Boris Johnson’s latest Green wheeze is high in visibility (as ever) but low in practicability. Across Europe, in most of North America and throughout the rest of the world where domestic space heating is a necessity gas (in some cases oil) is the established fuel. Whilst for new build homes you can specify a “greener” alternative (at a cost) to retrofit existing homes with a replacement system is likely to be prohibitively expensive as well as very disruptive to the residents.

As well as residential premises tens of thousands of offices, schools, hospitals and commercial premises rely on gas boilers for their heating systems. The practicability of replacing these, as well as the cost, is doubtful.

The change from the principal domestic fuel being coal in a grate to a boiler and radiator (or hot air) system in the 1960s onwards came from technology advances, the easy availability of initially oil and then mainly gas and the huge increase in comfort that central heating gave. Mrs 1970 lived in a much warmer and more comfortable home than she had when she was a child.

None of the alternatives to gas boilers mentioned here match them in their efficiency or value and none can be installed in existing premises without major cost and disruption. A far more logical alternative is to continue to make gas boilers more efficient. There is no reason why new boilers should not be very low emissions indeed – this is an ongoing process.

Changing the energy balance of a nation is a complex task. To switch from petrol cars to electric ones, or from gas boilers to heat pumps or hydrogen fuelled ones, is a very long term goal indeed. The most effective green policy for now is conservation – cars and boilers are far more efficient these days with far lower emissions per unit of useful output. This should continue.

A society that seeks magic and rapid solutions to real or perceived problems is likely to be disappointed. Whilst we are all prepared to pay for personal lifestyle improvements spending our own money in order to make the world a greener place is a minority sport. We are unlikely, except in a few cases, to volunteer to pay for electric cars or replacement heating systems out of the goodness of our hearts. A touch of reality is necessary.

Tom Tugendhat has a piece in The Times today in which the headline says “Britain can counter China’s threat to international order.” Its utterly delusional I’m afraid.

Let’s start from Britain’s place in the world and specifically with regard to China and Hong Kong. Tough talk is not enough, you also need to wield a big stick. Morally and practically we have hardly no stick at all and waving the little one we have will be ineffective and risible.

It could have been different. As a leading member of the European Union and a significant contributor to the Union’s economic and political power and influence Britain would have been a player. Add in our special connection with Hong Kong and collectively you have a force even the Chinese would listen to. On our own we are an also ran.

The EU nations and the United States have mutually beneficial ties to China which it would damage both sides to loosen. Collectively the EU can along with the US be a force for good and change. Don’t hold you breath this will happen quickly , easily or significantly but there is a chance. Whilst this is underway Britain will be sitting ignored on the sidelines. Don’t kid yourself the Chinese think we matter.

Hong Kong is a specifically British issue morally but we have zero chance of being a force for good. When we handed the then Colony’s people over to a hostile power stateless and with no protections that mattered we surrendered any moral authority we might have had. The offer of right of U.K. residence now and (maybe) nationality later is far too little and far too late. Hong Kongers will treat it with the contempt it deserves. Those that leave HK (some will) will go to Canada or Australia countries that have, in contrast to Britain, welcomed them and where there are large Chinese communities that can effortlessly absorb them.

We cannot know what Little England’s place in the world will be in the future but to sententiously suggest that on our own we are still up there with the big boys is preposterous. Our soon to be divided Kingdom has lost its Empire and surrendered the only alternative role with logic – as a major player in a uniting Europe. No doubt we will still bang a few desks and opine pompously. But nobody, least of all the Chinese, will listen

Another day, another U- turn, this Government is absolutely shambolic. The Venn diagrams of the libertarian freaks who gave us Brexit and those who oppose common-sense lockdown measures are almost identical. The same specious cries about “freedom”. The same rejection of expert advice. The same dunderhead certainty they are right. The same egotistical leaders spouting nonsense.

Britain has been ungovernable for sometime as our vacillating Prime Minister spouts nationalistic claptrap and wants to slap the Union Flag on everything. Meanwhile the Union that flag celebrates slides inevitably towards extinction. It needs a modern day Gibbon to record all these disasters.

