So, are the remainers wrong, then?

Project fear is back – and it’s as wrong as ever.

Remainers are gleefully pointing to our economic problems, but ignoring the crises affecting much of Europe

Not my words. They’re from the Tory Daily Telegraph of 28 October 2022.

The Telegraph hits out

Anyone who’s gleeful about the present state of the British economy is clearly no friend of the country, and their views should be treated with deep scepticism. Most remainers, and I include myself among them, look at the UK economy with horror and disappointment, with no inclination to glee or gloating.

Any Brit over 30 today had a chance to vote in the 2010 election. I hope they remember how things were back then. Britain was suffering economically, not for anything it had done wrong itself, but because of the worldwide crisis precipitated by the crash of the financial markets. That was due to the irresponsible deregulation of the financial markets 25 years earlier, under the economic direction of Ronald Regan in the States and many leaders in Europe, notably Maggie Thatcher. None of that, however, stopped Conservatives blaming Labour for what had gone wrong.

In reality, Labour turned things around, with then Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling getting the country back to growth in just seven quarters.

The Conservatives claimed that Labour had caused the disaster and they would have to take office to solve the ballooning public debt crisis through austerity policies. Those, they promised, would return the economy to health and strength. 

Enough people believed the Conservatives to elect them.

The Conservatives inherited an economy emerging from recession. Within months, they had plunged it back in. 

They inherited a nation benefitting from free trade with its major partners, its neighbours in Europe. Today, they’ve broken those ties by leaving the EU, and trade with Europe is collapsing. 

They inherited a National Health Service in a stronger position and delivering higher-quality services than ever in its history. Today people are dying in ambulances outside hospitals, or at home before the ambulances can even get to them.

They haven’t even solved the problem they identified as their highest priority, of huge public debt. Today, debt is higher than when they came to power. 

On top of that, the fifty-day premiership of Liz Truss left the economy in a tailspin, with double-digit inflation, wages falling in real term, and pension funds close to bankruptcy until they were bailed out by the Bank of England.

All the government now promises is more austerity. In other words, more of the same. Twelve years on, having made problems far worse than whey they were berating Labour for them, they’re asking us to believe that the answer is to go for the same ideas all over again.

The Telegraph is right, though, to say that many other parts of Europe are suffering too. There’s an international economic crisis and that explains some of the problems Britain is facing. Let’s be fair to the Tories and allow that as part of the explanation for today’s difficulties, even though they weren’t fair enough themselves, back in 2010, to allow the same explanation to the Labour government when it faced a still more serious global crisis than today's. 

What still needs explaining, in any case, is why Britain’s performance is worse than anyone else’s in the G7, the group of the seven biggest economies in the world.

Even in the G20, of twenty major economies, it is underperforming every single country bar Russia. It may not be an accident that Russia has a government more incompetent than any of the others, as it’s shown by its disastrously misjudged invasion of Ukraine. 

So why is Britain doing so much more badly than most? 

That’s a stark question for those, like the Telegraph, who think Brexit has nothing to do with it. 

Britain’s doing significantly less well than the European countries that didn’t leave the EU. It’s hard to write that off as a mere accident. It’s hard not to see it as the key factor behind the difference in Britain’s performance. 

After all, the only other explanation would be the sheer incompetence of a government that promised us it had the solution in 2010, then made things worse for twelve years, and is now offering to go around exactly the same cycle again. 

Come to think of it, it’s perfectly possible that both explanations are true. 

The tale of a dogged Jew

The thing about British society is that what looks like a permanently locked door can sometimes be made to open. Unfortunately, it can take a hell of a lot knocking first. A lot of sheer bloody doggedness.

Still, at a time when England seems keener to close doors than open them, it’s encouraging to remember such moments. They might, after all, yet return.

For centuries, the English state was officially Protestant, at least with the brand of Protestantism represented by the Church of England. Protestants outside the Church of England, such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Anabaptists, Quakers and so on, were excluded from any kind of political power.

The exclusion from power from which these so-called Dissenting Protestants suffered was, of course, even more severely applied to the great enemies of Protestantism as a whole, the Roman Catholics. 

However, in the nineteenth century things began to ease. For instance, Parliament would annually suspend the rules denying the right of Dissenters to sit in Parliament. Many began to ask whether it wasn’t ridiculous to have a rule that was repeatedly suspended. Why not just do away with it?

The resistance to such a move, from leaders of the Church of England and their allies in Parliament, was tough. However, the pressure for change was tougher still. Finally, a measure to emancipate Dissenters was forced through in 1828, so they were allowed into Parliament by right, rather than by suspension of rules.

