The principle of subsidiarity, enshrined in the European Union’s treaties, says that decisions should be taken at the lowest level possible practicable. It’s arguably an essential component of trans-national agreements and bolsters national sovereignty. In general nation states should take their own decisions and in the EU, despite the moaning of hard line Brexiteers, they do.

Which brings me to federal nations and other countries, like the United Kingdom, which have elements of federalism about them. Let’s deal with the latter first. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do some things differently but are, arguably, no less British for it. The Scottish legal system is different to the English. Since devolution and the setting up of parliaments in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff subsidiarity in the U.K. has increased.

Federal republics are premised on a voluntary association of separate states. This, nominally at least, gives these states the freedom to be the different. In Germany, for example, the differences between, say the states of, Prussia and Bavaria are minor. It’s a federal republic but the nation is more important than the state.

Which brings us to the United States where there are few more contentious issues that “States’ Rights”. The founding fathers seeking to find a way of binding different ex-colonies together created a Constitution which enshrined a high degree of subsidiarity in their governance. Less than a hundred years later this led to Civil War.

The American Civil War was a conflict about States’ Rights – in particular the right of individual states to keep slavery. South of the Mason-Dixon line eleven states seceded from the Union over the matter leading to war.

Slavery is a Human Rights issue and for Abraham Lincoln no member state of the Union could have the option to do their own thing on human rights. After the War the Constitution was amended to recognise this – at least as far as slavery was concerned.

But what is a nation if it is not consistent across its territory on human rights? Let’s predicate an imaginary situation where a murder is committed in one state and just down the road, across the state line, an identical murder takes place in an adjoining state. One guilty murderer could face the death penalty whereas the other would not because his offence was committed in a state that had abolished capital punishment.

Should individual states really have the freedom judicially to execute someone – surely, like slavery, this is an area where national consistency should apply ? Which brings us to Roe v Wade.

In 1973 the US Supreme Court ruled that the right to have an abortion is a human right that should be applied consistently across the country. It was an issue where, like slavery before it, States’ Rights should be subordinate to federal law. Recently changes to the composition of the Supreme Court thanks to Donald Trump’s appointments are such that it looks like Roe v Wade will be overturned. As with capital punishment your human rights will be determined by which side of a state line something happens.

Subsidiarity is limited in most jurisdictions for practical and sometimes cultural reasons. But in a nation, and arguably at a higher level, surely human rights are a constant? Should one American state be liberal whilst an adjoining state is conservative? Should human rights, especially in the case of abortion womens’ rights , be determined by the serendipity of location ? Surely not.

Douglas Murray is an apologist for slavery in The Times today – his arguments are unconvincing.

For Britons the issue is less about slavery as an evil but about Empire. Yes it is true that owning slaves was not an exclusively Anglo-Saxon amorality nor even only a second Millennium phenomenon. But imperialism was arguably an even greater evil and our British ancestors were the prime movers in that.

The conceit that a developed nation has the right to venture abroad, set up camp, exploit natural resources and dominate and enslave native peoples is about as venal as it gets. And still, astonishingly, we praise this venality by singing “Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be spread” at least once a year!

Empire and Slavery are inextricably interlinked. When British adventurers found natural resources to exploit, but without the indigenous labour to do so, they imported people to do it. Slavery was always driven by commercial ambition and the slaves were property – a factor of production rather than human beings.

To our modern sensibilities imperialism and slavery are abominations, though far from vanished. Putin’s attempt to enlarge the Russian Empire, the Chinese in Tibet, the mistreatment by Israel of Palestinians and all too many other examples are imperialism by another name. As was Hitler’s search for “Lebensraum”.

In short the British Empire was built by slaves and none of us should be sanguine about this. I commend Susan Neiman’s fine book “Learning from the Germans”. The Empire is not something to glorify but to be honest and, yes, contrite about.

Shell and BP are multinational corporations each of them operating in over 100 countries. Sources of revenue are diverse and whilst the U.K. is significant it is far from crucial to either company’s future. Both Shell and BP have chosen to be U.K. registered and they are major FTSE members. But they don’t have to be.

Both Shell and BP have upstream assets and are gas and oil producers in the U.K. but neither refines crude oil in Britain any more. Their downstream business – branded petrol stations included – are useful brand symbols but not major contributors to global revenues.

