Care home visits are a
basic human right
Janice Turner
Page 35
of the West Midlands, Andy Street, as
a model for resetting the Tory image.
This pandemic has given Britain a
crash course in remote working, in
digital technology and in the sort of
IT agility that defies geographical
proximity and plays well into the
“global Britain” idea. Next we need
massive IT infrastructure upgrades,
some of them physical. I don’t see
Johnson speaking this language with
much fluency, but a powerful and
trusted minister in his cabinet could
get the grip and talk the talk, and
Downing Street could do the
showcasing, because there’s a theme
here too, and Johnson is well
equipped to verbalise it. The theme is
Britain springing from this crisis more
agile and lighter of foot than we went
into it. I may not approve but can see
how Brexit — Britain unencumbered
— could be tied into this.
Which brings us to the hard part.
This reset is being seen as a facing-
down of the zealots of the Leave camp
in the PM’s party and government:
not a facing-down of the whole Leave
camp — he has crossed that Rubicon
to join it — but of the zealots. Has
Johnson the balls to see them off and
signal the compromises that we may
need to make to get an EU trade
deal that won’t hurt both sides? Or
will he act in what seems to be his
nature and, having been kissed for a
weekend by an admiring breeze from
a Tory-centrist direction, take fright
at the hardliners’ anger and tack
back their way?
We’ll see. Reset is undoubtedly the
word of the weekend. It may prove
the word of the month. But if we’re
to get a real and lasting change in
course, a prime minister has to make
it and stick to it. I hope, even while I
doubt, that Boris Johnson could
surprise us.There’s still a way Johnson can save himself
Vacuum in No 10 could be filled if the PM plots a new course focusing on the green revolution and jobs for the young
PETER KOLLANYI/LNPThough I can almost hear the PM’s
weary sigh as we cite apprenticeship
schemes, retraining schemes,
youth-targeted job opportunities
and the like, he should reflect hard.
This pandemic is punishing the
younger generation horribly — in
education and in the jobs market
beyond education — and I suspect
the issue will grow. Now is the time
for a Conservative leader to take this
generation to his heart.
“What works” should be the
driving idea. Johnson starts with the
advantage that, like Tony Blair, he is
not a dogmatist, nor thought to be.
We should study the cheerful,
unideological, relentlessly practical
positivity of the Conservative mayorCarrie Symonds has an influential role
alongside Boris Johnson within No 10unideological, broadly generous and
bold in their sweep. How would that
translate into a post-reset manifesto?
Surprisingly easily.
The first is climate change and a
green revolution, all of which goes
with the Johnson grain. This week
alone, look at Rolls-Royce’s
collaborative project to manufacture
small nuclear reactors. British
science and engineering has a long
pedigree in innovative ideas but a
more chequered history in exploiting
them. We’ve seen what non-state
bodies can do in this week’s news
about the Pfizer vaccine
breakthrough and Oxford
University’s work on a vaccine.
Targeted state investment in
renewables, green energy generation,
design and manufacturing could
bring similar returns. A prime
minister who could inject the same
energy and sense of urgency into
green politics could distinguish our
country for its vision and idealism, as
well as seed an economic harvest.
What about a Severn tidal
barrage? Boris loves big, newsworthy
projects and knows how to brush
aside myopic cost-benefit analysis.
Ever since Margaret Thatcher’s
famous speech claiming the
environment as a distinctly
Conservative responsibility, I’ve
waited for a Tory leader brave
enough to take on the stick-in-the-
muds on the British right and plant a
Conservative flag on concern for the
planet. Assured already of Michael
Gove’s enthusiasm (and now we’re
leaving the EU’s common
agricultural policy) Johnson could
stick his neck out, moving on from
outdated postwar farm subsidy and
investing in greener farming. So
there’s one theme.
A second should be the young.N
ature abhors a vacuum.
When there’s a hole at the
centre, peripherals get
sucked in by the very
nothingness. They may
look like the action, and in a way
they are, but it is a failure to act that
has created the agitation. Dominic
Cummings, the prime minister’s
not-quite chief of staff, should have
been peripheral. So should Lee Cain,
the prime minister’s director of
communications; likewise Carrie
Symonds, the prime minister’s
partner; Allegra Stratton, the prime
minister’s new press secretary,
has become central only by being
similarly sucked in.
So observe the name that appears
in each of these clauses: “the prime
minister”. This has been the vacuum.
Strong people — and all of these
courtiers are strong people — need
a strong king to command them.
Otherwise what you get is a
basketful of egos and intellects
flailing and biting each other’s
bottoms in a pit.
And that is what we got. Mr
Cummings is some kind of a genius
in his way, but his way is strange. Ms
Stratton has a good mind, moderate
instincts and attracts the limelight;
Ms Symonds is said to be difficult,
passionate, idealistic, manipulative
and volatile. Mr Cain appears
abrasive and ruthless.
