THE GREAT GAME

The Great Game has nothing to do with deadly power rivalry in Central Asia and about who controls the Silk Road, the Hindu Kush or the Khyber Pass.  It is all about the serious activities daily occurring at Muirfield, at Royal Birkdale, at Augusta, and at thousands of venues throughout the world, furrowing the brow of nations and giving participants 18 chances of triumph or disaster. In short the Great Game is the game of Golf.

Golf is called a game but it is in fact a kind of religion to be approached in hushed tones. PG Wodehouse writes comically in Those in Peril on the Tee, about how Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch play a round of golf, which they both desperately try to lose, for the hand in marriage of the formidable Agnes Flack, under the baleful gaze of lovesick but violent Sidney McMurdo. It is funny but a touch blasphemous. On a golf course you seldom hear peals of laughter only the odd groan, impossible to suppress, as the ball disappears in a dense stand of brambles. I recall guffawing loudly when my convivial partner Spike, at an otherwise jolly company golf day, drove off wildly hitting the ladies tee box causing the ball to rebound over the starter’s cabin and land 30 yards behind him. The spectators and other golfers were po-faced and silent and I realised I had committed yet another gaffe.  

The Scots claim to have invented golf and they certainly codified its rules. As Scots are known to be serious-minded to a fault, it is not hard to see where the reverence for the game comes from. One can imagine an early McTavish, horny-handed son of toil, trudging over the windswept shore at St Andrews, calculating how a fiendish bunker might be fashioned and gaining some dexterity with a primitive club and pebble. A later McTavish learns the arcane secret of the gutta-percha ball and profitably carries the clubs of the snootily well-born and famous. Our modern pro McTavish rubs his hands in anticipation of the arrival of bus-loads of Americans in vivid checks, eager to kiss the sacred soil and spend mega-dollars on the paraphernalia of the great game. Much too serious a matter to be laughed at.

The vocabulary of Golf is an early obstacle. When I first was conscious of the game in the 1940s people still talked of mashies, niblicks and brassies (no, not peroxide blonde ladies in Soho), all clubs of varying lofts. The names were sensibly standardised by the Americans but we still have eagles, birdies and bogeys (triple-bogeys in my case), not to mention fairways, GASP and Mulligans. It all adds to the mystery - not unlike albs, orphreys and chasubles in matters ecclesiastical.

Learning to play the game only to a moderate competence is a labour of many years to all but the precociously talented. Depending on your mood, psychological state or hangover, you are likely to duff this drive, foozle that chip and miss a sitter of a putt. These frequent setbacks must be shouldered with a philosophic steadfastness although even Tiger Woods has been known to throw away a club and many lesser golfers attempt to snap one over their knee – but this is very bad form. This is where GASP comes in, (Grip, Address, Stance and Posture), steadying ordinances murmured to yourself, but hard to get all four right.

Having achieved some small ability, you should then try to join a club. This used to be a great and snobbish trial but now, apart from a few famous names, most clubs will at least consider your candidacy as the economic crisis has seen membership rolls nose-dive. To be admitted, you will have to be “played in”, an ordeal usually involving a round with the Captain and an Old Member to see what you are made of. In my case I was made of soggy meringue and I committed the horrid solecism of putting my ball hard against the Captain’s so that he was knocked away rather like a cannon in snooker. If looks could kill, I was toast. Somehow however I was admitted through pure cronyism – a revered former Captain, a business friend, had kindly proposed me!

A green at Hampstead Golf Club

After 30 years hacking round a variety of private and municipal courses, my own club golfing career was short and undistinguished. I enjoyed my club in leafy North London with its convivial bar and gentle undulations. I later joined one in the Cotswolds. There the members were very friendly too but the course was built on the side of a steep hill making a round a challenge for alpine troopers, let alone middle-aged gents with cardiac premonitions. After moving mainly to under-golfed and baking hot Greece, my enthusiasm gradually fizzled out, to the silent disappointment of my eldest brother who has been a good golfer all his life and who would still cross continents to attend the midweek Medal.

