What if we were capable of running our own country?

The “what if?” game is a favourite among those of us who have spent some time studying history.

The end product of six years studying history, and a reminder of how I looked before old age and dissolute living took their toll

What if someone had said in late June 1914: “You know, Franz Ferdinand, I think it might be better if you didn’t visit Sarajevo today”?

Or what if Britain had decided to let France, Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary get on with it in August 1914, and sat aside whistling nonchalantly?

The rationale for intervention has always been that Britain cannot allow the Continent to be dominated by a single power that might act against our vital interests.

In which case our finest minds have done an absolutely cracking job, through 50 years of international politics and diplomacy, in creating a power bloc on our doorstep that seems to be almost uniformly hostile to our notion of who should run the European Union, and how it should develop.

This should not be altogether surprising. The Continental countries’ experience of revolutions, dictatorships and military occupations during the last century is vastly different from our own.

If they wish to forge an ever-closer union with a common currency and uniform laws largely handed down from Brussels, bully for them. But I sense that a natural majority of the British people shares my reluctance to join them.

Hence at some point we need to stop lying to each other, admit that we want different things, disengage and move on.

There are many respected economists willing to vouch that the net economic cost to Britain of withdrawing from the EU would be marginal at worst, and that the oft-bleated refrain of “three million jobs at risk” is a number simply plucked from the air.

Only one thing gives me pause about embarking on an unreservedly enthusiastic campaign for our early withdrawal from the EU, and it is not the potential impact on business. It is doubts about the calibre of those who would have to shoulder the burden of running a properly independent country.

Surely those with the privilege of voting in the forthcoming Scottish independence referendum must similarly consider the leadership of the SNP and think: “Really? All on their own?”

Wheezes pour forth from all sides in the year-long campaign for the 2015 general election. The Conservatives offer us HS3 to cap the monstrous folly of HS2, plus the alluring promise of elected mayors, even though the idea keeps being rejected whenever people are offered a say on the issue. The evident moral here must be: don’t ask the people.

Any sane person’s heart must surely sink when George Osborne proposes to merge the tax and National Insurance systems, given that the three words even more likely to induce despair than “England football team” are “Government IT project”: a guaranteed recipe for waste and chaos on a truly Brobdingnagian scale.

Meanwhile Labour’s own policy chief Jon Cruddas denounces the “dead hand” at the party’s centre that prevents it from proposing anything similarly radical, and Nick Clegg …

Well, there’s probably no point wasting ink on anything the LibDems have to say, given their electoral prospects next year.

Are any of our prospective national leaders really up to the job of leading a nation of 64 million people alone on the international stage?

Our Queen certainly is, but she is 88 and on a job share as head of state of 15 other countries at the same time.

Ed Miliband? Don’t make me laugh.

Nigel Farage? I refer you to my previous answer.

David Cameron is undoubtedly a bit of a lightweight. A former PR man, for heaven’s sake, and I can tell you from decades of direct experience just how useless they are.

But our “friends” in Europe have surely done him a massive favour in appointing as their supremo a man who apparently likes a drop and whose crowning achievement to date has been leading a country with a population around two thirds that of Tyneside.

Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, congratulations. You are officially the man who makes even David Cameron look like a proper statesman.

Now, what if Dave actually calls that EU referendum I am sure he would really rather avoid, and cannot wriggle around to recommending that we all vote to stay?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

You've let me down again

Like every right-thinking columnist in the country, I am extremely disappointed with your performance in the European and local elections.

I should perhaps clarify that I mean “right-thinking” in the sense of “correct” (though not, heaven forfend, politically correct) rather than as an indicator of my own allegiance.

Unlike many, I am not annoyed that 27.5% of you who voted chose a party led by Viz comic’s “Man In The Pub”. That is your prerogative.

But I am beyond furious that 66% of you could not be bothered to vote at all.

What on earth was so utterly riveting that it prevented you from nipping out at any point between 7am and 10pm last Thursday and marking a simple cross on a piece of paper? A journey that you could have avoided, as I did, by requesting a postal vote.

Don’t say “It doesn’t change anything” and “They’re all the same”. Because they’re not, as the triumph of The Man In The Pub demonstrates.

I keep hearing radio interviews with people banging on about how we need to increase numbers on the electoral register and perhaps extend the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds, but surely this pales into insignificance compared with just persuading the two thirds of the electorate already on the register to get off their backsides and at least feign an interest.

Our former third party used to be fond of arguing that we would all be more engaged if we made every vote count by abolishing the unfairness of “first past the post”. In the circumstances, it would have taken a heart of stone not to laugh at the almost complete destruction of the Liberal Democrats under a system of proportional representation.

It had all the appeal of watching a famous big game hunter being trampled to death by an angry elephant.

Not so long ago “I agree with Nick” was the political catchphrase on nearly everyone’s lips. Now the only person likely to utter it is Mrs Clegg, and he probably can’t even count on that.

The ejection from the European Parliament of that other Nick from the BNP was another bright spot, burnished by his explanation that the electorate had “voted for UKIP’s racist policies instead”.

Meanwhile Labour are furious with what remains of the white working class for daring to vote for The Man In The Pub rather than their union-appointed leader, who has performed the great feat of making Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock look like top Prime Ministerial material.

Among the erstwhile major parties only David Cameron seems to be avoiding serious questions about his leadership by keeping his head down and praying that his natural supporters will now return to the fold after registering their “protest vote”.

Over the coming months we will grow very weary indeed of hearing “Vote Farage, Get Miliband” trotted out as the entirely negative argument for voting Conservative.

Where are the positives? I am a natural pessimist, but even I am weary of the endless doom and gloom that passes for political debate in this country today.

Britain is a great place to live. (Clearly it must be, or immigration would not be such a big election issue.) The North East is the best place to live in Britain (as I am reminded every time I have to leave it to earn a living).

In my view we all have much to be grateful for but, if you don’t agree, you have the power to change it. Thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 we already know that the next General Election will be on May 7, 2015. So you have nearly a full year to practise going out of the house or to get a postal vote lined up.