In short Shell and BP’s significance to the U.K. is exaggerated other than that they choose to be registered here. Both corporations have large tax departments whose primary responsibility is to minimise tax liabilities – e.g. by generating and/or posting profits in lower tax jurisdictions. Tax was a factor in Shell choosing to relocate corporately from The Netherlands to the U.K. So there will always be a close focus on tax and if for whatever reason the U.K. became less attractive then both companies have alternatives.

Production of hydrocarbons, mostly offshore at present, is carried out by companies like Shell and BP on strictly commercial terms. They pay Government for licences and then spend huge amounts of capital and revenue on the exploration and production initiatives. An adequate return on capital employed is required. Anything that raises costs, tax included, makes marginal fields less attractive.

A windfall tax on Multinational energy companies is far from straightforward given their very diverse sources of income and complex accounting arrangements. It’s not a magic solution.

Maybe some voters have always voted against rather than for things. But surely around the world there has never been such a time when electorates know what they don’t like rather than what they are for.

The feeling that all is not well and that “something needs to be done” is endemic in the West. It gave us Trump. It gives us Johnson. It might even have given us Le Pen or Corbyn. Note that for us to vote in such a way there has to be a candidate.

The rise in the electability of outsiders is partly a function of perceived political failure by traditional politicians. Hillary Clinton was as traditional establishment as they come and was punished for it. In the French presidential elections of 2017 and 2022 the traditional parties of Left and Right were annihilated. Macron was an outsider in 2017 and hardly mainstream in 2022.

The electoral system in France permitted in 2017 a man with little or no political background to be elected. In Britain that would be almost impossible. But in a binary choice plebiscite in 2016 the British electorate did air its dissatisfaction with the establishment as America was to do later that year and France the following one.

In 2019 the electorate in Britain felt empowered to go for the unconventional as they had in 2016 and almost had in 2017. “Leave” and its reworked message “Get Brexit Done” were votes against the political norms – the enemy was foreigners and the establishment. Easy targets not requiring cerebral logic.

One has to be very careful with Third Reich comparisons but National Socialism was built on being against the Weimar establishment parties as much (maybe more) than it was for Hitler’s policies. The Nazis enemies were the political establishment and those who were cerebral. The anti Woke movements of today are not dissimilar.

It was Muhammad Ali who started it. “I am the Greatest” he announced as a personal brand signature and the world, pretty much, bought it. Whether he was “The Greatest” was a subjective call – it always is. But we still do it, all the time.

There is now a mnemonic for it – the Greatest Of All Time or “GOAT” . And newspapers actually have serious articles as to whether somebody is the “GOAT”. Take football. There is a debate as to whether Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo is the GOAT. This daft discourse conveniently ignores the fact that before these two modern players appeared on the scene there were a few decent kickers of the ball around – Pele, Maradona, Bobby Charlton anyone?

And it is the historical comparison that makes the GOAT invalid. We might debate whether Messi or Ronaldo is the greatest of our times . A pretty sterile debate in my view but at least there’s a context. But Ronaldo versus, say, his countryman Eusebio? They played in different eras and you just can’t make a qualitative judgment. Even when you try and get quantitative (goals scored per game, for example) there’s no real credible comparative measure. Times change.

A few years ago a music magazine asked top conductors to name the “Greatest Symphony”. They chose Beethoven’s 3rd, the “Eroica” – but, in my view, this is just as defective as comparing footballers. I can tell you my favourite Symphony (Rachmaninov’s 2nd actually) but it would be silly for me to claim that it’s the greatest of all time.

Back to sport and to cricket. The statistics suggest that the GOAT batsman was Donald Bradman. His average in Test Matches was 99.94 and the next highest is 61.87. Conclusive surely? but according to this survey he was only the seventh greatest and the GOAT was Sachin Tendulkar. You see the problem ? It’s subjective and recent players, ones we’ve actually seen, are magnified whilst more distant individuals are reduced in size.

In British politics the “Greatest Prime Minister” game is often played and Winston Churchill usually wins. Well he did lead Britain with distinction in Wartime of course. But he was actually for four years – 1951-1955 – a pretty dreadful peacetime PM.

The problem with all this GOAT nonsense is that when we seek to be objective the statistics are only part of the story and when we acknowledge the subjectivity we recognise that it’s all personal opinion. The other problem is that it’s a waste of time!

Many years ago now I stayed in a four star hotel in Cyprus. It had a pleasant swimming pool surrounded by loungers. On one of the loungers a couple was having sex. Now whether there was actual penetration wasn’t clear but there was certainly some enthusiastic humping. When a waiter brought me a drink I asked him about the couple’s exhibitionism. “Russians” he replied, as if that was an explanation.

