Reading the Political Tea Leaves

Here's the latest from a Washington insider who asks not to be named. Sure, he's a Republican, but he has never drunk from the party Kool-Aid that would preclude him from examining a forthcoming election in a cool and rational manner.

"Let's see what the political tea leaves say about next year's presidential election:

1) We have a stunning 7.2 percent economic growth figure has been revised upwards to a staggering 8.2 percent rate that is predicted to level off at a comfortable 4% rate later this year.

2) We have a Democratic frontrunner, Howard Dean, who proposes to re-regulate key sectors of the American economy, a la Jimmy Carter BEFORE Carter de-regulated the airlines.

3) We have Governor Dean first embracing the pick-up driving, Confederate flag bumper sticker-toting crowd only to be forced into repudiating the very same people by the rest of the Democratic field there-by locking the forthcoming Democratic ticket out of the South for the balance of the election.

4) We have Congressional Democrats despondent over a Republican Medicare reform package that a disciplined majority drove through the House to wails of Pelosi-led protest putting the Democratic Party directly at odds with a $400 billion benefit to seniors.

5) We have a Democratic Party in critical disarray over the only issue that will ultimately matter in the next election:  national security policy.  To the extent that one could say a Democratic national security policy exists it would seem to argue that U.S. interests are best defined and defended by...the French.

6) We have a Republican incumbent who enjoys the mirror-image of advantages to be derived from the failure and dissaray of the opposition:  a strong economy, an economic policy that seems connected to the way the a free economy actually works, an impregnable regional political base in those areas of the country that are growing the fastest, a Nixon-goes-to-China Medicare program, and a national security policy that seeks to fight the war on terror in terrorism's front yard instead of Central Park.

7) Add to this a $200 million political warchest for President Bush and the near-unanimous support of his party.

Anyone care to wager on who takes the Oath of Office in January, 2005?"

Hmmmm, reciting a whole poem from memory.

That's a tricky one.

After extensive self-interrogation, I am pretty sure that I cannot recite an entire poem either, unless you count The Horseshoe Nail (more a morality tale, or lecture on historical contingency than a poem, I'd say), or the 23rd Psalm...and I suspect that there are bits of both I'd leave out.

Shocking, really.

Just a bunch of prose mavens?

November, instead of the month in which we give thanks, now appears to be the month in which we are to bewail culture lost. US News and World Report ran an article at the beginning of the month, "Losing Our History", which lamented the fact that children don't sing any longer and so folk songs and the history they contain are disappearing from the culture. The New York Times ran an interview with John McWhorter discussing his new book, "Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care" , which laments the decline of the spoken word.

For someone who apparently is passionate about the language (he taught himself 12 languages), is a singer, a Broadway aficionado, and has acted in amateur theatricals, McWhorter makes a curious statement. "I cannot recite a single poem," he says.

Dude, like, whatever.

I am departing for Cleveland (The Land of the Cleves) in the wee small hours, off for a bit of turkey and trimmings. I turn over the reins to my compatriots.

America, Eastern Branch

I had the unfortunate experience earlier this month of seeing the movie Love Actually. If you must go, have two martinis (3/4 Plymouth Gin, 1/4 vermouth, shaken, 2 queen olives) ahead of time, so that you are either insensible to the sentimentalized drivel on-screen or are led into a well-timed two hour nap. Watching it cold sober gives you the unpleasant trapped feeling of wanting to come out of your skin. Two things kept coming to mind while enduring the movie. First, one of the necessary factors to enjoying a film is somehow, someway liking the characters. Instead, I thought "what an awful group of people here -- mostly young, modern, trendy, urban Brits." Second, that being so, I further thought to myself, "they are awful because they don't even seem British -- they seem like young, modern, trendy, urban Americans with British accents." This wasn't an exercise in self-hatred on my part. I just could not fathom why were aping the very worst America has to offer rather than the best.