If the two thirds of you who did not bother to vote last week could be persuaded to do so, all the polls and calculations will go out of the window because literally anything is possible. Surely that thought must excite you just a tiny little bit?

If not, please remember that those who do not bother to vote automatically lose all entitlement to that most cherished of benefits: the right to moan about the result.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

A chance to scale our cot sides in the polling booth

In my admittedly limited experience, children are born intensely conservative. They hate change.

Take my younger son. (Not literally, please.)

Now aged two, he has latterly taken to climbing out of his cot in the evenings. On a couple of occasions he has hurt himself in the process, so last week we gave him the happy news that we would be removing the cot’s sides to convert it into a bed.

Cue much pouting and floods of tears. Through his choking sobs, I made out the words: “My no want a bed. My want to sleep in a cot.”

A child with strong conservative views on just about everything

As with children, so with adult politics. Whenever we are offered a radical choice, we tend to fall back on the old principle of “better the devil you know”.

Hence the fate of the North East Assembly and Alternative Vote referendums. Or, looking further afield, the votes on independence for Quebec or the creation of an Australian republic.

I suspect that this augurs badly for those campaigning for a “yes” vote in the Scottish independence referendum, but it also creates a real mountain to climb for those arguing for our withdrawal from the EU, in the unlikely event that we are ever allowed to vote on that.

Particularly as the classic Big Lie about three million jobs going straight down the gurgler on our exit will be repeated relentlessly throughout any campaign.

This argument has featured to some extent in the current enthralling European election campaign, but for me the real impact of the “party of in” came in the letter I received last week from my elder son’s school.

This announced that, from September, his school lunches will be free of charge. And instructed me in a rather hectoring manner to write back immediately if I did not want him to have them, explaining my reasons why.

As it happens, I am perfectly content for him to eat a school dinner, which is why I have been cheerfully paying for the privilege for the last year.

Once I could have met this cost from the child allowance the Government kindly gave us when our sons were born. Gordon Brown even threw in a £250 cheque to kick-start our elder boy’s Child Trust Fund.

Our benefactor, possibly giving an early example of the "Farage wave"

Then George Osborne decreed that, because I earn more than some arbitrary limit, this child allowance would be taken away again. Though no one ever actually wrote explaining how I could stop receiving it.

So the money still flows into a joint bank account, my wife spends it on the children, and it gets clawed back from me when I submit my tax return at the end of the year. A classic time- and money-wasting bureaucratic merry-go-round.

I am not complaining about being asked to make my contribution to cutting the deficit, but the logic of now giving me another benefit I do not need completely eludes me. In fact, it makes me fear for the sanity of those currently running the country.

Free school meals are Nick Clegg’s big idea and presumably designed to make me feel warmer towards his party. If so, it is a wheeze that has backfired spectacularly.

It has strengthened my desire not to see another coalition after the next General Election, and particularly not to allow the Liberal Democrats to become our permanent party of government, swinging like a weathervane between left and right.

Stolen, with thanks, from the Daily Referendum blog

I have already taken the opportunity to express my view in tomorrow’s European elections. Voting early because, about four general elections ago, I requested a postal vote that somehow became a permanent fixture.

I resisted the temptation to show my disgust with the loons currently in power by voting for a party dominated by even bigger ones.

That UKIP carnival in full swing

I do not seek to influence your own vote in any way, but I do urge you to cast one, no matter how much contempt you may feel for politicians in general and the European Parliament in particular.

The people who say: “Don’t vote, it only encourages them” are quite wrong. Because voting is the only peaceful way we have of exerting influence on those who seek power over us, and eventually climbing over our own cot sides to sanity and freedom.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The St Jude's Day storm ... about bad language and a tie

The St Jude’s Day storm broke out in the Hann household with full force yesterday morning, though it had nothing to do with the weather.

Instead it was over my elder son Charlie’s return to school after the half term break and his switch to a “winter uniform” including a crisp white shirt and a smartly striped tie. This was in place of the monogrammed polo shirt he had been happily wearing since he started school last month.

A very grumpy boy (can't think where he gets it from)

For me, his new clothes brought back fond memories of my own garb at Akhurst Boys’ Preparatory School in Jesmond 55 years ago. The only real difference being that his outfit is blue, whereas mine was in a shade of dark brown specified in terms now so politically incorrect that I cannot even hint at them in a family newspaper.

Charlie, however, took violent exception to his tie. Not as an act of youthful rebellion against convention, but because it was a “totally rubbish” clip-on tie, not “a proper tie like Daddy’s”.

The key difference here is that I don’t think Akhurst’s occasional spells away from our desks for unenergetic bursts of “rhythmics” and Scottish country dancing ever required us to take our ties off after Mummy had put them on for us in the morning. Whereas Charlie and his classmates regularly change into PE kit, and the prospect of helping 20-odd four-year-olds back into proper neckties must seem rather daunting for their teachers.

Charlie had already shown encouraging signs of harbouring old-fashioned tastes two years ago, when we bought him a well-cut miniature suit to wear at a wedding, and he refused point blank to be seen wearing it in public unless we also got him a smart spotted silk handkerchief to sport in his top pocket.

At least I need have no worries about finding a suitable inheritor for the gold watch and chain handed down to me from my great-grandfather William Hann, who was born in Whittingham in 1836. This conveniently allows me to focus all my energies on worrying about whether I will ever work again as the current TV series about Iceland continues to unfold.

There does not seem to be a lot of obvious upside in being the PR adviser during what is already widely cited as a textbook PR disaster: Horsegate.

I have been unkindly described by one reviewer as “looking like a Werther’s Original granddad”, on which the only consolation I received was the e-mail from a friend pointing out that they could have substituted “Operation Yewtree suspect” with equal accuracy.

Given that I spent the best part of a year toning down my usual robust vocabulary because of the presence of cameras, it seemed ironic that I spent Saturday lunchtime in the Joiners’ Arms at Newton-by-the-Sea being lectured by my 88-year-old aunt about my “dreadful” language.

I do hope she heeded my strong advice not to tune in last night, when I quoted some irate people who had achieved simply dizzying new heights of colourful invective.

