In The Times today Michael Atherton argues that Rachel Heyhoe-Flint should have a statue at Lord’s. For once I don’t think that Athers has thought this through.

It was in 1963 that CLR James, adapting Kipling, asked the question “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” That quote illustrated perfectly the dilemma once faced by cricket lovers about South Africa. In 1960, with Apartheid firmly in place, Rachel Heyhoe had been a member of an English women’s team touring the country. In her autobiography she revealed that the tourists had been warned “…to make absolutely no comment on the ‘racial issues’ (sic) in the country)”. Black spectators were banned at the matches and the coaching the English women did was only for the whites. The British Women’s Cricket Association (WCA), in which Rachel played a significant role for many years said that the 1960 tour “engendered goodwill”. Not with black South Africans it didn’t !

Rachel obeyed the rules in 1960 but by 1978 when her memoir was published, she revealed her true feelings “[I] retained the view that it was their country, and hardly the place of any English people to criticise”. This was a naïve even offensive remark, not least because it was made ten years after the D’Oliveira Affair and seven after South Africa had been banned from all international sport.  

Rafaelle Nicholson, a historian of Women’s cricket, has written that “in the build up to the D’Oliveira Affair, it was the women’s cricket community who continued to wholeheartedly to embrace South Africa.”  The WCA was in the forefront of this, and Rachel Heyhoe played a significant part as player and later administrator.  In 1968 once MCC cancelled the men’s tour to South Africa over D’Oliveira the WCA followed suit cancelling their own planned cricketing stopover. Nicholson writes further “Several members of the [WCA] Executive Committee had wanted to go ahead with the stopover… but had been outvoted. Presumably, this included England Captain Heyhoe-Flint, who told The Times that she was “very disappointed”.

Rachel’s position on Sport and Apartheid was made crystal clear in her autobiography “[if] the British Government consider it their duty to register their disapproval of South African policies I suggest they cut off every contact with them, including banking and trading links. For, as things stand, sport is merely being used as a political lever. Who are we, in any case, to tell the South Africans how to run their country”?

Rachel’s posture on South Africa, including her participation with many luminaries of the world of cricket to try and ensure that the planned 1970 men’s tour took place, was unequivocal. Her position was a cricket establishment one and many joined her in the “1970 Cricket Fund” which was to pay for security to allow the games to take place. Those in cricket who opposed to the tour, most notably Mike Brearley and the Rev. David Sheppard, were in a minority.

The moral high ground was with Brearley and Sheppard and history has proven them not Heyhoe-Flint and her fellow South Africa appeasers to have been right. Rachel unquestionably deserves the accolades she received for her active support for Women’s cricket and for opposing the discrimination against women at Lord’s and elsewhere. But I would have would have thought that the Life Peerage was enough.

A statue at Lord’s in these cancel culture times would be a provocation – but I oppose it not because it might be an activists’ target but because it’s a bad even offensive idea.

Quentin Letts in The Times today calls Boris Johnson the “Sultan of Insouciance” – he is a “sated sultan, wafted by punkahs, his belly glistening.” For me it’s performance art and Johnson is very good at it. It reminds me of Tracey Emin (featuring elsewhere in today’s Times). Nobody did it remotely like Tracey. Nobody does it remotely like Boris who is his own walking, talking unmade bed – the visible, shambolic manifestation of all the girls he slept with.

Artists in all genres are often eccentrics and sometimes not very nice. Politicians are often not very nice as well but rarely as creative or eccentric as their famous arty equivalents. Johnson has the same affection for bizarre imagery as Gilbert and George. Where they are Smart Camp he is ruffled testosterone.

“He’s a character” is a common view of the Prime Minister. That’s less trite than it sounds. We know that the great fictional “characters” – from Falstaff to Basil Fawlty – weren’t real but that they revealed something in all of us. Do I sometimes reveal a bit of my inner Ted Hastings fired with indignation? It’s more Father Jack in my case actually – “Feck, Girls, Drink”.