Which brings me to Theodore Dalrymple's latest article in the Spectator, showing how young, modern, trendy, urban Brits are unconsciously exhibiting American habits of speech, dress, and attitudes because of their consumption of American pop culture. This is not a pretty picture. Rather than reflecting America's best qualities and habits (a nation of fabulous educational and cultural institutions, a nation of tremendous religious belief while the Western world goes cooly secular), these young people dress like Brittany Spears, talk like Eminem, and act like Al Bundy. Dalrymple notes: The problem with the demonstration effect of Virtual America is that it is confined purely to externals, often of the least attractive kind. White-trash clothing, for example, must be among the most unattractive ever devised by man. It is impossible to look intelligent or dignified, and difficult even to look civil, in a baseball cap. The popular music is appalling and brutalising, the food horrible and the manners depicted selfish and egocentric. Virtual America will never convey the message that the Americans are, in fact, a courteous people, whose manners are (at least nowadays) vastly superior to our own.

Even further, superficial mimicking of American pop culture without America's better qualities of individual striving leaves young, modern, trendy, urban Brits void of ideas and bored. When the demotic culture is not combined with or ameliorated by a belief in personal striving for material improvement, but rather with the idea that affluence is delivered by the government through confiscation and redistribution — that is to say by the promotion of ‘social justice’ — a uniquely horrible, new culture is forged, the culture of embittered slovenliness. The British are increasingly a nation of angry slobs.

If Love Actually is even a partial reflection of British realities, Dalrymple's forecasts are coming to pass. London looked like LA.

David Frum has a lovely article in the Daily Telegraph about Nevilles first act/first day. Quite a despicable group of people, really.

Speaking of Nevilles, Austin Bay has a little essay over at www.strategypage.com on the Axis of Neville. Snicker, snicker, snicker.

Doing Neville Chamberlain proud

Well, good luck to the President over the next several days, winding his away around Britain, his heels being nipped by...by...what shall we call them? The Neville Chamberlain Society? The Baathists, Western Branch? Because the clear implication of their "ideas" -- if we can call them that -- is the continued rule of Hussein, complete with his dictatorial apparatus of prisons, secret police, ritual murder and rape, and torture chambers. In fact, what greater ally can brutal dictators and international terrorists have then the "Nevilles?" Skilled at making big puppets, their "ideas" are less creative, merely the thin skin of idealism covering a corrupt core of accomodation, retreat, and anti-Western self-hatred.

Perhaps the Bush visit can result in some good: (1.) the British disrespect could anger Americans into continued support for the President's positions, (2.) anger reasonable non-puppet making Britons into continued support for Blair, (3.) discredit the Nevilles by giving them the press coverage they so dearly want. Does anyone doubt there will be a few rather revealing anti-Israel, anti-Semitic placards in the throng?

Still, the Guardian has an interesting poll this morning, showing a trend of British frustration with the Nevilles, so perhaps the Bush visit will appall sufficient numbers of people into a backlash

Political Prognostications

I was up there in Washington, DC (Our Nation's Capital) this weekend, and got to hear some good political thinking from some Operatives. Hopefully their Prognostications will be a feature from here to the election, so long as they keep talking to me.

Anyway, here's the roundup:

Louisiana- Jindal's defeat was due, in the consensual opinion, to shading the difference between Blanco's pro-life position, except in case of rape or incest, and Jindal's no-exceptions on rape position. In Louisiana anti-abortion except in case of rape or incest counts as a moderate stance, I guess. As one of my informatns says, "a slight shading of difference on the rape and incest issue hurt Jindal among suburban women." Another says, rather darkly, "It would be interesting to see some real numbers on that, plus numbers on the racist factor."

How could Dean win the general election?- Considering the results of the 2000 election, how could a Democratic contender get a winning number of electoral votes?

One of my informants, who is a wizard at the numbers, shares the following information:
Electoral factoids to chew on:

"A total of 12 electoral votes have shifted from blue country to red country as a result of the 2000 census.

If the electoral map of 2004 had been in place in 2000, red would have won 283 electoral votes.

