There is a fine piece of writing in the “Sunday Times” today by Matthew Syed which gets to the heart of our collective floundering around when public figures, Film Director Noel Clarke in this case, are seen to overstep the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. The start here was, as Syed says, fine investigative journalism in “The Guardian”. Surely the correct response to this was not for BAFTA to judge but to pause – to suspend Clarke pending further enquiries ?

We do have laws which protect citizens from harassment. We have due processes which are followed when there are allegations of unlawful behaviour. If the police and the CPS investigate this matter and conclude that that law should take its course then a trial would follow. And should Clarke be found guilty that would be the time for BAFTA to act. And if the CPS decides there is insufficient evidence to prosecute ? Then BAFTA should withdraw their suspension.

The problem here and in other cases is the court of public opinion which runs parallel to the real judicial processes. Last year an MP was effectively suspended because of allegations of sexual harassment, and worse. He was not named but it wasn’t hard to discover who he was. The Police/CPS dropped the case and the MP has returned to public life. But he is in limbo to some extent. No case to answer is presumably what the CPS concluded.

Innocent until proven guilty lies at the cornerstone of our judicial system. In both the cases I mention here there has been neither trial nor verdict. Journalism may dig up evidence, but it is not Judge and Jury. And Twitter is not a court of law.

“Without the Falklands war, the ballooning of the Thatcher legend, and Labour’s panicked swerve back towards the centre, the Alliance [Liberal/SDP] would have triumphed.” So writes Matthew Parris in The Times today.

It would indeed and with the late Shirley Williams very much in our thoughts old SDP members like me remember nostalgically how close we were. The Falklands were the Blessed Margaret’s saviour as the successful COVID-19 vaccination programme has been that of the rather less than Blessed Boris.

The SDP was in a sense in the centre ground – but it was actually rather radical in construct and policies. It’s manual was “The Future of Socialism” Tony Crosland’s brilliant guide book for the Left from twenty-five years earlier. Crosland’s case had been for social reform not ideological clause 4 nonsense and Harold Wilson’s pragmatic administrations of 1964-1970 had delivered it.

It is arguable that the true successors of Crosland and the SDP were New Labour – an even more pragmatic construct that Wilson’s governments. Remember those that fiercely criticised Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s did not unravel much, if anything, of what she did when they took power in 1997.

The gap now may be twofold in its nature. First the urgent need for a return to decency in Government. There is no precedent in my baby boomer lifetime for a Prime Minister as venal as Boris Johnson or a cabinet as shallow as his gang. Secondly a return to principle not Right Wing ideology in policy, not least in the Home Office but across the board as well.

At the moment my view is that the last thing that we need is a new Party as Parris argues. I think the precedents of Wilson and Blair should guide us. And of Hugh Gaitskell before them for that matter. He argued to “Fight and Fight again” to save the Party he loved falling into the hands of the extremists. It was Harold Wilson and later Tony Blair who won this fight.

The Jeremy Corbyn aberration was the greatest threat to Labour since Gaitskell’s day – Foot and Benn were cuddly centrists compared with Corbyn and his wild men of the ideological Left. Keir Starmer must be a man in the Wilson/Blair mould if he is to succeed. I argue this not for the good of Labour but for the good of the country. The Augean stables of government have never been fouler than they are now.

The electors of Hartlepool may well elect a Conservative MP shortly. If this is part of a trend line then the end of Labour as a credible political party is, as Matthew Parris argues, in sight. And so Sir Keir will have to regroup from a slough deeper even than that which preceded Blair. But the solution is the same. A comprehensive rebranding of the Party, decent policies and a focus on the real enemy across the despatch box and in the country. New Labour worked once. It needs to work again.

There is a pretty complacent and narrow summary of where we are on corruption in politics by William Hague in The Times today. Peter Oborne’s recent throughly researched and meticulously referenced “The Assault on Truth” details the extent of our Prime Minister’s mendaciousness in office. When your head of Government is a liar everything flows from that.

Corruption requires lies and cover ups. In a culture like this right is not distinguished from wrong. And we know what happens when first you practice to deceive. The repetitiveness of deceit becomes endemic. This ranges from petty porky pies to behaviour that in days of yore would have led inevitably to resignation.

Liars in office, when they are rumbled, just don’t resign any more. Cover up is piled on top of cover up and the original offence, though compounded, is often deeply buried in the slime. And the media focuses on the latest revelations not the old news. This culture creates a new and insidious norm where not only is corruption rife but it actually may not even be seen as such.

Liz Truss spoke of the current allegations against Boris Johnson yesterday by papering over them and trying to push them aside. She didn’t answer the very fair questions posed. The BBC radio news I’ve just heard (first item) said that Boris Johnson is concentrating on policy today (or some such platitude). This newspaper has not even reviewed Oborne’s book. We are being played.

