During the reign of Elizabeth the First it wasn’t unknown to keep the celebrations going from Allhallowtide (November 1) to Candlemas (February 2) when hope in the form of light began to penetrate. Unlike our own noisy preoccupation with Christmas Day, it was Twelfth Night, or Epiphany—the Feast of the Three Kings as they made their journey to Bethlehem to pay homage to the newborn King of Kings—that was the focus; the culmination of an open house policy that began on December 25 welcoming in friends, relatives and neighbours, servants, and strangers, until the final blowout on January 6.

“So I do really enjoy myself, and understand that if I do not do it now, I shall not hereafter,” as Pepys noted in self-exculpatory mode in his diary after Twelfth Night in 1688. He had drunk too much, eaten too much, stayed up too late, and spent more than he could afford. A century earlier, Sir William Petre of Ingatestone Hall had been having an even better Twelfth Night than Pepys. In her book, Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book, the culinary writings of  an Elizabethan housewife, Hilary Spurling describes a dinner given by Sir William on January 6 in 1552 at which 100 people consumed between them “16 raised pies, 15 joints of beef, four of veal, three of pork (including a whole suckling pig), three geese, a brace each of partridge, teal, capons and coneys, a woodcock and one dozen larks with a whole sheep . . .”

Despite the astonishing quantities of food, the real focus of these evenings was the Twelfth Night Cake, a spicy fruit concoction into which was baked a bean and a pea symbolising the King and Queen of the Revels. The person who found a token in their slice gained or forfeited  a privilege. Pepys’ cake cost him 20s and was enough for 20 people including gatecrashers but paled into insignificance when compared to the annual Fettiplace cake which was a yeast cake made with “good ale”, 12 1/2 pounds of flour, four pounds of currants, and an ounce and a half of cinnamon and ginger, capable of feeding upwards of 160 guests.

In the late 17th century, the series of tokens secreted in the cake expanded to include cloves for knaves, rags for wanton girls, and so on, and by the 18th century the tokens became a series of characters printed on paper which were cut out, folded and drawn from a hat—vestiges of these customs still survive in the sixpences and threepenny pieces that were sometime put in Christmas puddings.

There are similar traditions found all over Europe: in Spain, the Roscón de Reyes is a ring-shaped cake decorated with candied fruit containing a sorpresa (surprise), a coin or tiny ceramic figure that will bring luck to the finder. It’s a close cousin of Portugal’s Bolo Rei, a cake made with port and candied fruit. The person who finds the bean hidden within must provide next year’s Bolo Rei. Swiss and German Dreikönigskuchen are rich bread wreaths, each concealing an almond which will confer kingship on the finder.  Further afield, in New Orleans, King cakes, brioche loaves iced in purple green and gold, each contain a plastic baby whose finder must give the next Twelfth Night party.

Best known, perhaps, of the Twelfth Night cakes is the French Galette des Rois. This is a round flat cake made with many variations on a theme of flour, sugar, butter and eggs, or with puff pastry filled with frangipane. A bean hidden in the pastry renders the finder into the day’s Lord of the Revels.

The Galette in its puff pastry form has become a welcome antidote to the modern British Twelfth Night which has largely dispensed with revelry in favour of  the gloomy ritual of taking down the Christmas decorations and despatching the tree. In 2021 it might be especially welcome—a delicious distraction from the woes of 2020 and the possibility, pace the appearance of a vaccine, of yet another lockdown currently forecast for January. You can buy a Galette quite easily, or frozen puff pastry makes it simple to construct your own, method  below. The recipe for Elinor Fettiplace’s cake, with modern translation, can be found in Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book by Hilary Spurling (Penguin, 1987).

Galette des Rois

400g ready-made puff pastry
100g softened butter
100g caster sugar
1 lightly beaten egg
100g ground almonds
2 tbsp cognac or dark rum
dash of almond essence (optional)

Heat the oven to 200C/fanC180/gas 6.
Divide the puff pastry in half, roll out each piece and cut each piece into a circle.
Put one round on a baking sheet, set aside the other.
Beat together the softened butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg. Stir in the ground almonds and cognac or dark rum and the almond essence if using.
Spoon the mixture over the pastry disc, spreading it evenly. Brush the edges of the pastry with water, then cover with the second piece, pressing the edges to seal. Mark the top of the pastry in a zig-zag pattern, then brush with beaten egg.
Bake for 25-30 mins until crisp and golden. Serve warm or cold.

The post The king of cakes appeared first on Standpoint.

This September, Women and Equalities Minister Liz Truss announced the government’s intention not to pursue any significant reforms to the GRA and attempted to soften the blow to trans activists by making some minor concessions—for instance, waiving the £140 administrative fee usually charged to those applying for a legal sex change. But, crucially, Truss’s statement made clear that the government would not be adopting a system of co-called “self-ID”, as most LGBT advocacy organisations had urged.

Such a system would have permitted transgender people to change their legal sex with minimal gatekeeping: no psychiatric consultation, no need to “live as” the opposite sex for a period before making a formal application, and no necessity to undergo any medical interventions. In other words, under self-ID, any person, at any time, could have simply declared themselves a member of the opposite sex, and the government would have been obliged to officially recognise that declaration.

Feminist critics of self-ID—who describe themselves as “gender critical”, but are described by their opponents as “trans exclusionary radical feminists” (TERFs)—pushed back hard against the move, pointing out that although the reforms might make life marginally easier for transgender people, they would likely have a negative effect on natal women, and that this effect had not been taken into account by the government. Research organisations such as Fair Play for Women argued that women’s sports and single-sex services would be imperilled by the move, and groups such as A Woman’s Place UK organised public meetings to discuss the proposals, which were regularly besieged by angry protestors. Nonetheless, this campaigning effort cut through.