I can understand his dedication and that of proper golfers. I once watched Tony Lema, sadly soon to die in a plane crash, and Peter Alliss, later to succeed Henry Longhurst as the BBC voice of golf, play in Scotland and the power of their play, their long drives and accurate irons bowled me over. For much of the last 60 years, the Americans have dominated with charming Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in their pomp walking off with all the trophies. Even Nicklaus became fallible however, taking 4 shots to get out of Hell Bunker at the 14th during the 1993 Open at St Andrews.

Magnetic Seve Ballasteros

 

Rory McIlroy, Northern Ireland's idol

  

Gradually the Europeans reasserted themselves. Who can forget the excitement of Tony Jacklin winning the Open in 1969 and then the US Open in 1970 or of the epic demolition of Greg Norman by Nick Faldo at the 1996 Masters? Drama was evident too as Jan van de Velde, paddling without his socks, threw away the 1999 Open at Carnoustie with a catastrophic triple-bogey at the 18^th and we could not watch Rory McIlroy go to pieces, shooting an 80 after 3 rounds of glory at Augusta in 2011, since redeemed by his famous Open triumph. After a wait of 65 years, Sandy Lyle became the first Scotsman to win the Open in 1985 and the first Briton to don the green jacket at the 1988 Masters.

The Ryder Cup, long an American victory procession, burst back to life when the continental Europeans joined it in 1979 and Europe has won the competition many times recently. Golfing talent is abundant. Great players like the mercurial and much-missed Seve Ballasteros have graced this event and curiously super-golfer Tiger Woods has never shone, even before his private demons undermined his game.

Apart from these public highlights, regular golfers the world over enjoy smart club-houses, beautiful courses and convivial company (although golf bores do pop up) - and they get away from their spouses. I now depend on my TV for viewing golf and I regularly play Nintendo WII golf with my lovely wife. We are well matched, both unable to better a 4-under-par round and blissfully I do not have to don windcheater, waterproof trousers and lug caddie carts and bellow “Fore!” as my drive slices to the wrong fairway. Currently (2011) my namesake Luke holds the World No1 spot and I bask in reflected glory. Although I cannot prove it, I am quietly convinced he is a 6^th cousin twice removed.

This year in 2017 the Open is at Royal Birkdale and my money is (unreliably) on Danny Willett, Masters winner in 2016, or Justin Rose. Keep your heads down!

SMD

1.6.11 and 20.07.17

Copyright © Sidney Donald 2011 and 2017

HUMANITY AND BLEEDING HEARTS

In a recent Daily Telegraph, Bryony Gordon condemned the poverty of spirit of those who are already tiring of the Grenfell Tower victims and the painful dilemma over baby Charlie Gard. She is right of course - the milk of human kindness should not curdle quickly, if at all, and the Grenfell victims were housed in a combustible environment inexcusably. Yet I do not accept that we are obliged to take upon us all the sins of the world (that, I believe, was Another Chap’s chosen role); we help our fellow-humans as much as possible but there are limits to the material aid we can provide and we jib at giving them an open invitation to share our own crowded shores.

Grenfell Tower blaze kills 80

The pressing problems of the indigenous poor, the displaced and the armies of migrants are challenging but are capable of rational solution. No group can claim a monopoly of conscience or feelings of pity.  The great engine of progress in our society is economic growth. If growth can be achieved, our poor will be relaunched on a sea of prosperity, their benefits increased and new employment opportunities will open up. The genuinely displaced, those actually homeless from the wars in Syria for example, are refugees and must be given humanitarian shelter under UN guidelines. The UK will of course readily take her due share.

Migrants trudge through Central Europe

 The migrant army is fleeing the chronic poverty, corruption, instability and violence of their own societies in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. These unfortunates are economic refugees, merely seeking a better life. We owe them absolutely nothing other than our natural compassion but we will treat them fairly if they reach our country. Our border security is as porous as the rest of the EU. Economic migrants should in time be repatriated to their countries of origin, if practicable, and our government’s efforts concentrated on improving the economic and social systems of those states, admittedly a grindingly long-term policy target.

