Britannia Radio

26 June 2010 8:56 PM

These cuts are a con – we’ll soon be just like Greece (but without the lovely beaches)

This is Peter Hicthens' Mail on Sunday column

Anyone would think that the late General Pinochet, Chile’s ultra-conservative military dictator, had risen from his grave and was stalking Britain, slashing public spending with an axe and machine-gunning screaming public-service workers in football stadiums.

The exaggerated fuss over George Osborne’s Budget is crude spin.

Unlike proper, old-fashioned Budgets, which could not be leaked on pain of political death, this propaganda document was made ublic almost completely beforehand.

It may convince the gullible sheep-brained people who appear to control the stock markets and bond markets of the world, and who make their livings by dashing hither and thither shoving prices up and down on a whim. But should it convince us?

There’s such a mismatch between the scale of the national profligacy and what the Government can actually do that it’s necessary for the Chancellor to pretend that he is being more brutal than he truly is.

Likewise the Labour Party, which would have done more or less the same had it been in office, has to join in the same pretence.

False declarations of resolve are met with false howls of outrage.

The supposed core of the Osborne effort is a series of 25 per cent cuts in spending in most departments.

These cuts have yet to be specified, and will actually need to be much higher than 25 per cent, probably nearer 33 per cent, because the sacred NHS, the largest employer in Europe and a sink of bureaucracy and inefficiency, is to be spared the slasher’s knife. And so is the equally sacred budget for ‘Foreign Aid’.

Quite why this suspect activity – which so seldom actually reaches the suffering – is so untouchable, I do not know.

Once you realise that a sizeable chunk of it will be spent on aborting Third World babies, you begin to wonder where the rest is going.

The trumpeted cuts are polit ically impossible.

The screeching lobbies that stand behind the public sector and the welfare state have automatic access to the BBC, where their advocates are treated with reverence.

They have a similar direct line to large chunks of the Liberal Democrat Party, and the cultural elite in general.

Maybe if this were 1920 rather than 2010, Mr Osborne might hope to do as he promises.

But – as Michael Portillo has repeatedly warned, and he was once in charge of controlling spending – real cuts are extremely difficult to achieve.

So what will happen?

My guess is that the country will continue living beyond its means as it has done since Harold Macmillan began debauching the national finances to win popularity 50 years ago.

And we will pay the price in inflation and in a devalued currency, slowly slipping from second to third-class status, so that at the end we really are pretty much like Greece, instead of just pretending to be, hopelessly in debt and nothing working properly.

But without the Acropolis or the nice beaches.

The wrong Huhne got the chop

Heaven knows we all stumble in our lives, and the hard promises of marriage are among the most difficult we ever make.

But why is it that when a man’s marriage comes up against his political career, we all seem to assume that it is the marriage that has to go?

When Chris Huhne’s infidelity was discovered, nobody was surprised when his instant response was to sack Mrs Huhne, so taking the heat off the Government and the weird coalition that sustains it.

I think this is the wrong way round.

Compared with his transient job in charge of carpeting the country with futile windmills, Mr Huhne’s marriage and family are of far more lasting importance.

Shouldn’t he at least have paused to see if he could save it? Shouldn’t his friends and colleagues have done likewise?

One of the reasons marriage is disappearing so fast in our society, and why so many children must now grow up without both their own natural parents, is that our culture thinks that a break-up is the best answer to a crisis.

Well, for me, the break-up of anybody’s marriage, anywhere, is infinitely more grievous than the break-up of a government.

Each of these small, deep tragedies diminishes us all and takes another brick out of the arch of civilisation.

Sacrificed to feeble leadership

The self-serving twaddle oozing from David Cameron on Afghanistan is actually shocking. He is not stupid.

He must know talk of ‘building up the Afghans’ own security’ is a bitter joke. All attempts to create serious Afghan armed forces have flopped.

The ‘police’ are a corrupt, drug-riddled, undisciplined embarrassment.

Afghans all know we will leave soon, and those who support us will then be seen as traitors and have their heads sawn off.

As for his talk of a ‘military covenant’, the one our soldiers need is the only one they cannot get: an assurance they will only be asked to die or be maimed for good reason. There is no such good reason in Afghanistan. The Cabinet know this, but do nothing about it.

No more soldiers should be sent to die in a war already lost, a war Mr Cameron already knows to be lost.

We all pay a price for having weak, indecisive leaders. But none pays a price as high as the one our soldiers pay.

Our Government is not worthy of our Army.

