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front-bench1F
ew Daily Telegraph readers will
disagree with Kwasi Kwarteng
that the past 20 years have seen a
calamitous decline in the respect
shown by the public towards figures of
authority. Many will have been
nodding their heads, too, when the
minister called at the weekend for a
return “to the levels of deference that
we saw in the past”. He cited the Prime
Minister’s pledge to put an extra
20,000 police officers on the streets
over the next three years as a “good
place to start”. And after the shocking
death of a 28-year-old PC in Berkshire
last week, it is clear that we cannot go
on as we are.
But this is a societal problem as
much as a political one to fix, and morepolice is, as Mr Kwarteng says, only a
good place to start. Today, deference is
something that young people are
taught not to have. Indeed, we are
meant to be in an age of happy
“disruption”, questioning everything,
from the decisions of our elders to our
own gender. The two key authority
figures outside the family – the police
and the teacher – have become
problematic, their authority stripped
away. The police are seen as fair game
for a good kicking, both literally and
through policy reports.
This has been going on for a lot
longer than 20 years, and is the result
of a cultural shift that started to
emerge in the Sixties and Seventies,
informed by a general willingness to
see the worst in figures of authority.
Consider the way the police are
portrayed in popular culture. Those of
us the wrong side of 50 will remember
that fantastic TV drama The Sweeney.
Produced in the Seventies, it depicted
the notorious members of Scotland
Yard’s Flying Squad. Policemen were
shown as rule-bending, rule-breaking,
and corrupt. Gone were the days of
Dixon of Dock Green or Z Cars, in
which officers were heroic figures
respected by their community. And
today, no police drama seems to be
complete without bent officers andgratuitous violence galore.
This cultural shift has been
reinforced by the fallout from the
Macpherson report, which followed
the murder of Stephen Lawrence. It
charged the police with being
institutionally racist. Even now, it
hardly seems to matter what efforts
are made to deal with this problem. In
the eyes of many young people, the
police are the enemy – the “Feds”– to
be despised and avoided.
Some will claim that it is naive for a
minister to call for a return to
deference towards the police. They
will say that we are too far gone. They
are wrong. Not only can a culture of
deference be actively popular, but
respect for authority can be revived.
The best illustration is Hackney, in
East London. In 2002, the schools in
the borough were the worst in Europe,
and the then government decided to
suspend the Local Education
Authority and give the contract to a
Learning Trust. I was part of that body.
We embarked on a project of
transformation based on high
expectations. Uniforms, routines and
behavioural rituals were reimposed,
along with teaching deference towards
the authority of teachers.
The borough’s schools were turned
into some of the best in the country.We need more police
officers but we also need a
cultural shift in the way
our society views themTony Sewell
W
hen Boris Johnson
arrives at his first G
summit in Biarritz
this weekend, he
will surely reflect on
what an odd
gathering it is. Recent annual meetings
have ended in acrimony. The seating
plan will reveal that there are not seven
leaders but nine, since the heads of the
EU Commission and Council are both
permanently invited. Indeed, on this
occasion there will be 12 for much of
the time, since India, Australia and
Spain have all been included, for very
good reasons in each case.
Most of the world’s media will be
focused on whether 12 global leaders
can get through 36 hours or so without
a diplomatic disaster. Given the
laudable themes chosen by the French
hosts of fighting inequality, addressing
the powers of the big tech companies
and promoting biodiversity, can a
meaningful communiqué be agreed on
these issues with President Trump?
Will the new British PM look as if he
has any worthwhile relations with
President Macron and Chancellor
Merkel? Can this group agree on
anything about how to handle Iran?
In short, there is huge scope for the
leadership of the Western world tolook more divided by the end of the
meeting than it did at the beginning.
Yet Boris Johnson also has, of
course, an opportunity to give some
substance to the idea of “global Britain”
and to show that our bitter divisions
over Brexit are not the only attribute
by which this country should be
defined. In fact, this gathering,
including his much-vaunted encounter
with Trump that might precede it, is
the main chance he will have to do so
before those domestic divisions enter
their most intense and decisive phase.
There will be plenty for him to say
about the immense contribution to the
world made by British citizens and
taxpayers – from generous overseas aid
to the tireless efforts of our armed
forces, intelligence services and
diplomats to keep the peace around
the globe. Without Britain, this would
be a poorer, meaner and more violent
world.