The grassroots feminist response to the proposed GRA reforms clearly surprised the government. As James Kirkup wrote in the Spectator following Liz Truss’s announcement this September: “. . . when the May government announced a consultation on GRA reform, a system of self-ID was effectively the default option. Most politicians paid no attention to the detail, instead outsourcing their judgement on a complex and seemingly obscure issue to officials who were often very (too?) close to highly-effective professional advocacy groups such as Stonewall, which has led the push for self-ID.”

Despite this initial hostility, not only did feminist campaigners succeed in persuading the government that self-ID was not the default option, they eventually succeeded in producing a U-turn on the entire GRA reform project.

A crucial player in this campaigning success was the parenting platform that this year turns 20: Mumsnet. From roughly 2015 onwards, the Mumsnet feminist forum became a key platform for gender critical discussion—or, as one less sympathetic American magazine dubbed it, “the ground zero for British transphobia”.

A new book by Sarah Pedersen, The Politicisation of Mumsnet, brilliantly chronicles the ascendance of the website as a force for political change. Pedersen, a Professor of Communication and Media at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, suggests that the GRA debate brought forth a new side to Mumsnet, previously characterised by researchers as a site of consumerist middle-class “choice feminism” dominated by discussion of aspirational expenditure: the best private schools, the best expensive buggies, and so on.

Nowadays, though, the feminism messageboard of Mumsnet leans decidedly towards the radical, and Pedersen describes Mumsnet’s relationship with groups such as Fair Play For Women and A Woman’s Place UK as “symbiotic”—the two activist platforms having developed concurrently in response to the threat of self-ID.

The politicisation of Mumsnet was in motion even before the GRA debate came along. Gordon Brown and David Cameron were the first party leaders to cotton on to the fact that Mumsnet contained an unusually high proportion of floating voters, and they therefore chose to participate in live chats with the site’s users that have since become a mainstay of election season.

Media coverage of these live chats has often tended towards the dismissive, with particular emphasis on the one question that is always asked of any participant: “What is your favourite biscuit?” Of course, the “biscuit question” often gets a politicised response, no doubt formulated in discussion with special advisors. But it has a tendency to wrong-foot politicians who mistakenly assume that the Mumsnet audience are only interested in trivia. Thus, particularly in the early 2010s, live chats often revealed participants to be well prepared on childcare policy and other “softer” topics, but regularly flummoxed by more technical questions relating to the economy or defence.

And, within the last five years, live chats have become considerably more difficult for politicians as a result of the GRA debate. Pedersen describes one such incident:

A February 2017 webchat with Jess Phillips (Labour) and Flick Drummond (Conservative), co-chairs of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women and Work, was framed as an opportunity to discuss the Group’s first annual report, which focused on the issue of women returning to work—assumed to be of interest to Mumsnetters . . . 51 questions were posted by Mumsnetters. Twenty-five of these—almost half—were on the issue of self-identification, definitions of women and, in particular, the proposed changes to the GRA.

Phillips and Drummond attempted to avoid engaging with this contentious issue, but with little success. Phillips issued a pre-prepared statement on the GRA question that carefully avoided taking a side before pivoting to the biscuit question. The tactic didn’t work. “Wow,” commented one user. “Is this really a webchat with 2 women MPs completely ignoring the biggest concern women posting have asked questions on?” The chat moderators pleaded for calm—“we don’t want our webchat guests to be harangued”—but to no avail. Mumsnet users were not having it.

The strong feelings on this issue are hardly surprising. Although its users do include both men and childless women, Mumsnet’s political priorities are set by mothers and, given their life experiences, many have proved reluctant to accept the trans activist claim that the biological differences between men and women are unimportant. The radical tone of the Mumsnet feminist forum has led to an influx of women into the GRA debate, particularly since 2018, and these were often women who had come to the site for non-political reasons. Pedersen quotes one user who described her own journey: “came for the babies, stayed for the feminism”.

The Mumsnet format lends itself well to discussion of controversial subjects concerning women, particularly the issue of self-ID. The site is unusually large for a female-dominated platform and, unlike on Facebook, its users can be anonymous and, unlike on Twitter, are unlikely to be met with a flurry of furious responses. Mumsnet moderators have periodically attempted to censor discussion, partly in response to the threat of losing advertising revenue. But these attempts have been intermittent, half-hearted, and reliably met with fury from Mumsnet users. Despite widespread efforts to shut down the “ground zero of British transphobia”, Mumsnetters have prevailed.

The Times columnist Janice Turner—a consistently gender critical voice—has described the GRA debate as “gender’s version of Brexit”. She’s quite right, and not only because of the frequently toxic nature of the debate.

Personally, I am agnostic on Brexit. I voted Remain primarily out of fear for the economic consequences of leaving the EU, and I would likely vote the same way again if another referendum were held. But I am sympathetic to the interpretation that sees Leave voters as a “left behind” majority who had been consistently ignored by Westminster and dismissed by the cultural elites as backwards, stupid, and bigoted, only to be finally given the opportunity to have their voice heard on this one issue.

We might apply the same narrative to feminism, dominated for decades by a cultural elite who hold power in academia and the media, but constitute a small minority of women. It was this feminist elite that most vigorously embraced self-ID and in doing so failed to consider the effect on, for instance, women in prison who risked being housed with male sex-offenders as a result. When GRA reform was put on the agenda, there was an outcry from the much larger majority of women who weren’t willing to accept the outlandish claims made by trans activists. Those women, having finally been pushed too far, organised a concerted campaign—based mostly, but not exclusively, online—in an effort to have their voices heard. They were presented as backwards, stupid, and bigoted. They still won.

And they are newly enlivened as a result. As we enter a new year, my prediction is that the Mumsnet effect on feminism will only become more important. This group of politicised women have proved themselves adept at changing the political narrative, and they are unlikely to quieten down now. For, as Pedersen puts it, “contrary to popular opinion . . . women do not lose the ability to think once they have had a baby”. 

The post Mum’s army appeared first on Standpoint.