Perhaps I may yet carve out a niche as an author and lecturer on PR and how not to do it. After all, someone who is consistently wrong is as useful a guide to any subject as a person who is always right. The value of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats in our national life lies precisely in our ability to find out what they are saying on any issue, so that we may then confidently assert the opposite.

One consolation if I do find myself unemployed, in the wake of this TV exposure of my professional limitations, is that my wife has finally conceded that Low Newton’s beach is her “favourite in the whole world” and she would not mind living nearby.

I suppose we might just about be able to afford a small caravan.

What’s more, I strongly suspect that the children at the local primary school don’t wear “totally rubbish” clip-on ties, though this may well be because they don’t wear ties of any sort.

And the way Charlie is going, in another year he will be sporting a Fedora, wing collar and spats, which may make fitting in a little bit of a challenge.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

2013: the year in prospect

My forecasts for the year ahead (which at least probably stand a better chance than the below-mentioned Radio 4 racing tips):

January: BBC Today programme announces appointment of ancient Mayan racing tipster; Muffin the Mule arrested as Jimmy Savile enquiry enters new phase

February: Silvio Berlusconi re-elected Prime Minister of Italy; satire officially declared dead

March: Shock in Parliament as someone says “I agree with Nick” for first time since 2010 leaders’ debates; Tories blamed

April: New press regulator starts work; all newspapers lead on story of successful lambing in Northumberland

May: First woman bishop enthroned after surprise Synod vote; cathedral rocked by estimate for new curtains on all stained glass windows

June: Queen celebrates 60th anniversary of Coronation; Prince Charles wins Network Rail Lifetime Achievement Award for world’s longest wait

Frankly any excuse will do for a lovely picture of the Coronation

July: Duchess of Cambridge gives birth to a son; feminists demand urgent recount

August: New Bank of England Governor Mark Carney completes initial review of books and returns to Canada, saying he may be some time

September: Alex Salmond slain as local toddlers’ Flodden 500th anniversary re-enactment gets out of hand

October: Last Newcastle public library closes: Tories blamed; Lit & Phil announces first-ever waiting list for membership

November: After knife-edge vote, US Congress approves far-reaching ban on personal ownership of bazookas and howitzers

December: Bankers earn record bonuses; MPs claim record expenses; Tories blamed

www.keithhann.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Here's a truly radical idea: let's value tradition

Amidst all the millenarian gloom arising from last week’s Biblical deluge, it was good to be reminded on Saturday of the helping hand that God extended to Noah, and to the children of Israel at the Red Sea.

The occasion for these reflections was the baptism of my younger son, James. Yes, I know I wrote that I had given up trying to organise this, but I reckoned without the steely determination of my Muslim wife.

Not that Mrs Hann ever demonstrates any of the conventional signs of adherence to Islam, like attending a mosque, reciting the Koran, praying to Allah five times a day, wearing a burka or eschewing pork. But she does have Iranian parents and invariably announces, “I’m terribly sorry, I’m a Muslim,” when the Jehovah’s Witnesses pay us a call.

Suitably fortified by wifely insistence, I somehow managed to arrange a service that stuck rigidly to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, over the twitching corpse of the rector whose church we were borrowing.

“Surely you would prefer the modern service,” he quibbled. “I find there is far too much sin in the BCP.”

So, just as the church now likes to omit the traditional bit about the prevention of fornication in the marriage service, and would no doubt prefer to skirt around anything as downbeat as death during funerals, it strives to avoid the whole point of baptism, which is the mystical washing away of original sin.

And it is not just me. All present agreed that it was a thoroughly uplifting spiritual occasion, replete with “tingle factor” phrases that have echoed down the ages such as “Ask, and ye shall have; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”; and “Suffer little children to come unto me.” 

What could possibly be better than hearing three godparents solemnly promise to “renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh”?

In its attitude to its liturgy, the Church resembles a stately home owner who feels so embarrassed by his riches that he is moved to store all the Old Masters in a basement, whitewash the walls and put up some polystyrene tiles to hide the frescoes on the ceiling.

We might as well ban Shakespeare from the theatre, because the words of Eminem or Frankie Boyle would be more accessible.

It is the same possibly well-intentioned but ultimately vandalistic spirit that motivates Nick Clegg (who would make a perfect modern vicar if only he were prepared to undergo a sex change) when he seeks to destroy another institution that has worked perfectly well for hundreds of years, the House of Lords. 

No one disputes that the current mode of entry to the Lords is a touch eccentric, but it has produced a revising chamber that combines unparalleled specialist expertise with robust common sense.

It could once be argued that it suffered from inbuilt bias, but even when it was stuffed with Conservative hereditary peers, it defeated Mrs Thatcher’s government on more than 170 occasions, while the Commons did so only four times.

When discussing Tony Blair’s attempts to reform the constitution, I recycled Evelyn Waugh’s aphorism about it being like seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee. With Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems, it is more like being trapped in a small room with a troop of howler monkeys and a live hand grenade.

What sort of nonentity is going to stand for election to the reformed Lords? Oh yes, the many Lib Dem MPs who will be made redundant come the next election.

We should treasure and rejoice in the great riches we have in our language, culture and institutions. And amongst these, there can surely be none greater than the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and the dear old House of Lords. Please just let them be. Amen.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Few things give us more cause to rejoice than being left behind

We all surely knew that the non-campaign for elected mayors was running into serious trouble when its supporters started bleating about the dangers of Newcastle being “left behind”.

I have been left behind all my life, from the earliest egg and spoon races at my primary school, and it has never done me any harm. In fact, I rejoice in it.

How many of us wake up in the morning full of regret that we ignored all those powerful politicians and economic gurus who warned us that we would be “left behind” if we did not join the euro? But there the parallel ends.

A lemming: no doubt cursing its luck at being left behind

Elected mayors were a half-baked idea that no one seemed capable of explaining coherently, let alone selling to an electorate that clearly had other issues much closer to its heart.

I await with keen interest a protest march chanting: “What do we want? More highly paid elected politicians! When do we want them? Now!”

The euro, on the other hand, while economically illiterate, is a very well-thought-through cog in that great political project designed to deliver a single European state. And even as the voters of France and Greece reject the parties of austerity, the cheerleaders of the new Europe like Lord Mandelson declare that the only answer to the crisis is – yes, you guessed it – more European integration.