Vince, trapped by the Eton tribe

How sorry I felt for Vince Cable as I sat a few feet from him on Question Time on Thursday night.

He seemed to be resorting to transcendental meditation to escape the horror of his position, defending a Government he never wanted to be in.

It’s not that he really disagrees with the Budget.

If he’d joined the coalition with Labour that he’d much have preferred, he’d have had to go through roughly the same performance.

It’s that he’s tribally much closer to Labour than to the Etonians, and feels as a football fan would if he were compelled to cheer for a team he’d hated since his youth.

That’s why the Tories put him, not one of their own, on TV to defend the Budget.

They wanted to make sure he was irreversibly committed.

They know that, at some point in the next four years, the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party will split, and they want to make it impossible for Vince to be one of the defectors. Then they can move on to the next stage – the creation of the Liberal Conservative Party which David Cameron dreams of.

Yet more alleged statues by the alleged sculptor Antony Gormley are cropping up all over the country. There’s one perched on a rooftop in Oxford, looking like a man contemplating suicide.

Now a team of them has been deployed in Edinburgh. Any day now I expect to find one of them standing next to me in the gents’. Couldn’t someone cut spending on this?

23 June 2010 6:01 PM

Treading Water with 'Stan'

Can nobody help me with this lone struggle against obtuseness? We now have the response from 'Stan' (who is not limited to any maximum number of words) and it is this, almost wholly unresponsive item, apparently written by someone who hasn't read most of what I have written.

I will take it piece by piece.

'Stan': 'You claim that the British guarantee to Poland changed history is "blindingly obvious" without any way to substantiate this claim. How do you "know" it changed history? How do you "know" it changed Hitler's plans? Can you retrospectively read his mind?'

My reply: This posting is absolute proof that Stan is not reading what I am writing. I have actually gone to the trouble to explain specifically that my contention - to him - is far more modest (see my last posting).

I contend that had this episode not taken place, that it 'might' have changed history. This is all I ask 'Stan' to concede. I don't say - to him - that (as he seems to think) that it did change history.

I think that's too much for him to take at one go.

I say that it might have, and I have laboriously and repeatedly explained why it might have done.

None of these explanations depends upon anything other than known history and the balance of forces at the time.

Nor do these explanations depend in any way on an alteration of Hitler's state of mind, or any change in his plans, except as these might reasonably have been envisaged if Poland had agreed to make concessions on Danzig and the corridor.

As 'Stan' repeatedly and doggedly fails to grasp, it is the possible effect of the guarantee on the behaviour of Poland that is crucial.

'Stan': 'My argument is based on two known facts. One - that Hitler was "surprised" when Britain and France declared war following his invasion of Poland. If Hitler was surprised then that demonstrates that he did not expect Britain to honour their promises to Poland and therefore the guarantee could not have made any difference to his plans.'

My reply: Can some other reader please point out to 'Stan' just how many times I have explained that I don't dispute this? Not merely do I not dispute it, I agree with it. Hitler (who was for a long while viewed by British historians of the period as unhinged, but who in such matters seems to me to have been coldly rational) could not understand how we could have behaved so irrationally.

Nor, as it happens, can I.

As I repeat above, it is the effect of the guarantee on Poland. There is also the matter of Poland's ability, thanks to this guarantee, to decide our entry into war - an ability Poland would not have possessed without the guarantee. That is the point.

Stan: 'That is blindingly obvious is it not?'

My reply: One thing that is increasingly obvious is that 'Stan' not reading my replies to him. I am likewise increasingly interested as to why he will not do so.

Stan: 'Your only point to refute this is that, without such a guarantee by Britain (and regardless of the 1921 Franco-Polish treaty guaranteeing Polish national integrity) Germany and Poland may have come to some agreement over Danzig meaning that no invasion was necessary.'

My reply: My only point? Well, yes, that is precisely my point, though 'refutation' is not what I desire. All I desire is for Stan to say, and to grasp the importance of it: 'without such a guarantee by Britain (and regardless of the 1921 Franco-Polish treaty guaranteeing Polish national integrity) Germany and Poland may have come to some agreement over Danzig meaning that no invasion was necessary'.

Yes, that's right - though I would have used the word 'might' rather than 'may', and I dealt with the 1921 Treaty many posts ago, in another contribution which was wholly ignored by 'Stan' at the time, in which I pointed out that this treaty, especially since the Polish-German non-aggression Pact of 1934, and since France's failure to honour its 1924 treaty guarantee to Czechoslovakia at Munich, was by April 1939 regarded by both countries as a dead letter, hence the renewed French guarantee given to Poland (The Kasprzycki-Gamelin Convention) in May 1939, soon after the British one.