There is nobody here who could
not serve in a useful team for a
strong prime minister: a Professor
Calculus, a saleswoman, a diva and a
bouncer. But throw them together
without a proper boss and mayhem
will follow.
Now it has. And we waste our time
mapping the territories of each,
chronicling the conflicts and
psychoanalysing the personalities.
These are what scientists call
epiphenomena. An epiphenomenon
(says the OED) being “a mental state,
regarded as a by-product [my italics]
of brain activity”. Except that in
this case the mental state is the
by-product of an absence of brain
activity, and the brain in question is
the prime minister’s. Boris Johnson
has some luminous talents and a
sharp mind: but focused brain
activity of the kind necessary for
setting directions for a great nation
is not among them.
Nevertheless he’s all we’ve got.
Railing against him may assist public
understanding, but it doesn’t help
useful thinking about a future
brighter than what this week’s
gloomy economic news and Brexitarm-wrestling seem to threaten.
So let’s try to be positive. If you
hear the word “reset” once this
weekend, you’ll hear it a score of
times, but opportunities like this for
the prime minister to plot a new
course with a team hired to help him
won’t come often. And thinking
about what that course should be,
I’m struck by how in tune much of it
appears to be with his own instincts.
Because Johnson does have instincts,
and I believe they’re liberal,Strong-willed courtiers
need a strong king
to command them
Matthew
ParrisComment
A spell in
uniform does
wonders for
the young
T
o those of a progressive
disposition it was a good
thing that National Service
was ditched back in the
Sixties, along with the
death penalty and the criminalisation
of homosexuality. The Beatles were
among the first to be liberated from
its yoke — they had just turned
conscription age when it was ended
in 1960 — and look what they went
on to achieve. Instead of square-
bashing and being forced to have a
short back and sides, they were
allowed to grow their hair and
express themselves. In so doing they
revolutionised society. They made it
swing. Well, yes, there is all that.
And yet as an assiduous
reader of obituaries I’m
struck by how often
National Service features in
the stories of those who went
on to achieve great things in
their lives. In some cases it
was clearly a turning
point, a catalyst for
their future careers,
as was the case
recently with
Frank Bough.
After reading
history at Oxford
he did his
National Service
with the Royal
Tank Regiment in
Germany and there
he made his first
broadcast with the
British Forces Network.
Writers on the obits
desk are often told
something like: “There’s adescription of how he turned skiving
off into an art form: “Not going
missing exactly but always unseen. It
became difficult to focus on me.”
Auberon Waugh’s account of
accidentally shooting himself with a
machine gun during his National
Service in Cyprus is a classic of the
genre: “I observed with dismay that
it was firing into my chest.” As he lay
injured on the ground, he noticed
the serious look on Corporal
Chudleigh’s face and so lightened the
mood by saying: “Kiss me,
Chudleigh.” “Chudleigh did not spot
the historical reference and treated
me with some caution thereafter.”Jungle talk
I
don’t know the context for this
comment, or even which of my sons
said it, or to whom, but this is what I
overheard as I was walking down the
stairs the other day and it made me
smile: “Just because you’ve got pubes
now, it doesn’t make you Tarzan.”Carol Midgley is awaystory he used to like to tell about when
he did his National Service... ” The
fondly recalled anecdotes reveal that
National Service helped young men
to forge lifelong bonds. It gave
them confidence and a sense
of belonging. Importantly it
toughened them up, physically
and mentally, and taught
them useful life skills — not
only how to take orders
but also how to give them.
Perhaps more than
anything it was a melting
pot. Toffs met proles for
the first time, and vice
versa, and both sides of
the social divide had to
learn how to rub along.
You can see where
I’m going with this. A
recent poll suggests
that two thirds of us
think National Service
should be reintroduced.
Politicians of the calibre
of William Hague and
Rory Stewart are said tobe warming to the idea of its
reintroduction as a creative response
to the pandemic, especially if it helps
young black people feel less alienated.
Not just military service, they say, but
nursing, the police, the fire service,
forestry and so on. As young people,
including graduates, face the prospect
of living on benefits until the job
market recovers, now might be the
perfect time. William Hague put the
case powerfully when he said: “Not
only might it stop working-class
youths settling arguments by
stabbing one another, it might stop
the middle-class ones from wanging
on about their feelings and their safe
spaces all the time.” OK, I made that
quote up, but you take the point.Kiss me, Chudleigh
N
ational Service often crops up
in memoirs too. Sir Michael
Caine reckoned his in the
Korean War was the making of him.
Others get comic mileage from their
two years, as the biographer Sir
Michael Holroyd does in hisNigel Farndale Notebook
the times | Saturday November 14 2020 1GM 33