The principal change is that whereas hitherto Johnson has had to lie for himself he now has someone to lie for him. Ms Stratton is a professional communicator so I’m sure she’ll do it well. But in effect we will in future have to deal with the monkey not the organ grinder. A Press Secretary is NOT part of the Government – she is its servant. And she can credibly say “I don’t know” whereas Johnson could not. And she can say (and definitely will) “I’ll come back to you”.

The key relationship will not be with the PM but with Dominic Cummings. Cummings has been the de facto Press Secretary (among other things) for some time. Every significant communication has had his stamp on it. When Johnson appears to take us for fools it’s because Cummings takes us for fools. Stratton needs to ensure that she commands tone and style not the Svengali in the basement.

But Stratton will be Her Master’s Voice – that’s her job. She may challenge Johnson and try and persuade his messages to be less mendacious and she may finesse things a bit. But however good she is she will still be an apparatchik beholden to a dysfunctional government pursuing crackpot policies. Johnson’s Johnson.

The major divide in occupational pensions is between the Defined Benefit (DB) schemes, which Oliver Kamm is mainly talking about in his piece on ethical investment in The Times today, and so-called Defined Contribution (DC) or money purchase schemes which are really savings schemes without the security of a predictable pension that DB gives. We can exclude DC from this debate because to include it would require the same environmental investment rules to be applied to any portfolio investment (Trust or otherwise) – which ain’t going to happen! If you want ethical investment there are funds that do this – but you can’t make it the norm.

DB Pension Funds are substantially “heritage” schemes these days looking after pensioners and those employees lucky enough to join the scheme before it was closed to new entrants. That said they are collectively a huge national asset providing millions of retirees with a sound basis for their retirement years. The trustees of these funds have a multiplicity of duties but above all they must protect the financial security of the fund now and for the future. It’s a complex and quite technical task. The overriding requirement is to try and ensure that future liabilities are matched by assets.

There is a range of asset classes available to trustees to try and ensure a good Asset/Liability balance for the long term (most funds, despite being “closed”, have a prospective lifespan of at least thirty years). Many funds these days pursue a Liability matching policy – that is they try and order their investments in such a way that their future pension payment obligations are met. This may involve an increasing percentage of Gilt type investments which give a predicable and guaranteed return rather than the higher risk (but potentially higher return) equity investment classes.

Every Pension Fund is unique with a different current Asset/Liability ratio. The more positive this is (the more Assets exceed Liabilities) the more Liability matching makes sense. The nirvana of certainty in the future capability of the fund to meet its obligations is within reach for some well run Funds. The key point is that the focus of every fund changes over time as will the asset mix they choose. For example shrewd investment in equities in a time of stock market growth may allow a Fund to grow to the point that it can switch almost entirely to a Liability matching portfolio.

In sketching out the priorities for Pension Fund Trustees in this way I am emphasising both that the task of constructing the right asset class mix is complex and that it changes over time. That funds should consider the ethical component of their portfolio (particularly for Equities of course) is reasonable but I would argue not to the extent that it takes away from their overriding obligation to underpin their future capability to meet their pension payment obligations.

Finally it’s worth remembering that there are millions of retirees and employees in the public sector with Final Salary pension benefits (or future benefits) covered not from a pension fund but by the Treasury out of taxation and borrowings. Society as a whole guarantees the pensions of nurses, teachers, civil servants and the rest. Whether society should also place constraints on the freedom of the generally well-run private sector Pension Funds to make their own choices on investments is a moot point. Pension Fund Trustees have many masters to serve, but first and foremost their obligation is to serve the needs of current and future pensioners.

I think that most of us who follow politics , albeit from the sidelines, would argue that the current Government is the most Right Wing since Thatcher’s. I would go further and say it was the most extreme in my lifetime (b. 1946). And yet for those who drove us into this joy free desert , the ERG and fellow travellers, it isn’t enough. Is there anything more gormlessly self-satisfied than the ravings of a “Libertarian” Tory?

John Major famously said that he could hear the flapping of the dress of the men in white coats. The Redwood tendency at the time was comparatively small. Now they infect the House of Commons more than any virus. Look what they did to Theresa May.