The rise of separatism in Scotland should alarm us all. Although both an independent Scotland and a rump Britain would survive the break-up of the Anglo-Scottish Union, there is a probability of a fractious divorce, which would embitter relations between the English and the Scots to a degree not seen since the 18th century. Moreover, it would push the status of Northern Ireland back to the top of the Irish political agenda, with unpredictable—maybe violent—consequences. Further still, it would deal a major blow to the international standing and military strength of one of the West’s leading powers just when Western solidarity is needed to counter Russian subversion and Chinese bullying.      

For anyone who cares about peace within the British Isles and liberal democracy without, there are strong reasons to oppose Scottish independence. But how? In the 2014 referendum the case for the Union was made almost entirely in the unromantic terms of pounds and pence. It worked then, but it probably wouldn’t work now. With the collapse in the price of oil and the real possibility of a hard border between Scotland and England, the economic case for independence is even weaker than it was six years ago. But that hasn’t stopped separatist support soaring.

The reason lies in separatist nationalism’s nature as a secular religion, infusing quotidian lives with transcendent meaning, justifying the sacrifice of money and even life itself in the grand cause of the nation’s spiritual redemption. In Vivid Faces, his account of “the revolutionary generation” in Ireland straddling the First World War, Roy Foster depicts Irish separatists as the young revolting against their parents’ collusion with decadent, materialist, militarist British civilisation, while spellbound by an apocalyptic vision of national Gaelic purity. Against such heady idealism sober appeals to gradual, substantive reforms could not compete. In 1914 the moderate constitutional nationalist, John Redmond, had urged the Irish to put historic grievances behind them and focus instead on the concrete political achievements of recent years: “Do let us be a sensible and truthful people. Do let us remember that we today of our generation are a free people. We have emancipated the farmer; we have housed the agricultural labourer; we have won religious liberty; . . . and finally we have won an Irish parliament and an executive responsible to it”. But to no avail. Crystallised and galvanised by the happenstances of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the draconian British reaction, revolutionary zeal left sense and truth trailing in its wake. The result was often disillusion. Frank O’Connor, the man of letters who had fought with the IRA against the British, soon fled the repressive Catholicism of independent Ireland and went to live in London. He would have sympathised with his fellow nationalist, Bulmer Hobson, who lamented in 1956, “the phoenix of our youth has fluttered to earth such a miserable old hen I have no heart for it”.

So, how are we to save Britain from disintegration and the Scots from bitter disillusion? Arguments that independence would be a major act of economic self-harm, or that Sturgeon’s Covid performance has really not been much better than Johnson’s, will move older, more sober floating voters. But for younger, idealistic ones we need to recover and develop a morally attractive story about Britain with which they would want to identify. We need to confound the nationalist stereotype of post-Brexit, Tory Britain as worn-out, xenophobic, and devoted to screwing the poor.

The good news is that recent announcements suggest that the Government understands this. Its ambitious Green policies should attract the idealism of the young. The dramatic increase in defence spending displays a “Global Britain” serious about remaining an important pillar of the west in a time of insecurity. And plans to “level up” the working-class North evidence a commitment to social justice and national community. So, we have a good story about Britain to tell. But the bad news is that more is needed to woo idealistic young Scots most mistrustful of this Government away from their reckless, revolutionary dreams of independence. We also need a sophisticated social media strategy that distils the story into memes, tailors them to specific groups of voters, and then broadcasts them. Who is organising that?

The post Is Scottish independence now inevitable? appeared first on Standpoint.

Standpoint ends the year with a wide-ranging issue: from President Trump’s final days in office to the global significance of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, by way of Argentinian identity through soccer and why Henry James really does still matter. The magazine is, if nothing else, the broadest of intellectual churches.

If the pandemic has brought anything into stark relief, it is that we live in what Andrew Doyle terms “a closed casket culture”. His vital essay on a moribund (and unfashionable) topic asks us to take a more realistic approach to the inevitability of death.

The long-awaited demise of Trump’s presidency has held a global audience captive as any cheap soap opera might. In her dispatch from the US, Madeleine Kearns considers what are, in spite of his recriminatory stance, likely to be Trump’s final days. While any accusation of voter fraud should be taken seriously, the President’s claims do not bear close scrutiny. As a counterbalance, this issue’s guest speaker, Conrad Black, makes the case for President Trump as having one of the most successful first terms in US history, whilst having had to endure consistently negative press.

The US presidential election also revealed certain British attitudes. In his fascinating essay, Dominic Sandbrook assesses Britain’s obsession with the US. Was it the allure of the Entertainer-in-chief’s defeat? And why, given this country’s fanatical stance on Europe (on either side of the debate), Britain remains so ignorant about the Continent politically and culturally. David Swift draws on the rise of the Republican vote, among the Latino, Black and Muslim communities, to understand the shifting political allegiances of ethnic minorities here in the UK.

For all its admirers—the epithetic “the lucky country” was originally used with irony in the 1960s but has since become literal—Australia is little understood. Helen Dale analyses Australian exceptionalism and idiosyncrasy, and explains why its successes may not be as easy to replicate elsewhere. Fitzroy Morrissey’s incisive piece on Islam looks at the challenging relationship between politics and religion, and how Muslims are now living through a battle of ideas.

Closer to home, Louise Perry charts the politicisation of the internet forum Mumsnet and its increased importance as a feminist voice. Nigel Biggar looks north of the border and asks whether Britain can be saved from disintegration and “the Scots from bitter disillusion”.

Lockdown has brought us closer to nature, or so said the endless articles on a hackneyed subject. Ros Coward believes real appreciation of the countryside is severely lacking, due to both disinterest and too much interest. She states, “The widely shared image of the felling of the 250-year-old Cubbington pear tree, inconveniently in the way of HS2, encapsulated this despoliation.”

The 18th-century novelist Pierre Choderlos de Laclos might have inserted a positive adjective in his maxim, “our intentions make blackguards of us all”. Gabriel Gavin examines how reality all too often frustrates the hopes of those with good intentions, and how our interests perhaps narrow over time.

