My blog

Category: Opinion

  • Gillian Keegan on Maths to 18, apprenticeships and why Sadiq Khan is good for Conservatives

    Gillian Keegan

     

    Now that we’re coming into a General Election year, I feel confident that we’re going to see Rishi Sunak’s strength and leadership come through and prove the doubters wrong.

    So how do we win? I think it’s very important that we provide a great focus on business education; we need to work harder on encouraging young people in setting up their own businesses.

    Rishi Sunak’s Maths to 18 policy is sometimes misrepresented, but it’s of huge practical importance to understand about working capital and the administrative side of business, all of which obviously goes back to the importance of mathematics as a core subject.

    There’s an entrepreneurial element to the policy which has been missed in too much of the commentary. What we need to champion is the acquisition of knowledge about the pragmatic side to life.

    That’s why citing our educational achievements is going to be a big part of our strategy for the next election. Many of our universities have now set up entrepreneurial centres, and the government is already thinking about ways in which we can help entrepreneurs: they’re the lifeblood of our economy.

    But I do accept that when it comes to Maths to 18, it will be absolutely crucial how we sell that policy. Young people already know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform their lives within their lifetime – in fact, it’s already doing so. What we have to do is to demystify that and sell it as something that’s going to help you in your life. This stuff is going to be changing how our houses work, our jobs, and our education: we have to make sure it’s something that people don’t see as a threat. When the Maths to 18 policy was raised, everyone imagined it amounted to making it compulsory to take the subject at A-Level. That’s not what we’re talking about, and we need to make sure we bring everyone along with us according to a proper understand of what the Prime Minister is really championing.

    As I look ahead to the next General Election, I sometimes think that the current London Mayor Sadiq Khan is doing rather a good job for us. Take the free school meals policy that he’s introduced. It sounds fantastic on the face of it, but it costs a fortune and is only for the course of a year. Also, nobody in City Hall seems to be thinking about how you deliver it. This is where Labour is always weak: in the crucial realm of reality.

    By stark contrast, the Conservatives have been very pragmatic: Rishi Sunak knows how to get things done. So, for instance, we have an international student strategy which we’ve developed over the past couple of years which targets international students, and seeks to recognise that our education system is one of our biggest exports.

    I recall vividly one trip to Egypt where everybody was talking about how fantastic our education system is: at King’s College London, we train most of the world’s defence leaders, as well as most of the senior army figures. Of course, we all see the immigration figures, but I’ve put the case firmly that immigration can be vital to the economy and to the health of our world-class universities. It’s a question of balance.

    Another area where Rishi Sunak has been highly strategic is on creative industries, where the government has put a range of policies in place to recognise that this is our second biggest sector. We’ve tried to make sure that student loan finance is available in the short term and in smaller chunks. On a separate front, we’re also seeing an increase in nursing and medical schools, as well as full time or part time apprenticeships: but we need to change the culture around recruitment. My local hospital for instance recently returned from a trip to the Philippines to recruit nurses over there; and I explained to them that it’s perfectly possible to recruit them here.

    There’s so much more to do. I have also spoken to recruiters at big companies and corporations: what they find is that a lot of kids do well in school but then lack the social skills and understanding of social interaction suitable for the working world. But a lot of that will come back to the Maths to 18 policy: we need to create a numerate and pragmatic workforce which understands the realities of life.

     

    The Secretary of State for Education was talking at the In and Out Club

  • Simon Callow on his upbringing, life as an actor and the dangers of the art house flop

    Simon Callow

    I am sometimes asked by young people who want to be actors whether I can help – realistically, there’s not much I can do because I’m not Laurence Olivier so I can’t invite people to come and work in my theatre.

    But when asked for advice, I tell young people that it’s a very, very hard life.   If you are considering this route, you must first ask yourself: “Do you need to be an actor?” Unless your life depends on it – unless it’s the only thing that you can imagine yourself doing – then don’t even think about it because it’s a life of rejection and disappointment.

    I lived in Streatham until I was five and then I went to live in Berkshire where my mother was the school secretary for two years, before we returned to Streatham. When I was nine, I went to Africa; we returned eventually in 1962, and I lived then in Gypsy Hill.

    I didn’t think I was going to be an artist until much later. I had no idea but my grandmother had been a singer, and even been on the stage. She was a contralto – one of those deep female voices that you don’t really hear so much nowadays.  But the life was not for her since she suffered quite badly from nerves so big concerts were difficult. However, she did sing at the Albert Hall to celebrate the end of the war in 1919.

    She was a very theatrical human being as was her father – who was Danish and had been a clown in the Tivoli Club, and then became a ringmaster in Copenhagen where he married my great grandmother, a bare back horse rider. He came from a long line of equestrian folk and came to London and became an impresario. So theatre was there but not close to hand.