Lord Contra-Indicator of Hartlepool and Foy

As a small-c conservative, I naturally take heart from the great British public’s tendency to reject gratuitous change, whether in the form of a regional assembly, the alternative vote or elected mayors, whenever anyone consults us directly.

I am also conscious, however, that the real victor in last week’s local elections and referenda was the Apathy Party, which kept more than two thirds of potential voters away from the polling stations.

If we don’t like Messrs Cameron and Osborne now, we are surely going to hate them when all the belt-tightening measures they have announced but not enacted actually start to impact on our lives.

It seems implausible that we would turn so soon to the comedy double act of the Two Eds, who were right at the epicentre of the Gordon Brown Fan Club that got us into our current mess in the first place.

Miliband and Balls: Ssshhh, don't mention Gordon

Though memories are remarkably short, as one can judge from the chorus of boos on any discussion programme when Coalition ministers attempt to pin the blame on the huge deficit that Labour ran up.

We cannot register a protest vote with the usual third party, since Nice Nick is enjoying a threesome with those other posh kids, so where does that leave us? With Nigel Farage, Caroline Lucas, George Galloway and Nick Griffin, plus others who would make their policies look like positively mainstream.

In short, pretty much where the Greek people have ended up today. Time will tell whether the net result is to be the collapse of the euro project or the extinction of democracy in Greece and any other country where the electorate has the temerity to challenge the wisdom of the European elite.

My money, I regret to say, is on the latter. But, either way, we face a period of acute economic and political turbulence across the Channel that isn’t going to do any favours for prosperity or stability here.

I would relish a referendum that gave Britain the opportunity to start extricating itself from this European car crash. The result is far from easy to call: our innate conservatism and shortness of memory surely militate against apparently radical action to put the clock back and reclaim our independence.

But when you are perched on the edge of a cliff with a forest fire advancing behind you, there is no easy choice.

Who will give us the chance to vote on something that actually matters? If nothing else, it might help to push the Apathy Party back into the minority where it rightfully belongs.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Elected mayors? I'd rather be represented by a duke

How entirely typical that our beloved political elite should mark England’s national day by publishing proposals to screw up one of the few bits of our system of government that is both decorative and decorous, functional and inexpensive.

I have got into hot water before for defending the House of Lords. Clearing out some old newspapers at the weekend, I came across an impassioned reader’s letter of October 2009. Its author positively reeled in disbelief that anyone could hold to the “absurd” notion that there was a place in the “modern British constitution” for the hereditary peer.

But frankly I would much rather be represented in Parliament by a duke than almost any of our current crop of MPs. Apart from anything else, a man who has inherited a castle or two seems rather less likely to fiddle his expenses than someone who has clawed their way up the obsessives’ greasy pole of political research and special adviserships.

The Duke of Wellington: my kind of Prime Minister

While there may be some life peers whose curricula vitae leave a little to be desired, it also seems ironic that proposals to clear out the current House of Lords should be published on the very day that the papers carried obituaries of exactly the sort of member that the old system of nomination delivered so well: that doughty campaigner for the disabled, Lord Ashley.

However, I am prepared to forgive all this for the sheer delight of hearing Nick Clegg on the BBC on Sunday dismissing the need for a referendum on Lords reform in these words: “Why is it that we should spend a great deal of money, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, asking the British people a question which frankly most people don’t worry about very much?”

In such marked contrast to, say, the great AV referendum of 2011, on which the great British public could scarcely contain their excitement. Or the current fatuous votes on “directly elected mayors”, for which we have clearly all been crying out since we saw such brilliant examples as Ken and Boris, the man in the monkey suit in Hartlepool and that English Democrat in Doncaster.

Hangus, Mayor of Hartlepool - almost making Ken look credible

If the people of Newcastle are daft enough to vote for this, we are told that the egotist who gains the position will have (undefined) “greater powers” and could take a leadership role across the whole of the “city region”. Including, presumably, the rural backwater in Northumberland that I call home.

In which case it seems pretty unfair that I am not also being given an opportunity to cast a vote against the idea. Government isn’t “Britain’s Got Talent”. We don’t need more star personalities. We need decent, principled and disinterested people prepared to undertake a necessary but thankless job.

Like most of the current members of the House of Lords, to pick an example entirely at random.

The Government wastes not millions, but billions of pounds of our money every single day. It makes me furious every time I contemplate it. Yet suggest a referendum on something about which a significant number of us clearly do care, like our continuing membership of the European Union, and there is never any shortage of reasons why it would be unconstitutional and unnecessary.

No wonder politicians are held in such minimal respect.

There are lots of things in Britain that aren’t working well. School leavers unfit for employment because they are functionally illiterate, the continuing travails of the NHS, overstretched armed forces and a collapsing pensions system, to name but a few. Against such fundamentals, having a Home Secretary who literally does not know which day of the week it is pales into insignificance.

Theresa May (or, in her diary, June). But probably Won't.

So as some people once said on the telly, I agree with Nick. The House of Lords hardly even begins to register on the very long list of things we need to worry about, so why doesn’t our cabinet of chum(p)s just move on and leave it alone?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Surely there must be some room at the top for a mere lad of 57?

Nick Clegg excited some predictable mockery when he recently referred to rich people living “literally in a different galaxy” when it came to paying tax.

Deputy Prime Minister and Lord President of the Council. No, honestly.

Sadly it is not so. They are very much on this planet, and many undoubtedly share the late Leona Helmsley’s view that “only the little people pay taxes”. And have, as Mr Clegg correctly pointed out, armies of lawyers and accountants dedicated to making this a reality.

Leona: sentenced to 16 years for tax evasion, served 18 months

But those at the top are different in other ways, too: notably in what they contribute in time as well as money. And time, I can say with confidence, is ultimately far more precious.

For example, the other day Tesco led the private sector in raising its normal pension age to 67. Yet its last boss Sir Terry Leahy conveniently retired, shortly before the business began to be described as “troubled”, at the ripe old age of 55.