But something more than that will
be needed, as every sceptical journalist
prepares to write about the apparently
inward-looking and disaster-prone UK,
and seeks to portray a reckless
government in London approaching its
imminent fall. And much more is in
any case required if the disparate
group squeezing around the table in
Biarritz is going to show the slightest
sign of common purpose.
Boris should not attempt to corral
his fellow heads of government into a
common line on every issue, nor set
himself up as the go-between for the
US and Europe. Such efforts would be
doomed to fail, for now at least, and
more likely to end in ridicule than
renown. Brexit inevitably involves
being less influential in EU capitals,
even if it brings the warmth of the
Trump White House.
What he can do is to present a bigger
vision of what the free, democraticnations of the world should be focused
on, and present ideas that could even
give them some energy and unity. He
could show that leaders can rise above
parochial and short-term problems and
identify the issues they really need to
tackle before it is too late.
The most pressing of these is climate
change and the steady destruction of
the natural world, about which he has
a heartfelt passion. He should give free
rein to his instincts on that.
Additionally, here are four vital themes
on which Britain can give a lead, and
then make a big contribution:
The G7 needs a new, common, and
visionary approach to relations with
China. As things stand, a potentially
dangerous superpower rivalry
between the US and China looks likely
to dominate this century. Britain could
advocate standing with Trump on
confronting China’s approach to trade
and technology, but recognising
China’s global financial role, working
together on development and the
environment and halting a new arms
race in space and AI weapons –
“autonomous killing machines”. Only a
united policy on the part of Western
nations will provide the strength and
confidence for this to work.
It needs to think ahead to the rise of
great mega-cities in Africa. Over the
next 30 years, around half the
expansion of the world’s population is
expected to be on the African
continent. Today’s towns will expand
into vast cities of tens of millions of
people. There is no point having any
global goals for economic growth,
reducing inequality and halting waves
of migration or fighting terrorism
unless this is taken into account. So the
G7 would be wise to harness together
their development budgets, education
efforts, commercial priorities and
political alliances to give those citiesThe G7 is an opportunity
to take the lead on global
issues and show what
Britain can offer the worldwilliam hagueague
anne-eliSabeTh
mouTeTTeach young people to respect authority
The humourless
French will
never ‘get’ your
prime minister
“C
an you come on
our show?” The
France 5 TV booker
sounded frazzled. “Would
you explain why we should
be afraid of Boris Johnson?”
“Er,” I said. “That’s our title
tonight. ‘Pourquoi faut-il
avoir peur de Boris Johnson?’
You write for the same
paper, yes?”
This was the start of my
new and improved
television career, which I
entirely owe to Bojo. I have
become, by default, the
French Boris Whisperer,
because, to my compatriots,
the PM is a riddle wrapped
in a mystery inside an
enigma. They see him as the
exact opposite of what a
politician should be: it’s hard
to imagine someone more
different from Emmanuel
Macron while still belonging
to the same species. Now the
two are meeting on
Thursday at the Elysee, and
my only advice to Macron is:
take an interpreter.
I should confess that I’ve
met Boris Johnson only
once, at a Spectator summer
party, where he was holding
court next to a fountain of
Pol Roger, and probably did
not even register my
presence. He was having
fun, and people enjoyed
seeing him having fun. “It’s
one of the reasons he is so
popular,” I recently told a
radio host, who looked at me
as if I’d sprouted fins or
spoken Székely Hungarian.
“It’s been three years of
bumbling and gloom, and
voters like a bit of optimism.”
“But why does he joke? Ce
n’est pas sérieux.” Humour in
France is as regulated as the
Common Agricultural
Policy: off the cuff is more
likely to get you fired than
elicit a chuckle. It’s
impossible to get the French
to even conceive that not
being “sérieux” can be a
politician’s raison d’être (and
a vote winner). The great
post-war editor of Le Monde
used to tell his journalists to
write “boringly”, as any hint
of fantasy would destroy the
paper’s credibility. Self-
deprecation here amounts
to self-sabotage: any hint
that you’ve “dabbled” ratherThose who sneer at the conformist
culture of Hackney schools need to
look at the disruptive homes that many
of those children came from, where
the adults had gone Awol. School is
now a secure space where there are
clear boundaries and there is someone
in charge who you respect.