The mighty have fallen into insignificance governed by people who only tell the truth occasionally, and then by mistake. The default position is to lie and we the people know it – so we do our own thing. The sensible amongst us are in quarantine – the dimwitted march maskless through central London showing open contempt for the law.

Leadership is ephemeral but you know it when you see it. It’s not characterised by bombast and ego but by demonstrating grip and garnering support for doing the right thing. After its four year slumber leadership is emerging again in America. Britain needs to do the same.

“Events, dear boy, events” said Harold Macmillan musing on the main things that influence politics. He was surely right. It’s a question of what in business is often referred to as the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the long term – tactics happen to steer towards that long term goal but also, and crucially, to fight fires. The “events”.

There ought to be more to politics than fire-fighting and there is certainly at times, plenty of rhetoric about what sort of nation Britain should be. For the last year, the Boris Johnson premiership after his successful General Election, we know what he wants us not to be (European) but very little about what he actually wants us to be instead. “Independent” is the populist buzz word. Sadly, except at the most abstract level, this means nothing in a very interdependent world.

Rishi Sunak was an active campaigner for “Leave” before he held any office. Like many of his Asian heritage compatriots (Patel, Javid and the rest) this was curious and unexplained but opposition to immigration, wrapped unconvincingly in the veneer of “Sovereignty” , lay at the heart of it. Sunak confirmed this in a strong anti-immigration speech back in 2016. The immigration he was primarily opposed to, of course, was that from Europe not South Asia.

Sunak is certainly bright but his intelligence is narrowly applied. There are few if any signs of any real social intelligence – that elusive quality that augments smartness with compassion. When you take Sunak out of his comfort zone he looks uncomfortable. And good though he may be on matters Financial (you don’t make a personal fortune in Goldman Sachs without knowing how many beans make five) in other policy areas he is at best an unknown quantity.

Whatever Europe trade deal emerges shortly we know for sure that it will be less advantageous to Britain than the status quo. And that the majority of our trade with the rest of the world will be uncovered by any formal deals for a long time. It is in these unpromising circumstances that we will have to manage the worst national financial balance sheet and P&L in modern times. Compounded by the unprecedented hit our economy will take from Brexit.

The pandemic is an unprecedented “event” and even the wily Macmillan would have struggled to manage it. In such times we need friends. Gordon Brown’s success in managing the “event” of the global financial crisis during his premiership was based on international cooperation in which he took a leading role. Perhaps the last time Britain was global before the infection of Brexit changed us for ever.

In a normal world the politically inexperienced Rishi Sunak might be a junior minister making his way – not our least worst choice to be Prime Minister when Boris Johnson follows his henchmen out of Number 10. Cometh the hour cometh the man possibly, but don’t hold your breath. What is certain is that he will be preoccupied with “events” and with putting out the post-Johnson fires that will be raging. He’ll have no time for strategy and not just that – his tactical options will be severely limited by the calamitous limiting factor of Brexit. In language Sunak will understand be very bearish about Britain for a very long time.

The photograph above is one that I took of the funeral procession for Diana Princess of Wales in 1997. Although I had moved to Dubai the previous year I was in London on business and a spot of leave at the time of the funeral. Ann was with me.

I am a firm Republican who would abolish the monarchy. I am the last person to wave a flag when a Royal goes by. I am also not a “Celeb” freak – I’ve never read let alone bought “Hello” magazine. So what was I doing in Hyde Park for Diana’s funeral and even laying flowers among the hundreds of thousands of other bunches?

