The Sunday Telegraph - 11.08.2019

18 ***^ Sunday 11 August 2019 The Sunday Telegraph

T

he growth of nepotism in

showbusiness has been one

of the most repulsive minor

cultural degradations of recent years.

Because showbiz was until recently

considered no better than it should

be, those with nothing to lose flocked

to it. Who could have predicted it

would become so respectable that

we’d reach a stage where the odd

successful working-class actor talks

sadly of how few of their fellows

there are? Rags-to-riches stories have

been replaced by riches-to-richer

stories and with the next generation

of celebrity spawn already smeared

all over the cultural landscape, it

shows no sign of stopping.

This being so, it seems drearily

appropriate that another smug and

unadventurous development –

remakes of films which are just a

decade or two old – is well under way.

Just as Marc Jacobs hiring Cindy

Crawford’s lookalike teenage daughter

as the face of his perfume may trigger

memories to be monetised, so

remaking one generation’s favourite

film may lead them to take their own

children to see it, instead of some

unknown quantity. We’ve already had

The Lion King – inflicting the season-

in-hell soundtrack that is Hakuna

Matata on a new generation – now

Disney has announced that Home

Alone will be “reimagined for a new

generation”.

The star of that film Macaulay

Culkin has himself thrown out a

suggestion, tweeting: “I hope the

Space Jam reboot kicks off a whole

slew of 80s/90s sports movie

remakes” but I’m pretty sure this

opinion isn’t shared by many who

won’t be expecting cameos in these

wretched projects. There’s a reason

why the third Home Alone only

narrowly lost out on the Golden

Raspberry Award for Worst Sequel to

Speed 2: Cruise Control in 1998 and

after that was good only for two

straight-to-TV features: people grew

weary of the same old same old.

It’s interesting that Culkin uses the

terms “remake” and “reboot”;

invariably the dullards behind these

projects think of themselves as

Rebooters, doing something cool and

techy and futuristic rather than mere

Remakers, with the make ’n’ mend

implications of dragging out some old

rag and zhushing it up a bit.

Reimaginers, of course, go to the top

of the pile; bringing their limitless

creativity to a project that seemed

definitive at the time. In fact, all three

are cultural rag-and-bone men.

It’s not just in films that this

tendency is so irritating; there was

much chatter about the latest Doctor

Who reboot but rather than

regenerate, each new incarnation

seems to degenerate by several

degrees. How ironic that after all that

fuss about the first female doctor and

how revolutionary it would be, the

show has become even more staid,

pious and PC. Sometimes the last

series seemed a spaced-up version

of Call The Midwife, with its

ceaseless empathising and woke

box-ticking; I’m sure that in two

decades’ time, someone at the

overpaid, underperforming

BBC-of-the-future will

have the bright idea of a

mash-up.

“Nobody knows

anything,” William

Goldman famously

said of Hollywood.

But that was why

Hollywood was

I’ll take old Hollywood’s magic over a new Home Alone

magic – a musical or a Western or a

cartoon could give more insight into

the human condition than any number

of pretentious plays. If you saw them

• Gypsy or The Searchers or Bambi


• before the hard carapace of
  adulthood had grown over you, they
  could make you see the world in a
  whole new way – even change the
  direction of your life. No one’s ever
  going to get that from a remake by
  people who know the price of
  everything and the value of nothing.
  Old Hollywood was without doubt a
  place of cynicism and corruption,
  where the casting couch was the norm
  and actors could be forced to make
  films they didn’t want to by their
  studios. But at its best it was as if the
  whoremongers, hustlers and con men
  who created and populated the place
  dug down deep inside themselves to
  find that little bit of magic. Just
  making the same films over and
  over, and thus robbing the culture
  of imagination and innovation,
  means that all that’s left is the
  cynicism and corruption. Make
  no mistake, this is decadence –
  no matter how cute and
  wholesome the subject matter.

JULIE BURCHILL

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opinion

A

ny minute now,

somebody is going to

suggest that we need a

written constitution. This

will be presented as an

obvious solution to the

farrago currently dominating our

politics (or, at least, the media

coverage of it) which is, in truth, not a

constitutional crisis at all but simply a

national argument in which the losing

side refuses to accept defeat.