NH has recently moved from the lean red to lean blue category, -4 for blue.

PA and IA are now lean red; NM solid red.

Red winning in 2004 with 307."

Democrats on Iraq- What are they thinking? Frederick Kagan, an Interventionist Neo-Con Hawk whom no one could accuse of shilling for the Democratic National Committee, had an op-ed in the Washington Post today saying that, all things considered, the major Democratic candidates weren't that weak when it came to Iraq.

Myself, I think Fred is whistling a happy bipartisan tune that doesn’t have an ending. I don’t think, in the end, that what he observes amounts to much. I think I see him mentally contrasting Democratic candidates with the anti-war people in Europe, and thinking, “Man, what a bunch of Anti-Saddamites!” But what he quotes is electioneering fluff. Sure, it’s not George McGovern. But the important words, the words that describe what any of these chaps would do as President, have been and continue to be conspicuous in their absence. They will be thrust into a Crisis Situation, and they don’t seem to acknowledge that. Instead they tip their hat to the “War on Terrorism” and then move on to comparing W to Herbert Hoover, or some old chestnut like that.

One of my informants agrees, adding that "all of the criticisms offered by the Dems relative to Iraq do not, taken together, add up to an alternative policy. They are just ankle biting. Dean just happens to be the most ferocious of the ankle biters. In the right circumstances (e.g. total meltdown in Iraq) he could get a hold of Bush he could do a lot of damage with his message."

Please and Thank You

To no one's surprise who uses their eyes and ears, and leaves their house, Americans are losing (or have already lost) good manners -- even more devastating, they have forsaken the very idea of etiquette. This article, discussing the post-1960 abandonment of American manners, in last week's Globe flew under my radar, but is worth considering.

Despite the 19th century cliches about uncouth Americans, spitting and swearing their way through life, there once was a day when etiquette informed our behavior, silently and unconsciously regulating and directing our social activities. Certain ways of acting were shamed, condemned, and looked down upon. Other ways were encouraged by practice and every day use, by teaching and parenting, and "the soft collar of social esteem," Edmund Burke's telling phrase about how we value our neighbor's opinion of us. I bought the 1941 New American Etiquette the other week at a used book sale (does the fact that is cost me $1 say anything?). The book is remarkably, almost ridiculously, thorough, covering everything -- how to act in restaurants, how to name your children, how to act on-board ships, how to address royalty, how to write letters to, well, every type of person, how to act on the phone, etc. Today, many would consider this a silly contrivance, a sort of social intimidation bent on infringing the "real self," but read what the preface says: The rules of etiquette are not swords hanging over our heads by a slender thread which we may sever by a violation. The true aim of all etiquette is the development of a kindly interest in and consideration for others. Some of the most liked persons who have ever lived have known little of the arbitrary rules of the etiquette of their day but invariably they were kind and considerate of others and inspired those qualities in all with whom they were in contact. Etiquette is not about arbitrary social force, pressure to conform with no aim, but about enforcing consideration to make what could be (and now too often is) an ugly inconsiderate daily life into a livable and lovable one.

Good manners drifted away, the Globe article asserts, in the 1960s when young Boomers rejected social artificiality for individual authenticity, never realizing that when people are unmoored from the "soft collar" and humane purposes of social etiquette they become rather selfish unfriendly boors -- terribly authentic, terribly rude. We have never recovered and now the "ugly American" is thought to have always existed, as if the pre-1960 nation which had a least a semblance of good manners and restraint was a bad dream. Swearing in public is commonplace (walking across a college campus, one usually hears a collection of about 10 words, none of them fit for repetition, all used to express a variety of emotions), dress is sloppy, road manners are non-existent. Don't believe me? Think I am exaggerating? Check out this site called Etiquette Hell.