Leahy: before the wheels fell off

The excuse, I keep being told, is that the job of Chief Executive, Prime Minister or even Headmaster is so impossibly demanding nowadays that no one can stick at it for more than a decade. This would at least make my age of 57 the ideal time to apply for a senior position if the same rules applied at the top as everywhere else.

But, strangely enough, they don’t. Although we are all living longer, and retirement dates for most of us keep receding, those in the most senior roles just go on getting younger. Aspiration is confined to a 20-year window between leaving university full of promise (for which read inexperienced and unemployable) to being considered pathetically over the hill.

We see the results all around us. Most of the present Cabinet, with the right honourable exception of Kenneth Clarke, look like children to me.

Clarke: I may not care much for his politics, but I applaud his dress sense

Yet Palmerston was appointed Prime Minister for the first time at 71, Gladstone for the last time at 82. Churchill was 65 when he succeeded Chamberlain in 1940, and 80 when he finally left Downing Street in 1955. We may debate the merits of all these men, and question whether they were on top form towards the end of their careers, but surely few would deny that the political class of 2012 look like pygmies beside them.

What a British Prime Minister should look like

Similarly, the list of possible successors to Rowan Williams has several men marked down by the bookies as “too old” because they are over 60.

There was a time when one could at least rely on bishops and judges bringing the wisdom of age to their vocations, with the added bonus of some easy laughs when they found themselves baffled by the more outlandish aspects of modern life.

Today it seems that only the British monarchy and the Papacy have room for someone seriously old to play the lead – even though it is so obviously good for the individual filling the role.

In the days when cardinals really were walled up in the Sistine Chapel until they elected a new Pope, there was a strong temptation to vote for the oldest and feeblest of their number to give themselves a break. Time and again this granted a spectacular new lease of life to some poor old chap who had been at death’s door until the Pope’s triple crown landed on his head.

Pope Leo XIII: crowned at 68, died at 93

I am under no Blair-like illusions that my best years are ahead of me, but I do feel that it is time for those of us born in the mid-1950s to launch a crusade to make 57 something fuller of promise than simply a number on the side of Heinz tins.

In short, I am still eager to get to the top of something: indeed anything. All suggestions will be most gratefully received. I promise to apply myself conscientiously for at least the next ten years, and not to spend a penny of my very reasonable salary on employing sharp tax accountants.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Give us a vote on who makes our laws

I couldn’t get very excited about last week’s Barnsley by-election. Nor, judging by the feeble 35% turnout, could the electors of Barnsley themselves, who obediently placed their usual signatures against the name of the Labour candidate, as they have done since time immemorial.

Notwithstanding the apparently inconvenient fact that the Labour candidate they had elected only last May subsequently turned out to be an expenses-fiddling crook.

What did get me very exercised last week were the astonishing statements made by two previously unheard-of judges at Nottingham Crown Court who, in the course of barring a Christian couple from fostering children because of their unfashionable views on homosexuality, proclaimed “We sit as secular judges serving a multi-cultural community of many faiths” and “the laws and usages of the realm do not include Christianity, in whatever form. The aphorism that ‘Christianity is part of the common law of England’ is mere rhetoric.”

And there was I fooled into thinking that I lived in a Christian country because we have a head of state anointed in an ancient religious ceremony, two established churches, bishops sitting in the House of Lords – oh, and because nearly 80% of the population of England and Wales defined themselves as Christian, when asked in the 2001 census.

The judges themselves presumably delivered their shocking words in a court adorned with the royal coat of arms, and in which the proceedings usually kick off with participants being invited to swear an oath on the Bible. So how could they so easily conclude that Christian beliefs count for no more in Britain today than those of the islanders of Vanuatu who worship the Duke of Edinburgh as a god?

Memo to judges: the bit at the bottom means 'God and my right'. Quiz: Why might Peter Cook be turning in his grave?

In fact the Vanuatans would almost certainly be accorded more respect by the English courts, because it seems axiomatic that we must pander to the views of every religious minority for fear of causing offence. Hence the widespread sale of unlabelled halal meat to unsuspecting supermarket customers, and the official efforts to excise Christianity from our traditional public holidays, even though worshippers of other faiths keep asserting that they don’t mind in the least. My Muslim in-laws certainly celebrate Christmas far more enthusiastically than I have ever done.

The really important issue here, however, is not the content of the judgement, but the fact that power seems to be leaching constantly from those we have elected, however reluctantly, to judges who are forever beyond our reach. That applies whether they sit in the British courts or in the ever more powerful European ones, which came up with last week’s infuriating judgement on the illegality of taking account of the fact that men are more dangerous drivers than women, and die sooner (two facts which might just be tangentially connected).

In May we are being granted a referendum on a change to the voting system that absolutely no one wants, because even those campaigning for the Alternative Vote would really prefer proportional representation, which AV certainly isn’t. You only have to look at the estimates of how much it would have increased the number of Labour MPs in 1997, 2001 and 2005, when they were hardly in short supply, to realise that.

It would also have made not a blind bit of difference in Barnsley, where Labour’s Dan Jarvis scooped over 60% of the vote.

We are apparently so strapped for cash that we must sack soldiers returning from the front line of Afghanistan, yet we can afford to invest millions holding a pointless referendum to appease the doomed Nick Clegg. Well, here’s a radical idea. Why not hold a referendum on something that matters, like who actually makes our laws: MPs, British judges, Brussels bureaucrats or the European courts?

Until we are allowed a vote on that, my career advice to my son will be unequivocal: become a lawyer.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Toffs protest for the 'lower class'

Unfortunately this week’s column demands a prefatory apology and explanation. The apology is for the egregious schoolboy error of claiming that descendants of Charles I still have their official residence in St James’s Palace. As anyone with the faintest knowledge of British history will realise, the present Royal family are descended not from him but from his father, James I. The direct and legitimate male line of descent from Charles I ended with the death of Henry, Cardinal York (to Jacobites, King Henry IX) in 1807. Franz, Duke of Bavaria, who is descended from Charles’s youngest daughter Henrietta Anne, is the current head of the House of Stuart, and has indeed made the career-limiting move of being a Roman Catholic.