But nonetheless, the cry will go up,

as it does from time to time whenever

a particularly self-regarding

Westminster clique sees itself as being

marginalised: modern government

cannot be conducted on the informal,

makeshift basis that has ensured

Britain’s ability to adapt to changing

circumstances with great fluency for

centuries. We need a legally binding

document to clarify without ambiguity

the powers and responsibilities of

Parliament, the prime minister, the

Cabinet Office, blah, blah.

Whoever initiates the proposal this

time around will immediately receive

blanket coverage on the BBC, the

support of innumerable Guardian

columnists and the endorsement of

the Liberal Democrats. Given how

much time and energy we are

investing at the moment in trying to

define basic terms like “democracy”

and “parliamentary sovereignty”, even

quite sensible people might be

prepared to give it consideration.

Then again, perhaps enthusiasm for

this idea will be instantly mitigated by

recent events on the other side of the

Atlantic where the effects of just such

a document – with its historical

guarantee of the right to bear arms – is

having demonstrably catastrophic

consequences. The Second

Amendment to the US Constitution

was devised to protect the new-found

states against the danger of a coup by

federal government which was seen as

a form of proxy for the old colonial

ruler. It guaranteed the right of the

states to form militias and, as a

necessary corollary, of the people to

bear arms. It is an almost perfect

example of the danger embodied in a

written constitution – which is to say,

it froze the historical concerns of the

time in which it was written into the

unforeseeable future.

Of course, constitutions may be

amended – but only with great

difficulty. That’s the whole point. A

written constitution is not simply a

piece of legislation that may be

reversed by a further legislative act: it

is the basis for the legality of all acts of

government. In the US, not only has

the Second Amendment proved almost

impossible to amend or even

re-interpret (because of hugely

influential opposition from the gun

lobby and constitutional

traditionalists), but new amendments

which most progressives favour have

proved impossible to pass.

The most striking (although now

largely forgotten) example of this was

the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment,

which would have made

discrimination against women

unconstitutional. It was passed by the

Senate but did not succeed in being

ratified by the three quarters of states

required and so the US, home of the

modern feminist movement, never

succeeded in amending its

constitution to guarantee equality for

women. Meanwhile, Britain, accepting

the moral force of the case, passed

such legislation in the lifetime of one

parliament. Lesson: a document that

enshrines the sacred political and

cultural principles of the era in which

it is composed may not seem like such

a great idea a few generations (or even

decades) later. This difficulty would be

magnified exponentially at the present

moment when the question in hand is

so contentious. Any new constitutional

settlement now would simply be

regarded as a coup by one side or the

other in the Brexit controversy.

National constitutions are an attempt

to put the Enlightenment idea of a

social contract between government

and the people into literal form. That

is why they were adopted with such

alacrity by the revolutionary republics

of the 18th century, usually at seminal

points in their histories when there

was general agreement on the ideals

and objectives of the society that was

being born. We are, needless to say,

not at such a point. We cannot settle

our raging debate with a permanent

redefinition of governmental

functions: in the great British

democratic tradition, it will have to be

argued to exhaustion and whichever

side proves more convincing will win.

Having lived under both systems, I

promise you this is the better way.

Britain has found it remarkably easy in

the past to settle the great social

questions of the day such as abortion

Britain’s informal system of

power is far preferable to

the ‘right to bear arms’

mess of the US constitution

JANET DALEYEY

DIA CHAKRAVARTY

Posturing acts

will never solve

our green issues

L

ast week, it emerged

that the 5p plastic bag

charge, a Coalition-era

policy that the Lib Dems

proudly claim as a victory,

“might have actually

increased the overall

amount of plastic being

used”.

In a week rife with

examples of the law of

unintended consequences,

it was also reported that the

hyped “green drive” by

McDonald’s to shift from

recyclable plastic straws to

paper ones had backfired. It

turned out the new straws

were simply being put into

general waste. Private

companies, it seems, are just

as susceptible to a bit of

mindless green posturing as

our recent governments

have been.