This year we have spent far too much time at home. In his wry Overrated/Underrated column, Stephen Bayley demonstrates why “Abroad” is clearly preferable to “Home”. He reminds us of Hannah Arendt’s clear-sightedness in the matter: “Loving life is easy when you are abroad . . . you are more master of yourself than at any other time.”

This month’s diary, provided by the classicist and broadcaster Natalie Haynes, is a poignant one. Her line—“The lights on London’s Oxford Street, and in Covent Garden especially, have a defiant quality to them which makes me tear up when I go walking through the unseasonably quiet streets”—will resonate with many, wherever they live. Perhaps at the end of this difficult year it is to T.S. Eliot that we should turn and “Little Gidding”:

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
.  .  .
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

In what has been a trying year for any magazine, large or small, Standpoint wholeheartedly thanks its readers for their forbearance and support. It has not been straightforward bringing out a publication during 2020; though we hope that the magazine continues to provoke thought as well as entertain. Standpoint will always stand by those values it holds dear. Donations are not only welcome but also highly prized. Without them we could not exist. Please, therefore, do donate what you can.

Standpoint wishes you all a merry Christmas and all best wishes for a healthy New Year.

The post Doubts and certainties appeared first on Standpoint.

The next time we were locked down, I hoped we would be spared further commentary of this kind. Because real evidence of a renewed appreciation of nature has been distinctly lacking. In fact, everywhere I have been recently I have witnessed abuse of nature, whether it is private indifference, vast housing developments on previously undeveloped countryside or infrastructure projects laying waste to precious wildlife habitats. The widely shared image of the felling of the 250-year-old Cubbington pear tree, inconveniently in the way of HS2, encapsulated this despoliation.

Having been an active environmentalist for many years it was initially exciting to hear commentators rhapsodising about the natural world. I even began to believe there might be a chance that the loss of species and their habitats would become a priority. Of course, it soon became clear most people were untouched by any real new reverence for nature. It wasn’t just the shocking scenes of litter-strewn beaches and parks, or the fly tipping which exploded along our already littered verges or, to add insult to injury, the casually discarded surgical gloves and masks which became a common sight on pavements. It was also evident from many home renovation projects which sprang back into life after lockdown that, whatever the fine words, nature wasn’t a consideration. In London where I live, I haven’t seen a single new garden created or a single barren space turned into a green sanctuary. Instead builders are at their usual work, ripping out hedges and plants, replacing them with railings and tarmac.

This disconnection between what is said about nature and what is done is especially acute when it comes to the government. Boris Johnson is full of fine words but they are never translated into action. In recent months he’s spoken about the environment in two UN speeches and in his Conservative Party Conference speech he gave his support for both the recovery of nature and the protection of green belts, digressing with a long fantasy about an idyllic future Britain in which families would picnic in “wild belts” amid flourishing flora and fauna. Needless to say, he promises the UK will set “world beating standards” in nature protection, animal welfare and energy policy. Yet the Environment Bill, which would give the opportunity to do this, has not been prioritised, instead moving sluggishly through parliament. Now that it has finally resurfaced, the focus is more on green “industry” and climate than protecting nature.

The reality is that, under this government’s stewardship, a plethora of damaging developments have been unleashed in the countryside. Historic hedgerows are being grubbed up. Ancient woodlands are being bulldozed.

Locals are horrified at the loss of beloved beauty spots, shocked at the apparent hypocrisy of their political leaders. In Greater Manchester, objectors are reeling from the allocation of 6,000 houses to be built on Carrington Moss, an irreplaceable 10,000-year-old peat moor, which has an important role in carbon capture and is home to more than 20 red-listed bird species. This development, described by campaigners as “scandalous, disgusting, insane” is supported by the local council even though local politicians, including Mayor Andy Burnham, have previously expressed support for a Greater Manchester Wetlands Improvement Area.

Many rural communities are waking up to the implications of the Government’s £27 billion road-building plans. In Norfolk, campaigners are desperately trying to stop the ecologically devastating Wensum Link, a four-lane highway that will cut through precious habitat of endangered species including the rare Barbastelle bat. In Sussex, the Highways Agency has announced its preferred route for the Arundel bypass across an unspoilt landscape. The Woodland Trust, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the Wildlife Trusts all oppose the new road, arguing that it will fragment habitat for dormice, endanger bat populations and ruin rare fenland. Campaigners call it a “climate-wrecking dual carriageway” that will cause “serious destruction of landscape and wildlife”.

Road plans like these always have wider consequences. Consider the so-called Oxford-Cambridge “Growth Arc” where plans to link roads to each university town via Milton Keynes are accompanied by ambitions to develop the corridor and build one million more homes. There has already been significant purchasing of land around this proposed route by developers. According to the CPRE, if this development goes ahead it will be a significant urbanisation of some of the last stretches of tranquil English countryside.

The eco-vandalism associated with HS2 sums up how little nature really matters to the Johnson administration. Work started as soon as Lockdown One ended and the scenes which followed were deeply upsetting. The Cubbington pear tree and its woodlands in Warwickshire are a tiny part of this destructive rampage. Calvert Jubilee Nature reserve in Buckinghamshire, which for decades had been tended and loved by volunteers for the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, has been trashed. Ancient trees have been felled, the rich wildlife habitat is now a flattened muddy track. Estelle Bailey, chair of the trust, said she was “heartbroken”.

At Jones Hill Woods, near Aylesbury, protestors resisted the bulldozers, calling HS2 “the greatest deforestation since World War 1”. Scenes of their eviction were chilling. HS2’s sinister enforcement officers, the National Eviction Team, dressed in what looked like riot gear, filmed protestors and used drones, before finally arresting them. A sliver of hope emerged when it became clear HS2 had not done a full ecological survey of resident bat species. But Johnson is unlikely to let “newt counters”, as he called ecologists in one of his less green, probably more truthful moments, get in the way.