“Freedom” like “Motherhood” is something we all approve of innit? Suggest that something curtails our freedoms and it instantly becomes a BAD THING. Within days some self-appointed libertarian expert will surface in The Spectator or the Daily Telegraph to blast it. Did Magna Carta die in vain?

Scientists and Doctors are doing their best to save us from further doom and gloom. It’s not nice to lose a loved one and if I forgo a bit of my freedom to help ensure it doesn’t happen does it really matter? All I need is an assurance that there is science behind (say) the decision to close pubs at 10:00pm.

What I don’t need is opinionated Right Wingers blathering on about “Freedom” shouting down the real experts. I wouldn’t trust the ERG tendency with anything important and certainly not giving advice on areas outside their expertise. That’s quite a lot actually.

“May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.” – Peter Marshall

As I meander along in my eighth decade my thoughts occasionally drift away from important things like how the Special One will heal the rift with Dele Alli to things like political philosophy. The latter is full of “isms” like Socialism and Capitalism. And, in general, these isms are unhelpful.

The problem is that usage has been so unavoidably imprecise over the years as to render the words meaningless. Maybe I’ll cover Socialism another time but for now let me have a go at Capitalism. We’ve never actually not had in modern times in Britain the system under which the use of Land, Labour, Capital and Enterprise in combination produces goods and services. Even before the Industrial Revolution, and certainly during and after it, this free enterprise system has been how we do things – call it “Capitalism” if you like.

But in the late nineteenth century it became clear that unfettered free enterprise was not only damaging to those at the bottom of the pile but sub optimal as well. Unit production in the dark satanic mills was lower than in manufactories with better conditions. So a combination of social awareness and pragmatism forced change and a plethora of regulations came in. Children stopped going up chimneys.

In the twentieth century change accelerated and in the immediate post war period we actually expanded government control of vital services – nationalisation. The mixed economy was born. In truth it had been around for a while but 1945-51 was its flowering. It’s still with us – even Capitalism’s heroine Margaret Thatcher only shifted it a bit.

So any debate about the principle of Capitalism is doomed to be impotently irrelevant. There is no alternative that makes an iota of sense. Where there is room for debate is about who does what and where in the mixed economy. Such debate must not be ideological. The public/private mix in our healthcare system does not need ideologues from either side of the debate. The only criteria are patient care and efficiency. If that means more (or less) contracting out so be it.

Capitalism with a mixed economy is what we do. Fine tune it of course but it’s not not going away.

There are few institutions in Britain that have to be all things to all men (and women) as the BBC. Its charter pretty well requires that. This means that much of its output should be, and is, popular entertainment. “Eastenders” and “Strictly” . Pop music on Radio 1. Light music on Radio 2. That the corporation also caters for those with more cerebral tastes – BBC Four and Radio 3 (etc.) is also part of their long-standing role to educate and inform as well as entertain. Reithian values just about hang in.

Charles Moore is not , I imagine, a fan of “Strictly” . Indeed he doesn’t seem a man fond of any entertainment you can’t do on a horse. Etonians don’t do the “Common touch”. Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher is thorough and well written, but a bit condescending to the grocer’s daughter. And if Moore couldn’t quite get her what chance he’ll understand your average fan of Dot Cotton and Dirty Den?

Elitism and snobbery are part of society – we are stratified in a hierarchy with the privileged, like Moore, at the top. Old Etonian Prime Ministers in the past had a touch of Noblesse Oblige about them but not their modern successors. Dave and Boris always look uncomfortable when they have to meet the hoi polloi. Moore will patronise the stable lad no doubt but have little interest in his television and radio choices.

Moore writes entertainingly and is well-mannered in a Wodehousian sort of a way. You can imagine him rising early, dressing in tweeds and popping out to check on his pig. What you can’t imagine him doing is running the BBC.

There is a preposterous article in The Times today which tries to do a sort of Cost Benefit Analysis on the Royal Family. Only in a society that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing could measuring the value of the Royal Family be a matter of simplistic accountancy. The issue is simpler and more principled than is revealed by building a spreadsheet and entering data. Does Britain in the future want to give power and privilege to people based on the accident of their birth, or not?

