The Tory party needs some wind in its sails

Ihave just re-read Theresa May’s speech to her party conference last year. It does not read badly. It gives quite a strong defence of free markets, and of improved opportunity. Its stance on Brexit – recovering sovereignty while staying friends with Europe – sounds well balanced.

But of course, no one remembers a word of this, because what Mrs May was calling “the British Dream” turned as she spoke into a British nightmare. A prankster disturbed her, her voice gave out and the letters of the slogan behind her dropped like autumn leaves.

Might it be different this week? Presumably the party chairman, Brandon Lewis, has been at great pains to glue the right letters in the right place. Her audience – though sceptical after the debacle of her Chequers proposals – will not be hostile. They will be willing her to succeed.

One must be doubtful that she will do so, however. This is partly because of Mrs May’s dislike – most unusual in a leader – of talking in public about what she is doing. Margaret Thatcher was a passionate preacher, especially to the converted. John Major was a low-key but seductive persuader. David Cameron might not have had great natural rapport with his party conference audience, but he could always deliver first-rate, rousing oratory. Mrs May gives the impression she would prefer to be at the dentist.

Her other problem is her apparent lack of interest in what brings national success. She does not seem to understand that if you are steering the ship of state, the engine room is more important than the sick bay. The creation and widespread ownership of wealth is what makes all the rest of it (including the care of the sick) work: that is where the necessary energy comes from.

At the risk of exhausting the metaphor, I would add that the captain, once he has ensured that the ship is well-provisioned and wellcrewed, must put out to sea. Mrs May has been at the helm for more than two years, yet we are still in port.

In Australia, a Royal Commission wants to force the Roman Catholic Church to break the seal of the confessional if a penitent confesses to child abuse. Priests would have to report the sinner to the police. One can think of many moral objections to this measure. Why, for example, must child abuse be considered worse than murder? But there are overwhelming practical ones too. Confession must involve complete honesty and complete trust. Otherwise, the absolution is invalid. The person confessing must declare all the sins which are on his or her conscience. The priest hearing the confession must tell no one what was said.

If someone confessing child abuse were reported by a priest without being warned that this would happen, the priest would then have deceived him. No priest could ever agree to that. If he were informed in advance that he would be reported to the police if he confessed to abuse, he would either not confess it (which would make his confession sacramentally worthless), or he would in effect be turning himself in to the state authorities (in which case, he might want to cut out the middle man). So no extra paedophiles would be caught.

Besides, priests very frequently do not know who is confessing to them. They often hear the confessions of people who are not their parishioners, and never, in or out of their parishes, ask the name of the person confessing. Making confession is designed to be an anonymous process.

Imagine preposterous court cases in which someone tries to prove that a priest failed to turn in someone whom he knew from a confession to be a child abuser. How could the evidence conceivably be found? Imagine priests going to jail for upholding their Church’s sacrament.

Not a single child would be helped, nor a single molester caught as a result of this proposal. Australia is a sane and free country, but this is a piece of old-fashioned “No Popery”, dressed up as anti-paedophile zeal.

‘Cameron would always deliver rousing oratory. Mrs May gives the impression she’d rather be at the dentist’

Poor Macedonia. When Yugoslavia split up, feelings ran high about who was entitled to what name. To lower the temperature, the newly independent Macedonia became perhaps the only nation in history whose formal name referred to its past status. It is officially the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Many want it to become simply “Macedonia”; but the Greeks, who get very angry about this sort of thing, insist it be only “North Macedonia”. Greece claims a sort of copyright on the word Macedonia. I shall not get into trouble by trying to adjudicate who is right, and regardless of the result of yesterday’s referendum on the issue, the logic of history makes it almost certain that the name of Macedonia will win in the end. The other names are sops.

As Brexit approaches, let us apply this lesson in a generous spirit. I am sure that Leavers would be happy to rename our country “The Former European Colony of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” for a few years if that would sugar the pill for disappointed Remainers.

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