Estelle Bailey isn’t the only one to be heartbroken. I am too. I spend a lot of time in Kent and it’s devastating to see how little of Kent’s quintessential countryside is left. Housing developments are everywhere, mostly providing four-five bedroom houses rather than affordable housing which was the Trojan horse that let the developers push their “build, build, build” agenda. Earlier this year Alok Sharma, the business secretary, gave permission to  build Europe’s largest solar plant on Graveney marshes, an evocative, ecologically rich area, and one of the very few places in Kent where you can still experience solitude. And what little was left of the garden of England has now been sacrificed to the insanities of Brexit. It is not just the truly vast lorry park near Sevington but also several hundred portaloos to provide for lorry drivers caught in the bureaucratic hell of a Kent border.

Over the years the pro-development lobby has argued that the British countryside is still abundant so we can afford to lose some of it. This is misleading. The green belt originally made up 13 per cent of all land and for decades was a key factor in the protection of continuous stretches of countryside. As recently as 2010-11, there had been no net loss of it. But changes in planning legislation have led to rapidly escalating incursions into previously undeveloped land, resulting in less continuous countryside and more urban landscapes. The land grab started in 2012 when David Cameron’s coalition government introduced the National Planning Policy Framework. This legislation insisted councils set targets for housing so, lacking land to meet those targets, local authorities were forced to redefine green belt areas as “available for development”. By 2018, 11,960 acres of green belt had been lost and the amount is growing. “If you look at data on land use change,” says Paul Miner, head of Land Use and Planning at CPRE, “levels of development on green field and previously undeveloped countryside have been going steadily upwards.”

If the 2012 changes in planning laws loosened planning controls, housing secretary Robert Jenrick’s proposals in the “Planning for the Future” white paper look dangerously like tearing them up altogether. Planning decisions will be taken away from local communities with areas zoned for development by central government and housing targets set nationally. Developers will be given power to drive forward proposals unobstructed. The stated aim is “to get the country building”. This year’s statistics will likely reveal huge increases in the change of land use from previously underdeveloped to built environment. But the publication of these figures is now overdue. Cynics—or should that be realists?—suspect the delay is deliberate because these figures will inflame a now powerful backbench rebellion against Jenrick’s plans.

Alongside the belief that “build, build, build” will “save” our economy, the main excuse for all this development is the so-called housing crisis. But a growing body of evidence shows that developments currently flourishing in our countryside do nothing to solve the real problem which is not a shortage of housing per se but a shortage of affordable housing. Developers don’t want to build cheap, small starter homes. They prefer five-bedroom, low density, housing on green field sites, especially those near beautiful areas. Why? Because they are massively more profitable. There’s evidence that developers are targeting sites near Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty because these command the highest values.

Those involved in local campaigns to protect their own precious surroundings may not realise it but they are fighting against a countrywide problem. Developers are pushing at the edges of protected areas. Infrastructure projects are blasting through previously connected stretches of habitat. Industrial energy plants and thousands of houses threaten to destroy atmospheric and important marshes. The countryside is literally being transformed into an urban landscape. These changes have never been debated nationally and almost certainly wouldn’t be popular if they were.

We are at a tipping point. Much has already been lost. The time for just singing the praises of the healing powers of nature is over. We need to reflect on how we can take a stand against its destruction. A good place to start would be calling this government to account for pretending to care about nature while concreting over it.

The post Concreting over the countryside appeared first on Standpoint.

It is intended to tackle “the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans”.

Its concern is that “this malign ideology is now migrating from the fringes of American society and threatens to infect core institutions of our country”.

Therefore it prohibits the promotion of “divisive concepts”—the notion that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.

It is not an attempt to stifle academic debate, or limit free speech. People and institutions are still able to discuss and critique ideas to their hearts’ content.

What they’re no longer allowed to do is “to promote race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating in the Federal workforce or in the Uniformed Services”.

This Executive Order was essentially attacking “Critical Race Theory” (CRT)—a currently fashionable hotchpotch of half-baked hocus-pocus to which the notion of inherent “white privilege” is central.

If the EO was a watershed moment in the States, then the Equalities Minister’s October speech denouncing CRT in the House of Commons was our closest equivalent in the UK. Kemi Badenoch reminded educators that they would be breaking existing legislation if they teach politically contested ideas such as “white privilege” as facts.

Unfortunately, an intervention such as hers is all too rare and with Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain now out of Number 10, the government is reportedly looking to move away from the culture wars and to present Boris Johnson more in line with a Joe Biden-style approach. Why a centre-right party with an 80-strong majority in a small “c” conservative country would want to lean more towards the ideologies of a particularly left-wing politician is anyone’s guess.

It’s a great shame because after a long time people are finally beginning to wake up to what the Marxist sociologist Rudi Dutschke called “the long march through the institutions”—the idea that left-wing “progressives” have to infiltrate public bodies in order to push through their ideologies. The long march is now well underway and it will take a huge effort to reverse it, particularly in the education system.

The “woke” infiltration is evident everywhere one looks. Cambridge University recently proposed a rule which would require academics to be “respectful of the diverse identities of others” which sounds well-meaning but could essentially prevent the debate of ideas that  one disagrees with. It is an attempt by the Left to stifle free speech and silence dissenting views.

Universities UK has published recommendations suggesting that universities must “go beyond” unconscious bias training and implement anti-racist training on “white privilege”, despite Badenoch’s statement.

And up at Manchester University, students are demanding the banning of the word “black”; the colour is no longer appropriate because it has been “used for bad and unsavoury situations or objects”.

Meanwhile, exam bodies, apparently unaware that “black” is verboten, propose giving GCSE History a “Black Lives Matter makeover”. Edexcel says: “While we always work hard to design history qualifications that are diverse and inclusive, this year has rightly generated a renewed focus on what history is taught to our young people, and the sector needs to keep challenging itself.” According to AQA: “We’re always looking at how we can make our qualifications as representative as they can possibly be.”

In a recent survey by Channel 5, 93 per cent of respondents said that the school curriculum was not diverse enough to reflect society. Ninety per cent believe that teachers lacked adequate training to deliver an anti-racist education. But it’s not the job of the curriculum to reflect society. It certainly shouldn’t be presented in a superficially “diverse” way. Surely, a curriculum should be knowledge-rich and planned according to educational principles, not rapidly reshaped as a reaction to current events.