    As a child I was rather extrovert.  When I was out with my grandmother shopping I would be doing routines and someone said to my grandmother: “This child should be on stage, he is very gifted.” My grandmother was delighted by that idea and told my mother the good news and my mother said: “Over my dead body!”

    When I was in Africa, aged 9 or 12, in Lusaka, Zambia at school we did little playlets but tiny stuff. When I went to boarding school in South Africa at a school called St Aidens in what was then Grahamstown, I did actually act in plays but I have very little memory of it – except there is a photograph of me dressed up as an angry old man shaking my fist.

    When I came back to England, I went to a school called the London Oratory which was in those days in Chelsea but subsequently moved to Fulham and became quite a famous school partly because Tony Blair went there. It was a pretty terrible school and we had no drama at all. I knew nothing about acting at all. But London was all around me, and from my personal experience, I was overwhelmed by the work of the National Theatre and the Old Vic. I wrote a letter to Laurence Olivier who suggested that I might apply for a job in the box office.

    Since that time, I’ve been very lucky in my career, and I do get recognised, especially after Four Weddings and A Funeral. However I’m not Jennifer Lopez and I’m not Brad Pitt so the true burdens of fame aren’t something I’ve had to bear.

    I’ve had my share of setbacks. Not all movie executives or financiers are especially responsive to my art, but then that’s especially normal when people cross over from theatre into film. Take Tom Stoppard, as an example, who has sometimes seen his scripts go unmade: he is essentially a playwright, and he knows what he’s doing. But when executives read a Tom Stoppard script they probably don’t see dollar signs. Instead they think: “This is very clever, this is very interesting but where’s the money and the audience?”

    I have sometimes had to face the fact that I’m not commercial. I directed one film called The Ballad of the Sad Café which was a sort of mildly respected flop. An art house flop is the worst sort of film you can make. You could make an art house success, and that’s very good. You can also make a commercial flop – but if you brought it in on time and under budget then you would still be a safe pair of hands. But an art house flop is an absolute no-no.

    Even so, things are looking up and I have some movies in the pipeline, which are very promising. But the thing about making movies is that it’s very expensive, and people don’t like spending their money – except when they sometimes go mad and think that they are making art like Warren Beatty’s famous flop Ishtar, where everybody spent more and more money because he was Warren Beatty.

    This is all partly why I am quite nervous when I am doing plays with other people: on my own I am my own master completely and even if were to forget a lump of the text I can make it up, and I am now quite good at improvising Dickens and Shakespeare. I note that the solo play is becoming a trend. I see that Eddie Izzard has just done Great Expectations, and that Andrew Scott has done Uncle Vanya as a one man show. The only novel that I have ever done as a one man show is A Christmas Carol which works because it is this amazing magical performance where you can jump from one scene to another: the narrator of A Christmas Carol in our version is a conjurer and that makes sense.

    I am often asked about my next one man show. I’m sure Gore Vidal would make an entertaining evening but I don’t think I would be the person to do it. I am always nobbling writers to write me things and they are always a bit daunted by it. They are adapting at the moment a novel by an American novelist called John Clinch. Clinch he writes two kinds of novels: straightforward narratives and prequels somehow interconnected to already existing novels. One he wrote was called Marley; I happened to review it for The New York Times – and I immediately took an option out on it because I could see huge cinematic potential in it, as well as solo performance potential. I’m on a third draft of it, and getting close to something performable now.

    I’ve now been writing about Orson Welles for over a quarter of a century: I have become a more nuanced viewer of the human scene than I was when I was younger but that’s not surprising. But lately I’ve been thinking about fiction too: there are about half a dozen novels swirling around in my brain and I would love to write them, but I have so many other things that I have still got to do before that. I also want to write about my family – but not in fictional form:  I have just got to get it out of my system.

  • Reviving Varanasi: A Journey to India’s Holiest Place

    Dinesh Dhamija

    I’ve just spent a few days in Varanasi, India’s holiest place, celebrating my brother-in-law’s 70th birthday.

    Coming back to this city and seeing India’s mightiest river brought back all kinds of memories.

    In 1999, 24 years ago, my brother and I said farewell to our father and scattered his ashes in the Ganges. As children, we would come to Varanasi and visit the ghats, the temples and the shrines.

    The difference from those days to the present is astonishing. Just to take one example: the Kashi Vishwanath temple – the holiest of the holy places for Hindus – has been completely renovated and is now at the centre of a wide, calm, beautifully-designed precinct and avenue leading down to the river, allowing pilgrims to worship and visitors to enjoy the extraordinary architecture and atmosphere.

    Spread over 5000 hectares, the project cost $95 million and included the restoration of 40 temples along the route, which had been ‘lost’ over the centuries through haphazard development.

    Varanasi – or Benares (‘City of Light’) as it is sometimes known – is one of the world’s oldest cities. This is one of its charms. There are layers upon layers of history jostling together next to the holy river.