So what is there to do? Teach it anew, I guess. There are etiquette classes one can take, filling the void for those who were not taught such things at home. There are books to buy on the subject of good behavior. I taught one such book, P. M. Forni's Choosing Civility, to my college seniors. My undergraduates seemed to "get it," that good manners are not a burden, but a liberation meant to make life livable. Yet, they chafed at being told what to do by social pressure. For example, a solid majority could not understand why playing loud music in your car with the windows open was rude -- "if it bothers you, it's your problem, not mine," "I'm just driving by, it'll be gone in a few seconds," "get a life," "hey, it's my car and my radio, I can do as I please." So effectively drilled by pop culture and perhaps their parents that "doing as you please" is natural and right, these young people see etiquette as fake and burdensome. They cannot make the connection between an ugly rude world (one which they often complain about) and a "liberated, more authentic" way of acting. The world has always been this way, they say, let me be who I am. In the tug o' war between social consideration and individual expression, expressing and "doing as I please when it pleases me" wins out.

Unfortunately for all of us, that attitude is how the world became ugly in the first place.

I knew it, I always knew it. Guinness really is good for you.

A quick plug for a magazine I've come to enjoy. I noticed that Enoch Soames (whom Doc & Co. thank for linking) sings the praises of G. K. Chesterton today, and I'll second that sentiment. Since I've read through a bit of GKC in the past couple of years, I've found him terribly skilled in pointing out the obvious (or what should be the obvious) silliness, hubris, and inanity of twentieth century life. For example, quoting from Chesterton's Orthodoxy, what better way to explain the tired intellectual habit of bemoaning the conformity and blandness of contemporary life than this: [O]ddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. Pity more people didn't say something like this to William Burroughs and Allan Ginsburg in the 1950s, Chesterton contra the Beats, "the reason you find things so stifling and bland is because you are so damned odd you don't notice the difference. If you were a normal person, you'd see the thrilling peculiarity and excitement of life."

That said, check out the very clever and entertaining Chestertonian magazine Gilbert!. The Doc is a proud subscriber and looks forward to it every month.

Here's a modest proposal for Veteran's Day. Well, two, actually.

In view of the fact that Veteran's Day is in a) danger of merging completely in the psyche with Memorial Day and b) becoming unremarked because it isn't celebrated on a Monday, like everything else, we ought to take the following steps to mark it.

One, the President and all members of the Political Class should start to wear poppies in their lapel for the two weeks prior to Veteran's Day. This is a custom universally followed in Britain (in many ways Remembrance Day is the only national holiday in Britain; hmmm, there's an essay there), and one that I rather miss over here. It would set aside November 11th in a special, non-hyped way.

Second, Veteran's Day should be a day off for all of those who have served in the Armed Forces of the United States, in time of peace and war, and for them alone. Period. [Hat-tip here to the slightly mad Buchananite Carlton Meyer at www.g2mil.com].

There, that should do it...and for crying out loud, keep at bay all those who would move Veteran's Day to the Monday closest to November 11th. Cretins. Orcs. They must be destroyed.

On Veteran's Day, an interesting article by Norman Allen, commenting about public forgetfulness of World War One. He writes: It has been said that beauty and grace died on the battlefields of the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. But the war also succeeded in breaking through the corseted snobbery of Victorian grande dames and the self-indulgence of Edwardian aesthetes. It gave birth to a new and vital worldview. American forces didn’t enter the conflict until April 1917, but the stories they brought back, and the dead they left behind, altered forever the outlook of a nation still riding the wave of Western expansion and pioneer pride. For better and for worse, the Great War was the beginning of our modern era. We live now in a post-apocalyptic age, dating from those days. Fallen monarchies, global communism, Nazism and the Holocaust, cultural vacuity, religious collapse. I am not a pessimist by nature, but I cannot find positives here -- I'd rather have the beauty and grace with "corseted snobbery" and "aesthetes." It's well worth the price.