In a similar vein, a recent report by the Black Curriculum (it describes itself as “a social enterprise founded in 2019 by young people to address the lack of Black British history in the UK Curriculum”) claimed that the national curriculum “systematically omits the contribution of black British history in favour of a dominant white, Eurocentric curriculum”. It will be useful to get a firm understanding of what exactly is meant by “black history”. Hitherto we haven’t taught history based on complexion but rather based on key events that have shaped our nation. And the fact is that this nation has been a majority white country for most of its history. Obviously a significant portion of the history curriculum will feature white individuals of influence. That does not make it racist, it makes it accurate.

Also, consider this. The largest number of immigrants joining our schools are of Eastern European descent. The larger groups of minorities in this country are no longer within the 13 per cent BAME category, and actually fall within the 87 per cent white group. Why do we never hear demands for more Polish history on the curriculum?

CRT really is insidious. It has seeped into our institutions like a toxic miasma. Thankfully, the general public are becoming aware of its baleful influence. Now it is time for the establishment to start standing up to it rather than pursing a policy of appeasement.

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***

I probably have the pandemic to thank, however, for making my West End debut in November as a playwright. That’s how I’ll describe it on my CV, anyway. A more accurate description is that I loosely translated and modernised an Ovid poem (a letter from Hypsipyle to her errant husband, Jason) for a set of 15 short plays, based on Ovid’s Heroides, for the Jermyn St Theatre. Olivia Williams performed my monologue, which was screened as part of the mini-season. I’ve been performing since I was a student, but I’m no actor. Watching someone at the top of their game take a character and occupy every corner and crevice of her, seeing what happens to a piece of writing when an actor and director turn it into a theatrical (and cinematic) performance was properly thrilling. I think I’d always vaguely hoped that if I made it to the West End, there would be more people and glasses of champagne on press night. But it turned out not to matter at all.

***

My concentration seems to be shot this year for anything except work. I have entirely failed to learn a new language, finish a novel (unless I’m reading it for work, in which case I still seem to be able to power through at speed, but as soon as it’s for pleasure, I slow to a sloth’s pace), or  watch anything more demanding than repeats of Morse. I want to join in with the collective watching of various shows, but I couldn’t get into Normal People (too many sad-eyed pretty people having sex they didn’t like to John Lewis-ad covers of songs I do like) and I have yet to commit to The Queen’s Gambit. I wonder if I’ve lost my taste for jeopardy. This month, I’ve mainly been watching Inspector Montalbano. This is partly because I like a murder mystery, partly because the conventions of crime dramas in other languages are intriguing (why can Catarella not open a door properly? Was the actor famous for slapstick before he was cast in the show? Don’t write in, I enjoy not knowing). But it’s mainly because I like the feeling of seeing people somewhere hot and beautiful, eating delicious food. I’d probably be just as happy if he didn’t solve the crime.

***

I’ve been hopeless at Christmas for the past two years (I used to be excellent at it but I lost my way, so now I mainly try not to be Scrooge and ruin it for other people). I have a little wooden tree I might put up, now I’ve finally cleaned my flat. But I can’t remember enjoying other people’s Christmas decorations more than I have this year, even though they’ve been up since Halloween. The lights on London’s Oxford Street, and in Covent Garden especially, have a defiant quality to them which makes me tear up when I go walking through the unseasonally quiet streets. I think it’s the refusal to go into winter without offering up a little light in the dark.

***

One of the happier aspects of taking everything online is that last week I interviewed Douglas Stuart, the Booker Prize winner, for Hay Winter Weekend. Neither of us was in Hay: I was in London and Douglas was in New York. The pandemic means that he has yet to see a copy of his book in a UK bookshop. His winning novel, Shuggie Bain, is a remarkable piece of work: a dark, bleakly funny account of addiction from the perspective of a child watching his mother fall apart. But even though I was in the enviable position of being able to ask him anything about his writing process and his inspiration for an hour, I got sidetracked when he mentioned knitting. His day job is in textiles, and we ended up comparing notes on our knitting projects after the event was finished. We hope to meet in real life in one or other of our cities at some point. I plan to wear a woolly hat.

The post A pandemic diary appeared first on Standpoint.

A general problem with this is the obvious fact that people do not vote as a bloc, and that ethnic or racial groups—and often individuals within these groups—contain a multitude of political opinions. A specific problem with this kind of analysis in the UK is that the relatively small numbers makes accurate polling of the views of ethnic minorities notoriously difficult.

In the US, for example, “Latinos” constitute almost 20 per cent, and African Americans around 14 per cent, of the population. In the UK, by contrast, British Asians make up only 7 per cent, and African or Caribbean Brits merely 3 per cent of the population. Therefore, surveys need to poll a very large number of people in order to reach anything like a decent sample size.

Nonetheless, we can roughly estimate that most ethnic minority groups in the UK have large majorities in favour of the Labour Party. But a closer examination of the breadth of economic, political and cultural opinions among the people who make up these groups suggests that loyalty to Labour is often based on an association of the Left with anti-racism and of the Conservatives with hostility to non-white Britons. If the Tories can shake their hard-earned reputation for racism, there is plenty of evidence to suggest they can make inroads with Asian and Black Britons, just as they have done with the white working class over the past two elections.

Since the 1980s, sociologists have noted that black people in the UK are often less economically left-wing than many whites. In his seminal There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack, Paul Gilroy warned that Black Britons “remain suspicious and distant from the political institutions of the working-class movement” such as trade unions, and that “many of the younger people in black cultural production haven’t had any exposure to radical political movements at all”. Sociology professor Gargi Bhattacharyya attributes the unhappy experiences of many black and Asian Britons when it comes to the state as leading many “dark-skinned folk of varying hues to embrace the promise of neoliberal subject-hood with enthusiasm” and argues that “if anything, there is more vocal enthusiasm for some kinds of markets among black and minority populations” than among whites.