The great clowns must never be out of character. So Johnson doesn’t comb his hair before PMQs , he ruffles it more. Is it all a facade? I think no more than Olivier as Othello was a facade. The Boris character is fictional and you’d think only he can play it. How could it be otherwise? It is clownish but like all clowns Johnson does tragic as well. His Unique Selling Proposition is fraudulent bonhomie tempered by faux-sincere patriotic reverence. And we all fall for it time and time again .

Kenneth Branagh will portray Boris Johnson in an upcoming drama “This Sceptred Isle”. If anyone can get into the character Ken is probably your man. Branagh was an excellent Archie Rice in John Osborne’s “The Entertainer” a few years ago. He played the failing Music Hall artist brilliantly. He should be able to play another.

Danny Finkelstein, writing in The Times today, says “…in any sort of democracy you need the centre in order to win.” Danny, like me, was once a member of the SDP. Our numbers are declining, sadly, and we lost Shirley Williams one of our founders recently. But the hard core of our principles lives on – though sometimes you have to dig a bit to find it. In essence the SDP eschewed the extremes of Left and Right, and if you do that you end up in the Centre.

But centrism isn’t an ideology it’s a consequence of the rejection of extreme ideologies. For much of my lifetime this centrism has been in power. Attlee, despite his public ownership priorities, was a centrist at heart. A moderate social democrat. The administrations after Attlee – Churchill and Eden – were confused by the dying of Empire and were largely domestically indolent. But once they had faded away we had a moderate One Nation Tory in Macmillan – classic SDP material was SuperMac!

Wilson and Callaghan were Social Democrats threatened by the ideologies of the Footite and Bennite Left. Whilst these wild men briefly held sway in Labour the door swung open for the formation of the SDP, not least because Margaret Thatcher had triumphed, from the Right, over the One Nation Tories in the Blue Corner.

The SDP in alliance with the Liberal Party really did come briefly close to breaking the mould. It’s greatest achievement was to set in motion the return to social democracy in Labour. New Labour was the SDP in all but name. Centrism is pragmatic liberal government. Arguably it was in Government from 1945-1979 and from 1990-2015. You can quibble about the Major and Cameron Coalition governments – but they were not the Hard Right of Thatcher or the even harder Right of Johnson.

There’s a gap for the return of pragmatic liberal government as big now as in the 1980s. And an urgent need for Labour overtly to re-embrace Social Democracy again. And it would be good if the One Nation Tories could re-emerge from the shadows again as well.

Rational man in a kilt would probably vote to stay in the U.K. Just as rational man in trousers voted to stay in the European Union. But these choices fail on the dimly lit backwaters where emotion outshines rationality.

Few of us build a spreadsheet when we vote. It’s gut feeling that dictates our choice. A majority of us bought the appeal to xenophobic prejudice peddled by the “Leave” campaign. Had we all had the ability and the inclination to think about the advantages of continued EU membership we would have decided to Remain. But we didn’t so , disastrously, we haven’t.

The concept of Great Britain is a fairly modern one. England, Scotland and Wales have a far longer history as independent countries and nation states than they do together in the artificial construct that is the United Kingdom. The same applies to the short-lived colony that was British Ireland.

The U.K. before Brexit and after Irish independence just about worked. The glory of the British Empire was very real to the Victorians who created and ran it. By most measures (except moral ones) The U.K. with its empire led the world. But the Empire drifted away , including John Bull’s other island across the water (a colony in all but name). Hanging on to six Irish counties because the sectarian Protestant bigots of the north spouted that they were British before they were Irish was a bloody disaster. But unity in the island of Ireland is surely rational man’s choice now.

Pre Brexit the U.K. , Ulster aside, had some logic. But devolution opened the wounds in Scotland and Brexit rubbed salt in them. Scottish nationalism was fed from Holyrood and the Scots having chosen to stay in the EU took umbrage when they were forcibly ejected against their will.They’ll be off – and for good reason.

Little England is already a reality in our mindset and before long it will be a nation state reality again. Back to normal really – cry God for Harry, England and St George. Keep your Union Flag as a quaint reminder of what was if you like. But get used to England alone – broken, bitter and unloved.

“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.