My point is that what in my youth would be inconceivable (not just lounger activity) is now quite common. How we explain this to children I’ve no idea. As soon as they are able to use a tablet or a smartphone they can find their way to a porn site. On television they can watch explicit simulated (presumably) sex on the BBC no less – “Normal People” for example which was at times full frontal as well as almost soft porn. “Sex Education” on Netflix is similar – it opens with what I understand is some “Classic Cowgirl” action.

I doubt that there’s more sex today than there was in the past or more extramarital for that matter. We’re just more open about it. On balance that seems to me to be a good thing. “Normal People” is actually both a moral and a loving story despite (maybe because of) the bonking. “Sex Education” is very funny and, I thought, harmless.

Sally (not her real name) a good female friend of mine half my age talked openly about her sex life to me as, I think, a sort of therapy – for her! Her love life was entirely recreational and remarkably varied. Fifty years ago that fabulous film “The Graduate” had the following exchange between Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) and the husband of Mrs Robinson (his much older lover):

• Benjamin : Listen to me. What happened between Mrs. Robinson and me was nothing. It didn’t mean anything. We might just as well have been shaking hands.
• Mr. Robinson : Shaking hands? Well, that’s not saying much for my wife, is it?

This is hilariously funny but like my friend it recorded the recreational nature of many sexual experiences. In “Normal People” the relationship between Connell and Marianne is much deeper than the purely physical almost from the start. The sex aside we are almost in Jane Austen country. I found it utterly charming and a remarkable mix of modern sexual freedoms and timeless romance.

So what am I saying? Well that it’s good that the taboos are broken and that there is openness. Back to Sally. She fell in love, got married and now lives a monogamous life. I make no value judgment about this but she said to me “Sex with someone you love is different, and better”. Call me a big softie but that brought a tear to my eye.

Yes Johnson is on trial, and so he should be. But the key point is that the assumptions on which our unwritten constitution has always been based are no longer valid. Pompous though it may sound a key assumption was goodwill, honour and a bias towards the truth by our elected representatives both inside and outside Parliament. That bias no longer exists.

Yes the truth always has many faces and a belief in it has been under question and tested before. Saddam Hussain did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction but we were told by the Prime Minister that he did and a war was fought on that premise. A Foreign Secretary resigned because of an honest disagreement over Iraq as earlier one had over what he saw as his personal failure over The Falklands.

Today Minsters only seem to resign if they are photographed groping a colleague in a cupboard. Failure to tell the truth is no longer a resigning offence. Which brings one back to the constitution. If precedents are not followed, if the sort of “case law” that precedent is is not applied and if there are no written rules – no statutes – then those in charge today feel empowered to do what they like.

A written constitution is a legally applicable document that has to be followed unless amended. Without one we rely on people to be “Honourable” and even refer to them in Parliament by this designator. In the past they mostly were. And when they weren’t and lied (it happened) they went. No longer.

“Brexit was about taking back control. About asserting our own sovereignty and deciding our own destiny. The freedoms of Brexit should be about innovations justifying British exceptionalism on the basis of moral leadership, not moral delinquency.” David Davis in “The Times” today.

And there you have the fraud of Brexit neatly described by a Brexiteer for once honest enough to tell, the truth. Sure he might say that one bit of moral delinquency doesn’t make the whole project delinquent. He would be wrong to do so.

At this time we can see the horrors of nationalism in sharp relief as Putin and his gang murderously try to assert their will on Ukraine. But let’s be under no illusion. Russia’s drivers are part of the same narrow nationalism that drove the “Leave” campaign and drives Britain’s populist government today.

The reality of the modern world is that unless we build alliances, participate in cooperative treaties, recognise the international element in most of what we do we will blunder into an isolated faux-freedom state which we may call “deciding our destiny” but in reality is nothing of the sort. Russia is largely “free” to do as it wants so long as it has a thick enough skin. Britain thinks it can do the same. We can’t.

The Rwanda scheme is as delinquent as Putin’s attack on Ukraine, morally anyway. It’s wrong not because most of us, including Mr Davis, see that it is. It’s wrong because the civilised world condemns this “exceptionalism” as much as it condemns Putin. Nice company we keep.

I thought that the Netflix documentary on Jimmy Savile reasonably answered the question “What happened?” but struggled to address “Why did it happen?” Savile’s manipulation of those in power and the famous over decades was recorded. That the famous used him to confer a sort of glory by association we saw. Savile was famous, he was (apparently) doing good – so Margaret Thatcher and the Prince of Wales and the BBC and the rest wanted some reflected glory for themselves.