In a note for the Political

Studies Association, Sir Ivor

Crewe summarised his

extensive research on why

so many government

policies “fail spectacularly”.

The eminent political

scientist identified

“ministerial hyper-activism”

as one of the behavioural

causes of government

blunders, noting, “Benign

neglect – the option of doing

nothing – is alien to the

modern culture of

Whitehall”.

It is hardly surprising that

in this political climate,

merely being seen to do

something – rather than a

hard-headed examination of

the potential impact – drives

far too many of our policies.

Nowhere does this

sentiment figure more

strongly than in

environmental rules and

legislation, where any

cynicism about a policy’s

likely success may be

equated with climate

change scepticism – or even

“denial” – by the

increasingly aggressive

green lobby.

Successive

administrations have

fallen into the trap of

committing in haste to

green regulations that not

only fail to achieve their

targets, but sometimes end

When laws get set in stone, the

repercussions can be never-ending

reform, gay rights, and, indeed, gun

control primarily because its

legislature can respond rapidly and

fluidly to changing attitudes without

an agonisingly slow (and inherently

conservative) constitutional

procedure.

So if it cannot be resolved by some

constitutional fiat, where does this

leave the Great National Argument? It

depends on how seriously you take its

increasingly hysterical tone. Of course,

a great deal of the noise from the

antagonists in the actual Brexit

negotiation is trash talk: the fighters

haven’t even got into the ring yet.

Maybe this really is a purblind march

toward apocalypse, dictated by the

vanity of national rulers, like the steps

that led to the First World War. But

probably not: the vulnerability of

elected governments will almost

certainly rule this out. Refusing to

re-open the Withdrawal Agreement

even after it has been rejected by the

UK Parliament three times is simply

too absurd a notion to sell to European

electorates who will have to pay the

price of no deal.

Meanwhile, here at home, the abuse

being thrown around is descending

into self-parody. Sir Nicholas Soames

has described Dominic Cummings as a

“functionary” who, like a child,

“should be seen and not heard”. And a

former Treasury official, Nick

Macpherson, has likened Mr

Cummings to Thomas Cromwell,

advising him that when public

servants engage in self-promotion and

believe their own myths, it “tends to

end badly”. I doubt that we will be

seeing Mr Cummings publicly

beheaded at the Tower but I am quite

sure that an awful lot of public figures

are going to make fools of themselves

before this is over.

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up causing more

environmental damage. Yet

our politicians stubbornly

refuse to learn their lesson.

Gordon Brown’s attempt

to fight pollution by

incentivising diesel cars

resulted in 12 million of the

vehicles on the road in 2017

compared with just three

million in 2000. A move

that was designed to protect

the environment from CO

emissions ended up

exposing it to nitrogen

oxides and other harmful

pollutants that are

associated with thousands

of premature deaths per

year, according to some

experts.

In an attempt to correct

this blunder, the very

people who were actively

encouraged to “dash for

diesel” are now being

penalised by tax rises.

One might’ve hoped that

this episode would have

alerted Mr Brown’s

successors to the dangers of

legislating without thinking

beyond the worthy-

sounding intended purpose

of an idea, to the unintended

consequences which

sometimes seem counter-

intuitive. Alas, the hope

remains unfulfilled.

Usually an advocate of

government inaction, I

make an exception for the

environment, where I

believe considered

intervention can be

beneficial. But time and

again politicians let us down

through their short-

sightedness, short-termism

and an irrepressible desire

to leave a mark. Instead of

pandering to a shrill lobby,

it is time they focused on

what actually delivers

results.

With the new

administration said to be

tearing up the old rule book

and writing a new one, dare

I hope for change?

READ MORE at

telegraph.co.uk/

opinion

FOLLOW Dia Chakravarty on

Twitter @DiaChakravarty;

READ MORE at

telegraph.co.uk/opinion

SUNDAY COMMENT

‘A document

that

enshrines the

sacred

principles of

the era in

which it is

composed

may not

seem like

such a great

idea a few

generations

later’

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