The Royal throne of Kings does not make us a Sceptrered Isle as is only too apparent if we look around us today. Our problems are not helped by the fact that sitting on pedestals above us is a bunch of individuals whose only qualification is who their parents were, or who they married. That these individuals vary from the good (The Queen ) to the bad (Prince Andrew) and the ugly (your call) is not irrelevant.

No society that even plays lip service to the principle of equality of opportunity can justify hereditary privilege. It starts at the top. An unelected Head of State brings risks with it. We could have entered the Second World War with a Nazi loving King and only chance prevented this calamity. If HMQ had died at the same age as her father and Charles followed her before he married we’d have had King Andrew. Think about it.

The main symbol of the pernicious British Empire was Queen Victoria. The Empire is gone but the symbol remains in her regal successor. Elizabeth has been a fine public servant and might have made a good President had we had the sense to become a republic and vote her into office. But the serendipity of hereditary succession is inappropriate in a modern state. Is Charles Windsor really the early best we can do ? It’s not the cost of the Royal gang that matters but the principle.

“No 10 takes a very long-term view of Brexit and the opportunities it brings.”

Arch Brexiteer James Forsyth in today’s The Times.

I have tried, I really have tried, to get Brexiteers to tell me what these “opportunities” are. From before the referendum, during the campaign and since I have never heard of one genuine tangible benefit that leaving the European Union brings us. Plenty of nationalistic flimflam about “Sovereignty”. Plenty of headline grabbing rhetoric about “taking back control”. But one properly costed real benefit ? Nah.

In the “long-term” we will all be dead of course and by then the grotesque damage of Brexit may have worked its way out the system. But for the foreseeable future whatever facile fudge the government manages to walk away with we face years of political, economic and social stress for no advantage. My European citizenship was confiscated without reason – a culpable breach of my human rights without precedent. Our nation will be the only one in Europe without established trading relations – except for Belarus who we come closely to resemble. Except that the natives are rather less supine in Minsk than they are in Manchester.

It all seemed very silly for quite a while and those of us who deep down believed that at heart we are not idiots thought common sense would prevail. Since 2019 it has become clear that the idiots are alive and well and that they have taken over the asylum. And that their position has shifted from one where Brexit would bring immediate benefit to one where we are asked to take a “very long-term view”.

Nations sometimes drift towards disaster in deadly cumulative steps. Alliances, treaties and deals can stop the drift as allies help us to think again. In Germany in 1930 the German people, with no checks and balances in place, chose a course of action that was ultimately deadly. Their “sovereignty” permitted them to do this – for the last time for 15 years as it turned out. Maybe they took a “very long-term view”.

George Bush turned out to be a one term President. He was a decent man, a good Veep to Reagan – able and experienced. But in 1992 America was looking for someone new. Someone younger, someone more charismatic, someone who would clearly draw the line under the generation of Reagan of which GHWB was part. Bill Clinton, 22 years his junior, was that man.

The letter was not released by Clinton until 2016, a couple of years before his predecessor died. That was the year that Donald Trump was elected to be the 45th President of the United States. The two men, Bush and Clinton, Republican and Democrat a generation apart were united by their service and their patriotism. And, without doubt, their aversion to the man who was shortly to move into the office they had honoured.

GHWB and his son George Bush Junior, both had different politics to the man who was in office between them. But that was on the margins. Both made mistakes personal and political. But at no point did they vulgarise their presidencies to the extent that Trump has. (And, no, I haven’t forgotten Monica and the consequences of Clinton’s foolish dalliance).

America desperately needs renewal. The Clinton/Bush letter shows how it should be. I have always honoured the Office of President of the United States. Years ago I toured the White House and went into the Oval Office and I realised then that there is a symbolism to the job of President that goes beyond America. We should all care about it. That’s why Trump is more than an aberration – he is an obscenity. He wouldn’t recognise “wonder and respect” in a million years. High time the world was rid of him.

“And my vision for Britain is simple: I want this to be the best country to grow up in and the best country to grow old in.” Sir Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer is making a dramatic difference to the Labour Party and clearing the Augean Stables of the toxic stink of Corbynism. He’s not there yet but the signs are promising. Until yesterday I thought that as well as returning common sense and coherence to the Party he was eschewing the vulgar populism that so infects our body politic. Now I’m not so sure.

