Provocateur

France : A new area for the Republicains?

When it comes to French politics, President Macron has succeeded in monopolising public attention. But other interesting developments are taking place. On Sunday 10 December  there was a leadership election which highlighted the important challenges facing the French Right wing. Without much surprise, Laurent Wauquiez won the leadership of les Republicains, the principal party of the Right. He had faced very weak opposition. The main party leaders, Xavier Bertrand, Valerie Pecresse and Christian Estrosi, did not run for the position, which was hardly an expression of confidence in their party's immediate future.

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Conservativism and Ideology

In the summer of 1975, the new leader of the Conservative party, Mrs Thatcher, presided over a seminar held in the Conservative Research Department. In his book ‘Thatcher’s People’, John Ranelagh, who worked in the Department at the time, recounts how one of his colleagues attempted to present a paper that argued that  the “Middle Way” was the pragmatic path for the Conservative party to take, avoiding the extremes of Left and Right’. However, “before he had finished speaking… the new Party leader reached into her briefcase and took out a book. It was Friedrich von Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. Interrupting our pragmatist, she held the book up for us all to see. ‘This’ she said sternly ‘is what we believe’ and banged Hayek down on the table.”

The hapless ‘pragmatist’ was my 25-year-old self. And I still remember the next thing that happened with painful clarity. Mrs Thatcher glared at me wrathfully and said: “Dermot, I don’t know if you believe in Freedom, but I do.” It sounded like a career death sentence.

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A Prime Minister, a Pantomime Horse and a Piss-up in a Brewery

Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make silly. In normal times, the spat over Philip Hammond's transport arrangements would just have been an amusing embarrassment: a chance for the Opposition to enjoy five minutes of gentle teasing. These are not normal times. The disagreement over the unpaid plane bill will confirm an increasingly deep-rooted impression of a government mired in chronic incompetence: of as much coherence as the two halves of a pantomime horse, when both actors were drunk.

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A Cardiologist Views Brexit

I am as British as any Brexiteer. I served as Regimental Medical Officer in the Gurkha Field Force in Hong Kong. An ancestor lost a leg at Waterloo. My family members were decorated in several wars. Thirty members of my family served around the world in the East Yorkshire Regiment and the Northumberland Fusiliers. Imperial glory runs in my veins. I feel the tingle of a special relationship when in Delhi or in “The Commonwealth of Connecticut”. But the past belongs to the past. I belong to the future. Although I enjoy reverie as part of my personal culture, it does not determine my destiny.

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Beauty, Faith and Unbelief

'Advent' is a borrowing from Latin, and a superbly felicitous one. It has become one of the most beautiful words in the English language and has survived all attempts to debase it into adv-ertise-ment: a month of hyper-consumerism. As part of the constant drive to increase sales, there is now a Black Friday in the secular calendar. 'In spite of that, we call this Friday Good:' most of those who celebrate the black version would have no idea what Eliot was saying. But ghastliness can be held at bay, without the need for crucifixes and cloves of garlic. Carols will do. Though not unique to England, they are a deeply English form of worship, and seem to express a harmonious faith. That is where my problems start. Although enchanted by the music and its tribute to goodness, I cannot share the faith.

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