To say that this my 'only point' is a bit like the detective saying to the suspect 'So, your only point is that you were in Peking at the time of the murder, which took place in East Grinstead, and have five reliable eyewitnesses to this fact including the British ambassador' or 'So your only point when you say that the British might have won Yorktown without the French blockade is that the blockade prevented vital aid reaching the British army in time?'

This is an interesting and novel use of the word 'only'.

'Stan': 'This argument is demonstrably erroneous as Hitler had previously negotiated settlements which he then broke within a matter of months.'

Me: This a grandiose and in fact misleading use of words. 'Demonstrably erroneous' means that it can be shown to be wrong. But a speculation on what might have been - which, I repeat, is all that I am doing - cannot be shown to be wrong.

It can be shown to be highly unlikely, if it can be proved that none of the suggested events was possible or likely given the known facts.

But that is not the case here. The opposite is the case. A German-Polish deal on Danzig was perfectly possible and had for many years been a major object of British foreign policy in the area.

'Stan': 'That is the historical precedent and there is nothing to suggest this would have changed.'

My reply: But at what stage does my argument rely on Hitler having kept any promise within the period involved? At no stage. I have never contended this. Assume that Stan is right and that Hitler for some reason harboured a desire to occupy the whole of Poland or to partition it with the USSR.

There is so far as I know no evidence at all of this. The plans to invade Poland were drawn up after the British guarantee, as I have said, and after Beck's (resulting?) refusal to enter further discussions about a renewed Polish-German pact dependent on concessions over Danzig.

The partition plan was only agreed with Moscow in August 1939 as a secret annexe to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the German occupation of Poland, when it came, showed all the signs of having been cobbled together at the last minute.

Hitler could and did ignore German minorities where and when it suited him, postponing action to 'rescue' them until it fitted his immediate purpose.

(I have mentioned the South Tirol, to a deafening silence from 'Stan', in an earlier post).

He also had no difficulty in leaving physically intact the other cowed and subservient states of Eastern Europe between Germany and the USSR, and sought only to ensure that their governments did as he told them.

Had he successfully created his Eastern Empire they would presumably have disappeared eventually, but that is not the point at issue.

So let us assume that Stan is right, that Colonel Beck went to Berlin in the summer of 1939 and, lacking any guarantee from Britain (or France) agreed to give Hitler the territorial concessions he demanded. On the Czech precedent (rump Czechoslovakia lasted from September 1938 to March 1939) Hitler would have made no further move until he had consolidated his new gains, quite possibly not before the spring of 1940.

And, had he done so, what exactly would the British interest (or the French one) in intervening have been by that stage? What would the USSR have been doing? That is leaving aside the great dissimilarity between Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Slovakia was easily separated from the federation that had never worked well. A Poland shorn of Danzig and the Corridor (and perhaps some other German-populated territories) could not have been so easily dismantled.

The main countries with an interest in rousing national discontent in Poland by that stage would have been the USSR (there were then large Byelorussian and Ukrainian minorities in Eastern Poland around Brest-Litovsk and Lvov) or Lithuania (whose historical capital, Vilnius, was then under Polish rule).

Germany's interests were in Danzig, Silesia, West Prussia and in ending the isolation of East Prussia.

'Stan': 'Furthermore, as you correctly noted, the British army was not capable of offering any real defence of Poland - but the French army was considerable and was capable of doing so.'

My reply: Once again, Stan' is selectively ignoring what does not suit him. I have mentioned the Anglo-French staff talks in spring 1939 at which the French made it plain to Britain that they had no intention of taking any aggressive action to support Poland in the event of an attack.

This would also have been no surprise to any observer, who could observe the overwhelmingly defensive dispositions of the French Army, which was not designed or deployed for offensive war, but to sit behind the Maginot line and bleed any attacker white.

This was because of the horrendous casualties sustained by France at Verdun, which made French political and military leaders highly reluctant to embark on an aggressive war.

The difficulty with this otherwise workable idea was Belgium's departure from its alliance with France after the German reoccupation of the Rhineland, and its subsequent neutrality and refusal to co-ordinate defences with France, which left the way open for the Ardennes attack which eventually took place.

Given the French failure to support Czechoslovakia in 1938 (which had far more modern forces and defences than Poland, and with which France also had a binding mutual aid treaty), who would have relied on Paris to back Poland? Certainly not Germany.