The following year, there was a move for something even more devastating. It was time to let the Catholics in. That really got hackles raised. Why, a king – James II of England, James VII of Scotland – had been driven from his throne for being a ‘Papist’. And now they were to be allowed into Parliament?

The Home Secretary, the man shepherding the measure through Parliament, was Sir Robert Peel, a longstanding opponent of Catholic Emancipation. He’d changed his stance in the light of evolving public opinion. That cost this future leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom his seat in Parliament, since he represented the University of Oxford, the main training ground for Church of England clergy. He had to get himself re-elected in a hurry for somewhere else, to be back in Parliament in time to push the legislation through.

He pulled it off and from 1829, Catholics too could sit in the House of Commons, as the oath a member had to take on entering the House only proclaimed adherence to the Christian faith, rather than to any flavour of that faith. 

Both Dissenters and Catholics could now be MPs. 

A door had been pushed open a little. Ajar, as it were.

Then in 1847, a new challenge arose. 

At the general election that year, Lionel de Rothschild, head of the British branch of the famous banking family, was one of the four successful candidates for Parliament elected by the City of London (most constituencies elected two MPs, and some more, at that time). He was a practising Jew. He wasn’t going to swear fealty to the Christian faith.

Lionel de Rothschild in about 1840

One of his fellow MPs for the City of London happened to be Lord John Russell. That title ‘Lord’ was a courtesy, as he was a younger son of the Duke of Bedford, but he wasn’t a Peer himself, so he could sit in the Commons rather than the House of Lords. He was also leader of the Whig Party, increasingly known as the Liberal Party, and he had a reputation as a champion of liberal values.

Oh, by the way, he was also Prime Minister.

Russell presented a Jewish Disabilities Bill, designed to remove the ‘disabilities’ that prevented Jews becoming Members of Parliament. As usual, the Conservatives opposed the measure, with some exceptions, most notably that of the man who was increasingly leading them in the Commons, Benjamin Disraeli. Although a convert to Christianity, which allowed him to take a Commons seat himself, he was, as his name suggests, Jewish by birth. Indeed, that caused him to be viewed by many within his own party, as a touch ‘foreign’ not something that helped him advance his career (though he did eventually make it to Prime Minister). 

It's a tribute to Disraeli’s courage that he backed Russell’s bill, against the will of most of his party.

The Jewish Disabilities Bill was adopted by the Commons. But then the Lords threw it out. Twice. 

Rothschild couldn’t take his seat.

That’s when he started to show his tenacity. In 1849, he resigned the seat and stood again, in a by-election, which he won. In the House of Commons the following year, he asked to take his oath on a Jewish Bible, and this was agreed. But he refused to say, “upon the true faith of a Christian”, so once more he had to leave.

In 1851, another Jewish Disabilities Bill was passed by the Commons and defeated again in the Lords.

There was a general election in 1852. Rothschild stood and won. But the Lords again threw out the Bill passed by the Commons.

Doggedly, he ploughed on, winning a seat for the fourth time at the General Election of 1857. Now at last the two Houses of Parliament compromised, allowing each to set their own form of oath. The Commons chose a form Rothschild could accept so he took the oath, his head covered, and using the words “so help me, Jehovah”. 

At last, a practising Jew was able to take a seat in the House of Commons. A door pushed ajar for Dissenters and Catholics had been opened a little further.

Lionel de Rothschild introduced to the House of Commons in 1858
accompanied by two MPs, one of them Lord John Russell

This was clearly Rothschild’s aim. He would have a seat in the Commons for fifteen years but never addressed the House. The objective hadn’t been to become an active MP, it was to establish the principle that Jews too could sit in the Commons.

Now, let’s not overstate any of this. The door had a long way to go still. It would be decades before the first woman would take her seat in the House. Even among Jews, of the eighteen who became MPs between 1858 and 1887, nine would be bankers and seven lawyers. These were hardly typical members of the Jewish community. But then, non-Jewish MPs were also far from representative of the population of Britain as a whole: it would take a long time before the poor or working classes would find themselves represented in Parliament.

Still, Lionel de Rothschild was rather a special banker. When he was first elected, in 1847, Ireland was suffering a terrible famine, one that has come to be known as the ‘Great Famine’, with a million dead and over a million forced to emigrate from the country. Rothschild put together an Association to raise funds for the country. It ultimately came up with some £390,000 for relief. Rothschild was the biggest individual donor. 

By comparison, Queen Victoria pledged £2000. US President Polk pledged $50.