I have just watched the “People” magazine documentary about Diana on Netflix – it’s a bit gushing but it pretty much gets the story right. Roll back seventeen years from 1997 to 1980 when on my first overseas assignment at the age of 33 I moved to The Netherlands. The house we were lucky enough to rent backed onto the Rhine Schiekanaal in the lovely town of Leiden. Our Dutch neighbour told us that the best way to see our part of Holland was from the water – the rivers, canals and lakes. We should get a boat, ideally a small motor cruiser. We did! But what should we call her ? Well a few months earlier in 1981 Lady Diana Spencer had got engaged to the Prince of Wales. So we called our boat “Lady Di”. This was all a bit weird but that summer, before and after Lady Di’s wedding at the end of July, we cruised along the waterways flying the Red Ensign and with the boat’s name prominently visible. “Lady Di” people shouted when we went by, and waved.

Over our years in The Netherlands, Scotland, Hong Kong, London and Dubai we watched the Royal marriage story play out. We saw the two of them in Sydney for the Aussie bicentennial. Even for the anti-Royal like me it was fascinating – part soap opera, part comedy, part farce, part tragedy. The Netflix documentary covers it very well with interviews with many of the observers of or participants in the events of twenty or thirty years ago. It is in fact only in part a “Royal” story at all. Yes the key players are the Royal Family – especially Charles. But as you can also see in “The Crown” Diana was never really one of them.

Diana was a reluctant Royal, maybe not initially but it didn’t take long. She matured rapidly from the shy schoolgirl to the canny, charismatic Icon she became. I can think of no parallel in any sphere of life in my lifetime (maybe Jackie Kennedy, briefly). Fame, so sudden, blossomed rather than withered her and enhanced her infinite variety. She took to it in a quite different way to (say) the conventional, dull and dutiful Kate who was to marry her elder son.

Diana was anything but dull and dutiful. As soon it started to be clear that the Charles/Diana marriage was an unmitigated disaster she was empowered to be herself not a Kate-like appendage. “Jackie O” had done the same when, similarly alone, she had needed to find herself. Applying a blame judgment when a marriage breaks down is rarely fair – there is always fault on both sides. But with Charles and Diana you have to blame the Prince not the Princess. He had an arrogant, anachronistic and rather misogynistic belief that he could do what he liked and his spouse would turn a blind eye. He did, Diana didn’t.

The story of Diana as well-told in the Netflix documentary is unique and uniquely fascinating. Watching it I had no sense of voyeurism. This is because Diana really did relate to people and people responded to this – even cynics like me. The universally loved People’s Princess (Aargh – but she was). There was no snobbery about Diana though she was, as the daughter of an Earl, hardly a commoner. But she had the common touch – a rare social intelligence almost entirely absent from her husband and her mother-in-law. The Queen initially staying aloof in Balmoral after Diana’s death goofed big time. Tony Blair rescued her – though this is unmentioned in the documentary for some reason.

Charisma is hard to define and genuine rather than confected charisma rather rare . In my lifetime Sinatra, Garland, Monroe, Mohammed Ali, Mandela, Obama. You’ve either got or you haven’t got style – they all had it. Diana had rather more.

I don’t know if it still happens but there was a time when people privileged like me adopted behaviour to minimise the obviousness of their privilege. So they would add glottal stops to their speech to ease them away from the obviousness of their middle class revealed by their accent. Or they would dress in a style they thought to be more man of the world. It never worked. Nor did the guilt-ridden politics of a Jeremy Corbyn or his sidekick Seumas Milne both privately educated Marxists. Yeah, right on !

I might deplore the lack of equality in our society but when push comes to shove would I eschew using my school or my father’s friends to give me an advantage? I didn’t. Does that make me a hypocrite ? Of course it does. Privilege is institutionalised in British society. The Grammar schools, by aping the independent schools, cleverly reduced the effect of advantage by giving bright kids from humble backgrounds a chance. We don’t do that any more. 

If you’re white, well educated, from a moneyed background, personally self-confident , not disabled, mentally robust, at least of average height and build, and (often) male you’ll do better than someone who is less privileged. To identify that fact is the first step towards doing something about it. Are we? Not when we are governed by the posh boys we’re not.