    It had also become a problem. As India’s population rose and ever more pilgrims made their way here, the overcrowding became oppressive, even dangerous. Varanasi is the Hindu equivalent of Mecca: worshippers are encouraged to visit at least once in their lives.

    The transformation of the Kashi Vishwanath temple is an example of 21st Indian development at its finest. It welcomes international visitors, who would previously be alarmed by the chaotic bustle. It elevates one of the country’s great architectural marvels to its proper status. And it showcases a new kind of India: clean, orderly, proud of its heritage and appealing to a new generation.

    Anyone who has spent time in India knows that there are thousands of amazing places to see. But for those who are yet to come here, the stereotypical view is: let’s go to the Taj Mahal. And maybe the Gateway of India in Mumbai.

    Broadening this narrow vision is a great service to India and to its visitors. They could consider visiting the majestic peaks of the Indian Himalayas, the idyllic waterways of Kerala, the Ajanta caves of Maharashtra, the tiger reserves of Tamil Nadu or the ancient, ruined temples of Hampi.

    Many visitors remark on how much has changed in India in recent years. It’s true and welcome. I would say that the transformation of Kashi Vishwanath is one of the most important and profound changes and I’d urge anyone coming to India to see it for themselves.

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book is The Indian Century.

  • Baroness D’Souza on the encroaching power of the executive

    Frances D’Souza

     

    My really big concern is the increasing power of the executive; this has been going on for years and years. It’s becoming extreme at the moment whereby we are getting bills which have been passed by the Commons which are essentially what we would call skeleton bills. These are really just broad outlines – and all the detail is being inserted by means of statutory instruments and secondary legislation which is unammendable.

    In the Lords our options are limited if the government decides to do that. We can either put down what’s called a fatal motion and vote on it and win. That’s extremely rare and has happened only a handful of times since World War II. The last time we did it was in relation to Universal Credit. This motion was overwhelmingly supported by peers on all sides of the House, include Tories. But it was so frowned upon by the powers-that-be that they commissioned a special enquiry into the power of the House of Lords.

    Of course this whole question goes all the way back over a hundred years to Lloyd George and to the Asquith administration, and the passage of the legislation which curbed the power of the Lords. The Parliament Act means that the Lords can create a delay of a year but it also ultimately means that the government gets its way. That’s right when you consider that the Commons is elected and the Lords isn’t.

    Even so, we’re now at a point where the government is getting all sorts of things past Parliament because of unchallengeable executive orders. I find this truly worrying. The person who did the most on this was Igor Judge, who sadly died in November 2023. He was a convenor in the House of Lords and an absolutely masterly speechmaker. He will be sorely missed.

    The only really effective check on government action are the Select Committees. These at least have the effect of making Ministers wary about what they do because they are going to have to answer to them. That fact alone makes the Public Accounts Committee, the Constitutional Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and so on quite powerful. But in the end these encounters occur after the event and that of course places severe limits on their power.

    You might recall also that Dominic Cummings refused once to attend the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I had thought up until recently that to refuse to appear before a Select Committee was a sort of hanging offence and that the Committees had the power to command Ministers to attend. That turns out not to be the case.

    That particular episode makes one wonder also whether there should be parliamentary oversight of the appointment of special advisors – or SPADs as they’ve become known. Look, for instance, at the appointment of Richard Sharp as Chairman of the BBC. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of that, the perception was always very dicey: he was somehow involved in brokering a loan for a very needy and irresponsible Prime Minister and then, hey presto, he became the chair!

    This isn’t an isolated instance. The government puts in people who it knows will be safe on their terms: it shows the way in which democracy can be undermined. We cannot escape the fact that the institutions of democracy are increasingly in the gift of the government.

    In a curious way, the Conservatives had the antithesis of all this in the shape of Lady May. Whatever one might think of her premiership, she is extraordinarily respected today as a backbencher: she embodies that sense of public duty which has all but left government. I had a drink with her shortly after she stepped down and I said: “I don’t know how you get out of bed in the morning when they’re treating you like that.” She replied: “You can do it if you think it is right.” It is impossible not to respect that.

    I got a different answer with another former prime minister in a similar encounter. I once asked Sir John Major why he didn’t come to the Lords and he said: “I have been so bruised by politics, I just can’t go near it.” Well, who can blame him?

     

    Frances D’Souza is a former Speaker of the House of Lords

     

  • Steve Coogan and the division between talent and knowledge

    Christopher Jackson

    Steve Coogan recently joined the ranks of the great actors with his portrayal of the odious Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning, the BBC‘s attempt to dramatise its own failures in relation to that grim affair.

    To say Coogan’s performance is superb is to understate the case. He’s able to do more than just impersonate Savile, but his performance is built on the gifts of an impressionist – an excellent eye and ear. In being so good at impersonation Coogan has always known the limitations of that metier. Spitting Image, where Coogan began, always required the elevation of the small but telling detail, because that is where laughter is to be found: in contrast to what’s not absurd.