Lionel de Rothschild was a remarkable man. A dogged man. And a man who showed that when illiberal circles try to limit our rights, we need to push back hard and just keep on pushing.

Until we get our way.

 

Unplanned celebrations can be the best

It wasn’t planned, and it was hardly the most obvious way of doing it, but we enjoyed joining in the celebrations of the 12th of October.

This is the anniversary of the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement. The very first man to reach that continent. Well, the very first apart from all the other Europeans that got there before him. To say nothing of the sixty or so million people who were already living there.

Still, not counting them, he was the first and that’s something to celebrate.

In Spain, the 12th of October is called El día de la Hispanidad, roughly translatable the day of Spanishness, and it’s the country’s national holiday. It’s a better name than the one it had before, which was Día de la Raza or Day of the Race (that’s nothing to do with running quickly, it’s race as in racism). 

That name always makes me think of what has to be the most remarkable moment associated with that day. That was when Miguel de Unamuno, novelist and logician, a specialist in paradoxes, spoke at a public meeting celebrating the day in the University of Salamanca, then under Fascist control, in 1936.

The audience contained members of the Spanish Foreign Legion, most of them armed. Their general, José Millán-Astray, was on the dais. He’d made famous the slogan he’d given to the Legion, ‘Viva la Muerte’, ’Long live Death’. Unamuno, who wasn’t due to speak, rose anyway. There’s no full account of his words, but he’s believed to have said: 

I, who have passed my entire life creating paradoxes which annoyed those who didn’t understand them, have to tell you as an authority in the field, that this paradox strikes me as ridiculous and repellent.

He’s also often quoted as saying, “you will win but you will not convince”, which works better in Spanish, since it includes a play on word, “venceréis pero no convenceréis”. Others reckon he said, “bear in mind that winning is not the same as convincing (vencer no es convencer), nor is conquering the same as converting”.

Unamuno (bearded) leaving the lecture theatre after his speech

They feel like the right words for something called the Day of Race. Not that they did Unamuno any good, since he was placed under house arrest where he died a few months later.

Today, the Spanish national day is a much less dire spectacle. The main procession, in Madrid, involves the royal family and the Prime Minister. Indeed, this year the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, was a little late so the King and Queen had to wait a couple of minutes in their car for him to turn up and join the greeting line to welcome them. That earned Sánchez whistles and boos, which seems a pity, given that he’s doing rather a good job, but there’s a powerful right wing here in Spain, not prepared to give him credit for anything, such as his excellent response to Covid.

Parachutist with Spanish flag for the 12th of October

With head of state and head of government present, there was likely to be a fair measure of pomp in the show. But it’s less marked than in some countries. I particularly liked the parachutist could came floating down from the sky with a Spanish flag, even getting a leg caught in it at one point (he disentangled himself before landing). And though there were the usual military things, like a flypast, tanks on tank transporters, and marching soldiers, all that was a little lightened by such sights as the detachment that came marching by with a sheep as its mascot.

A fine mascot

In any case, we weren’t there. Instead, we went out for a bike ride in the evening, showing up in the town of Pobla de Vallbona a little before six in the evening. That was when they were due to have their own procession. We found a bar where we could sit and have a drink with a good view of the festivities when they came past. 

Good-humoured national day procession in Pobla de Vallbona

It was fun. Lots of people showed up, including a great many children, no doubt attracted by the fact that the people on the floats would be throwing sweets and toys to the public. It was a small show, with about half a dozen floats, and plenty of music. It was all over in about ten minutes, but everyone was smiling and having a great time. That’s the kind of atmosphere that lightens the heart and gives good memories. Just what I’d hope for from a national day at human scale.

We hadn’t planned to be there. But I’m rather glad we were. Especially as it worked out so much better than for Unamuno.

Kids' rugby: a learning experience (for me)

It was kind of the rain to hold off until the rugby was over.

The match, or matches since there were several going on, involved eight- and nine-year olds playing with all the commitment of professionals turning out for their countries. And if the weather was well-disposed towards them, so was I. That was down to the atmosphere created not just by the kids, but by the adults with them. They were supportive, encouraging, good-humoured. 

What a stark contrast that was to my experience when we were living in England and took our youngest son to play his first football match. Which turned out to be his last. The parents were screaming for their side to win, shouting at the referee, abusing the other side. Of course, there was no way they were going to tolerate the presence of a beginner on the pitch, as their furious screeching made clear. My son was taken off the pitch within minutes and never returned.

The parents at the rugby match behaved as though the aim was to take part, not necessarily to win. Winning was a bonus, not an essential. But then, that’s part of what makes rugby so much more attractive a game. 