As Stan rightly and repeatedly points out, Hitler never took these guarantees seriously. And as I ceaselessly point out, he was correct in his doubts, as the events of September 1939 record.

'Stan': 'Therefore, had there been no guarantee by Britain, the Polish government would still have had the confidence to deny Hitler based on their military alliance with France - a far more powerful military ally than Britain.'

My reply. 'This is a non sequitur. How does it follow that Poland "would" have had this 'confidence'. It 'might' have done, as I can happily concede. Though I can't for the moment see why. But then again, it 'might not'.

Let him read the history of the Franco-Polish alliance of 1921, and its minimal implementation, and then imagine the effect, on this yellowing document from another era, drawn up by dead men, of France's recent repudiation of the parallel 1924 treaty with Prague.

'I might add that the renewed (though ultimately worthless) French guarantee to Poland, the May 1939 Kasprzycki-Gamelin Convention, is generally accepted to have been a consequence of the British guarantee).

'Stan': 'Therefore the guarantee by Britain almost certainly made no difference to the Polish attitude.'

My response: 'I am gratified by that "almost certainly". In the gap between that "almost certainly" and "certainly" lives a flickering hope that I may at last be getting somewhere. If his certainty is no longer total, then the belief of "Stan" that the "Finest Hour" was an unalterable, predestined episode begins to falter.

'Stan': 'All this tells me that had Britain not offered any guarantee then nothing would have changed.'

My response. No it doesn't. As "Stan" himself admits, even he, wedded to the sad Churchill cult, has to concede that this was not wholly certain.

'Stan': 'Unless you can come up with something to substantiate your claim that it changed history other than your irrational belief that this is "blindingly obvious" then your argument is dead in the water.'

Me: Wrong. 'My contention, as clearly stated in my last long posting is not in fact that it "did" change history. I happen to think it did and believe that any undogmatic person can see this. But I am not at present engaged in seeking to prove that.

So, as to try to enter the closed circle of the Churchill cult, I have lowered my sights. All that I seek from Stan is a concession of almost infinitesimal smallness - that history "might" have been altered by this event.

His continued refusal to make even this tiny, tiny shift demonstrates the point I now really seek to make to any remaining readers - that "Stan" is helpless in the grip of a dogma which dare not admit even the faintest glimmer of a significant truth, in case its whole edifice falls down.

'That case is therefore discredited by its own hermetic circularity. Thus does dogma triumph over fact and logic, over and over again, in the history of the world.

'Stan': 'My second known fact is that at the outbreak of war (ie September 3rd, 1939) Britain was aware of German plans to invade France through the Low Countries. This is a matter of fact recorded by the Bletchley Park records.'

Me: German plans to invade France (Fall Gelb) were not in fact drawn up till October 1939, while Bletchley Park did not open for business until August 15, 1939.

That business was the decoding of military radio messages, a communication method which would not normally be used to convey invasion plans, for many obvious reasons.

I have now I think five times asked "Stan" to tell me what these "Bletchley Park Records are" and to give me some sort of traceable reference. I have never heard of them and they do not make sense to me, as I have time after time explained. He has repeatedly not done so.

I have no idea what they are, and so cannot deal with them. Maybe they actually exist. But I do wish he would stop dragging them up without explaining what they are or telling us where to find them. It is annoying. I have tried several Google variants and found nothing to substantiate this.

But, far more significant, I have pointed out repeatedly that, since the subject under discussion is whether the world might have been altered had events turned out otherwise during the period April-May 1939, events taking place in September 1939 (after events had taken the course which they actually did take) really offer no evidence of any kind as to whether I am right or wrong.

The way in which 'Stan' clings to this piece of historical flotsam, which may not even exist, is perplexing.

'Stan': 'This known fact not only demonstrates that we knew Hitler had plans to invade Western Europe.'

Me: No, it doesn't. First, it doesn't appear to be known by anyone but 'Stan'. Second, Hitler ordered the development of such plans in Fuehrer Directive No 6, in October 1939, that is to say, almost six months after the period under discussion, thus some time after both the giving and the dishonouring of the British guarantee to Poland.

Once again, I have repeatedly asked 'Stan' to provide evidence of the existence of any significant plans of this kind before this date. He has ignored my request.

'Stan': 'It also fits in with the overall German strategy of the time which was, as you have conceded, to reverse the perceived wrongs of the Versailles Treaty and restore German lands to German control.'

Me: 'This has never been in dispute. No 'concession' by me is needed, or has any taken place.

