Reflections on the Rule of Law, on Scotland and on an astonishingly cruel portrayal of Lady Thatcher

I am grateful to the many readers who wrote to endorse my plea for the rule of law, following the Lawrence murder trial. I am also grateful to those who disagreed, for taking the trouble to recognise that this is an important issue that civilised states must discuss and decide.

The principle that law triumphs over power has always seemed to me to be one of the most important results of the Christian foundation of our civilisation.

Behind it lies the belief that the law itself stems from an idea of ultimate good and justice, which is beyond our power to alter and which exists for all time and which overrides our emotions and desires, as well as trumping mere temporal power. It is the existence of such a rule of law, not the largely phoney trumpery of universal suffrage 'democracy', which distinguishes free and civilised nations from despotic slums.  If those who sought to reform Russia after the collapse of the Soviet regime had concentrated on the rule of law, rather than on the forms of democracy, they might have achieved something important. As it is, they have what they have.

Of course, this is a choice. It is often tempting to override the rule of law. Everyone must feel this temptation from time to time. I certainly have. But it is precisely when it seems most attractive to ignore it or push it aside, that it is most important to defend it. I've been a little shocked that so few voices have been raised in its defence this past week.

 

Bannockburn Refought

After meeting him one evening long ago, in a rather agreeable castle,  for a TV discussion programme, I formed the idea that Alex Salmond was a very clever man indeed. If he went into a revolving door behind you, he would probably come out in front. (Though I could have done without him correcting my frenchified pronunciation of 'Mary of Guise' . I'm English. We don't talk about her as much as the Scots do. )  He's a loss to Britain as a whole. If only he regarded himself as British, I have a feeling he would be keen on regaining our independence from the EU, and be very smart at achieving that objective.

But sadly for us all, he was born in these dismal times. Let me say here first of all that I don't do silly anti-Scottish jeering. My earliest memories are of Scotland, of Scottish landscapes and Scottish voices, so I continue to love the place. In general, I have a high opinion of that small country, which has produced many great men  and much important thought. Its contribution to our joint history has been huge and mainly beneficial. We're lucky to be neighbours (that goes both ways).

I also see that there is a problem with the way Scotland is governed.  From the 1707 Act of Union until devolution, Scotland had a legal system without a parliament. What is more it had for centuries had a parliament of its own.  Some sort of fairly powerful legislative body had to be created, and the United Kingdom ought to have been strong enough to survive the arrangement    I wouldn't have said this ten years ago, but I have since changed my mind. I am much less sure that Wales either wants or needs its own assembly, and I am completely against any sort of parliament for Northern Ireland which – if it is to have justice and law – would be much better off ruled directly from London. I think such a solution would also have been better by far for the Irish Republic, which is going to face many difficulties when it eventually absorbs Northern Ireland as a very anomalous and troublesome special autonomous zone.

I am also against the recent creation of a fifth province of the United Kingdom, Livingstonia, or 'Greater London'. This sizeable Republic (for its elected head of state is really a mini-President, though he is called a mayor)  subverts the whole shape of the British constitution, and creates a needless new power in the country. What London needs is small,  efficient, truly local  borough councils, not some grandiose and gargantuan Thing.

But all of these would be minor troubles if it were not for the real reason behind the break-up of what was until very recently a genuinely United Kingdom.

This is the growth in the power and wealth of the European Union. The EU is deeply prejudiced against nation states, and exerts itself to break them up. It has a particular dislike of Federal multi-ethnic  states such as Yugoslavia (which the EU has helped break up by aggressive diplomacy and force) or the United Kingdom (which the EU seeks to break up by subtlety).  It wants allegiance, and subsidy,  to flow as directly as possible from Brussels to the provinces or 'regions'. Indeed, it cannot really ever be complete until this is the arrangement, with the life sucked out of the official capitals as far as possible.

Countries without regions (such as Portugal) are more or less compelled to have them.  Even federal mono-ethnic states are under pressure to regionalise, not that Germany needs much encouragement to do so, as it was before 1870 made up of many small states, and still has fierce and genuine regional loyalties and differences.

I have always remembered entering the EU from the east, before Poland joined. When you reached the Polish-German border, there was a huge sign, bearing the yellow stars of Brussels, saying (in German) 'Welcome to the European Union'. A short way after that was a prominent  sign saying 'Welcome to Brandenburg' (the German state which borders Poland at that point). Some distance after that, almost hidden in the snowy grass, was a small and rather diffident sign saying 'Welcome to Germany'.