Achille brushes off the defence as he drives for the try line

I was there to watch Achille, the son of our good friends Félicie and Yannick. When I’d previously seen him, he was still a baby, unable to crawl, let alone walk, far less run through a line of defending rugby players to score a try. Which he did while I was watching. And, even more impressive, he was as determined in defence as in attack, tackling players, taking them around the legs and falling himself as he brought them down. It was a remarkable sight.

Full commitment: Achille gets his man
Bringing down the ball carrier before he can get to the line

There wasn’t just him, of course. We also got to know the later additions, his brother Arsène and sister Diane. Three kids made the reunion livelier and, above all, still more joyful.

Now, names like Arsène or Félicie should have given you a clue that the reunion wasn’t taking place in England. No, it was another welcome benefit of our visit to Strasbourg, alongside the pleasure of introducing sixteen Spanish friends from Valencia to that excellent city of Eastern France, as I’ve described before. 

Rugby is still a minority interest in France, which remains much more focused on the round-ball type of football. But France is good at rugby. In the 2022 instalment of the main European championship, the Six Nations, it won a Grand Slam, which means it beat all the others (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Italy). 

Not that there’s any reason for fans to gloat (the French supporters), or be downhearted (all the others). Rugby’s all ups and down. That makes it more interesting to follow. One year’s defeats can be followed by another’s victories, just as this year’s disasters may be followed by next year’s triumphs. French domination won’t last for ever, since all the sides (well, bar Italy so far, but its day will come) have enjoyed good times that take them to the Championship, and bad times when they fall. The only rather galling constant in world rugby is the almost unbroken superiority of the Southern Hemisphere over the Northern, and of New Zealand’s extraordinary All Blacks within that hemisphere. 

In any case, it wasn’t just the rugby that made the visit to our friends enjoyable. I travelled to the match with Yannick, and that gave me the opportunity to catch up with him. I’m glad to say that he’s doing extremely well. Just three years ago, he decided to launch his own company with a couple of technical friends who’d come up with an innovative way to produce graphene, one of the key products in the high-tech field. Yannick took the leadership of the company, and it has boomed.

From a standing start, they’ve grown the company until it has thirteen employees and a growing list of clients. That growth is due above all to the quality of the product and the skill with which they’ve run the company. But they were helped by an extraordinary injection of public funds: €1.5 million, in fact.

“That’s amazing,” I told Yannick, “and the government provides that funding?”

“Yes, as part of its initiative to re-industrialise France and foster innovation.”

To me that seemed as amazing as it was impressive. France, like Britain, has lost much of its industrial base. Now it’s trying to rebuild it, but not by going back to the soul-destroying (not to mention body-destroying) and ecologically toxic heavy industries of the past. Instead, the country is helping the emergence of high-tech companies working on a newer, more intelligent from of industrial production. That won’t just stimulate the French economy, it’ll help place it in the forefront of key developments in the future. 

I suppose it’s obvious why I found that impressive. Why, though, did I find it amazing? That was down to the contrast with Britain. It has taken a radically different approach to its economic woes. Instead of using tax revenue to invest in cutting-edge industries, the UK government decided to borrow massive sums only to hand them out to the wealthiest in the form of tax cuts. 

This is all part of what’s referred to as the ‘trickle-down’ effect in economics. The idea is that the rich get more money, they spend it, and that creates jobs and stimulates the economy. The truth is that the wealthy save a higher proportion of their income than the poor do, or can, and often they save it in offshore tax havens where it does little or no good back home. Even what they spend is likely to be on a second or third home, rather than an investment in industry, and a lot of the spending goes overseas anyway (it seems a luxury villa in the Caymans is a must-have accessory for those with tax-dodging investments there).

Yannick and his colleagues came up with a smart idea, and the French government is helping them realise it. Both sides gain. And the approach leaves Britain, the front-runner in the original industrial revolution, wallowing in its wake.

A bit like the rugby, to tell the truth. It was invented in England, specifically at Rugby school. This year France beat England 25-13.

Well, as I said, in rugby everything comes around and goes around. England will be back someday. One or other of the European teams will knock France off its perch. 

When it comes to the economy, though, things don’t look as encouraging. Britain is going down entirely the wrong road. Any likelihood of emulating its neighbour across the Channel seems remote indeed. 

Yannick will, I hope, continue to enjoy impressive success with his company. As I hope his family continues to bloom, both on and off the sports field. And maybe at some stage Britain can admit its mistakes, change direction, and start to cultivate similar success for itself.