    Drama is different since it requires truth: the same techniques which might elicit a laugh don’t elicit a sense of awe, terror or wonder at the nature of reality. It’s therefore remarkable that Coogan has also mastered this second set of skills. In his portrayal of Savile, Coogan conveys brilliantly the terrible passivity of the evil and powerful when they know they’re getting away with it: the presiding image is of the DJ, tipping his head back, luxuriating in the knowledge that he won’t be caught. It suggests that just batting away the guesses of interviewers will be enough: with each puff of cigar smoke came the certainty that the truth was too dark and large for outsiders to intuit.

    Then there are other terrible moments when Coogan shows us how, just before an attack, Savile could display a sudden assertion of physicality. In one scene, hard to dislodge from the mind once it has been witnessed, Coogan looms before a victim, suddenly the only fact about a confined space, and we feel how strength in certain predators is concealed in the sort of wiry frame where we might not expect to find it.

    Then there is the other aspect of Coogan’s performance: he shows the japester, with his almost tapdancing caper along hospital corridors – that terrible springiness in his step, suggesting both of subterfuge and a general alertness for the next possible crime. Coogan also expertly delivers those clownish asides for which Savile was well-known – the sort of jokes which sound like they might be funny but which aren’t, and which even contain a kind of threat if you choose not to laugh.

    It all amounts to a performance as exciting in its actual brilliance as to its potential: someone who can deliver such a complex performance around such a sensitive issue can do anything. Great art is always a function of great intelligence, and this is the case with Coogan: every frame suggests a powerful mind at work.

    This is all good news. But we might be more comfortable celebrating it if Coogan hadn’t around the same time cemented himself in the ranks of celebrities who talk about politics with omniscience while also knowing very little. Around the release of The Reckoning, Coogan had this to say about people who support the monarchy:


    It’s just because most of the people that are into it all, those flag-waving plastic boats of people, I think are kind of idiots because they support a power structure that keeps the foot on the throat of working class people and I’m just not very keen on that kind of thing.

    The loftiness of the tone here is as bad as the reasoning. The way in which Coogan speaks about politics suggests a man in the media bubble used to being agreed with partly because he is famous, but also because the media is not a sector noted for its diversity of opinion. Such people talk as if the notion of disagreement with their view were wholly farcical.

    Meanwhile, the reasoning is poor because it shows a complete ignorance of the many good reasons intelligent people have for liking the monarchy: a liking for history, a passion for the individual character of a nation, the aesthetic of pageantry, or the good things which, for instance, King Charles III has done for society (and especially in the social mobility space). Coogan is talking with complete ignorance that such logic may exist, let alone that it might be valid, as it obviously is. This, then, is to speak idiotically while labelling others high-handedly idiots.

    There’s more. After the appalling October 7th attacks in Israel, Coogan was the most famous signatory to the ludicrous Artists for Palestine letter which asked governments to end their support for Israeli actions without mentioning the reasons why Israel had made incursions into Palestine in the first place. It was an early preview of the regrettable tendency, now widespread, to act as though nothing very significant or alarming happened on 7th October to make Israel act. This position has its logical conclusion in the reports we’re now seeing of people on TikTok embracing Bin Ladenism.

    Coogan was forced to backtrack, saying ‘that it goes without saying that what Hamas did is evil beyond imagination’, but a man of his intelligence knows that in the context – especially given the history of anti-Semitism – this ought to go with a good deal of saying. We cannot say it enough. In Gaza today, to omit context is to destroy the meaning of the events themselves, and therefore create the basis for excusing Hamas’ actions. It is also to remove any possible sense of regret which always accompanies legitimate acts of war – the baffled sense of being left with no choice for the sake of the memory of those you have lost, and their families, and the dignity of the nation. If anyone doubts that Israel was placed in this position on 7th October then they need to look again at what happened.

    It is no coincidence that Coogan has in the past supported another Hamas apologist Jeremy Corbyn. In this he is similar to Mark Rylance another brilliant actor who has also managed to convince himself that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. There is a trend here which cannot be entirely explained away by the media bubble. Coogan and Rylance are great actors because they are capable of independent though in their acting which they then cannot replicate when considering politics: in that area of life, they resort to the banalities of the herd.

    What then is going on? In Coogan’s case being famous at a relatively young age doesn’t help. Politics is to do with the day-to-day lives of millions and the life of the creator of Alan Partridge isn’t likely to be an ordinary one. For one thing, such people tend not to be especially expert on the tax system around which politics really revolves: they are financially secure and have advisors for that side of life. Nor are they particularly likely to develop this understanding during their busy lives. It was Asquith who said of the prime ministership that you have to conduct it with the knowledge you bring to it on your first day in office. He meant that there wasn’t enough time to acquire new knowledge. Today’s fame is probably similar: everything conspires to fix you in your opinions because success and busyness are now constants.