The most extraordinary thing is that dozens of Tory MPs and others in the pro Patel camp are missing the point completely. The issue is not how able, how determined, how hard-working, how charming etc etc she is. It’s not about her rightness over Brexit. It’s not about her policies in the Home Office. None of these things. What it’s about is that a properly constituted enquiry conducted by an experienced, qualified and independent assessor found her indisputably guilty of bullying behaviour. Not on one occasion but repeatedly. All the rest is noise.

The Jimmy Savile defence (“I always found Mr Savile charming…”) doesn’t work for Patel any more than it worked for Savile. All the Tories who burst onto social media in an obviously coordinated action to say how wonderful Patel is expected us to ignore Sir Alex Allan’s report because she is kind to children and animals (I paraphrase).

Natural Justice says that if someone is guilty of unlawful or unacceptable behaviour they have to accept the consequences. Boris Johnson overruled Sir Alex for no reason other than political self-interest. He didn’t cite mitigating circumstances because there clearly were none. Johnson allowed Patel to wriggle free – an unprecedented thing to do and it unsurprisingly led to Sir Alex’s resignation.

This is a shameful scandal. The behaviour itself. The delays in releasing the report. The wholly inadequate apology. The rallying round by sycophants. The contempt for precedent and public interest. These are not the actions of honourable people in a respected democracy. They are the actions of dictators and crooks in a failed state.

The idea of a “Kinder, gentler Trumpism” floated today by Justin Webb in “The Times” is too preposterous to be worthy of serious consideration. To start with it implies that Donald Trump has some kind of ideology, that there is method in his madness. But of course that is untrue. That his eccentric, inconsistent and often deranged populism garners votes is not in doubt. The naked appeal to the gut, to fear and to patriotism and prejudice and to white supremacy is effective. Throw in a wholly specious bit of Bible toting and you have a political platform of sorts, but you don’t have an ideology.

Trump has been a disruptive and dangerous interruption to the continuity and logic of American governance. Yes over the years Republican presidents have done different things to Democrat ones, but not that different. Yes the support bases of the two Parties reflect the national divide – the two Americas. Yes Republicans are popular in Wall Street as well as in the boondocks whilst the Democrats appeal is much more cerebral. But no matter from where they have campaigned Presidents tend to do the same things in office. Except for Trump that is.

”They are all the same” is a familiar jibe about politicians the world over and, up to a point, it is true. Trump broke that mould not because of any coherent philosophy or any personal qualities of merit but because he was perceived as anti establishment. Well he was certainly that, but to be against things does not represent an “ism” . All of his political positions were negative and his rants and Tweets against the media, Muslims, liberals, foreigners and the rest were raw and incoherent as well as offensive.

The anti-Trump Republicans such as those in the “Lincoln Project” are surely the way forward for the GOP – the state of Arizona their exemplar. Here the admirable Cindy McCain reminded Republicans of decency in politics – she invited a vote for Biden not because she had suddenly become a Democrat but because she wanted to signal that the Republican Party needed to return to the republicanism of her late husband. The GOP needs to find a new standard bearer to pick up that baton.

America is changing and both political parties need to find positions that reflect that change. In the boom years of the 1950s and early 1960s there was not a huge difference between the two parties or their leaders, But there did emerge a generation change which offered a modern set of alternatives to the old men born in the 19th Century like Eisenhower. It is sometimes forgotten that Richard Nixon was the same age as John Kennedy – they had contrasting political positions and very contrasting characters. But they were both an electable new normal.

The new “new normal” is not Joe Biden and certainly not his fellow septuagenarian Trump. The Democrats have found theirs in the youthful Kamala Harris – she is the model for the GOP. The Republicans will need to find a credible alternative to the charismatic Ms Harris in 2024. The brief interregnum of the Age of Trump is over. Harris will offer a positive optimistic view of the possibilities of the future from the Centre-Left. There is no reason why the GOP should not do the same putting the madness and venality of Trump aside and reclaiming the Centre-Right for a revived but decent Republican Party.

Today’s headlines have been grabbed by the Government’s announcement that the sale of petrol/diesel cars will be banned by 2030 and hybrids five years later. There is zero chance of this actually happening.