In the meantime, I’m pleased to have attended a rugby match that taught me so much. Not all of it by any means about rugby. 

Operation Martha

It may just be me, but isn’t there something dodgy about flying a bunch of single women halfway around the world, to pair them off with a bunch of single men? It feels particularly rough if they’re going to live among people entirely unfamiliar to them, whose language they don’t speak, and where they’ll be cut off from their friends and family.

Doesn’t it feel all the dodgier to know that Catholic clergy were involved in making all those arrangements?

The women were the Marthas. Or possibly Martas. It all depends on whether you speak English, the language of the country they travelled to, Australia, or Spanish, the language of the country they came from, Spain.

It all began with ‘Operación Canguro’, an initiative in the 1950s backed by the Catholic Church in Australia, to bring in migrants from Spain. Back then, it claimed it had about 2 million followers in Australia, close to 20% of the population at the time. The Church wanted to increase its presence in the country. In absolute terms, it’s done well, since the number of Catholics is now over 5 million, but sadly, that still represents just under 20% of the total population, which has grown just as fast.

The desire to bring in Catholics dovetailed neatly with the needs of sugar producers to bring in skilled men to help with cane cutting. 

That’s quite ironic, because sugarcane cutting was the main motivation for England to get into the transatlantic slave trade.

Much manual work in England’s North American colonies, which included the West Indies, was carried out by indentured labour. These were men who agreed to work for board and lodging only for a fixed period, say seven years, in return for having their transatlantic crossing paid for.  At the end, they were freed from the indenture and might well acquire some land or set up in business on their own.

It wasn’t slavery, though it was hard work. 

The West Indies were a great place to grow sugar cane. The traditional sweetener in Europe was honey. But sugar didn’t need bees and so it could be produced in far greater quantities.

Unfortunately, that involved cane cutting, desperately hard work under difficult conditions. Men from England or Ireland couldn’t cope. So the plantation owners came up with a brilliant idea: they’d import labour from Africa instead. Africans were used to the heat. And, what’s more, without white skins, they had no rights any white man had to recognise. They could be kept at their work without hope of freedom until they dropped, unlike the indentured labour.

That was slavery.

Australia didn’t go for slaves for their sugar plantations – there might have been nasty repercussions from pesky organisations like the United Nations. Nor did they use Africans: for a long time Australia explicitly banned non-white immigration.

Spain back then was under Franco’s dictatorship. That made it a bit of a pariah nation, the only Fascist regime to survive the Second World War, when Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy had been defeated. Its isolation, and the sheer economic incompetence of its leadership, held it back from the kind of development that led to the post-war boom in Europe.

Emigration was one of the solutions for anyone looking to enjoy a little more freedom and live a little more comfortably.

Australia and Spain had no diplomatic relations. That gave the Catholic Church its opportunity. It negotiated informal agreements providing financial assistance for Spanish workers to emigrate to Australia, with the promise of assured work at better wages than they could earn at home. Every Australian worker has a car, they were told, which sounded like dazzling luxury to Spanish workers then.

Some 10,000 moved out. Getting on for 4000 were men emigrating for work, with many accompanied by dependants who made up the rest. 

Things worked well in the sugar plantations, especially with the Basques who were found to be good at their work and conscientious. But sometimes white-collar workers managed to smuggle themselves into the programme, and there was nothing suitable for them, especially if they had no English. Besides, sometimes things fell through, so that even manual workers might find themselves waiting for months for jobs, living in resettlement centres, earning little money, eating unappetising food and wondering when they’d get out.

One of the big problems was the single men who joined the programme. They were lonely and isolated, with little or no English, and had little in the way of means to stay in touch with families 15,500 kilometres away.

Hence the Marthas. They were tempted out by promises of domestic work at good wages. And some were also tempted by the simple prospect of going somewhere else, away from the stifling atmosphere in Spain. Tempted even by the simple fact of air travel, normally way beyond their means.

What nobody told them was that the unspoken aim of their trip was for them to find the single young men and marry them. But that’s what many of them did – often to Catholics though not always to Spaniards.

The story of three of them is told in an article my good friend, and excellent source of blogpost material, Ana Cervera pointed me to.

They would all go to mass, and that was a great focal point where lots of the young people came together and got to know each other. Then they might move on to an evening out, where things could develop nicely.

Cristina, one of the women interviewed in the article, explained that she met her husband, John, at a dance, and he wouldn’t leave her alone afterwards. Her friends told the journalist that she only spoke ‘body language’ to him, a suggestion that got her smiling, sixty years on. But, she added, he did have a little Spanish.  