'Stan': 'One of the most contentious was that of Alsace-Lorraine. It would naturally follow that, having achieved his aims with the weaker nations of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Hitler's next step would be to return Alsace to German control. I have asked you how you think he would have achieved that without an invasion of France through the Low Countries, but you have neglected to answer.'

Me: On the contrary, I have dwelt at some length on the issue of Alsace-Lorraine, on its recent incorporation (1871) into the Reich, on Hitler's willingness to leave some German minorities alone for political convenience (South Tirol) on the possibility that the peoples of Alsace-Lorraine would have voted against incorporation into the Reich in a plebiscite etc.

More proof that he hasn't read what I have written with any care. I'd add that there's little evidence of Hitler having made any great fuss about this area at any stage. So why is it "one of the most contentious"?

'Stan': 'It does not matter that we knew of these plans after offering a guarantee to Poland because everything before that demonstrates that the guarantee was not a decisive factor in Hitler's plans and ambitions anyway.'

Me: Yet again, and for what seems like the five millionth time, the point is not the effect of the guarantee on Hitler, but on the Polish government, whose behaviour in turn might have affected Hitler's - after all, why make war on a country that voluntarily concedes much of what you asked for, and will probably give you the rest in time?

'Nobody is positing any moral greatness or magnanimity on Hitler's part, just simple calculation of material advantage. So of course it matters. It also matter that the plans were made months after the Polish guarantee had already decided the future course of events, (rather than that we knew of them, which we didn't as far as I know until a German plane was forced down over Belgium in January 1940 (the Mechelen incident) and we saw them, and largely ignored them.)

'Stan': 'Had Poland conceded Danzig there is nothing to indicate that he would have settled for that and that alone any more than he settled in Czechoslovakia - you are asking us to believe that Hitler would suddenly have decided to have a rest from all this conquering and invading for a couple of years before carrying on! What makes you think that? Certainly no evidence or historical precedent - just your own flight of fancy.'

Me: So what? Nobody is suggesting that Hitler would have "settled" permanently for any concessions that Colonel Beck came up with. But he might well have settled temporarily for them in summer 1939, and then Britain and France might well have avoided launching a war they couldn't win for a country they couldn't save at a time when they weren't ready, and as a result Hitler might well have turned his attentions sooner towards the USSR instead.

'The suggestion is just that the disastrous, stupid and pointless entry of Britain into war with Hitler in 1939, which led to our near-defeat and subjugation and the actual destruction of our Empire, an episode misleadingly described as our "finest hour", was not fore-ordained by unalterable providence, but was the needless consequence of dim-witted human choice.

Had Poland conceded Danzig and the Corridor, as I say above, Hitler might well have accepted it as enough gained in Summer 1939. To believe this is not to believe in Hitler's benevolence, or anything of the kind.

Until 1941, when he became hubristic after his conquests, his actions were always carefully calculated, incremental and cautious.

There was no special need for him to achieve his final target by September 1939, or May 1940. There were two years between the Rhineland and the Anschluss (a process that was itself preceded by years of preparation and might never have taken place had it not been for the premature disclosure of the Hoare-Laval Pact and the disaffection of Italy from France and Britain), six months between the Anschluss and Munich, six more between Munich and the occupation of Prague.

19 June 2010 9:32 PM

A genuine Tory speaks out... and all Dave can do is flannel

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

A real opposition is starting to take shape in the worst Parliament of modern history. Let us hope it now grows in strength and conviction. Among all the oily creeps, thrusting airhead careerists and quota-selected women, we can hear the occasional voice speaking for the people.

Prime Minister’s Questions, transformed by Coalition politics into a flabby, empty occasion, suddenly developed bite last Wednesday – but not across the Dispatch Box. The genuinely conservative MP Philip Davies smacked the Liberal Tory Premier, David Cameron, smartly about the chops. Mr Davies said: ‘The millions of people who voted Conservative at the last Election in order to make him Prime Minister did not do so in order to see a reduction in the number of people sent to prison or to see those criminals given softer sentences.

‘If he really wants to reduce the budget of the Prison Service, may I suggest that he starts by taking Sky TV away from the 4,000 prisoners who enjoy that luxury in their cells?’

Mr Cameron – who in my personal experience deeply dislikes and resents any kind of challenge – was noticeably peeved and retorted sarcastically: ‘May I thank my honourable friend for that helpful suggestion?’

The Premier then flannelled, because he knows perfectly well his Government is going to release lots of prisoners, early, and weaken sentences. Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Injustice, had won the warm approval of soppy liberals (and soppy Liberal Democrats) a few days before, when he smugly brushed off the public’s fear of crime as ‘out of proportion’ and talked of prison cuts.