I found Evelyn Waugh's remarks on the "pre-war Georgian" period most interesting: One is naturally inclined to regard all periods but one's own as a conservative Utopia, where everything was tranquilly rooted in tradition, the rich respected, the poor contented, and everyone slept well and ate with a hearty appetite. Fair enough -- historians are major violators in this regard, picking out their utopias from the dustpin of history, Old South, Medieval Europe, 1960s America. But...still...can we today claim cultural superiority to 1910? Hardly. Political superiority? Doubtful -- quantitative enlargement rather than qualitative improvement, really. Can we really say the world is far improved from the days when these men fell in trenches at Ypres?

Is this a good or bad thing? I scored 10.45365% on the Geek Test, saved from further humiliation by a total lack of interest in science fiction or wacko fantasy shows/books/games. But the historian bit pushed me over, I'm afraid.

First, scientists have computed just how much damage Guy Fawkes would have caused if his plot to kill James I and blow up Parliament succeeded -- the "big bang" would have destroyed a huge swath of downtown London because Fawkes used much more gunpowder than he needed.

Second, a member of the Scottish Socialist Party (one of three, perhaps?) pinned up a poster in his office picturing Fawkes with the line "Vote Guy Fawkes, the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions."

Not surprisingly, many are not amused.

And how about this? Looking for an interesting email address, one that reflects your historical, regional, ideological preferences? Well, how about "yourname@scottishtories.com"? David Hume would be proud.

Not only is Michael Howard the first Jewish Conservative leader since Disraeli, he is also the first Welshman ever to lead the Tories.

But before you get carried away by Howard, take a peek at Peter Hitchens lovely bitter article about him. A few snippets to wet your appetite: Bah, humbug. The Tory Party currently resembles a cage in which several savage small animals are kept in order only by the threat that the pet shop owner will drown the lot of them if they succumb to the biting and gouging that they instinctively long to do ... Mr Howard has declared that he will 'lead from the centre', which means he will offer no real challenge to this anti-British, politically correct regime of penal taxation, no serious opposition to the Labour policy of winking at mass illegal immigration, no serious thinking about crime and disorder, no discussion of leaving the oppressive EU, no help for the married family, no radical reform for the worst education system in Europe.

The last remaining British Military Medal winner is still alive at 104 (despite being pronounced dead by unaware veteran associations a few years ago). Lance Corporal James Lovell lied about his age to enlist in 1915 and fought at the Somme.

Well, the 18th century isn't the best century in which to find a Scottish nationalist hero. You've got guys like Rob Roy who, while being pretty cool if you're a McGregor, aren't too great if you're a MacDonald whom the Gregora find asleep in the heather. Your best bet is a Frenchy kid with good manners and a passion for cherry brandy and chasing skirt--but it's hard to get enthusiastic about Bonnie Prince Charlie after Culloden. Then everyone gets hung right and left, the English suborn the Scots into Highland regiments, and before you know it they're playing the bagpipes on the Plains of Abraham and tearing into the other half of the Auld Alliance, the Frogs.

Not, if you're a spin doctor for the Scottish Nationalist Party, altogether the best century in which to find an appropriate poster boy.

That's why they were pretty darn happy when Braveheart rolled into the theaters.

Accurate? Accuracy? It's medieval, no one can remember that far back.

So what you are saying, my vaunted Colonialist friend, is that Rob Roy has more in common with Don Corleone than George Washington? An out-of-date tribalist robbing and lying for the good of his clan, later hijacked by Scottish nationalists desperate for a symbol of their resolve? Then who would you choose as the 18th century embodiment of Scottish "national" pride? Who is the Scottish General Lee? Or is this a loaded question, assuming there actually is something called Scottish national (or should I say regional) pride?

The Doc emails me and asks:

"But was Rob Roy duplicitious for national reasons or purely personal? To say the first is coy and good Machiavellian politics; to say the second is greed and treason."

Nation? What nation? And what personal reasons? My goodness, Doc, I am a little shocked. I think that both of those categories are a wee bit anachronistic for a 1700's Highland Chieftan.