Anyway, it turned out fine.

Leontina had been engaged before she came out to Australia. Her fiancé followed her and they were married in Australia.  

Mari perhaps came closest to the desired behaviour pattern. She met a young Matteo at a Catholic social club shortly after arriving in Australia. Like Cristina’s John, he wouldn’t leave her alone (she claims) and eventually they married too. They had a life of hard work but a happy one, with four children.

All three women are still living in Australia. Cristina says that she’d do the trip again if she had her time over, though she certainly missed her family. As she missed Spanish bars. Even so, though she’s been back three times, she always returns to Australia, where she finds the life better. 

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on the Catholic Church. Things did work out, after all. Even though there were occasional bizarre moments, such as the day the Sydney Morning Herald published an article claiming that Spanish women had been seen working nude in a vineyard. The article was accompanied by a cartoon trying to be funny about the incident. The story led to a formal investigation which established that nothing of the kind had happened. 

From the Sydney Herald, March 1963
A weird, baseless and probably racist view of the Marthas

Even so, that kind of bad publicity, with its undertone of racism, helped create the atmosphere which brought the Martha programme to an end.

As for Operation Kangaroo itself, some of the problems that had arisen in the later stages, such as jobs not being available as planned, led the Spanish government to pull the plug in 1963. The assisted emigration scheme was officially closed. Australian sugar producers would have to go looking for manpower elsewhere. And, of course, there’d be no more Martas.

Another reason for shutting down the initiative must have been what was happening in Europe itself. By 1963, when Canguro ended, 1436 Spaniards emigrated to Australia. That same year, 83,728 emigrated to other European nations. A lot closer, a lot cheaper, a lot more convenient.

Meanwhile, Australia has profoundly changed its attitude too. These days, not only are they not assisting emigrants to get there, now they’re actively keeping them out, and the camps they hold them in aren’t temporary resettlement centres, but something far uglier.

Fortunately, the Franco dictatorship is over. So today’s Martas don’t have to run away to Australia for a better life. They can have one right where they are.

Which, unlike Cristina, they can do without missing their families. Or Spanish bars.

Second thoughts can be good. Or not.

“I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching,” the character Charles Venables, a British Cabinet Minister, tells us in J. M. Barrie’s play What Every Woman knows.

Well, there’s merit in the thought. Some of the greatest politicians I’ve come across are ready to recognise their errors and correct them fast. Why, it was the case of the man I regard as the outstanding politician of all time, Abraham Lincoln, over the Trent affair, as I’ve described before.

The problem is that, if the initial thought was bad enough, the second one can be better without being good. We’ve had a great illustration of that just this week. I’m referring, of course, to the political gymnastics of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Finance), Kwasi Kwarteng, perfectly nicknamed by John Crace in the Guardian as ‘Kamikwasi’. 

Kamikwasi Kwarteng, a remarkable Chancellor of the Exchequer
with Librium Liz, record-breaking opinion poll sinker

It's fascinating to see how he, and his political allies, have reacted to the economic tsunami that followed his recent proposals on tax and assistance with energy bills. Skyrocketing interest rates and a collapsing pound were, they claimed, entirely coincidental, caused by Putin’s war or the US Reserve Bank’s interest rate hike. They were entirely unrelated to the Chancellor’s actions, and only by accident occurred immediately after he’d announced them. 

What was clear from Kwarteng’s proposals is that they were entirely aimed at supporting the very wealthiest. One measure was strikingly so: the elimination of the higher band of income tax, of 45 pence in the pound, on salaries of over £150,000 a year (the median salary for all workers in the UK is just under £26,000, barely over a sixth of that level). Also eye-watering was the proposal to remove the ceiling on bonuses paid to bankers.

These two measures were largely symbolic in effect. The higher rate of tax only generated about £2 billion a year for the government, about 1.4% of total government spending. And the limit on bankers’ bonuses simply pushed up their basic income. But both measures said an awful lot about government attitudes towards society, specifically the way they favour the wealthy over the poor.

Much more serious was the fact that the measures were unfunded. In the past, Conservative politicians have been hugely critical of government initiatives without proper financing. They scream about Labour governments taking initiatives based entirely on borrowing.

“You’re piling up a colossal debt,” they wail, “for future generations to pay.”

And yet here they are doing exactly that. With no necessity to do so. Much of the spending was to protect consumers from excessive energy prices, protection that could have been funded by taxing the excessive profits energy companies are making as a result of those excessive prices. That, it seems, was a proposal the government couldn’t even begin to consider.