The narrative from Corbyn’s Labour and the Left would take a quite different angle. Our native poor were created by the “exploitation”, from the Industrial Revolution onwards, of labourers by rapacious bosses, who are still at it. The poor deserve special privileges to lift them out of poverty and confiscatory taxes should be levied on the rich to narrow the wealth gap so that all end up equally miserable and dependent on the Socialist government. The Grenfell Tower disaster is branded as “social murder”.  The notorious politics of envy and class hate runs riot, Marxist claptrap is presented as self-evident fact and Corbyn’s star is currently in the ascendant.

Soon to be our nightmare masters? John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn

Living a relatively sheltered life, I could hardly believe that Labour’s Leftie views carry any credibility and I am appalled to discover that whole generations have been fed this stuff and swallow it without a single choke. My eldest son, an idealist in some ways but no fool, lent me a book which gained currency from its publication in 1980 and is taught reverently in many public schools and colleges in the US. I refer to A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

I am only partly through it and I find it hard going, so opposed to every fibre in my body is the Zinn theology. He preaches the merits of the underdog, the underclass exploited by their superiors. Thus he paints a bucolic idyll of native Indian life destroyed by the Europeans, an account of the suffering of the black Africans and the horrors of slavery, descriptions of poor whites bullied by colonial masters, of the revolutionary impetus against the British with the propertied classes keeping control, on through Jacksonian era rent and labour agitation, Civil War, Reconstruction, robber barons and early trade unions, the later struggles of factory workers and women.

All this is no doubt well-researched but it is all slanted towards the Socialist cause. This picture of American history is distorted. In Britain, as in the US, history is made by leadership and decisive action by men of substance like Nelson, Wellington, Peel, Gladstone and Churchill, not to mention a later heroine, Thatcher.  Zinn (and Corbyn) reduce ordinary citizens to being victims living under oppression. It is nonsense – the great achievements of recent US democracy needed the oratory of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King; the legislative cunning and persuasiveness of LBJ and the populist clarity of Reagan.

Truly, the mettle of Britain has been sadly weakened. Nobody admires the dignified “stiff upper lip” any more. The tragic death of Princess Diana in 1997 triggered off an orgy of self-indulgent grief and since then every celebrity’s passing and every life cut short brings out flowers and teddy bears from hysterical strangers. Even Theresa May thought it “human” to admit to blubbing when she fouled up the recent election. For goodness sake, take a grip!  

The Conservative (and indeed the Liberal Democratic) national vision needs to be proclaimed with passion by its leaders. Cameron fell short and Theresa May has betrayed her inadequacy. In our topsy-turvy world maybe an odd-ball like Boris Johnson (or even solid David Davis) with oodles of personality could rise to the challenge. The electorate needs to be wooed and inspired, amused and impressed by its politicians, not patronised.

Is Boris the man?

Save us from patronising Labour, – I remember wincing years ago whenever Scargill referred to the miners as “the lads” – may we present a compelling contrast to their categorisation of us as “victims”. Let us bury for ever their neo-Stalinism and fight for an open society, trading freely, competing fairly, prospering together and living comfortably within our own institutional skin.

SMD

17.07.2017

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2017

A TASTE OF FRANCE

I live most of the year in Folkestone, Kent and as I stroll down The Leas, the grassy promenade of this historic town, I can gaze over the narrow English Channel to the coastal settlements and fields of France some 25 miles away. I find this glimpse tantalising, so near and yet…; I know France and England to be quite different societies, fashioned by their unique histories and imbued with wholly dissimilar views on many key issues. Both have huge merits and contribute enormously to global felicity but their proximity can mislead if the observer assumes nearness in space equates to nearness in fundamental attitudes.

National Heroine of France - Joan of Arc

  

The French are idealistic yet passionate, making a heroine of brave, driven, perhaps unhinged Joan of Arc, betrayed by her own countrymen and doomed to a martyr’s death. The English have no such recognised hero but a representative figure might be Oliver Cromwell, pragmatic, decisive and single-minded, who flattened his enemies and died in his bed - a striking contrast.