Rob Roy was looking after Clan McGregor who were already, if I mistake not, forbidden to actually use their name; hence they were called "The Nameless Clan", and hence we know him as Rob Roy rather than Rob Roy McGregor. This is all tucked into Kidnapped and Catriona; Stevenson knew his history. As a Highland Chief at this moment in time, Rob Roy was really the last generation to think of the tribe as the paramount political, social and cultural identifier. So I think that "treason" is a bit much; sure, from either the Jacobite or Hanoverian perspective he was betraying them. But as far as the McGregor's were concerned, their Chief was looking after them.

And I am just a little amused that this good Professor is all flabberghasted that Rob Roy was a "confidence man". Con man? Hah! He stole cattle and committed murder. And his sons stole women (or a woman, a very famous case), and forced her to marry. Con man is the least of it.

This is a whole lot of newspaper article about nothing.

Rob Roy a Traitor??

I hope this doesn't sound too cynical, but there were very few political luminaries in any part of Britain who didn't work both sides of the political schism in the late 17th and early 18th century. John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, was in correspondence with the Stuart court at St. Germain in Paris, even when he was kicking around the French Army. He fed them inconsequential intelligence, lies, and perhaps even the occasional tidbit of good intelligence. Why? Was this all brilliant spycraft? Probably...but he was also, perhaps, keeping his options open. After all, he had been one of James II's most trusted subordinates, his sister had been James' mistress, and thus James' illegitimate son the Duke of Berwick was his nephew.

Likewise James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, was always suspected of being a secret Jacobite. He had made his obeisance at the Jacobite court in Italy in 1717. When he failed to catch up with Bonnie Prince Charlie's army in the '45, it was widely suspected that it was not a consequence of bad weather. Oglethorpe was never given a command in the British Army after that, though he remained its senior officer until his death forty years later.

So Rob Roy was working both sides of the fence? He was a Highlander! Of course he was! It's like expressing surprise that a mafioso sometimes informs on his rival gangs. I am shocked-- shocked!-- to find that sort of behavior going on in the Highlands.

It's what I like about the Highlands--they're a bunch of paesan who wear tartan and substitute oats for pasta.

Rob Roy a fraud?

That's what a new book is about to say. The font of Scottish nationalism is revealed as a British spy (he sold secrets to the Government during the Jacobite revolt of 1715) and a swindler (caught attempting to hide assets and fraudulently declare bankrupcy). The author, Dr. David Stevenson of St. Andrew's University, told Scotland on Sunday this past weekend: I have found evidence that he was selling intelligence to the chief of the Hanoverian army in Scotland. This is typical of Rob Roy. He sells himself as a Jacobite, but at the same time he was selling information to the government ... I was surprised at the extent of his double dealing and criminality. He encouraged comparisons with the Robin Hood myth. He was a confidence trickster and was very clever at getting people to take his side. He sells himself as the little man being done down by the powerful.

Yikes. Good luck to Dr. Stephenson next time he drops by the local for a pint.

Favorite headline of the day, from the Washington Post:

"U.S. Administrator Imposes Flat Tax System on Iraq"

First, only the Post (and perhaps the LA Times, NY Times, and Boston Globe) would use the verb "imposes" in connection with a flat tax. A flat 15% income tax rate is an imposition? "Imposes" seems to suggest "against their will." Wouldn't the headline be better: "U.S. Administrator Awards Flat Tax System to Iraq?"

Second, what does it say that Iraq gets the flat tax before the US does? Next thing you know, Baghdad will be an "enterprise zone" ahead of Washington, DC.

A couple of things this dreary Monday morning:

Gene Robinson was consecrated yesterday over in Durham, NH, and this likely marks the beginning of the end of the American Episcopal Church as we know it. Some are even announcing that the Robinson scandal will be the most serious crisis in the Anglican Church since the American Revolution. Condemnations are already rolling in from Canterbury and Africa, and well as across the US and Canada. Robinson has his miter, but he will lose the church to which it belongs.