    It has been said that there is a distinction between artistic and moral intelligence. This is attractive but too simplistic: we could say Coogan is intelligent as an artist but not as a political thinker. But this isn’t satisfactory because, as we’ve seen, the Savile portrayal is so good because of its moral intelligence. This means that the only possible explanation is moral laziness – that Coogan is capable of great things when he is on camera, there is a paycheck involved and he knows vast numbers of people will be watching. However, we can say with reasonable assurance, that he doesn’t make as much effort when it comes to the issues which affect others.

    The elevation of the media as a sector has got out of hand. We would be surprised if Rishi Sunak stood at the despatch-box and announced that he had an idea for a TV drama. Maybe now, as the world’s issues gather in complexity, it might be a good idea if actors returned the favour, and worked harder on the detail before they gave us their political opinions.

     

     

     

  • Tesla Targets India

    Dinesh Dhamija

     

    I’m a big fan of Tesla.

     

    When I sold ebookers.com, I had salespeople trying to interest me in all kinds of fancy cars. Some of them I couldn’t squeeze into. Others just made me feel like a polluting road-hog.

    Several years later, I’m still extremely happy in my quiet, smooth, comfortable and non-polluting Tesla. And so is my wife, in hers.

    So it’s exciting to see that Elon Musk is getting serious about setting up Tesla in India. He’s met Narendra Modi a couple of times already and held meetings with commerce minister Piyush Goyal about building one of his mega factories in the country.

    Of course, there are hurdles to overcome. Despite hundreds of millions of consumers, few Indian car buyers can afford to pay $38,000 (the current cheapest Tesla). The government would have to lower its 70 per cent tariff on cars below $40,000 and 100 per cent on cars above $40,000, which will be resisted by domestic carmakers.

    An Indian government official was quoted in the Financial Times proposing a 15 per cent tariff for all EVs, in return for building a plant in the country.

    Infrastructure for EVs is basic to non-existent in much of India. Right now, they make up just 1.5 per cent of passenger vehicles sold in the country. And the most popular types of car are tiny, compared with the spacious Tesla saloons.

    Yet like so much in Elon Musk’s career, the idea of attacking the India market shows imagination and vision beyond the scope of most other people. He sets almost ridiculously high targets – the latest is to produce 20 million cars a year by 2030, more than Toyota and Volkswagen combined.

    For India and specifically for Narendra Modi, a new Tesla plant would give all the right signals: it would show that he welcomes industrial investment, is further developing his green agenda, boosting high tech employment and helping to improve India’s terrible air quality.

    A more mobile Indian population, with greater car ownership, will bring all kinds of other dividends. It will add to pressure on state and local authorities to improve the country’s highways, it will aid commercial growth and improve skills. If a growing proportion of this mobility can be electric, so much the better.

    On every urban Indian street, you find mechanics in their workshops tinkering with rickshaw engines and motorbikes. It would be good to see more smarter, higher-spec workshops with computer diagnostic equipment and EV charging points.

    As India approaches its next general election in spring 2024, Modi needs to demonstrate that he still has his finger on the pulse of the nation. Tesla’s arrival and the consequent mood of energising optimism around it could be just what he needs.

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be published in the Autumn.

     

  • Suella Braverman and the Art of Ministerial Sacking: Part II

    Christopher Jackson

    Sometimes it’s your privilege as a journalist to call events precisely wrong. Yesterday, some minutes before Suella Braverman was fired by Rishi Sunak, I published a blog here explaining why Sunak wouldn’t do exactly that.

    Humbling though it is to be faced with a political reality diametrically opposed to the one you thought you were living in, I would still argue that Sunak has made a mistake. He seemed relieved at the Lord Mayor’s banquet last night, but it was the look of someone who has asserted himself when he’s not used to doing so, and finds belatedly that he’s enjoying it. Sunak is now dangerously exposed on his right flank, and faces an immediate potential trigger of that situation tomorrow should the government lose its appeal on the Rwanda issue.

    His reasoning also seems petty. The main logic for the firing is that “the Prime Minister was sick and tired of it”. Suella Braverman has obviously stretched the bounds of Cabinet responsibility and been an irritant. But Sunak must also be aware that everybody around that table, with the possible – but not definite – exception of the newly returned Lord Cameron, would like to be in his job this afternoon if at all possible. To suddenly break out in anger about this looks like an immature reaction to an unchanging fact of high politics.

    One sympathises to an extent. The far right of the Tory Party can indeed be very annoying: their mode of expressing themselves is frequently hyperbolic; they often act as though the British people would rise up en masse behind them if only Boris Johnson were made the absolute monarch of the nation; and they sometimes seem to have forgotten that reality is complex and admits of no easy fixes. But to hope to nudge them to one side is wishful thinking.