For many centuries France possessed the richest culture in Europe. In poetry from the early 12^th century epic The Song of Roland, through to the three 17^th century dramatic giants Corneille, Racine (yawn, yawn) and Molière, with a later great flowering with Hugo, Lamartine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Apollinaire. Unmatched prose has flowed from Gallic pens too, the musings of Montaigne and Pascal, the seminal novels of Stendhal, Flaubert and Balzac, crusading Zola, arrestingly decadent Huysmans, the endless descriptive mastery of Proust with his Madeleines and Vinteuil’s Sonata. How much there is to admire in the powerful Voyage au bout de la Nuit by maverick Céline, in the exquisite sensitivity of Gide, the sardonic conservatism of Montherlant and the coolly radical Albert Camus!

Victor Hugo

Marcel Proust

  

While England slept, France produced the baroque music of Lully, Rameau and Charpentier giving way to romantic Schumann, Gounod and Berlioz to be followed by the later Debussy, Ravel and Fauré. Her philosophers were highly influential throughout Europe from Descartes onwards, including Voltaire, Rousseau, Comte and Bergson and the modern figures of Barthes, Lévi-Strauss and Foucault. Painters like Poussin, rococo Fragonard and Boucher, Ingres, David, Courbet, Monet, Degas, Manet, Cézanne and Gauguin delighted the entire world.  I can only name the great, so dense is the achievement in so many fields. I omit vast tracts of distinction too in the sciences, in medicine and in industrial pioneering.

To English eyes, what is missing is consistent political stability with elites hanging on too long and triggering violent reaction. To some of us, the French commitment to liberal democratic values is only skin-deep. France did not reject Absolutism until 1789, and it did not need Lady Bracknell to advise us that it was too late to avoid the horrific excesses of the French revolution.

Charlotte Corday gives Marat his due

Characters like Danton, Marat and Robespierre, though eagerly romanticised, were a nightmare and there was much relief at the emergence of Napoleon. His triumphs threatened all Europe while France still indulges in Emperor-worship of their law-giving saviour. The restored Bourbons and the Orleans dynasty failed to pacify the fissiparous natives although there was some stability with the Second Empire of Napoleon III allowing the growing prosperity of the bourgeoisie. Another convulsion, with defeat by Prussia and the blood-letting of the Paris Commune, ushered in the Third Republic with tumultuous politics but also the cultural glories of Belle Epoche Paris. 

WWI brought searing misery to France, though almost for the first time Britain and France were allies. After the hectic and fruitful inter-war years, demoralised France fell to Nazi Germany in 1940, polarising opinion between traditional nationalists who mainly gravitated towards Papa Pétain (but not so de Gaulle) and the Left. With Liberation, delivered by the British and Americans, France soon recovered but was hampered by divisive colonial wars in Indo-China and Algeria requiring in effect a Gaullist coup to revive the government via the Fifth Republic.

France has since been well governed, notably by competent administrators from les grandes écoles. This elite organised French economic progress in the early Gaullist period but despite its efforts Germany forged ahead and French parity with Germany is a polite fiction. French diplomatic expertise is acknowledged by the senior partner in the alliance, but the EU diktats emanate from Berlin rather than Paris and are funnelled out via supine Brussels.

The political culture of the EU, protectionist, dirigiste, integrationist, and mainly Catholic well suits most of the nations in the Union, though there are plenty of noisy critics and dissenters. Only the UK has decided the direction of travel is not acceptable to her and is negotiating a hopefully friendly divorce. The UK has made the right historic decision as her political culture has quite the opposite aspirations.

I very much hope relations between France and the UK can find a renewed level of mutual respect and esteem. French lucidity, intellectual reach and French defence capabilities are admirable and in even lesser matters French food is delicious and their grandes horizontales are tasty beyond measure. Britain and France are entwined in a misty incomprehension, but each rather likes her antagonist. 

Long may the amicable rivalry between the Frogs and Les Rosbifs flourish!

SMD

5.07.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS

As you progress upwards through the 7 Ages of Man, you soon realise that there are a number of ambitions you are not going to realise. In part this is because your talents, such as they were, lay elsewhere and partly because you were too damned idle to do anything about it when you had the chance and the physical capacity. In any event it is in an elegiac frame of mind rather than a self-reproachful one that I parade some of my now impossible dreams.

