Charles Moore
Sir Mark Rowley should not resign. We must try to break our habit of getting rid of each Metropolitan Police Commissioner before his/her term is complete. He has done nothing iniquitous or seriously incompetent. He is, however, systematically wrong about the right to protest, elevating it over the much more important right of the general public to own the streets. His parlaying with self-appointed Muslim community leaders privileges them. The weekly Gaza marches in London are effectively mobile no-go areas. This was confirmed by the altercation between Gideon Falter and the police sergeant who told him he was ‘openly Jewish’. It was true that Mr Falter had willed such an encounter, but what happened proved his point and disproved the Met’s claim that the marches are essentially peaceful. They are hate-filled and when significant numbers of marchers see someone they hate – for example, any Jew – the police believe they will be become violent, hence the officer’s warning to Mr Falter. It is not ‘tolerant’ to allow such intolerance. But I hope the awful phrase ‘openly Jewish’ can be put to good use. I keep thinking that more should be done to mobilise Gentiles who support Jews in their current plight. On a ‘Je suis Charlie’ principle, how about an organisation called Openly Jewish which brings Jews and Gentiles together in the same cause?
In the Daily Telegraph, John Simpson defends his employer, the BBC, from the charge of bias over Israel/Gaza. He says: ‘Did you see the interview on one BBC programme when a leading Hamas figure was asked how he could justify “killing people as they sleep”?’ The Hamas man stormed out of the studio. ‘I didn’t hear any complaints about the BBC’s lack of impartiality then,’ says Simpson. Well, yes, I suppose if I had been the Hamas chap, I would have been quite annoyed. ‘How dare you?’ I might have shouted. ‘We don’t kill people as they sleep. That is feeble. We rape and torture them first or shoot them up when they are cowering in hiding places or trying to cover their children. Sometimes we kidnap them in order to exert more power and inflict more pain later.’
I helped play ‘ping-pong’ in the House of Lords on Monday night. At about 8 p.m. we (though not I) sent the Rwanda Bill back to the Commons. It was about three hours’ wait for the Commons to pong in response to our ping, time for dinner in the peers’ dining room for a friend’s birthday and then an hour in the library where I continued to read Goncharov’s wonderful novel Oblomov, all about a man who does nothing. Appropriately, I fell asleep. Just before midnight, the Bill’s opponents dropped their resistance, and so Rishi Sunak’s battered ‘flagship’ could at last set sail. Because the whole process of ping-pong is governed by convention, not law, there is always a margin for disagreement about when peers should bow to the rights of the elected House. These discussions bring out the difference between the zealots and the constitutionalists. The latter almost always win in the end. This is ‘conventional wisdom’ in a good sense – the wisdom of conventions. One could sense the change of mood through the day, the feeling that the zealots had tried at least once too often. I note that the Labour front bench in the Lords, represented on Monday night by the friendly, jargon-free, amusing Lord Coaker, understands this well. I hope, but do not expect, that their front bench in the Commons will listen to their wisdom if their party forms the next government.
On 11 April, the first convoy of Ulez scrappage vehicles for Ukraine was supposed to set off, but did not do so. So far, there has been only one known sighting of a vehicle in Ukraine. Many are now filling a field near Dorking, including unusually useful ones like a refrigerated unit and a flatbed. One problem is that British Ukrainian Aid is TfL’s sole designated agent for the task and the volume is too great for it. Many potential partners are frustrated. The BUA monopoly should be broken and a second group signed up. Another problem is that mayoral election rules allegedly forbid media coverage. This is surely a misinterpretation. Yes, politicians such as Sadiq Khan are excluded for the duration. This should not impede the launch, already overdue, of a great enterprise.
It is quite a common experience to read media reports of something, then find out for oneself about the thing reported and find almost no resemblance between the two. So it was for me last week. I read that Lloyd Evans had written an appalling column in this paper about attending a lecture by a glamorous female historian in Cambridge and afterwards visiting a prostitute. The accusation was that he demeaned both women. This claim cannot survive reading what Evans actually wrote. As explained at the beginning and the end, the piece described how his male libido is ‘like being chained to a lunatic’. What he wrote about how Xe the prostitute trusted him when he didn’t have enough money and the discount she voluntarily gave him when he later tried to pay her in full was rather touching. His tone was respectful. He was not boasting or self-justifying. The piece had real pathos. Like an alcoholic or addict, he was describing a predicament. Sad if the tragicomedy of male desire is now off-limits. That cancels roughly a quarter of world literature.
Any tragicomic desire one might have to be Taylor Swift’s boyfriend must be tempered by the fact that, when the relationship breaks down, she will write a song about how disagreeable one is e.g. ‘I bet you think about me in your house with your organic shoes and your million-dollar couch.’ Perhaps the answer is to monetise the liaison from the outset, contracting for a percentage of any song which disparages one. Then, once it is all over, one would be what Taylor calls ‘Mr Perfectly Fine’.
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