“We’re happy to pile up a colossal debt,” they seemed to be thinking, though they would never admit it in public, “for future generations to pay.”

The impact of the measures shows all the signs of botched policy worked out in far too much of a hurry. The painful consequences weren’t just the ones affecting the economy, however cataclysmic those may have been (the Bank of England had to spend £65 billion to prevent pension funds going bust). They were political too. It’s common for a new Prime Minister to enjoy an opinion poll boost when they first take office. Certainly, there has been a colossal bounce in the polls on this occasion as on others. The innovative feature of this bounce is that it hasn’t benefited the government, but the Labour opposition.

Liz Truss’s extraordinary opinion poll bounce.
Spectacular. But for the other side

I’ve often worried about the leader of Labour, Keir Starmer, not doing enough to win positive support for him and for the party. He seemed to be relying far too much on the Conservatives making a mess of things. Well, right now it looks like he might have been absolutely right, and I’d underestimated the Conservative capacity for fouling up. 

Certainly, after enjoying a good but hardly overwhelming lead for some months, today Labour has a lead which could be massively election-winning, if it can hold on to it. If Kamikwasi was too quick with his budget, his boss, the Prime Minister Liz Truss, dubbed Librium Liz by John Crace for her apparent inability ever to show any enthusiasm for anything, has also set a new speed record. She has exhausted any early popularity she may have enjoyed more quickly than any other Prime Minister. 

In particular, the anger over abolishing the top rate of tax turned out to be irresistible. Even Conservative MPs publicly criticised their leader’s decision to do away with it. Why, in Spain, where I now live, we were entertained by the spectacle of politicians from the Popular Party, the equivalent of Britain’s Conservatives, falling over each other to explain that their own proposals for tax reductions had nothing in common with those adopted in Britain. 

So Kamikwasi decided he had to think again. At the Conservative Party conference, which is taking place this very week, he announced that he’d been listening to people and had decided to cancel the abolition of the 45p rate. A better second thought than the first.

But only barely. Because the rest stays in place. The unfunded initiatives remain. And the attack on the poor continues.

Librium Liz was asked in a BBC interview whether she intended to honour the commitment, made by her predecessor Boris Johnson, to upgrade benefits in line with inflation. She simply refused to say. Bad news, I’d say, is coming down the track for the very poorest in society.

To add to the ugly spectacle Liz and Kwasi were laying on for us, she announced that the initiative to back down on the top rate tax proposal had come entirely from the him. Kwarteng, in the meantime, was claiming that it came from her, as Prime Minister. Later he declared it to be a joint decision.

Neither, it seems, is prepared to own it, and both are happy to throw the blame for a humiliating about-turn on the other – or, at best, to share it. Not the most edifying of sights. But then, why would we expect edification from this lot?

Oh, well. Somehow Britain has ended up with obsessive ideologues in power, sure that they know the truth. Truss has said it herself: she has to do what she believes is right. That’s true enough, but it would be good if she decided what was right after proper consultation with those who know more about the subject than she does.

Maybe she’s a suitable recipient for Oliver Cromwell’s plea, to “think it possible that you may be mistaken”.

That, though, takes a much bigger person than either of these two, with far more courage, and above all far more brains.

People like Lincoln, in fact, whose first ideas are often good, and when they’re not, quickly adopt second thoughts that are. 

Lo, there was light

It was curious going all that way just to see a patch of sunlight.

It all started with a message from our great friend, Ana Cervera,. What she doesn’t know about things happening in Valencia just isn’t worth knowing. She’s also good at getting us off our backsides to go and take advantage of them.

“The monastery of St Michael and the Kings is having an open day on the 29th of September,” she told us. “Let me know if you want to go and I’ll reserve places.”

We’d seen the monastery from outside but had never been in. It looked worth visiting, though, so we naturally agreed.

Back she came to us. “We’re booked on the tour at 12:00. Let’s meet at the main entrance at 8:45”. 

8:45 for a 12.00 tour? It struck me as a little early.

“Well, we can go for a snack and a coffee, can’t we?” Ana assured me. 

She was right of course, and there were far worse ways to spend two or three hours than chatting with Ana, so I raised no further objections.

We duly arrived at 8:45, despite the early start. Well, not early compared to what many working people face on weekdays, but early all the same for the retired, like us, who enjoy a lie-in. Especially since we had to walk the dogs before we left.

We joined the queue that was already forming outside the main gate. And that’s when Ana explained to me that we needed to be at the crypt by 9:30 to see the famous light beam. Whose fame, I have to admit, hadn’t reached me.