    When I’m playing chess I might very well be slightly annoyed to have a group of pawns in a poor position, or a knight underdeveloped – but they are my pawns and my knight, and I need to take them under proper consideration as part of my strategy. They are an aspect of the only thing which matters: the facts of the board.

    There are signs that the Chief Whip was charged with assessing the power of Braverman to cause problems in the event of her sacking. According to The Mail, only six MPs were prepared to defend her to the hilt. We shall soon see whether the Chief Whip Simon Hart got his maths right or not – but a lot would seem to depend on his having done so. Sunak has taken the view that the prospect of better government without Braverman is sufficiently appetising to risk a noisy revolt.

    When we say a politician is gambling, we don’t usually say it in admiration: what we usually mean is that they had no good options but at least managed to make this series of things happen. In this case, we will have – as night follows day – a series of letters going into the 1922 Committee, and it is only a question of how many. When the only certain outcome of a gamble is an upping in the process designed to bring about your own removal, it might be argued you’re not in a great place.

    Secondly, it is all too late to change what Americans call ‘the electoral math’. Very often, politicians today seek to rearrange the furniture and even do some light dusting on the proverbial sinking ship. Sometimes, feeling particularly brazen, they might fire a sous-chef, or switch around the boatswain. But its impact has to be minimal when the course of the ship is misguided, and the ship itself defective.

    The photograph of Cameron shaking hands with Sunak yesterday was interesting. Whatever one thinks about Cameron, he held the job Sunak is currently doing for six years, and if one takes away the way in which it ended, it was a time of competent party management. His longevity in that role seems to come out of a different geological era compared to what we’ve had since. He undeniably brings stature just from this fact alone. Next to Sunak, he looks like he has come to visit the current occupant from a race of giants.

    One wouldn’t wish to say, however, given Libya and Brexit, that the Cameron years marked some heyday in British foreign policy. I seem to recall, when growing up, that teachers would make you go back and do again the parts of your homework you didn’t get right the first time, and this appointment smacks a little of the desire to make good what was done poorly initially. This opportunity for revisiting is good for Lord Cameron, but arguably not so good for us if the earlier set of calamities was so considerable.

    But how good will all this be really for Cameron? Even the rosiest of estimates makes it unlikely that he will be Foreign Secretary for more than a year, and it’s more than likely that having run the country for six years, he will now enjoy a period of six months as Foreign Secretary. It can likely never amount to more than a curious footnote to his career.

    But while there are elements of foolhardiness in Sunak’s reshuffle – as there are in all gambles – it wasn’t entirely unpleasant to see him making it. There is still the sense that Sunak could be a good prime minister if a few more things were to go right, and if he were to grow in stature within the job. The country isn’t in love with Labour; the Lib Dems still hardly exist; and the SNP is increasingly a basket case.

    What would actually change the situation? There probably never has been a prime minister in such dire need of a new speechwriter. Theresa May wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a good orator but she at least came up with ‘just about managing’ and ‘citizen of nowhere’.

    Boris Johnson could always rely on words to connect with people, and when people talk of his charisma, I think they really mean that he could be quite funny. Leaving Truss aside as too short a premiership to discuss here, Sunak has been in position for a year without uttering a memorable syllable and it is this which has meant that he hasn’t entered the public imagination in any shape or form.

    Only if this reshuffle were to be accompanied by a new voice could it be the basis on which to build towards a respectable showing in 2024. Sunak has never really told us a story about his premiership; he has to do that now, regardless of who’s sitting round the Cabinet table.

     

  • Suella Braverman and the art of ministerial sacking

    Christopher Jackson

    To sack or not to sack. That is the question for Rishi Sunak this week and the newspapers are presenting it as a difficult decision. I’m not so sure it is, for reasons I will explain, but there are few who would want to be in his shoes.

    But then that’s also the case in relation to the financial, electoral and geopolitical state of things: essentially all aspects of his job. Given its obvious undesirability, one sometimes wonders why top-tier politicians fight so hard for the premiership: it’s like watching seagulls tussling for mouldy bread.

    Sackings can often be pivotal for prime ministers. They are tests of strength and only a problem if you’re weak in the House of Commons. Braverman has some following in the Commons but she is hardly Michael Heseltine; it must also be said that it is useful to keep one’s Home Secretary if you can, since one tends to lose them anyway. It’s probably the only job in government less enjoyable than being prime minister since it involves handling immigration and crime. Sunak therefore probably approaches this problem thinking it would be better on the face of it if Braverman were to remain either in position, or in the Cabinet more broadly.