Schools may be better, but the
streets of London and other areas are
unsafe. The prevalence of knife crime,
however, particularly within black
communities, may well be changing
attitudes towards the police. Amid the
silly calls for more youth clubs and
table tennis, community leaders know
that safer streets require more and
better police. In fact, for the first time I
am hearing calls for more, not less,
policing from communities besieged
by young people out of control. When
you hear leaders demanding the whole
community works together to solve
knife crime, this is code for: we need
the police.
Of course, the Government should
back the police and deference returns
when there is trust within a
community. But what we really need is
a cultural shift, and that must come
from within society itself.Dr Tony Sewell is chair and founder of
the charity Generating GeniusBoris Johnson can help bring some
coherence to an incoherent West
every possible chance of success.
The European nations of the G
need to give attention to the instability
of the western Balkans and the drift
away from the Western alliance of
Turkey. This makes south-east Europe,
as so often over the centuries, the
biggest strategic threat to the stability
of the continent. With the US at
loggerheads with Turkey over the
purchase of Russian missiles, a
coordinated Western approach to the
whole region is urgently needed.
The G7 and similar nations should
be restating the case for freedom. The
end of the Cold War has deprived
democratic nations of their automatic
unity, and the global financial crisis has
rocked their self-confidence. Political
freedom has struggled to take root in
the Middle East. Yet the deep flaws of
authoritarian systems have not gone
away. As thousands demonstrate in
Russia and vast numbers in Hong
Kong, Western countries should avoid
any counterproductive attempts to
interfere but recognise this
underlining of a basic truth: people
know they are safer and more
prosperous when they are also free.
And the big economies of the G7 are in
the strongest position to ensure that
means freedom from the monopolistic
corporation and the controllers of data
as well.
The nations represented at Biarritz
are not short of meetings for their
leaders to attend. They are desperately
short, however, of ideas around which
they can coalesce, to address the main
threats that will overcome them unless
they look far enough ahead now.
A new British PM has the world’s
attention and the goodwill of America.
This is a rare opportunity to present
some clear ideas, to take a global lead,
and in doing so show a better face of
Britain.To order prints or signed copies of any Telegraph cartoon, go to telegraph.co.uk/prints-cartoons or call 0191 603 0178 [email protected]than sweated blood and
tears over your 600-page
history of the late Middle-
Ages is taken literally, with
your interlocutor’s eyes
looking frantically for some
less weird person to talk to.
“Are Boris’s jokes funny?”
I get asked. (Yes, I say. Then
I’m asked to translate things
like “an inverted pyramid of
piffle” to uncomprehending
glares.) Or: “Why is he so
untidy?” You need more
than a sound bite to develop
the Lord Emsworth theory
of dressing down, so I
explain that the English find
dapper men more suspicious
than someone whose shirt
tails seem to escape from his
trousers of their own
volition. It goes down like un
ballon en plomb.
The French notion of a
prime ministerial first
speech is something like
Macron’s staged 2017 drama:
dressed in a dark coat styled
after François Mitterrand’s,
the new president crossed
the floodlit Louvre Court
alone, to address the crowds
from a dais, delivering the
kind of flowery discourse
that, translated into English,
sounds like a press release
from the Ruritanian
Embassy: technocratic,
vague and bombastic. Boris’s
gung-ho address in front of
No 10 bemused us: it was
practical and upbeat, “like a
campaign speech”, people
said dismissively.
The vast majority of the
French, however, have
never actually heard Boris
speak; they rely on bland
voice-over snippets. The
new generation of educated
French pols think they can
speak English. What they
actually speak is Globish- syntactically correct but
with no understanding of
the assumptions shared by
British speakers.
Negotiations will be an
uphill task for both sides.
The Germans don’t get
British humour, but at least
they are aware there is
something there, so they are
more careful. I hate to say
this, but it’s Merkel and von
der Leyen who may give
decent Brexit concessions to
Boris, not Macron.
follow William
Hague on Twitter
@WilliamJHague
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14 ***^ Tuesday 20 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph
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