Among younger Britons generally, there is less sympathy towards the idea of jobs for life, trade unions, and certain aspects of the old welfare state. This suggests that traditional left-wing economic policies around industrial policies, taxation and welfare spending may be inadequate to win support from Black and Asian Britons going forward.

There is also a noted tendency, particularly among African and some Asian Brits, to send their children to independent schools, or at least aspire to do so, and this has led to a generation of young BAME Britons who don’t feel the antipathy towards private education that is an important shibboleth for the Labour Left, as reflected in last year’s Labour Party Conference pledge to abolish private schools.

The YouTuber “KSI”, who attended independent schools alongside his brother, says that his parents “worked so hard . . . and they put all their money into us”, invoking the language of sacrifice and striving traditionally used by Conservatives to justify private education.

Nor is the language of class snobbery unique to white people. Earlier this year, the former England football player Eniola Aluko attracted criticism after she posted a series of tweets criticising the government’s furlough scheme as fostering a “do-nothing” mentality and a “culture of entitlement”.

Outside of economics, there is evidence that many Black and Asian Britons are particularly conservative on cultural issues: an investigation by the Theos thinktank found that London—often assumed to be the most liberal part of the UK, yet also the most ethnically diverse—had more conservative attitudes on the whole than the rest of the UK. Nearly a quarter of Londoners say that sex before marriage is wrong in some cases, and 29 per cent say the same of same-sex
relationships, compared to just 13 per cent and 23 per cent of people outside of London.

A 2018 BBC survey of 2,000 British Asians found that while almost half—43 per cent—of respondents felt same-sex relationships were acceptable (down from 75 per cent of the British population as a whole), 36 per cent stated such relationships were “unacceptable” (compared to 15 per cent of the UK as a whole). Somewhat dispiritingly, there was not much variation according to age: 42 per cent of those aged 55+ said they accepted same-sex relationships, compared with 43 per cent of the 35-54 age group, and just 44 per cent of those aged 18-34.

This is reflected in occasional high-profile incidents, such as the dismissal last year of Shila Iqbal from the soap opera Emmerdale due to old tweets with homophobic and racist language, and of Seyi Omooba from a stage adaption of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, for writing on social media that she did “not believe you could be born gay [and] I do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal”.

Perhaps surprisingly, these conservative views also hold when it comes to immigration. A 2013 NatCen poll asked first and second generation migrants whether they thought immigration was good for the economy: only 26 per cent agreed, 25 per cent felt it had been neither good nor bad, and fully 48 per cent felt it had been detrimental to the British economy. The same survey asked whether they thought the numbers of immigrants should increase, stay the same, or decrease, and merely 8 per cent wanted immigration numbers to increase, 31 per cent wanted it to stay at the same level, and 60 per cent wanted the numbers to come down.

These attitudes on economics and culture have not been sufficient for the Conservatives to make sizeable inroads among the UK’s non-white electorate thus far. In the short term, according to the best estimates, it is only among British Indians and British Jews that the Tory party can realistically expect to win a majority of support, and the departure of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader may diminish their prospects with the latter. Nonetheless, given the volatility of the electorate over the past few elections and the crumbling of the “Red Wall”, it is clear that Labour cannot take these voters for granted, and the Tories have the potential to make progress, if they can shake their residual reputation for hostility to non-white Britons.

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He developed a technique of translating celebrity and a clear message tirelessly expressed into high political office, after changing parties seven times in 13 years while waiting for his opportunity to strike. He was the first president since Andrew Jackson in 1824 to promise, believably, to clean out the federal government, change its direction in many areas and effectively dispense with the entire political class. He ran against all factions of both parties and against the worst 20 years of presidential incompetence in the country’s history—endless, fruitless war, the worst economic debacle since the Great Depression, and steady loss of place to China, while the world took America’s jobs through mistaken trade agreements. A savage battle, his raged these four years, as he tried to dispose of all the old establishment: the entrenched defence included the unfounded and almost certainly criminally launched Trump-Russia collusion inquiry and the following completely spurious impeachment trial.

Despite these unprecedented harassments, President Trump has had the most successful first term in US history except for Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon. He addressed the greatest scandal of modern American history: the tacit agreement between both parties to admit between 10 and 20 million illegal and almost entirely unskilled immigrants across the southern border, because the Democrats harvested their votes even though they were ineligible as non-citizens, and Republican employers enjoyed the cheap labour. This influx strained the education, social, and police systems of the southwestern states and effectively stagnated the income of the less-skilled sector of the American workforce for many years. Trump has practically eliminated illegal immigration by strengthening the southern border.

By this measure and by reducing the taxes of 83 per cent of taxpayers, vastly deregulating to encourage business initiatives, and generously sponsoring investment in disadvantaged “enterprise zones”, Trump had practically eliminated unemployment prior to the onset of the Covid pandemic. There were 750,000 more positions to be filled than there were unemployed and he was generally assumed likely to be easily reelected. This is essentially how he raised his share of the traditionally Democratic African-American vote by 50 per cent and doubled his share of the Hispanic American vote between 2016 and 2020. The Trump administration had the lower 20 per cent of American income-earners gaining income in percentage terms more quickly than the upper 10 per cent, and was thus the first serious jurisdiction in the world to tackle the universal income disparity problem.

Trump spared the country the Green Terror of destroying the petroleum industry to fight a global warming that has not been happening in the last 50 years, while maintaining high environmental standards. He sharply lowered the poverty and violent crime rates and ended oil imports (which stood at 15 million barrels a day at the end of the Clinton administration). He pushed his Nato allies into $400 billion of additional military expenses in accord with their commitments, revitalised the US Armed Forces, made the greatest progress in Middle East peace since Carter’s Camp David Agreement in 1978, revived the concept of nuclear non-proliferation in respect of Iran and North Korea, mobilised Western opinion to the Chinese challenge, and encouraged China’s neighbours, especially India and Japan, in what amounts to an enlightened containment policy. He stuffed the federal courts with constitutionalist judges including three members of the Supreme Court. Despite, as has often occurred with him, bungled public relations, he sharply curtailed economic damage from Covid-19 and advanced the timetable for a vaccine, the only possible solution, by at least two years.