    Sackings are also a question of timing. When in 1940, Churchill got rid of Lord Halifax as Foreign Secretary and replaced him with Sir Anthony Eden, it came on the back of six months of expert internal manoeuvres. The famous May 1940 Cabinet showdown about whether to fight on against the Nazis – Halifax had wanted to sue for peace – had already shown Churchill to be in control, and uniquely capable of wielding power. The eventual sacking of Halfiax, just before Christmas and after Halifax’s ally Neville Chamberlain’s death, was the coup de grace.

    If Sunak were to sack Braverman now, it would exhibit no such mastery of timing, but give the impression of a prime minister responding to events moving out of his control on too many fronts. Braverman by necessity is at the core of the government agenda on immigration and crime, and more or less by accident is now also a touchpaper on the Israel-Palestine question.
    I’m not sure Sunak is strong enough to remove Braverman without it weakening his position still further: he lacks a General Election mandate of his own and faces dire opinion polls. In 1940, Churchill was plainly in the ascendant; Sunak isn’t.

    Cohesion at the top matters. We cannot know at this proximity to events what has and hasn’t been said around the Cabinet table, but it goes to show that a sacking should only take place if you can be sure of Cabinet and parliamentary unity afterwards. Early in Margaret Thatcher’s administration during the ‘clash of the wets’ in1981-2, Thatcher had Geoffrey Howe present the case for spending and tax cuts but was confronted in Cabinet by those ministers from high-spending departments who wished to increase their own expenditure.

    These ministers, known to history as the ‘wets’ (and they are very much history), argued that Howe’s proposals didn’t show “a sufficiently imaginative and practicable response to the acute social and political problems now confronting the government”. This is the waffly parlance of the soon-to-be-defeated. Thatcher noted their disagreement and in time, sacked the lot of them.

    Here we can see Thatcher’s peculiar genius for leadership at work: it is inconceivable that she would have undertaken such a culling without an important policy at stake. Sunak, by contrast, doesn’t disagree with Braverman in any meaningful sense about the reaction of the police to the marches. Both would likely prefer the marches not to have gone ahead, both accept that there is a right to march provided there is no incitement to violence (which in all too many cases there has been), and they want the police to do their jobs (and would each give the police a decidedly mixed review on their recent performance).

    Where they disagree is in linguistic tone and also the procedure leading up to the publication of Braverman’s original article. While Braverman has arguably shown some disrespect to Number 10 in ignoring edits they may have had about the original article, it isn’t clear that the matter is sufficiently serious to meet the Thatcher threshold. A dismissal would therefore seem petty to those who admire Braverman – and wouldn’t have the upside of demonstrating particularly forceful leadership by Sunak.

    Sunak is usually good at stepping back from media-driven speculation and considering the facts of a situation. One of his main strengths is that he doesn’t panic. His tendency to seek further information before he makes a big decision, also makes it seem likely that he will wish to see how the cards fall on Wednesday, when the Rwanda ruling, the release of inflation figures, and a debate in the Commons on the SNP’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza, are all taking place.

    Temperamentally, one would expect Sunak to wait for Wednesday than to risk all by going for the jugular on Tuesday and firing her beforehand. If the government wins the ruling the following day – he has essentially a 50-50 chance of doing so – it might look odd to those outside the Westminster bubble for him to have fired his Home Secretary the previous day.

    The former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has said that prime ministers tend to win this sort of confrontation. He is a politician-turned-newspaperman who is egging Sunak on to fire Braverman, and it is not for us to say that he is craving drama for the sake of it. It’s true that prime ministers are often in a stronger position than they realise in these matters – until one day they aren’t. Howe, removed by Thatcher eventually, was the one to wield the knife when she did eventually resign. But she achieved an enormous amount before that point because she always knew where she was going.

    Sunak is temperamentally more similar to Tony Blair who brought Peter Mandelson back into the Cabinet after sacking him. He also to some extent resembles David Cameron, who preferred not to rock the boat, and rarely got into unnecessary spats with ministers. Well-dressed, well-mannered, I sense that order is important to Sunak. With the electoral position somewhat perilous, it might be that he has far more to lose than to gain by removing his Home Secretary.

    And if he does? It’s impossible to know what chain of events that may spark, the extent of support for Braverman and the flimsiness of Sunak’s own position. But it would herald a change in Sunak’s approach to government and be somewhat out of character for him to do so. This is the unique pressure of high office, and this is the week where we will see how this particular occupant handles it.

     

    Update: this article was published at 7.03am, about an hour before Braverman was sacked.

     

  • Stephen James: Reviving the Spirit of Remembrance in the UK

    Stephen James

    Is the poppy our cultural canary in the mine? Following the atrocities of 7th October, this year’s Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal has been hard to find, troubled with violence, cancelled stalls, and fewer volunteers. More and more, the poppy badge is becoming a rarity. You may have noticed this or even chosen not to wear it this year.

