I wish that I had written the article by David Aaronovitch in today’s Times ( “You will, Paddy, you will”). It encapsulates everything I feel about politics, especially social and progressive politics. My political hero is Roy Jenkins who managed the change processes that meant that we stopped hanging people, created a law on abortion which gave pregnant women choice and respected sexual preferences – all within a sensible Legal and moral framework.

Roy Jenkins was a great reforming Home Secretary and he shifted the nation irreversibly in the direction of freedoms that we now take for granted. He was also, of course, Britain’s greatest modern pro European and saw that a liberal nation is also an open and international one.

On the environment in addition to Boris Johnson’s windy conversion (don’t hold your breath) we can include a raft of clean air measures since the 1950s. I first wore a mask not in 2020 to protect people from Covid but, as a little boy, to protect myself from smog. The power generation shift from coal to gas (opposed by some vested interests) was part of the drive which should ultimately culminate in a clean renewables dominated energy sector.

David’s final paragraph, tongue in cheek though it is, makes a connect between liberal reform and positive environmental change and Britain’s external relations. To leave the European Union is the most illiberal measure enacted by Britain in my lifetime. The parallel with social/environmental change is precise. These changes were as progressive as Brexit is regressive.

Post Imperial Britain has I now realise been fraught with the carry over from “Great Power Britain”. The withdrawal from Empire was at best messy and at worst amoral and deadly. From India to Kenya and Malaya and Cyprus we killed people in their hundreds as we freed them. And yet we still celebrate a “Land of Hope and Glory” – which it isn’t, and never was.

Our modest little island has a strange history with pomp and circumstance, but not a lot of genuine nobility. Our history is what it was and we both need to inform new generations about it, and atone for it, and move on. Moving on includes keeping on the liberating path of which we can be proud. Part of that is to restore our credibility as part of the European partnership of nations. Then we might have a chance to be Great Britain again – a liberal, open nation reconfigured for the modern age not silly Little England.

It is, of course, the big things that define the nation. But it’s often the small things that make us wake up to what we are, or what we’ve become. The advertisement had “UK Government” prominently displayed – there is not the slightest doubt that it reflects Government policy. A policy that is demeaning to the Arts and which praises the vague cold world of “Cyber” – whatever that is.

Here a young woman of colour, a ballet dancer, is being told that she will have to “rethink, reskill, reboot” but that she doesn’t know it yet. In other words stop doing what she has chosen to do and do something else. It’s insulting, ignorant and pointless. The latter because it can have no effect other than to irritate those in one of Britain’s great areas of strength – the performing Arts.

Any young person entering into the world of ballet knows that it is tough. The young woman looks to be in her teens. She will already have been through tough selection processes – auditions at every step of the way – and survived. She doesn’t need to be reminded that the high standards required mean that her career choice is precarious.

Performers above all need encouragement to test and hopefully realise their potential. That’s what the colleges of drama, the music conservatoires and the ballet schools do. The majority of students won’t make it because the standards are high. Here in effect the dancer is being discouraged – told that in a while she will hang up her tutu and spend her days not on the stage but in front of a computer screen.

Communication is about checks and balances and here they were obviously absent. But it’s not a one off. Some of the messages from the Home Office about asylum seekers recently have been as insulting, illiberal and idiotic as this one. And the tone is set at the top. Someone in Government, a Cabinet Minister no less, was responsible for this. The “National Cyber Security Centre” is a Government body – someone is ultimately in charge of it.

Joined up Government is difficult and, yes, sometimes the left hands of the bureaucracy don’t know that the right hands are doing. And not everyone in Government is as crass and philistine as whoever signed off this advertisement. Just as not everyone is as uncaring and insensitive as the Home Secretary who signed off the asylum seeker communications.

Someone needs to lay down the law and get things back on track because at the moment Boris Johnson’s Government is compounding its glaring incompetence and mendacity with communications that make them look like uncaring fools. And if they’re not careful the international perception of Britain, already at a historic low, will tumble into “failed state” territory.

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.