1.      Athletics. Nature was a little unkind to me as I was always chunky rather than lithe, plodding rather than graciously rapid. So I had to admire others from afar. As a lad, I fantasized about scoring that winning try for Scotland against the Australians just as Wee Jaikie Galt scored his in Buchan’s 1930 novel Castle Gay. Wee Jaikie had been a member of The Gorbals Diehards street-gang but had contrived to get to Cambridge and earn his rugby Blue. On the wing, Jaikie baffled the Aussie defence with his side-step and his ferret-like ability to evade and squirm out of tackles sealing his triumph at the final whistle. Well, Scotland can still beat the Australians (24-19 in Sydney as recently as 17 June) but the All Blacks are still an unscaled peak. But be patient!

The most exciting rugby player I ever saw was Richard Sharp, fly-half for England when still up at Oxford, who cut through defences like butter. His Championship winning try at Twickenham in 1963 against, alas, Scotland was the epitome of elegance and skill.

Richard Sharp touches down in 1963

2.       Hill Walking. I was brought up in glorious Scotland and walking in The Pentlands, The Grampians and dozens of other places was open to me. I did walk up Byron’s “Dark Lochnagar” at least twice but that was about the zenith of my achievement apart from the undemanding heights of Bennachie (“whar the Gadie rins”), a nostalgic spot for all natives of Aberdeenshire. But I can say nothing of scaling Munros and other such commonplace feats. I missed many a trick there but I was living in London- or that’s my excuse anyhow. Now in Folkestone, I would doubtless enjoy a brisk walk over the Weald but my dream hill-walking is further afield in the magical Dolomites which I only know slightly – those craggy mountains overlooking enchanted alpine meadows are my idea of heaven.

The Dolomites - a dream of heaven

                                           

3.      Singing. I love singing and as a prep-school boy I sang solos, being particularly appreciated when my voice darkened to become an alto. When my voice broke I inexplicably turned my back on singing and never took up a bass part in my school choir. This was another of life’s errors, but then 14-year-olds are not easily managed. So I have to content myself with arias in my bath and hymn singing in my car, well away from sensitive ears.

But how much I envy those choir members contributing so much to the great classic oratorios, masses and cantatas. A day or two ago I listened on YouTube to a performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F7TVM8m95Y). What a magnificent piece, how devotionally intense, yet how joyful and how replete with flowing harmony! It must be an enormous privilege to be a member of a choir capable of performing such works. I am more familiar with Handel’s stupendous Messiah (were I a trained bass how much I would love to sing The Trumpet shall Sound) but the choir has rousing choruses galore culminating in glorious Worthy is the Lamb and the incomparable Amen. Singing in these works means partaking in some of the finest achievements of Western Civilisation.

4.      Writing. I try my hand at writing and I enjoy this modest labour. Sometimes I am pleased with my results but I am untrained and I occasionally muse that had I kept with my first ambition to be a journalist I may have been more satisfied (though poorer!) than with my eventual incarnation as a rather pedestrian private equity investor. Yet I am far too diffident to be an effective journalist and an isolated writer in his ivory tower is a lonely existence, so maybe my quiet return to writing in my later years was the sensible route for me.

For I know good writing and good writers when I see them. John Steinbeck surpassed himself with The Grapes of Wrath just as Thomas Wolfe had done with Look Homeward, Angel. Evelyn Waugh was never better than in Brideshead Revisited. Critics like Christopher Hitchins and Tom Wolfe could write like angels and versatile Alan Bennett enchants his British public with his dry humanity. I present the palm for the greatest writer of fiction to our hardy perennial Charles Dickens, whose work is admittedly uneven but whose bustling style and eye for character has brought us Mr Pickwick and hilarious Sam Weller, Betsy Trotwood, Little Nell, Mr Squeers, Fagin and Bill Sikes, Mrs Gamp, but most of all Mr Wilkins Micawber, nobly “waiting for something to turn up”. Here was real genius and truly perceptive writing – far beyond my feeble grasp.