But did all the middle class worshippers at the Savile shrine really want to suggest that by links with the working class Savile they themselves would acquire some of his common touch? His origins were plebeian, but his lifestyle and behaviour certainly were not. The famous acquiesced to his rules and his eccentric norms – in a way we all did just by watching the TV programmes. The class element of those norms was there, but Savile was hardly a working-class hero. His nominal allegiances – Class, Yorkshire, Catholicism – were almost incidental.

Jimmy Savile was a member of MENSA which means that his intelligence was in the top one percent of the population. How he applied that intelligence was not really addressed. He created an identity which churned cash for himself but also for others. The “others” included those that exploited him commercially as well as the charities which benefited from his efforts. He called himself “tricky” – we might call him conniving and mendacious. But he got away with it, and some.

One missing element was an explanation of why he was what he was. No criminal psychologists explored his mind or his behaviour. No man is entirely a “one off” – even Savile. Another omission was an in depth examination of management failure – how on earth was it allowed to happen, for so long and in so many different places? I’m none the wiser.

It was as recently as 2006 that the “Me Too” movement started and this triggered revelations about many sexual offences committed by many in The Arts, some very well known. And in Britain in the world of pop music, in which Savile moved for much of his career, sexual relations between the famous and their fans, sometimes underage, was common and had been for years.

The case of DJ John Peel is relevant. In The Guardian in 1975, Peel said of young women, “All they wanted me to do was abuse them, sexually, which, of course, I was only too happy to do…one of my, er, regular customers, as it were, turned out to be 13, though she looked older.” Peel said that he “didn’t ask for ID”. Ten years earlier a work colleague of mine had endured his teenage daughter attaching herself as a “groupie” to a well known pop group – it was not an innocent attachment.

The point about Peel and countless others is that casual consensual sex between the famous and their fans was the norm for decades. That Savile was part of this is no surprise but, of course, his behaviour went way beyond brief liaisons in a dressing room after a gig, and much of it was far from consensual. The scale of Savile’s criminality was extraordinary and long-standing. How did he get away with it for so long?

One victim in the Netflix documentary said when asked why she didn’t blow the whistle on Jimmy Savile “Who’d take our word against the word of someone so famous and establishment he’s even close friends with the royals?” This I think gets to the heart of it. James Levine was the Director of the Metropolitan Opera when he abused young men. Rolf Harris was famous and had painted a portrait of the Queen. Gary Glitter was a high profile rock star. Harvey Weinstein was an Oscar winning producer. Kevin Spacey a well known actor and director when at The Old Vic Theatre. In every case like these there must have been to some extent a conspiracy of silence.

So I think that the answer to my question “Why did it happen ?” is in part ignorance and in part cover up. It also takes courage to complain especially when you suspect that those you complain to may choose not to listen. It was interesting to watch Selina Scott on the programme. Savile was very creepy with her and she was embarrassed. But, as far as I know, she didn’t complain. In public Savile was outrageous as well as being borderline confessional at times. The signs were there, but nobody chose to pick them up.

These protests reported in The Times today are absolutely contemptible. They are inspired by a profound ignorance of how Britains energy sector works and, in particular of the timescales involved for change. It is hard to see them as anything other than virtue signalling by fools.

The world is dependent on hydrocarbons for much of the fuel and power we need – and that fuel and power is the driver of our economies and our lifestyle. In Britain the mix is changing, particularly in power generation where wind power is making an impact and a growing one. But other important parts of our hydrocarbon use mix will take much longer to change and some cannot change at all within known technologies.

Road transport will stay dominated by petrol and diesel for the foreseeable future. The switch to electric power for private vehicles is underway but the cost and practicality is a block on progress. And there are very few commercial vehicles using anything but diesel fuel.

Our homes, our offices, our hospitals and the rest are overwhelmingly heated by gas and again whilst there will be a small number of new builds with alternatives like heat pumps removing and replacing gas boilers across our total housing stock is a very long term project, if it is a project at all.

Key transport sectors like aviation and marine are oil specific and will remain substantially so for decades ahead.

The protests oversimplify a complex subject and are exercises in little more than reductio ad absurdum. They are also arrogant the participants implying that only they have the wisdom to see the need for change. Our energy use is declining per unit of useful power as across all sectors more efficient machines takeover. Home insulation and far more efficient vehicle engines and gas boilers have had a major impact. That progress needs to be encouraged. The protests do the reverse of this.