It has been a formidable record of achievement and the majority of Americans declared themselves better off than they had been four years before. In the face of overwhelming press and polling antagonism, and though outspent two to one, the Republicans made impressive gains in the House of Representatives and across the country and are likely to retain control of the Senate and win back the House in two years.

The president himself was sandbagged by a totalitarian, hate-filled media for four years, one of the principal targets of his assault on Washington, assisted it must be said by some of Trump’s stylistic infelicities and foibles.

The credulous British public have been fed the Trump-hating snobbery and lies of the Guardian, BBC, FT, and Economist these four years and could scarcely have any notion of what has been happening in the US. The Democrats have a partially senescent candidate whose family received $9.4 million for unspecified services from China, Russia and Ukraine while Biden was the vice president. The Democrats’ programme, written by self-proclaimed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, could have been written by Jeremy Corbyn and is completely unacceptable to the American electorate. If Biden is inaugurated, his government will be a shambles and his only chance of being successful will be to ignore the far-left elephants in the room, and cooperate with the Republican leaders in the Congress to get something useful accomplished.

His party is a coalition of the Big Rich, Big Media, Big Tech, academia, Hollywood, professional sport, the urban guerrillas and hooligans who conducted “peaceful protests” all summer all around the country that killed scores of people, wounded 700 policemen, and caused more than $2 billion of property damage, and the detritus of the old Democrats, all riding a wave of confected Trump-hate. Biden didn’t campaign—the treacherous media did it for him and it was still a squeaker, with Republican victory down-ballot.

Joe Biden is the most unimpressive person ever elected to this position and he does not remotely possess the competence or stature to make an effective government out of the Democratic riffraff. Nostalgia for President Trump will soon become vertiginous. He should win the third and deciding round of the Great Trump War. 

The post The Great Trump War: Round Two appeared first on Standpoint.

The government is fast losing any modicum of authority and stands to alienate those very voters that helped it to power. In this issue David Swift takes a close look at how the government’s quixotic attempt at stemming the infection rate may have given those first-time Tory voters in the north of the country what can only be termed buyer’s remorse. Johnson’s heroic turn as Alexander in slicing the Gordian Knot of Brexit may yet be undone by his failure to level up the economy and take on the liberal elite.

As the clock runs down on the Brexit transition period, Britain’s future relationship with the EU remains unclear. For Stephen Booth “years of bad-tempered negotiations and political drama have drained the well of trust on both sides”. He assesses whether the hurdles are as insurmountable as they might seem.

This month’s diary comes courtesy of Gillian Philip, a victim of cancel culture when she was fired for backing J.K. Rowling. “Wokeness”, for want of a better noun, is no longer a byword for benign political correctness. Although social justice may have laudable origins, which few can gainsay, it has begun to reveal an insidious and intolerant aspect. The American journalist Bari Weiss, who fell foul of what she termed an “illiberal environment” at the New York Times, recently offered her Twitter followers advice from a wise source. The concluding paragraphs of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s essay “Live Not By Lies” are worth repeating here:

      If we are too frightened, then we should stop complaining that we are being suffocated. We are doing this to ourselves. If we bow down even further and wait longer, our brothers the biologists may then help to bring nearer the day when our thoughts can be read and our genes restructured.
       If we are too frightened to do anything, then we are hopeless and worthless people and the lines of Pushkin fit us well:

What use to the herds the gifts of freedom?
The scourge, and a yoke with tinkling bell
 —this is their heritage, bequeathed to every generation.

The poet Robert Frost sought to define education as “the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence”. But has tertiary education outlived its value and usefulness? Helen Dale decries ever-expanding higher education—“degrees are an intellectual peacock’s tail and serve to signal a very specific kind of fitness. They also (like the peacock’s tail) habitually get in their owners’ way”—and argues against rewarding people materially on their intelligence alone. David Goodhart also persuasively argues that we must not only serve the cognitive elite—where supply now outstrips demand—but also develop a culture of “hearts” and “hands”.

Following the death of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter (BLM) transcended its status as a social movement and became a watchword. Calvin Robinson’s personalised account of his own experience at the hands of this organisation—and how it attempted to cancel him—reveals how BLM may have missed the point it has been trying to make.

With Nigeria turning 60 as an independent nation this month, Remi Adekoya asks that we look to Africa rather than the United States for changing negative attitudes to blackness. He makes a case for Nigeria—a country of over 200 million—becoming the great black hope of the future.

If the global pandemic has taught us anything—which should include excising irritating phrases, such as “the new normal”, from common parlance—it is that life, however much we will it otherwise, remains uncertain. Of course, the Stoics knew this early. John Sellars makes a strong case for why stoicism still matters and how its philosophy might provide a guide in the current climate.

The distinction between what constitutes poetry and what does not is an argument that is unlikely ever to be resolved. The poet Ian Hamilton cuts a stoical and central figure in David Collard’s essay on the “poetry wars” of the 1970s, when traditionalists and radicals battled for the future of verse.

Cinema, Federico Fellini reminds us, “uses the language of dreams”. Lockdown has proved a nightmare for the movie industry. Matthew Bond assesses whether this is the end of cinema.

In his witty and contrarian Overrated/Underrated column, Stephen Bayley offers us lust over love. The latter, a recent invention, is prone to unhappiness, a price always having to be paid; whereas the former, well . . .

As the country enters another period of uncertainty, with stricter anti-Covid measures likely by the time this magazine hits the newsstands, Standpoint will, more than ever, need the continued support of its many readers and subscribers to survive. Putting out a magazine in these circumstances has not been an easy task—so, dear reader, should the urge come upon you, please do not hesitate to donate.

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