend could have been sunnier but intrepid Brits have been enjoying the coast, others have yomped moor and hill while children have thronged theme parks. People have taken to tents and caravans, to boats and steam trains. They have played cricket and munched on cream teas and some have taken part in historical re-enactments.
History of course provides a lot of scope: some brave mortals dress up in the colours of King or Cromwell, re-enact cavalry charges and fall off their horses. They call it fun. Others gird themselves in Viking gear and others still recreate scenes from the Second World War.
In some politically correct madness the last category of history-mad buffs and possibly frustrated actors have been banned from dressing up in German uniforms in case it causes offence or suggests a sympathy with Nazism. Oh, for goodness sake!
When I was at Oxford I attended a fancy dress event clad as Nell Gwynn. Is anybody going to suggest that meant I had secret hankerings to be a prostitute? Do people who dress up as Vikings harbour a repressed desire to loot, rape and sack? Are the chaps in the uniform of Cromwell’s New Model Army all closet puritans?
The Second World War is on the school curriculum and children are encouraged to ask their grandparents and IN the latest transgender nonsense students at Edinburgh University are to be issued with badges saying “he”, “she” or “they”, to indicate their preferred pronoun. No individual can be “they” as any nine-year-old could tell them.
Were I a fresher at Edinburgh I should have a badge which read “Anybody who cannot tell which sex I am is a nincompoop”. great-grandparents about it. To be on a train which is stopped by guys in the uniforms they have seen on television and asked for their papers is both exciting and educational.
How do you re-enact a war without actors representing both sides? The bigger question however is this: why run away from history and try to pretend something didn’t happen by refusing to face up to it in the here and now? Is that not the ultimate cowardice and betrayal of those who fought and died for our freedom?
Frightened by a Nazi uniform? Oh, poor snowflake, whatever would you have done if you’d had to face the real thing? Try watching Shoah sometime. FACED with gang violence, drugs and citizens daily afraid for their safety, Mayor Rudy Giuliani put another 11,000 police on the streets of New York.
Faced with gang violence, drugs and citizens too afraid to go out at night London has seen 7,000 officers taken off the beat.
Giuliani introduced zero tolerance. Our police are too busy to bother with burglary.
In this tale of two cities I know which approach I prefer – and which one works.