We need a Joe Biden to clean the swamp. And we need ex politicians who have been in or near high office , like William Hague, to act as well.

I think that Lionel Shriver is deliberately missing the point in her condemnation of “Black Lives Matter” in “The Times” today.

For the first time in my (long) living memory a response to institutionalised racism is having an effect. Her very article is proof that the establishment cage has been rattled.

Here and in the United States the cultural norm excludes people of colour. To break through ( many do) BAME citizens have to ensure that though they might be black or brown they have to adopt the mores and appearance of the white majority.

Multiculturalism is traduced by many who are discomforted by behaviour and appearance different to their own. This is particularly true of British muslims whose religion and dress can set them apart from the white mainstream. Spend a day tracking the abuse and Islamaphobia on social media if you doubt this.

Mankind is diverse, creating a hierarchy in any society based on colour is inhuman. And to think that it doesn’t matter is offensive. I support the premise that black lives matter – how can any civilised person not? I do not support the “Black Lives Matter” movement which has some odd political goals that I don’t endorse. I find no paradox here.

More shouty placard-waving please.

The time has hopefully come when the rich and well-armed West stops thinking it has the right and capability to interfere in the internal affairs of far away countries of which they know nothing. Virtually every arrogant act of military action of modern times has left the United States with egg on its face.

Osama bin Laden’s legacy was not just the horror of 9/11 but the subsequent grotesquely failed Western military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. America’s global policeman role was selective. Where a Government was evil but all powerful – Russia in the Crimea and presently potentially in Ukraine and China in Tibet for example – America sat on its hands. Thankfully.

Where American power was thought to be all powerful the lessons of Vietnam were not learned. And where commercial interests dominated – the Saudis in Yemen for example – the US let their business partners do what they liked. Don’t worry about a bit of genocide when there is a harvest of petrodollars to haul in.

The Times has a piece today about oil company moves into renewables. But the reality is that 95% of the Oil/Gas multinationals’ time and efforts are focused on their traditional hydrocarbon businesses. None of them has the corporate memory and mindset to be serious players in renewables. It is difficult to see their investments in non hydrocarbon business areas as being anything but token.

Shell has a very long history of tentative experiment in step out activities none of which survives today. From Nuclear Power, Coal, Agrochemicals, Metals, Forestry, Power Generation, Solar, Wind, Shell has stepped in and out in an almost whimsical fashion.

The necessary skills and experience to run (say) a wind energy business are almost entirely different to those to run a virtually integrated oil or gas operation. Of course the financial clout of an Exxon, BP or Shell means that they could buy a company in a new business area. But it never works. Look at Shell with Billiton. The strategy was that the mining and exploitation of metals was analogous to hydrocarbons. It took Shell more than a decade to find out that it wasn’t.

The truth is that these companies are not energy corporations at all but oil/gas giants. The do the search for, production, transportation, refining, trading and marketing of hydrocarbons well. But, in truth, not much else.

And the sun shined – oh how it shined. The images from Windsor Castle today were sensational the powerful natural light illuminating the ancient walls and towers. And when the mourners and the catafalque arrived they too were bathed in natural light. If Steven Spielberg had been directing it it could not have been better lit.

We were in unknown territory today in more ways than one. The first funeral of a reigning monarch’s consort since Prince Albert. Did Victoria have to sit alone at the funeral as her successor did today? I doubt it.

The Duke apparently choreographed what happened and by doing so revealed a wicked sense of humour and a rejection of the sentimental. The converted Land Rover that transported his coffin was a Pythonesque master stroke. The lack of triumphalist bombast was equally impressive.

I defy the gutter press to find much to object to. Peter Philips, The Duke’s grandson, cleverly walked a half pace behind his fellow grandsons William and Harry and whatever visual divide there might have been between the two Dukes was eliminated. Even Piers Morgan will struggle to find evidence of a rift there.

The music was well chosen and the ceremony was low key, but appropriate to the times. The wearing of masks, including by HMQ, was a leveller. As was the Queen’s decision (allegedly) to ban her offspring from the wearing of uniforms. If Andrew had appeared as an Admiral it would have turned an impressively classy event into a Gilbert and Sullivan opera.

Quite how Queen Elizabeth had to sit on her own I’ve no idea. Maybe it was her choice but it went beyond the poignant into the tragic. Did her suffering have to be quite so intense and visible?

There will be those who will say that the funeral was quintessentially British. This would reek of English exceptionalism to me. It was respectful and well organised and moving. I don’t think that any nation has a monopoly on those virtues.