I know all this because I am a fanatical monarchist and a bit of an anorak. But I wasn’t feeling well when I wrote my column, and clearly had a momentary brainstorm. That is the best I can offer by way of explanation.


Sadly for me, it does not provide much of an advertisement for a grammar school education, or indeed for having a first class degree in history. I hope that it will not be seen as a reflection on my excellent education either in Newcastle or Cambridge. My embarrassment is only increased by the fact that The Journal has chosen to run my column under the headline “Be repulsive if you must, but be right.”

I am on the side of liberty and jollity, colour and glamour, cakes and ale – so I have always loathed the “right but repulsive” Roundheads and admired the “wrong but wromantic” Cavaliers.

Strolling through London last Sunday morning, I was therefore pleased to encounter the mainly well-nourished and grey-haired Royalist members of the English Civil War Society, clad in 17th century fancy dress and equipped with muskets, pikes and even horses to commemorate the last journey of Charles I from St James’s Palace to the scaffold in Whitehall.

A 'two shirt' January Sunday in London

Marching past St James's Palace

Another fine Stuart tradition: pelicans on the lake

It was a bonus for the tour guides, attempting to explain what was going on to the foreigners who had turned up to see the usual changing of the Queen’s guard – our 11-year experiment with republican government by the 1650s equivalent of Gordon Brown having been ranked such a rollicking success that the executed king’s descendants (though not, of course, his most direct descendants, who made the career-limiting move of embracing Roman Catholicism) still have their official residence in St James’s Palace.

The day before I had overheard other guides trying to explain an English tradition with rather less tourist appeal, as placard-wielding youngsters in hooded tops, with scarves pulled over their faces, jogged through Trafalgar Square chanting “Fight back!” Luckily they had neither pikes nor muskets to hand.

Viewing the many cordoned-off streets and the faintly menacing crowd assembling in Bloomsbury from our taxi from the station that morning, I had experienced the same sense of unease that an aristocrat must have felt as his carriage skirted around the mob advancing on the Bastille.

Yet we did not see or hear any more of the student protesters until the early evening when, walking to the theatre, we encountered a small mob advancing down Charing Cross Road, gesticulating at the traffic and chanting a very rude word about the police. They were escorted by a few stoic officers whose poker faces successfully concealed any suggestion that this sentiment was heartily reciprocated.

The British media understandably felt that the protests in Cairo had rather more brio and potential import than this, so I had to consult a search engine to find out what else happened in London at the weekend. Not a lot, apparently. All I could find was a single report on a Bournemouth newspaper’s website, quoting 20-year-old Harriet from Sussex University who “invoked the memory of how popular protests overthrew the poll tax, said demonstrations needed ‘a certain amount of agitation’ and added ‘The lower class people won’t be able to afford to better themselves. It’s terrifying.’”

The lower class people? I kid you not. The language less of Socialist Worker than of the Dowager Lady Grantham, circa 1911.

A grammar school boy like me is naturally inclined to point out that schools like ours were a very effective way for select members of the “lower class” to better themselves until politicians kicked the ladder away on the grounds that it was not available to everyone. With the unsurprising result that the leadership of the country is once again concentrated in the hands of privately educated toffs.

As, on all the evidence to date, is much of the protest movement against them. I can’t see the likes of Harriet bringing down this Government. The cause of continued taxpayer funding for three years drinking and watching daytime TV while acquiring a BA in Public Relations with Dance hardly inspires the passions of the poll tax or the miners’ strike, let alone the Civil War.

While Cameron and Clegg are certainly not romantic or glamorous enough to be classed with Charles I, their opponents have the fatal disadvantage of being the offspring of Cavaliers, masquerading as Roundheads, behaving badly in a not particularly compelling cause. It’s bad enough being repulsive. If you are, it is important at least to be indisputably right.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

2011 revealed

Old Mother Hann takes her traditional look into her cloudy crystal ball and attempts to predict the key events of 2011 for The Journal's nebusiness section:

Jan: VAT rises to 20%; Philip Green issues press release about how much more tax he will be paying as a result.
Feb: Simon Cowell launches new talent contest to find Britain’s most unpopular person; Nick Clegg faces Mike Ashley in final.
Mar: Silvio Berlusconi snatches surprise victory in Italian general election after inviting all male voters to a party.
Apr: Army bulldozers clear snowbound London streets for Royal wedding; Met Office predicts 2011 will be warmest year on record.
May: Britain votes ‘no’ in AV referendum; EU insists it must be repeated until voters give the right answer.
Jun: Duke of Edinburgh celebrates 90th birthday at “Celebrating Multicultural Britain” party; panic attacks put five royal aides in hospital.
Jul: Britain hosts last-ever Wimbledon finals before event moves to Sahara Desert; rumours of bribery strongly denied.
Aug: Reports of wind turbine actually revolving bring thousands of green energy “twitchers” to North East; hoax by tourism bosses uncovered.
Sep: Ed Miliband announces new Labour Party policies; David Cameron rebuked by Speaker for mocking his pronunciation of “policies”.
Oct: Cyber attack stops all online transactions and cash machine withdrawals worldwide; eight-year-old North Shields boy arrested.
Nov: Euro collapses; entire British banking system nationalised.
Dec: Bankers paid record bonuses.

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

2010 assessed

My contribution to the double page spread in The Journal's nebusiness section featuring “Thoughts on 2010” from the Great and Good of the North East business community ... and, for some reason, me:

As usual, 2010 was a year mixing the entirely predictable with the genuinely surprising. Some events, like the emergence of a Mr Miliband at the head of the Labour Party, managed to combine both.

I regret that I failed to include the Icelandic ash cloud in my helpful list of forecasts a year ago, but at least I was spot on in characterising the 2010 General Election as one not to win. It turned out that the great British public did not want anyone to win it, either, setting the scene for the first coalition Government of my lifetime.

My estimation of “Dave” Cameron as a political operator has shot upwards as he has deftly saddled Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats with the blame for so much of the ensuing unpleasantness, though admittedly they have not helped themselves either by breaking explicit election promises or choosing to shimmer around the Strictly Come Dancing floor in white tie and tails while rioting students are running amok in the capital. Louis XVI and Versailles spring to mind.

