“Our top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education. To overcome decades of neglect and make Britain a learning society, developing the talents and raising the ambitions of all our young people.” Tony Blair 2001

What Tony Blair said back in 2001 wasn’t just morally right it was also pragmatic. The reality is that the better educated people are the more likely they are to vote Labour:

Behind where the Red Wall once stood are voters who are in significant numbers in the “Low” Educational category in the above graph – and who now now overwhelmingly vote Conservative.

Warning: These are aggregate figures showing general trends. A quarter of “Low” education level voters chose Labour in 2019 and a little more than a quarter of Graduates chose the Conservatives. But the general trend is clear.

So when Blair made his education commitment in 2001 he knew what he was doing. A better educated population is a more liberal population and is more likely to be Labour (or LibDem) voting. The reverse of this is also true. The “Leave” campaign knew who there target was in 2016 and the result confirmed that they were right:

Brexit-loving Hartlepool, now famous for embracing the Conservatives so enthusiastically, has 19% of voters with a degree. In my home town of leafy Twickenham, a rather liberal sort of place in every way, 52% of us are graduates.

Now look at the graph at the top of this Blog. The expenditure on education took a downturn both in its level and as a percentage of total government expenditure in 2010 – the year of the beginning of Conservative rule after the Blair/Brown years. Most notably university tuition fees (introduced in England at a modest level by the Labour government) were tripled by the Cameron government .

At the risk of being charged with elitism, and conscious of the dangers of generalisation, it seems clear to me that there is a clear correlation between education and political choice. This is surely the explanation for the reductio ad absurdum of much political communication.

Political issues are complex, not least Britain’s membership of the European Union at the time of the referendum. The “Leave” campaign was characterised by simplistic and binary communication and Boris Johnson both indulged in this at the time and continued when he took office. His appeal was not cerebral but an appeal to the gut, above all to patriotism.

Which brings us to “levelling up”. There is no greater driver of upward mobility than education. The Education Act of 1944 has been called a “triumph for progressive reform,” and it became a core element of the post-war consensus on education supported by both Labour and the (One Nation) Conservatives in power over these years. Blair certainly embraced the principles of this consensus and put money where his mouth was.

So where are we today? The Conservatives are in power and we are out of the European Union largely because the least well-educated of our society voted for just that.

The 2021 budget has been described as a “missed opportunity” for education after it failed to provide additional cash for schools. Government spending on tertiary education in the United Kingdom in the current year was the lowest amount spent by a UK government on higher education since 2009.

Do I charge that Conservative governments are following a self-interested “Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit” policy on education? Well 65% of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet attended independent schools compared with 7% for the population at large. I doubt that any of them would choose “The benefits of levelling up in education” as their special subject on “Mastermind” – not least because their seats in Parliament might be at risk if they actually did it.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we are witnessing the last days of the United Kingdom. The forces holding it shakily together are far weaker than those pulling it apart. “My country right or wrong” was in the past only the slogan of a tiny minority of flag-waving loons in Britain. When “my country” is wrong, as it has been a few times in my baby boomer lifetime especially recently, it is intellectually and morally bankrupt still to fly the flag as if all was well. When you nave no confidence in, nor respect for, your national leaders you seek alternative identities.

The United Kingdom as an alliance of distinct and different countries survived when the times were “good”. But the English dominance of it always made it problematic for the Celts, or many of them. In truth the Union Flag was an English flag and God was an Englishman not a Briton.

The alternative identity for the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish was obviously their legitimacy as authentic countries, if not nation states. John Bull’s other island rebelled first and booted John Bull back across the Irish sea. Sadly the conservative sectarianism of six counties in the North meant that the job was incomplete creating the tinder box that it still is.

It is the Scots who will disassemble the Kingdom and complete the task that the Irish kicked off a hundred plus years ago. They will become confident and proud – a “nation again” – and one with an identity far more solid and united than the divided nation to their south they have rejected. The Welsh will follow suit.

The United Kingdom will soon be dead. Largely unmourned I think. The creation of Little England to replace Great Britain is less significant than on the surface it might seem. Unscrambling the U.K. takes us back to the England of God for Harry and St George without the irritation of having to remember to mention the Celts.(I’m being ironic !).

Having spent a lot of time in Scotland and lived there on and off for many years I was a strong supporter of the Union at the referendum in 2014. No more. An independent Scotland in Europe is an appealing prospect and I look forward to it happening. The reunification of Ireland will be more problematic but I hope that even the antediluvian loyalists will find a way to accept it. I can’t see the Welsh wanting to be far behind in the big Celtic takeaway.

England is a concept needing renewal and coherent emotional investment. To unite north and south, rich and poor, city dweller and country yokel will be no easy task. But on the sporting fields we do have a proud English identity and that is a start. It will take an effort to be more than a “land of embarrassment and Breakfast” (as Julian Barnes put it). But once we’ve put the Union Flag away for good it shouldn’t be beyond us.

There is an excellent review of an excellent Series, the latest “Line of Duty”, in The Times today. The “Tall Poppy Syndrome” – something we regrettably seem to have inherited from Australia – means that it is smart to knock the successful, particularly if it comes from the BBC. From the start this series of “Line of Duty” suffered from it. Well it triumphed in the end.

The originality of “Line of Duty” was perhaps its greatest strength. It resembled nothing else on television and as such it grabbed one’s attention. When the goodies and the baddies are so intertwined it’s hard to separate them it makes compelling viewing.

Drama doesn’t have to be realistic to be engaging. If it creates a world which doesn’t exist, but which we believe could exist, it does its job. I’ve no idea whether such a thing as AC12 exists in the Police Force. But I know that it could. And I know for sure that some police officers have been institutionally corrupt over the years. Most coppers aren’t bent – but some are. That’s the point.

I once lived in a Little Britain world where the Police Force was corrupt. The Royal Hong Kong Police forty plus years ago was run by crooks (all British) riddled with villains and beholden to an Organised Crime Group called the Triads. It took an AC12 type operation (called the ICAC) to clean these very foul Augean stables. So don’t say “Line of Duty” couldn’t happen. It did.

Our Arts are under threat from cuts and the BBC is very much in the sights of the philistines. That it makes great programmes won’t count for much when the ideologues really get going. That “Line of Duty” could have been made by Netflix is probably true. But it isn’t the point.

The BBC still makes great programmes for all to watch uninterrupted by advertising and not subject to hard commercial constraints. The Licence Fee is a bargain. Let’s hope that “Line of Duty” reminds the decision makers that the Beeb, at its best, is outstanding. Don’t hold your breath – Mother of God don’t do that.

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.