    Whatever our political persuasion or social identity these days, none of us can argue that we don’t owe our safety and rights to the service and sacrifice of our Armed Forces. Today is Armistice Day. For 95 years, we have honoured the sacrifice of the veterans, many younger than us, who paid the ultimate price. To remember the fallen, we hold our silence for two minutes — a small token of respect which is a small price to pay against the cost of their sacrifice.

    If you think our nation’s observance of Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday should proceed unhindered, you belong to the silent majority, and I agree with you; however, let’s be silent no longer. Make noise with your actions and attend your local remembrance service. Demonstrate the stoic values that make our country and its people great.

    To me, it’s clear that the political leaders of all colours, as well as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, are refusing to show the kind of leadership that even the most junior of servicemen and women have in spades.

    The kind of leadership that is essential to maintain order and conserve our way of life.

    This year we have seen our Remembrance monuments vandalised and barricaded, fewer community leaders wearing the poppy, some RBL volunteers intimidated, and one physically attacked, ironically ‘in the name of peace’. Our leaders and the leadership of the police have failed to show solidarity with the silent majority, in order to protect the interests of our nation, our culture, and our war dead. I, like many, have had enough of the lack of leadership and implicit cultural shaming of British values.

    Policing by consent only works when the law is applied equally and when the police remain above politics themselves. The right to peacefully protest has been weakened by the police service’s failure to prosecute illegal hate speech and antisemitism in these marches. Overlooking these crimes is rightly causing reputational damage, and the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is right to voice concerns of cultural bias in the Metropolitan Police; it has happened before. The dangers of ignoring our laws to appease different factions do more damage to our way of life than is possible to measure.

    Our nation’s right to honour our war dead is being shamed. However, we can stop this rot by taking pride in the poppy and observing remembrance together this weekend.

    These days, we are so used to having our institutions and media bend to the will of so many triggered factions it’s not only tedious but exhausting to keep up with the ‘outrage’. That’s why many of us who don’t want to bore our lives past the point of endurance stay out of it, but we can’t afford to any longer if we want to uphold our values and have any British culture left.

    With the decline of the poppy, we are seeing the beginning of cultural collapse in the United Kingdom. If we cannot openly and safely come together to observe remembrance without disruption, what does this mean for us? I don’t want to test that decline. Instead, let’s get behind the values that underpin our British culture and show our solidarity with our Armed Forces as they do for us every day. We can do this by sharing the story of the poppy with our children, supporting the Poppy Appeal, and taking part in one of the remembrance events and services happening this weekend. When so much was asked by so many of so few, this small gesture of remembrance really matters; you could say it signifies the health of our nation. We should protect it and be proud of the small part we can play in bearing witness to the true costs of our British values.

  • Opinion: Why Solar Power is the Answer

    Dinesh Dhamija

    The world is hotter than ever. Climate-related disasters occur with terrifying regularity.

    “Fossil fuel emissions are already causing climate chaos which is devastating lives and livelihoods,” said UN secretary general António Guterres this week, ahead of the COP28 climate change summit in Dubai that starts on 30 November.

    And what do the world’s leading economies do? They ‘double down’ on fossil fuel production, cowed by the oil and gas lobbies and by short-term political expedience.

    The US, Saudi Arabia and Russia will produce twice as much fossil fuel by 2030 as the UN says is required to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

    These nations, and many others, complain that there is no viable alternative to fossil fuels and that cutting them out would lead to ‘energy chaos’.

    I don’t agree.

    Against this backdrop of superpower intransigence and looming catastrophe, India is quietly building a community of nations dedicated to solving the climate problem rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.

    The International Solar Alliance was created in 2015 by India and France to promote investment in and access to solar energy. It now has 116 signatories and 95 full members – Chile joined in early November – and is headquartered in New Delhi.

    For all kinds of reasons, I think that the world needs to get behind solar energy. It’s clean, free, reliable and widely available, not only to corporations but to small businesses and individuals, in most regions of the world.

    Narendra Modi made solar a central part of India’s energy strategy, developing ambitious schemes as chief minister of Gujarat and then accelerating progress as Prime Minister. India is now the world’s 5th-largest solar energy producer with 62 GW of installed capacity and a force for solar adoption throughout the developing world.

    Solar fits Modi’s vision of empowering individuals and communities: you can install solar panels on your roof, whereas you can’t drill for oil or gas. It takes away countries’ reliance upon expensive and politically-fraught energy imports. In the same way, Modi’s digital finance initiatives have given millions of Indian citizens access to life-changing opportunities.

    In my own modest way, I’ve tried to contribute to the growth of solar energy, developing a project in Romania which will produce enough electricity to serve a town of 250,000 people. See https://www.romania-insider.com/dinesh-dhamija-solar-park-project-romania-2023 Through this, I’ve seen how solar can transform the energy equation, producing both green electricity and hydrogen, which also has enormous potential to reduce CO2 emissions.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be published in the Autumn.