One thing I got badly wrong was expecting the pain of tax rises, spending cuts and job losses to impact straight after the General Election. Clearly we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Are they really all the same?

Once again I am proud to bring you a column that is spectacularly out of touch with the mood of the region, the nation and quite possibly the entire human race.

I fear this must be so because I spent last Tuesday evening doing a badly co-ordinated jig of glee in front of the television while the helicopters hovered over Downing Street. Between swigs from my celebratory glass, I loudly enquired why the departure of the Browns could not be more like that of the Ceausescus, while my wife murmured soothingly “He’s gone now, love. Just let it go.”

Then David Cameron arrived outside the famous front door and blow me down if almost his first words were not a glowing tribute to his predecessor: “Compared to a decade ago, this country is more open at home and more compassionate abroad and that is something we should all be grateful for.”

Really? More open to all those immigrants who hoovered up most of the new jobs created in the New Labour years, certainly, but how else? And what exactly do our major foreign policy initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan have to do with compassion?

My mystification only deepened when I turned, for light relief, to a social networking site, and found a friend reporting that she had wept over Gordon Brown’s departure, even though she is not a Labour voter. It must have been those well-scrubbed children that brought a lump to the throat, I guess. At least Lord Mandelson and Alastair Campbell have not lost their touch.

A myth is being constructed in which Gordon Brown was all along simply a dedicated public servant who strove to do his best for his country, was unluckily wrong-footed by a global financial crisis that blew up on his watch, and finally departed with dignity. This is untrue in every particular.

Right from the start, with the cut-price sale of our gold reserves, the destruction of our private pension system and the introduction of divided, “light touch” financial regulation, Mr Brown’s 13 years in Downing Street were a disaster. Only one great service to the nation stands out to underpin his claim to a place in Westminster Abbey, and that is his success in keeping Britain out of the euro, without which our financial predicament would be even closer to that of Greece.

While giving due credit for this, it should perhaps be qualified by the suspicion that it owed less to sound economic principles than to a determination to deny Tony Blair his bizarre but sincere wish to go down in history as the man who abolished the pound.

Now, it can be argued that I should indeed let all this go. When the Titanic was sinking, it doubtless made more sense to focus on saving as many lives as possible, rather than sitting down in the crazily tilting first class saloon for an in-depth discussion of who was responsible for the ship’s defective design.

Given the depth of the financial hole in which we find ourselves, it is perhaps right for our politicians to put aside their differences and pull together, as Messrs Cameron and Clegg have already done. Were Dave’s emollient words uttered with a view to the possible need to draw Labour into a new National Government if the crisis should deepen, as it well might?

The downside of this, along with the clustering of every party around the “centre ground”, taking their core supporters for granted so as to focus on luring in the wet and naïve floating voter, is that it fuels the suspicion graphically put to me by one elderly neighbour: “They’re all the same. They’re all in it for what they can get.”

Because if no major issues of principle divide our mainstream political parties, what other explanation can there be?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Sunderland has a lot to answer for

Well done, us! It takes real skill and judgement to manipulate a simple first-past-the-post electoral system to achieve a result that absolutely none of the political parties wanted. That will serve them right for fiddling their expenses.

The only snag is that, being British, we are still not satisfied. The weekend newspapers were full of vox pop moans about that weird Scotsman still hanging around in Downing Street, and asking what on earth nice Dave Clegg thought he was up to, talking to nasty Nick Cameron.

And, with another election probably looming fairly soon, no one in any party dared answer “Because you willed it, dimwits.”

My own election day went very satisfactorily until about 11pm. I dropped my postal vote off at my nearest polling station, impeded only by two nonagenarians attempting to dodder through the door simultaneously, and enjoyed a fine lunch with two fellow scribblers, both lifelong Labour supporters.

Funnily enough they had both suddenly discovered an urgent need to support the Lib Dems, cheerily noting that the party stood to the left of Labour on most issues. Vote Clegg, get Miliband seemed to be the calculation. How could Nick possibly do a deal with “oily Dave” the PR man?

Of course, they may yet prove to be right, but at least I have enjoyed a few days sporting a wry smile.

Having viewed the BBC exit poll, I should have headed straight for bed, but the wait for those promised Sunderland results seemed tantalisingly short. And then the massive Wearside swings of 8.4% and even 11.6% to the Tories made me think that a night of genuine excitement lay ahead.

After all, if Sunderland was prepared to swing so strongly towards “Dave” after his candid predictions about how the North East could look forward to many fewer comfortable public sector jobs not answering the phones in call centres, or casually losing computer discs full of sensitive information, just imagine how well he might do in regions to which he was not actually proposing to lay waste.

Which is how I came to be still up at 4.30am, completely knackered, my bottle of Champagne still unopened, before I finally grasped that the ultimate result was going to be bang in line with the exit poll I had seen six and a half hours earlier.

Now one of the few areas in which I am in complete agreement with our (probably soon) ex-Prime Minister is the operation of a strict blame culture. With him everything was Tony Blair’s fault for about 13 years, then poor old Sue stepped forward to take his place. Luckily for me I acquired a wife not too long after I stopped being able to afford a PA, and fortunately for her baby Charlie came along quite soon afterwards to share responsibility for everything that goes wrong in the Hann household.

Sadly we spent election night 200-odd miles apart, but even if we had been together it is quite clear that this particular debacle was all down to the Makems. Either they weren’t paying attention to “Dave”, or they were too dim to understand what he said, or in the rush to win the race for first declaration (which isn’t too much of a challenge, really, considering that they are the only entrant) …

No, they could not have miscounted, could they? The British electoral system is beyond reproach.

My only compensation for a needlessly sleepless night was going live to Montgomeryshire to see the look on the face of chief asteroid worrier and Cheeky Girl fancier Lembit Opik as he was turfed out on a scarcely believable swing. But it was not enough, really. Next time I’m off to bed at 10.05 sharp. And the right advice for Sunderland is surely this: start training for a marathon, not a sprint.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne

The election nobody should want to win

The first election coverage I sat up for was in 1970, when the polls foresaw Harold Wilson cruising to a comfortable Labour victory. My abiding memory is of a man with a pot of paint extending the BBC’s swingometer to reflect the far better than expected Conservative performance.