The great Charles Dickens

5.      The Brotherhood of Man. Yes, this is a utopian vision and our present world does not encourage us much. Divisions, conflicts, hatreds and animosity run rampant. However I am reading Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus and he informs me that Man is merely an organic algorithm and nowadays algorithms can be re-engineered. Before too long Artificial Intelligences will take control of our world, leaving the great mass of mankind in a secondary position, but made peaceful by genetic manipulation. All this is alarming and lowering as I had cherished the illusion of human free will. Utopia is thus a dream I will miss out on but modern science will not prevent me proclaiming the proud words of Robert Burns:

Then let us pray that, come it may, 
(As come it will for all that) 
That Sense and Worth o'er all the earth 
Shall bear the gree and all that. 
For all that and all that, 
It's coming yet for all that, 
That Man to Man the world o'er
Shall brothers be for all that.

SMD

1.07.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

THE NECESSITY OF COMPROMISE

We are all in rather a tizzy in the UK, split between the Blues and the Reds, the old and the young, the Leavers and the Remainers, the urban sophisticates and the steady Eddies, the rich and the poor. On many issues their stated opinions are poles apart; the job of those who care is to find an acceptable way of rubbing along together. Mature societies work by creating a consensus.

Statues in Derry celebrating Reconciliation

We all have to make compromises in life. Once well off, we adjust to a more modest life-style or, once poor, we learn how to enjoy prosperity tactfully. Different generations have quite different views in clothes, friends, music and the outside world and we should never stand in judgment. Chacun à son gout. Neighbours can be eccentric and deeply irritating, but you cannot choose your neighbours; bite your tongue – laissez faire et laissez passer. We easily express dogmatic opinions and set out ambitious targets but a moment’s reflexion will remind us that we may be going too fast (or too slowly) for others and many of our targets need the cooperation and goodwill of reluctant partners. The Great War taught us one thing; that entrenched positions lead to deadlock, stalemate and immobility.

At least in our liberal democracy few beliefs are so absolute that they cannot be shaded, spun or adjusted. We can leave Absolutism to the wilder shores of religion and ideology, both alien to our Zeitgeist. Cultural Relativism is the mode; without getting mired in philosophy, this relativism helps oil the wheels of debate and negotiation. Nothing, short of preventing national obliteration, is worth going to the stake to uphold.

All the above may sound rather pious, but in concrete terms how would a more dynamic attitude to compromise help resolve the pressing issues of the day? For a start the minority Tory government has secured a deal with the DUP to deliver a voting majority in Parliament. Yes, the government has had to inject extra cash into Northern Ireland, but it has achieved its main aim albeit at some cost in money and dignity; Ulster sensibilities have been respected, an exercise in effective compromising politics.

Besieged and defiant May

Loser Corbyn in Glastonbury triumph

The election did not provide the Tories with their expected large majority. Theresa May was too remote and failed to engage with her electorate. Corbyn surprised everyone by conducting himself sensibly and talking of social care, health issues and defence spending in a calm manner, which the electorate appreciated. He fell far short of winning but he won 29 seats from the Tories and revived Labour morale. Expect the Tories to learn a few lessons and tackle social care, health and defence with new investment and a less gung-ho manner. Financial goals in respect of deficit reduction may well have to become more elastic.

The elephant in the room is Brexit. Remainer opinion is in retreat though substantial numbers of Tories and Labour supporters favour the “soft “option of remaining in the single market. I think that is unrealistic and unachievable without jettisoning the point of Brexit. But there must be some middle ground. My own red lines would be the supremacy in the UK of our Parliament, UK laws and UK courts; control of our own defence within NATO and outside; the ability to trade freely with whom we choose and the ability to control our own borders. I do not get excited about the promised sharp reduction in net immigration (a high figure might suit us better). An EU trade treaty would be helpful, but squeezing an agreement from the EU 27 is a Herculean task and unlikely to be achievable on sensible terms. Like many I prefer a deal but a disruptive break and a retreat to WTO terms may be the only way forward, certainly much better than succumbing to the threats of an ever-centralising Brussels. Quite quickly we could enter into new arrangements with those who matter to us in Europe, notably Germany, and other big players overseas like the US, China and the modern Commonwealth.