A this time I still possessed an official map of Europe published by the European Parliament (this has since been revised, after being much criticised in the British media). It showed the British Isles divided into Euro-regions (an idea that is not dead, but sleepeth). There were two very interesting aspects of this. One was that while Scotland and Wales were each regions in their own right, and were named on the map, England was broken up into such exciting areas as 'South East' . And the word 'England' was absent from the map.

The other was that Ireland had two competing sets of frontiers – one the international border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the other the regional borders of Leinster, Ulster,  Munster and Connacht.  It looked – and I think was designed to look –temporary.

It's my view that Scotland, for all its energy and history, simply isn't big enough to function as a fully independent country comparable to Britain. I doubt it has enough oil and gas left to be as independent as Norway. I certainly doubt that it could sustain its own currency, or any armed forces beyond a coastguard and a small army with no possibility of power projection. Nor do I think it could afford a full-scale diplomatic service.

But it could certainly take on many of the superficial characteristics of a nation, within the EU but separate from England, with the lines of power and money running between Edinburgh and Brussels/Frankfurt.  There could be a Scottish EU passport, a Scottish flag flying alongside the others in Brussels, a Scottish anthem, a Scottish broadcasting corporation, a Scottish version of the EU border, Scottish postage stamps. Scottish law and policing would quite possibly be brought more into line with continental practice.  If the single currency weren't in such a mess, then Scotland might also consider joining the Euro – it was, after all, Ireland's decision to abolish its Punt that finally made the division real and hard. Then there's Schengen. Like Ireland, I would guess that a Scottish government would like to implement the EU's open borders scheme – but couldn't do so while the rest of the UK stayed outside. A Scottish departure from the UK could make it harder for England and Wales alone to keep up our resistance against the opening of our borders to passport-free travel from the rest of the EU. Paradoxically, Scotland might bring Berlin time to England – by negotiating its own Scottish time zone north of the border.

This is all speculation, but well within the bounds of possibility if the EU continues in being. Without the EU, in my view,  it would be fanciful.   

As to what David Cameron is playing at, I know that if I were him ( i.e. a cynical office–seeker who doesn't know what a principle is),  I would pretend noisily to be in favour of the Union, while quietly doing all I could to help break it up. (Why? Because removing the Scottish MPs provides the only chance of the Tory party ever again winning a majority at Westminster.)  The current attempts to boss Scotland around, and tell it what sort of referendum it can hold, seem likely to me to achieve this perfectly. No red-blooded Scot will be pleased to be told that he can't decide his own future, and so support for Mr Salmond will increase. But  in England, Mr Cameron's Olympically dim hero-worshippers will praise him for his toughness. I am told that the UK civil service increasingly behaves as if Scotland is en route to independence.  Why and how is that happening?

 

Harsh and Cruel

I aim to say more about this soon, but I was amazed at how personally harsh and cruel the new film about Lady Thatcher is.  It is just possible that the opening device of an old and bemused woman wandering into a corner shop is justified dramatically as the starting point for a review of her life, just as George Bailey's attempted suicide is justified in 'It's a Wonderful Life'.

But the film is not content with that. The actress Meryl Streep spends a huge part of the film in heavy ageing make-up, stooped and mumbling, hallucinating and in conversation with a (very badly caricatured) phantasm of her late husband Denis.  This fancy, which I think is based on some (perhaps unwise) revelations by her daughter Carol, is ceaselessly employed to link up the otherwise disjointed scenes and more or-less politically illiterate account of Margaret Thatcher's rise to office and her period in power.

I confess to having enjoyed quite a lot of it. I didn't see it at a preview but in a normal cinema in my left-wing home town, where the theatre was packed but where audience reaction was quite muted. I think I enjoyed it  because it awoke (even if by its inaccuracy) quite a lot of memories of an interesting part of my life. Also, I am not and never have been a Thatcher partisan, let alone one of her friends or intimates. But I would think anyone who has suffered the awful experience of a parent or grandparent with dementia will find the film distressing and cruel. And in any case, I had to wonder, what was the aim of the makers? No doubt they are hoping for big audiences in the USA ( where Lady Thatcher is still much admired) as well as here ( where feelings are rather more mixed). I'm not quite sure why, in that case, they should dwell so much on the distressing mental decline of an elderly woman, a terrible affliction all too common in modern Britain and America, and by no means confined to controversial ex-premiers. I could hazard a few guesses, though.