In this, he is in a long tradition of gutless Tory Ministers who have followed noisy promises to be tough on crime with reduced sentences and hamstrung police forces. As this Government continues, tightly clasped together at the centre by the Cameron-Clegg love affair, and by the shameless hunger for office of so many of the cyphers who sit in Cabinet, the strain will show at its edges.

How long, I wonder, can people such as Philip Davies sit on the same side of the chamber as Mr Cameron and his liberal, PC friends like Chris Huhne and Ken Clarke?How long, for that matter, will either Miliband brother, or most of the New Labour mob, be able to pretend that they are bitter opponents of Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg, when they agree with almost everything they say? Not long, I hope.

Then all the anti-British rabble can crowd on to the Government benches, and the proper MPs can face them.

A Saville scapegoat, and it was never going to be McGuinness

I think Ted Heath’s government should have fallen immediately after Bloody Sunday. It was their fault, and if – as I believe – Londonderry is a British city, such a major miscalculation and blunder should have brought them down. Imagine if the killings had happened in, say, Portsmouth.

The resignation of Mr Heath would have been an apology worth having – as well as perhaps sparing us several other horrors of that nasty Cabinet, which took us into the EU, massacred scores of good grammar schools and destroyed traditional local government. So, for me, the Saville inquiry comes a long time too late, and is too hard on the Army, especially Lt Col Derek Wilford, who has been unfairly treated because of the need for a scapegoat.

But there is one good outcome. We can now quote Lord Saville’s report as confirmation that the sinister and unrepentant Martin McGuinness was ‘adjutant of the Derry Brigade’ of the Provisional IRA. In other words, the man shamefully elevated into ministerial office by that modern-day Munich deal, the Good Friday Agreement, was the senior godfather of a criminal murder gang. We are also told: ‘He (McGuinness) was probably armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun, and though it is possible that he fired this weapon, there is insufficient evidence to make any finding on this.’

Well, I think it interesting that Martin McGuinness is given the benefit of the doubt where Derek Wilford is not, but what did we expect from this Blairite farrago anyway?

One flop leads to another, general

Most of us might be tempted to nod off under questioning by the venerable American Senator John McCain, an experience akin to having your ankle gently gummed by a long-retired watchdog.

The senator, it is always enjoyable to recall, is older than the Golden Gate Bridge, chocolate chip cookies, Israel and plutonium. But it wasn’t sleep that felled the warrior-scholar and puritan General David Petraeus, mastermind of the Afghanistan fiasco. The hollow-faced general, who looks as if he jogs far too much and drinks far too little, suddenly pitched face-forward on to the table. He claimed later that this was because he had skipped breakfast.

But I think it was because Mr McCain called him ‘one of America’s great heroes’, when in fact he knows that the whole mission is a ghastly, bloody flop.

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In the days when New Labour was busy leaking all its plans to the media and ignoring Parliament, the entire media elite plus the Tories harrumphed and complained (rightly) that this showed contempt for Parliament. Now a Liberal Tory Defence Secretary sacks the Chief of the Defence Staff in the course of a newspaper interview, and we are up to our kneecaps in Liberal Tory Government policy leaks, and nobody complains. Why is that?

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Last week my colleague Suzanne Moore retold a Tony Benn chestnut about how you wouldn’t trust a dentist who said he had no qualifications, but that his father had been a dentist. This is supposed to be a devastating blow at a hereditary House of Lords.

But is it? Would you be any keener if your dentist told you she had no qualifications, but had been elected to care for your teeth (after being put on an all-women shortlist)? Anyway, most hereditary peers are very good legislators, precisely because they have been brought up (as was Mr Benn) in the knowledge that they would one day have this duty. Mr Benn is very loveable these days, but he should stick to defending liberty and designing folding chairs.

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I got used to a zero alcohol limit on drivers in Moscow. If you drank, and killed someone in your car (not too difficult with so many drunk pedestrians around), it meant years in a labour camp, not points on your licence. If I planned to drink, I took a taxi. So I’m not very bothered about a lower limit here. But I would be interested to know how on earth it would be enforced.

The admirable law against using a handheld mobile phone while driving is universally flouted – and if you urge drivers to stop texting or chatting as they try to control a ton of steel, glass and rubber, they generally swear at you as if you were the problem. This is because the police have pretty much abandoned road patrols, one of the many bad effects of relying completely on speed cameras.