It is true that Britain by democratic vote applied to leave the EU. This was however after the EU, in its arrogance, flatly repulsed David Cameron’s request for substantive reforms to allow the UK to stay. A concession or two at that stage would have saved Europe a heap of trouble. Let’s not forget that and let us all dream up a cornucopia of compromises to get us through the next fraught years.

SMD

26.06.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

OH, CALAMITY!

The famous catchphrase belonged to Robertson Hare of Aldwych farces fame but it may well be adopted by our very own and contemporary Theresa May – fitting better than Brexit means Brexit or Strong and Stable. Already Theresa has made grovelling apologies to the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers for her foul-up and the air has filled with her plaintive Mea culpas   Alas, she is not alone in having to eat humble pie. I had blithely predicted a 100-seat Tory majority, the demise of Jeremy Corbyn and 5 years of Tory Paradise. Well, I got that wrong in spades and I now have as much prophetic credibility as Old Moore’s Almanac. Sorry, folks, I goofed too!

Theresa misfires disastrously

Who could have predicted this calamitous election campaign with Theresa holed up in her bunker, deigning only to talk to friendly audiences, refusing to debate with the other party leaders and unveiling a deeply uninspiring manifesto? The public wanted to get to know Theresa better and they did not much like what they saw. Stiff and insecure with ordinary people, wobbly on key issues, she and her wet husband did not connect with the electorate. She projected a Goody Two-Shoes image, confessing to running barefoot through a wheat-field as her naughtiest childhood deed: the electorate wanted evidence that behind her stern mask there was a ramrod spine and a brain sharp as steel. Instead they were dismayed to discover a Home Counties stereotype with a constitution composed of marsh-mallow and old-fashioned elderberry jelly.

Calling the election was a gamble though the temptations were obvious. The polls seemed to smile at Theresa and she needed a larger majority. But the British complained about election fatigue. A general election in 2015, the dramatic Brexit referendum of 2016 and then local elections in May 2017 were compounded by Theresa’s snap June poll. A peek at history might have warned her off: Baldwin called a snap election in 1923 to bolster his position only to end up letting in Macdonald who led Labour with a Liberal coalition. (Winston Churchill was famously unseated by Prohibitionist Edwin Scrymgeour in Dundee!). Heath, besieged by a miners’ strike, lost feebly to Wilson in 1974. Voters are not interested in Westminster manoeuvres and are often unpredictably fickle. Anyhow the damage is done and there is little to be gained by crying over spilt milk.

Corbyn was given a free ticket to peddle his shop-worn wares. The man is an ass and his policies are beyond parody. Yet no attack-dog Tory was unleashed to maul his uncosted programme or to challenge his mendacious world-view. Theresa wanted the contest to be a personal one between her and Corbyn but Jeremy has been offering free beer for all the workers for 30 years and is a practised street agitator. As leader, Jeremy was delighted to have the ability to offer guaranteed escalating pensions, free tertiary education, free meals for the kiddiewinks, etc, etc and of course such an unrealistic programme enthused many of the dispossessed and the idealistic. The gods relented and Corbyn’s gang did not actually get elected. I hope he has shot his bolt.

Corbyn cannot believe his luck

The only bright spot amid the darkness and gloom was Scotland. The Unionists, well-led by Ruth Davidson, won 12 seats and Labour and LibDem won 9, all at the expense of the pestilent SNP. Alex Salmond, he with the mien of a bookie’s runner, was ousted in Moray and pomposity personified, Angus Robertson, fell in Angus. A long-awaited roll-back of the SNP has been set in train.

Whither the Tories now? Theresa will no doubt cling on for a short time but I cannot see her surviving the election debacle. She may be able to stitch up a deal with the Paisleyite DUP just to survive, a none-too-edifying exercise. As we say North of the border, I hae ma doots about her longer term political longevity. Yet the Tories are not bursting with obvious talent. Boris J has brilliant flashes but carries too much personal baggage to survive scrutiny to lead the country, Michael Gove is capable but is not a magnet for loyalty, but at least both were Brexiteers. The Tories may have to fall back on terminally dull Philip “Spreadsheet” Hammond as the new Messiah. Hammond once leant towards Brexit but stayed a tepid Remainer. He might be a plausible negotiator as our European “friends” circle for the kill – the EU is reliably dysfunctional and will stumble somewhere down the line.