The most eloquent voice in Durham was a parishioner named Meredith Harwood, who read out a very thoughtful statement objecting to the consecration. She said, in part: It will tear us apart at our deepest level. This is foundational tearing, the most painful rupturing which human beings can experience. Jesus prayed for his followers to be one. The Anglican Communion is a sacred gift which has been entrusted to us. How dare this diocese rend asunder that which God has joined together! This is also the cowardly and conforming act of a church that has capitulated to elite culture. Many superficially appealing voices are telling us, "express yourselves."

But Jesus brought a gospel of salvation and transformation, not a watered down message of affirmation. Of course everyone is invited to God's party no matter who they are, no matter what their background or struggle in life. Yes, part of what Jesus offers is a profound love and welcome, but it is not a love that leaves people where they are, but a holy love which calls them to be who God wants them to become.

This is why Jesus said to the woman in John 8 on whom he had compassion, "go and sin no more," which he would say to Gene Robinson if he were physically here today. Inclusivity without transformation is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot be deaf, we shall not capitulate to what some in elite culture insist the church should do.

Churches hijacked by "elite culture" and "inclusivity without transformation" -- could there be a better description of the modern Christian crisis? The rest of her statement and a bevy of others can be found here.

All this brings to mind John Derbyshire's interesting article from last June, bemoaning the "gay-ghettoization" of modern Western Christianity; as it turns out, the article got Derbyshire into hot water with hang-wringing Midwestern academics who found such utterances insensitive.

I just finished Adam Nicholson's God's Secretaries, about the making of the King James Bible. It is popular history at its best and worst, taking a dusty but important event and making it accessible to the non-specialist, yet conjecturing and making the participants speak in a loose imaginative manner, unbecoming of a history text. Edmund Morris comes to mind, as Nicholson wonders what people are thinking and saying when the sources fail him.

The book also struck me as a paean to Jacobean society in general and King James I in particular, both of which I am unused to seeing. Granted, I spend most of my time lurking in nineteenth century America, but what I have read has always cast condemnations on those monarchs (James I & II, Charles I & II) who were more at home with divine right than popular rights. Perhaps Nicholson's take is a healthy one, giving the Stuarts and the Cavaliers a polite nod in the midst of an audience full of frowns.

I feel obligated, as a recent resident of the Island Kingdom, to say a little something about the latest round of Tory backstabbing, which has resulted in the disposal of Iain Duncan Smith (known as IDS), and seems fair to end up with Michael Howard as Leader of the Opposition.

The BBC has an unusually fair summary of events here. The Daily Telegraph, aka Torygraph, has a knowing insiders news-story here.

It seems clear that IDS was a goner once there were 25 names on a petition to vote on his leadership; Boris Johnson in an unusually heavy-hearted essay explains that, after all, the Tories are such a tiny band that 25 is to all intents and purposes a plurality. Boris explains in succinct fashion how he in the best English public school tradition stabbed deep for the heart when a sign of weakness was detected in the leader. Well, its a tradition, I suppose, so it has that going for it. Boris, however, explains that "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party." Which reminds me of something another Johnson should have said: Sir, party loyalty is the last refuge of the political scoundrel.

My biggest surprise is the ease and speed with which Michael Howard is moving towards coronation as Leader of the Tories. I had assumed, quite mistakenly, that David Davis would put up more of a fight. It all makes me smell a conspiracy. It was just too bloody easy. The fix was, somehow, in.

Anyway, Howard is an interesting chap, a brilliant debater, tough on crime, a Jew from Wales (the first Jew to lead a British party since Disraeli, I imagine), committed Atlanticist, and has the blonde wife which it is de rigeur for any Tory leader to have attached to his arm. (See his BBC profile, and this Torygraph profile by Alice Thomson.) Not too long ago Howard was judged well out of the running for any leadership position, this usually be attributed to a remark by Anne Widdecombe (Shadow Home Secretary after the Blair triumph over Major) that Howard "had something of the night about him."

And now Howard could well be the next Prime Minister, and Anne is sulking on the backbenches in her new platinum dyed hair. It's a funny old world.

Perhaps she wants to marry.