Approximately 2% of current passenger cars are electric. Over the ten years to 2030 this percentage will gradually increase as electric cars become more affordable and as technological changes give them a better range . But the breakthrough which makes them as practical and as affordable as petrol/diesel vehicles is yet to happen. Similarly the economies of scale of high volume petrol/diesel engine manufacture cannot be equalled for electric-powered engines at present. In short an electric car costs more and has a much more limited range than the alternative.

For new car sales all to be of electric cars in 2030 is an improbable stretch target. Even if it happens people will continue to make rational purchase decisions up to that date. Will we switch to buying more expensive less practical cars voluntarily? It seems highly unlikely. Government can offer financial incentives to persuade us of course but to do this would reduce government revenues. It will be a good few years before the Treasury will countenance that!

Electric vehicles pollute much less than petrol/diesel but the electricity has to come from somewhere. At present except in exceptional circumstances most of our daily Power comes from Natural Gas. So for the switch to electric cars to be genuinely “Green” there has to be a parallel switch to Renewables (principally wind). That is happening , but it takes time.

Energy policy is managed in a piecemeal way. The reality is that certain sectors are unlikely to have any significant switch from hydrocarbons in the foreseeable future (aircraft and shipping) and other sectors like Commercial Road Transport (trucks and buses) haven’t started to switch ( the odd demonstration vehicle aside). Again transport operators need to be offered affordable and practical alternatives to be encouraged to switch. There are few at present.

Announcing targets is all very well, but they need to be underpinned by reality. Headline grabbing is one thing, actually having a coherent action plan is something else. The devil is in the detail. And above all there needs to be international cooperation at a considerable level.

Major motor manufacturers across the world continue to predominantly make fossil fuel powered cars and trucks, tractors and construction vehicles, motor cycles and delivery vans. They do that in part because the alternatives are impractical or uneconomic. It’s a customer-driven sector. Changing today’s reality into something different will take time, investment and attitudinal change. Surely that will take much longer than ten years ?

There is a very good analysis by Clare Foges in “The Times” today about our current failures of government which rings true in every detail. We have teetered towards the cliff edge from time to time in my 74-year lifetime but nothing comes anywhere near the chaos of the past four plus years. There have been culpable military errors of judgment (Suez, Afghanistan…) and shameful betrayals (Hong Kong) . There have been abject failures to understand the divides in our society (Heath and Thatcher on the miners) and cowardly failures to reform our dysfunctionality (Wilson and Callaghan on the Unions). But nothing remotely compares with the “goatf***” of today.

Senior ex ministers and ex Prime Ministers seem united that the current Cabinet is the worst in living memory. Add in the extraordinary shallowness of the lobby fodder sitting on the benches behind our empty Prime Minister – fodder whose sole role seems to be to cheer when he bumbles inanities – and you have a recipe for chaos. And that’s what we’ve got.

Campaigning politicians with vision are rare in modern Britain. Thatcher perhaps the only one post war though Harold Wilson’s governments created genuine social change. But competence was generally to be relied upon. Economic crises happened all too frequently but from Healey to Jenkins, Major to Brown we had people at the top eventually to cope with them. Today Rishi Sunak is the only one who appears even marginally competent and when push comes to shove early in the New Year this may be sorely tested.

What is modern Britain ? Sadly a broken, divided nation doing the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. Is there nothing we can do well ? Sadly not. And part of that comes from appointing manifestly unsuitable people to important jobs. And then communicating in a way designed, it seems, to give offence. Is the Home Office really the cesspit it’s recent communications on our loss of Freedom of Movement suggest it is. Or is it just the malignancy of the Ministers running it ?

The Shakespearean inanities of the infighting in Johnson’s kitchen cabinet ought to be the source of a rip-roaring comedy or farce. But this isn’t a tale of the Emperor being entertained by his fool. No, the Emperor himself is the fool who cannot be taken seriously and his courtiers are sycophantic failures.