I also fondly recall that night’s ejection of legendary (for the wrong reasons) former foreign secretary George Brown from the Belper seat he had held since 1945. An event matched among “Portillo moments” for Tories perhaps only by the defeat of Tony Benn in 1983.

Apart from 1970, the only election I remember as a pleasant surprise was that of 1992. It then took me ages to unwind the complex financial arrangements I had made to keep my pathetic savings out of the hands of John Smith. By the time I had done so, the Conservatives’ reputation for financial competence had been utterly destroyed by the events of Black Wednesday.

Herein lies my essential problem with this week’s contest. Although I shall sit up all night, as tradition demands, with a bottle of champagne on ice, what on earth will there be for any of us to celebrate, however things turn out?

My tribal instincts lead me to hope for a Conservative victory, but even if I did not have my doubts about “Dave”, why would I want my own party to end up holding the not just poisoned but positively explosive chalice that is the legacy of 13 years of “prudence” by Gordon Brown?

Because the one prediction I think we can make with confidence is that a huge amount of almost indescribable nastiness is poised to strike the air conditioning, and it will make Black Wednesday look like the proverbial vicarage tea party. Looking forward to building an aircraft carrier, having your local A-road dualled, keeping your cushy paper-shuffling job in the civil service until you collect your gold-plated pension, or taking that new wonder drug for cancer?

Terribly sorry, but you’re going to be out of a job and stuck in a potholed rut at best, dead at worst. Oh, and you’re going to be paying painfully higher taxes into the bargain. That is the essential reality of our looming financial crisis that none of the contenders to be Prime Minister – not even the boy wonder Clegg – considers us grown-up enough to hear.

Because, their pollsters and focus groups no doubt assure them, anyone who told the truth would be toast come polling day.

That we have descended into this morass is not simply the politicians’ fault. Yes, they all went along with the ludicrous idea that we could keep getting richer through bankers doing the equivalent of playing the slot machines in Las Vegas. But they did it because we all longed to believe it, too.

During my lifetime we have seen a general infantilisation of the whole population, so that no-one expects to endure real pain or hardship, or to be faced with genuinely tough choices. Who now is prepared to say “No” to the bleatings of pressure groups, or administer the occasional short, sharp smack?

Well, what is coming after Thursday will be far worse than a reluctantly Court-approved “reasonable chastisement”. It is going to hurt, and the party and person who administer the punishment will soon be so fantastically unpopular that the Tories’ 13 years out of serious contention since 1997 will look like a mere bagatelle.

So I shall probably manage a ragged cheer as the Labour seats start to fall on Thursday night, but my heart will not really be in it if “Dave” looks like landing an overall majority. Though the alternative of some sort of coalition risks making nearly every serious politician in the country loathed with a truly unprecedented passion. And where exactly do we go from there?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The most dangerous age is now 43

How do you tell when you are getting past it? For my parents the key marker was policemen, whose increasing youthfulness caused gloomy comment every time they fired up the Ford Consul for a weekend run to Druridge Bay.

With me it is business leaders and politicians. Never mind new appointments; these days people far younger than I am are retiring as chief executives after hugely rewarding stints at the top.

As for party leaders, when Gladstone made his great comeback in the Midlothian campaign of 1879-80 he was 70 and had been in Parliament since 1832. The current head of Gladstone’s party is 43 (though he looks younger) and has been an MP for five minutes, sorry, years.

While Gladstone barnstormed to victory through a series of lengthy open-air speeches reaching maybe 90,000 people, Mr Clegg has attained pole position in this election with just two 90-minute TV appearances.

If the Young Pretender really does have the keys to Number 10 at his disposal, how will he play his hand? I think we can guess the quality of his negotiating skills from the fact that Mr Clegg is an atheist and his wife a Catholic; their three children are being raised as Catholics.

Similarly, Mrs Clegg (as she apparently prefers not to call herself) is Spanish, while Mr Clegg is at least partially British (his own website draws attention to his Dutch mother and half-Russian father); their sons are called Antonio, Alberto and Miguel.

If his evident assertiveness with his very own European partner is anything to go by, we may surely conclude that “yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir” is one of the better polished phrases in the four EU languages in which Mr Clegg prides himself in being fluent.

Yet being an accommodating “New Man” seems to be considered a sure-fire turn-on for the voters. David Cameron, also 43 and from an eerily similar privileged background, works hard to project himself as young, hip and cool, getting down with the kids and surrounding himself with babes, whether for kissing in their prams or as Tory candidates in winnable seats.

Where is the voice of experience when you need it? Oh yes, there is Gordon Brown, but then his experience was creating the mess we are all in now, which is hardly the strongest argument for giving him our support.

It seems ironic that, as the average lifespan stretches out towards 100, we apparently believe that people will do their best work before they are even halfway there. Tony Blair entered Downing Street at 43: a truly alarming precedent.

Will we ever again have an octogenarian Prime Minister like Gladstone, Palmerston or Churchill? It is certainly not the way to bet, particularly after the going-over suffered by Mr Clegg’s geriatric predecessor Sir Menzies Campbell, forcibly retired at 66. Would that be why the long-serving Sir Alan Beith (67) seems to have become more or less invisible in this campaign?

Whether you are appointing a PR man, financial adviser, chief executive or Prime Minister, choosing someone who cannot remember the last time that things went really horribly wrong greatly increases the chances of it happening again. This time, someone with experience of getting things surprisingly right should be in pole position. What a shame Kenneth Clarke is both 69 and an unabashed euro fanatic.

I must conclude with a sincere apology to Mr Clegg for my egregious error last week in suggesting that he attended the same school as that unbearable toff George Osborne. I knew that Mr Clegg went to the academically distinguished and socially exclusive Westminster School. My lazy error was to believe that Mr Osborne did, too, when he actually went to St Paul’s. Which is no doubt why his nickname in Oxford’s deeply unlovely Bullingdon Club was “Oik”.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.