We need an election-free period, a summer, winter and spring recess all in one. We can then enjoy the classic spectator sports of cricket, rugby, racing and football and the new one of Trump-watching. We even have our favourite Trooping the Colour on Saturday, with Her Majesty and waves of nostalgia for times past.

SMD

15.06.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017

BELOVED LONDON

How lucky we are to live in lovely England and to visit her glorious capital of London! We have been visiting the city this weekend to help our eldest son relocate from New York to a very attractive flat in Hampstead on the edge of the Heath. The sun has shone and this privileged enclave looks its idyllic best. Then the idyll is shattered by three Jihadi extremists murdering 7 innocents on London Bridge and at Borough Market and injuring many others, proclaiming “This is for Allah!” How can we react to this turmoil?

A corner of Hampstead Heath

My instinct is to dismiss the evil perpetrators as beyond redemption, accentuate all positives and all beauty and dig into the deep well of our national resilience. My physical surroundings here can hardly be bettered; my son’s rented flat is on a floor of a late Victorian villa once the home of the 1940s radio personality Professor C E M Joad. The rooms are spacious, the ceilings are high allowing large wall mirrors, there is much cheery coloured glass in the 1920s manner, and there are intricate stone fireplaces, one of which boasts scagliola columns and about 100 Delft tiles. Outside at the back is a ravishing secluded veranda giving views over an incomparable series of private gardens. On one side purple azaleas and white blooms vie with horse chestnut trees, in front of me as I write high stately elms preside over a myriad of clambering red roses, bushes, arbours and exotic plants, not to mention a large turreted folly below which a stone lion patrols watchfully. The owners yesterday cooked a sweet-smelling barbecue and a doting mother crooned the old nursery rhyme “The Grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men” to a gurgling infant stretching his legs experimentally on a lawn blanket. Beyond is a vast copper-beech and an abundance of hedges and flora I cannot possibly identify. I can only identify the scene as indubitably English and civilised.

Just across the road at the front of the house is one of the many access paths to Hampstead Heath, an ancient park of 320 hectares, criss-crossed with densely wooded narrow paths, opening up to sunny glades, fringed by crowned oak-trees, for picnics or earnest confabulations; you get splendid views of distant London – only 4 miles away.

The Heath is a haven for all Londoners, walkers, cyclists, joggers, swimmers for the many ponds, art-lovers (Robert Adam’s Kenwood with its terrific Iveagh Bequest paintings adjoins) and, in these permissive times, gay cruisers. It is a playground and pleasure garden which Londoners need and deserve.

Affluent properties in Hampstead Village

Hampstead Village has always been a favourite. Higher than the metropolis, it was a haven from plague and then a fashionable spa with healing waters in the 18^th century. It later acquired an artistic, even a bohemian air, and harboured writers and a covey of Labour politicians including Hugh Gaitskell, Anthony Crosland and chaotically eccentric Michael Foot. Its MP was until 2015 the strident Leftie film-star and champagne Socialist Glenda Jackson. I regret the disappearance of second-hand bookshops and certain hostelries rather more than the politicians. Now under the ownership of rich hedgies and celebrities, somehow the iconic painting Work by Ford Madox Brown (1865) depicting drain-laying labour on Heath Street no longer epitomises the Hampstead we see in 2017.

Such are the gorgeous sights and smells of London today. The sounds are more likely to be singing in my head in these tempestuous times. I find appropriate Purcell’s Welcome Ode to James II of 1685 “Britain, how great thou art” sung exquisitely by counter-tenor James Bowman. Perhaps more simply, I suggest we set aside all those who promise much and deliver little, promoters of fear and dismay, merchants of disunity and electoral bribes – a plague on all their houses! – and instead proclaim our self-confidence and self-belief singing There’ll always be an England.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GvkyKEYRnM

SMD

05/06/2017

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2017