Still, we were there on time. Down the steps we went and – lo and behold – there, lying on the floor, after passing through a long channel cut through the stone, was indeed the patch of light we’d been told about. 

The patch of light that turned out to be more
remarkable than I at first thought

Dare I admit it? It really didn’t make that much of an impression on me. Though, as I later discovered, that was mostly down to my not knowing the story.

To be fair, the monastery itself was impressive enough. And it has its own fine story. 

It’s been many things in its time. An Arab farm. A first monastery that fell into decrepitude. A new monastery built on the orders of the Viceroys of Valencia. They called it St Michael of the Kings, by the way, and I was relieved to discover that the kings in question weren’t for the usual ‘Catholic Kings’ of Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, who first united the kingdom under one monarchy. No, the monastery honours the three kings of Orient, the ones who in the Gospel story brought gifts to the infant Jesus, and whose day, the 6th of January, is a major celebration throughout Spain, the day when the kids get presents just like Jesus (though these days gold, frankincense and myrrh tend to give way to video games, sports equipment or toys). 

Later, the monastery became an artillery barracks during the French occupation, a women’s prison, a men’s prison, and now, finally, the Legal Deposit Library for the Community of Valencia. 

Forty years ago, I did some research in the British Library in London. This was in the round reading room inside the British Museum building, before the Library moved to its present new location. It was under that same soaring dome that Karl Marx worked, and it was quite a kick to be doing research in the same place as that old, bearded German troublemaker. 

It was there I learned about Legal Deposit Libraries, or Copyright Libraries as we sometimes call them in Britain. They’re libraries which have the right to at least one copy of any material published within the territory for which they’re responsible. The United Kingdom has six: the British Library, the libraries of the two ancient universities, the Bodleian in Oxford and the University Library in Cambridge, and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales. 

The sixth came as a surprise: it’s the library of Trinity College Dublin, which isn’t even in the UK. As is well known, the separation between the UK and Ireland wasn’t amicable. But it seems that in all the noise and smoke, no one thought of removing Trinity College from the list of copyright libraries. Consequently, to this day, it’s entitled to a copy of any book published in the United Kingdom.

Only the British Library exercises that right in full, collecting a copy of everything published in the country. The others pick and choose what they want. 

The Spanish Legal Deposit Library is in Madrid. It takes two copies of any publication anywhere in Spain. As for the Deposit Library of the Community of Valencia, it takes a copy of anything published in Valencia, and stores it in steel cabinets, in rooms floodable with uninflammable gas in case of fire. Already a million items strong, it has room for a further million, a pretty impressive collection.

Our visit took us into the depository and our guide showed us a couple of its more remarkable possessions.

Our guide to the Valencian Legal Deposit Library
showing us a facsimile produced in Valencia
(so liable to be included in the library) of an
illuminated manuscript originally made in Sweden
(which wouldn’t have been)

But back to the monastery itself. As I said, the second monastic structure was set up by the joint Viceroys of Valencia, who were Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, and his wife, Germaine de Foix.

“Calabria?” I hear you saying, “Isn’t that in Italy?”

Well, yes. But this was the time when Spain was the world’s superpower, and much of Italy was Spanish. The Duke of Calabria was a cousin of Ferdinand of Aragon. That’s the one who was half the Ferdinand-and-Isabella show.

Anyway, Germaine de Foix asked to be buried in the new monastery. She died before enough of the building was complete to fulfil her wish. In fact, the monastery was never completed, since when her husband died, the money ran out, so one of the two courtyards has fine cloisters and the other doesn’t. 

One of the two cloisters planned,
but the only one completed

In time, both husband and wife were buried in the chapel. Later, though, it was decided to move their sarcophagi down to the crypt. Then in 2006, archaeologists decided to investigate those great stone coffins themselves. To everyone’s astonishment, they turned out not to contain bodies. That was a hard finding to reconcile with the tradition that both were in the crypt.

So they kept looking. With a radar probe they checked out the whole place and, eventually, tracked them down.

There were indeed bodies, undoubtedly those of the viceroys and two others from their family. Simply, they weren’t in the sarcophagi, but under the paving stones on the floor.

And then they realised something else. The famous light, coming from a window on a staircase outside the crypt, then travelling along a channel cut through the rock, and hitting the floor, only did so on the 29th of September each year. That happens to be the feast of St Michael, patron of the monastery.

What’s more, the light falls right above where the bodies are buried.

The light is therefore their tombstone. It shines down on them annually, on the holy day of the saint they had chosen to honour. A clever piece of architectural work, making the light far more impressive than I’d thought, and far more touching.

That was well worth getting up for a little early...