Flying the flag is a pragmatic necessity for politicians of ambition and sometimes this can be a bit gruesomely faux-patriotic. But to have the ambition to make the United Kingdom the “best country” in the world – as the quote from Starmer’s speech at the top of this blog does – goes way too far for me and crosses the line into populist claptrap.

We are accustomed to political sloganry and often it doesn’t really matter. But we live in an interdependent world and one in which all nations have their individual national character. When we judge them, which inevitably we do when we visit, we do so from our own perspectives. We are entitled to have “favourite” countries but surely not to suggest a “good, better, best” ranking.

My personal perspective is likely to rate culture, scenery and cuisine highly. And my favourite countries tick all the boxes though I have to say Germany, which I love, doesn’t feature strongly gastronomically! The point of course is that every country is a complex mix. There can perhaps be “best” countries for aspects of a nation but even that is subjective. The frankfurter has its stout defenders.

The aspiration for Britain to be the “best country” to grow up in or grow old in actually suggests that there are measures available to allow targets to be set and progress to be measured. There are not – except at a very detailed level. We probably can measure our education or transport or healthcare systems against others. And my gut feel is that we don’t do very well. But to decide how our combined provision of public services across the board can make us the “best” would be a pointless and subjective task.

Of course Sir Keir may just have been indulging in populist jingoism with a touch of flag waving thrown in but I’d have preferred something a bit more forensic. To aim to be a “better” country (e.g. in respect of public services) is an admirable goal, providing it is detailed, specific and measurable. But to throw out the generic and bombastic “Best country” is too redolent of the mock exceptionalism of Flanders and Swann for me:

“The English, the English, the English are best
I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest”

It’s high time we grounded the Spitfires. High time we started looking forward rather than backwards. The past is a foreign country – we did things differently then. Yes there was heroism and at times no doubt people did believe that we were a land of hope and glory. But study that past closely and you’ll find that glory was often tarnished. But the more important question is not to try and record and define what we once were – though that is worth doing. No the issue of the day is to decide what we want to be.

British “Patriotism” is nearly always defined in symbols of the past. But if I am to have national pride I want to have it because of what we do in the here and now, and what our future plans are. That my father was brave in 1942 or my Grandfather in 1916 is a source of retrospective pride. But it means nothing today.

If I was German I’d have no problem – how ironic is that ? The achievements of successive post war German governments, culminating in reunification after 1989, would make me proud and patriotic. In my lifetime Germany has gone from a cesspit and a defeated pariah state to become an economic, political, cultural and uber-civilised state of which I would be proud to be a citizen. If only !

Would I rally to the Union Flag if asked – well yes, if I believed in the cause. But I emphatically do not believe in “My country right or wrong” and over the years I’ve said so. Though I was young at the time I thought Suez was nonsense. I actually supported the Falklands War at the time which I now regret but it did seem, at the time, something I should be “patriotic” about. I opposed Blair’s wars though strongly and said so . And the last ten years of preposterous faux-patriotism and jingoism around Brexit have made me sick.

So if you want me to be a patriot don’t talk to me about the Empire or about events that happened before I was born. Give me something to be proud of now. It happened at London2012 where I was a Gamesmaker. We did it well and I was proud of that. But then the Union Flag which I’d waved in the Olympic Stadium became tainted.Suddenly patriotism became negative – it became the preserve of those who opposed rather than a celebration of the positive. Most of all the jingoistic absurdity of “Sovereignty” entered the national vocabulary.The arrogance of the premise that only we British could take good decisions – not Brussels but only Britain. That in the EU we participated collectivly in the governance of Europe became, absurdly, a negative.

So in post-Brexit Britain have I anything to be proud about? I have not. Too many of my fellow citizens are bigots or bozos. I have a Government of breathtaking incompetence. My country is the laughing stock of the world. And almost every week there is some distant “triumph” to celebrate. These celebrations are doomed attempts to imply that we still matter. Trouble at the Mill? Send up a Spitfire. Need to take people’s minds off the ghastly daily realities. Give the old codger who walked 100 times around his garden a Knighthood.

Rally round the flag boys, rally round the flag.