More “Something must be done” bollocks about China from Matthew Parris in The Times today. I’m not personally particularly fond of blame apportionment but let’s be clear who is responsible for China’s place in the world today. Look in the mirror. I was in Tiananmen Square a couple of weeks before the Chinese murdered thousands of their own young people in 1989. It wasn’t my first visit to Peking – I’d been there several times pursuing my multinational employer’s interests. I got back safely to Hong Kong and eventually all my colleagues who were based in the capital did the same. Our MD had to be dragged away – his whole career seemed threatened if our grand ambition to profit mightily from China’s economic opening up was thwarted.

The evils of totalitarianism were for all to see well before the violent crackdown in 1989. The morality of seeking to do big business with the Chinese was rarely questioned in the western businesses pushing open the door to the market of well over a billion people. And not just a market either – a huge workforce resource. “China is Very Big” was the mantra of my MD. “China is an evil, repressive dictatorship” was not a message he wanted to hear.

The Chinese are famous for taking a long term view. “One Country Two Systems” was a comforting slogan for those negotiating the Hong Kong handover but the PRC was being artful and disingenuous. It would take a decade or two to turn China into by far the world’s largest manufactory as well as biggest market – fine, they said, we’ve got time on our hands.

Later in 1989 I presented to my management team colleagues the reputational risks of returning to China so soon after the massacre. I was told to get back in my box. It wasn’t too long before it was back to normal – Western bees around the Chinese honeypot.

The crackdown on Hong Kong didn’t happen until the economic dependency of the West on China was in place and not capable of being unravelled. The hand wringing now about Hong Kong and about the People’s Republic’s repression of the Uighurs or Tibet will not shift the Chinese one little bit. We in the West created this, without us the transformation of China into an economic powerhouse wouldn’t have happened. Look in the mirror.

There’s good and bad in all of us isn’t there? It’s the human condition. When we pop our clogs we’d expect those doing the obituaries and the eulogies to focus on the good rather than the bad and the ugly. And who is to judge anyway? And the longer the life the greater the evidence of our light and shade. Of our generosity , and of our selfishness. Of our worthiness and of our less worthy moments. No good biography is a whitewash, but nor is it just a sensationalist exposé.

We aren’t saints. Who amongst us can say that we haven’t had adulterous flings with ballerinas or attended dodgy parties organised by our osteopath? We all wear a mask from time to time – but usually metaphorically (or as a virus prevention tool) rather than as a sex orgy accessory.

Writing a life is a satisying thing to do. I’ve written a couple of full biographies as well as dozens of profiles. None of these is a hagiography but none is an intrusive search for scandal either. But at what point does a biographer fail to do his job if he doesn’t probe and dig. I once interviewed a Minister of State who I knew hated the Cabinet Minister boss – for good reason. I elected not to ask the Minister about this and it was not mentioned in the article. I guess I would never have made a tabloid hack.

At times the obituaries of “National Treasures” invert Shakespeare so that they become “The good that men do lives after them. The evil is oft interred with their bones.” Then later – generally much later – a new biographer stumbles across the “evil” and reveals it. This is sometimes not very popular!

Revisionism is a legitimate element of biographical writing. Revealing newly discovered facts, or putting a new spin on known ones, is a well established biographer’s technique. Not speaking ill of the dead is a respectful thing to do. But sometimes the passing of a public figure is the beginning of a period of disclosure without the fear attached to the making of inappropriate revelations during the subject’s life. Or immediately after their death.

Oscar Wilde said “Formerly we used to canonise our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them.” And that was 120 years ago! My plea is that we neither canonise nor vulgarise. That’s the biographer’s real challenge.

When Dean Acheson told us more than 60 years ago that we had “lost an Empire, but not found a role “ he could scarcely have imagined how well into the 21st Century this would still be true. I am a baby boomer born the year after WW2 ended. So my lifespan has seen the change from Great Power status to where we are today – which is what?

Acheson pointed Britain towards Europe – a direction that was, for other European countries big and small, largely uncontroversial. One can debate the nature of the model and the extent of the “ever closer Union” in Europe — but not the strategy. To argue that Britain should withdraw from the integration project you need some pretty powerful arguments to back up the exceptionalism. They don’t exist.

The Munich analogies live with the Great Power analogies and they should all be confined to the dustbin. Instead, post Brexit, we’ve put out more flags. The Tom Moore story was a fin de seicle hanging onto our fading memories of a time when Britain alone was not just true, but commendably honourable. He symbolised the emergence from “Our Darkest Hour” at a time when the skies were darkening again.

“Britain alone” today fails as a model because unlike in 1940 it has been a choice without any logic and makes us look petulant rather than brave. If after more than seventy years our role is defined by what we were rather than what we could be we’ve got a problem !