Duas coisas são infinitas: o universo e a estupidez humana. Mas, em relação ao universo, ainda não tenho a certeza absoluta.
(Einstein)
But the tune ends too soon for us all (Ian Anderson)
E quando aqueles “não-socialistas” garantiam que Seguro, em Belém, não faria fretes ao PS… Pois é: o PR enviou a Lei do Retorno e Asilo para o Tribunal Constitucional. Aí têm o vosso Tozé, tonhós!
Se calhar já não foram a tempo — e faço aqui, em solidariedade, aquele gesto de “dinheiro”, esfregando polegar e indicador — de aceitar a minha sugestão de férias da semana passada, Nova Iorque. Nada temam, ex-clientes da agência Abreu que aqui, sim, encontram boas dicas de destinos de férias. Hoje trago uma sugestão nova, muito mais quentinha, em especial nas últimas semanas. Querem conhecer todo o exotismo de mil anos de história, vivos em cada tradição de Marrocos? Visitem Ceuta!
A cidade espanhola é o destino certo para vocês. Pedro Sánchez e os media tradicionais — mas repito-me — garantem que todos os invasores já voltaram à origem o que, traduzido de PSOÊs para português, significa que permanecem em Ceuta milhares de novos imigrantes ilegais, muitos deles de origem não-marroquina, que Marrocos recusa aceitar de volta ao seu território. Oportunidade única, portanto, para uma experiência multicultural imersiva que dispensa passaporte. Desde que o turista esteja disposto a dispensar também a carteira ao virar da primeira esquina. A “taxa turística” à chegada não será de descurar mas, em contrapartida, os voos devem estar bem baratinhos.
E resolvido esse pequeno inconveniente de um “cheque out” logo no check-in, o resto só pode correr bem. Afinal, não é óptimo viajar ligeiro no verão?! Só é pena as senhoras da família não poderem viajar tão ligeiras, uma vez que passear ao sol com o reposteiro da sala só com dois buraquinhos para os olhos, a fazer as vezes de saída de praia, será mesmo a forma mais prudente de se movimentarem pela cosmopiolhita Ceuta.
Muito à conta destes estupendos avanços civilizacionais promovidos por toda a sorte de políticos europeus nas últimas décadas, a fascista veterana e primeira-ministra de Itália, Georgia Meloni, desencaminhou a fascista-nova e primeira-ministra da Dinamarca, Mette Frederiksen, para um comunicado conjunto a defender uma política migratória europeia mais estrita, com mais expulsões de imigrantes sem direito legal de permanência.
Agora, como é que a Mussolina meteu a Mette, colega de bancada do PS e do PSOE no Parlamento Europeu, nestas lides fascistas, é para mim um mistério. Terá sido bruxedo? Eh pá, essa é uma hipótese até um bocadinho misógina, associada a crenças ridículas que vitimaram tantas mulheres ao longo da história. Sem dúvida, esta hipótese fica descartada. O que desconhecia era que, também para as senhoras, o canto da sereia fascista representa uma tentação irresistível que conduz à perdição.
Nomeadamente à perdição — espera-se, digo eu — do direito de incontáveis e ilegais imigrantes se passearem livremente por essa Europa fora a distribuir amostras caríssimas de fundamentalismo islâmico. Sim, que muito longe vão os tempos em que a confiança permitia a descontraída expressão “De borla, até injecções na testa”.
Uma coisa é garantida: a base desta nova parceria M&M — a mais relevante desde o lançamento da versão amendoim do famoso chocolate — não foi decerto o bom senso, uma vez que o nosso referencial de imunidade a tais cantorias encantatórias, o nosso Ulisses de Belém, António José Seguro, permanece, Sanchíssimo, a despachar Leis do Retorno e Asilo para o Tribunal Constitucional. A Lua até pode eclipsar o Sol, mas Belém não eclipsará nunca o mais alto socialista da Nação.
E porque recordar é viver e, amiúde, ficar extra-deprimido, quem se lembra de todos aqueles “não-socialistas” que garantiam, em vésperas de eleições presidenciais, que um futuro Presidente Seguro jamais faria fretes ao PS uma vez que até era inimigo de António Costa e tudo? Aí têm o vosso Tozé, tonhós!
O nosso pole pole é «Ah, mas este solzinho não há noutro sítio do mundo». Ou «Sim, mas o peixe é muito bom».
Como todos aqueles que passam pela estúpida adolescência e descendem de agricultores semi ou totalmente analfabetos, eu também já tive a arrogância de julgar, por ter vivido sempre na cidade, por ter estudado e por ter uma vida que em nada se compara à dos meus avós, que sabia mais que aqueles a quem os que ainda mais sobranceiros que eu tratam por povo. Não há nada, na verdade, mais repugnante na intelectualidade, na política ou no radar mediático, do que a frasezinha que inclui a expressão povo. O povo, tão fofo, que nada sabe e que de tudo precisa, incluindo da suposta lucidez de algum outro estúpido autoproclamado brilhante, para não ser enganado por quem pretende abusar dele ou fazer dele bandeira. O povo, afinal, é estandarte de toda a gente, uma muleta que serve essencialmente para fazer distinguir positivamente aquele que, por alguma razão, se destaca desse mesmo povo, como uma superioridade anunciada totalmente carente de justificação. Antes houvesse, mas não há, de facto, menos estúpidos, menos broncos ou menos intelectualmente brutos naquilo a que se chama povo do que há naquilo a que se chama elite. Haverá nesta também autoproclamada elite lisboeta, nalguns casos mais felizes por jeito ou por hereditariedade, a elegância de saber pedir licença, de não tirar macacos do nariz, de não buzinar, de mastigar de boca fechada ou de não dizer ‘prontos’, mas o que separa a elite deste regime dos velhos lá da minha terra que me pediam para explicar o que ouviam na missa ou na televisão, é mais o estilo que a substância. Subsiste muita arrogância de casta que se julga uns patamares acima da banalidade dos comuns mortais que, na verdade, não passa de outra espécie de banalidade com a aparência da sofisticação.
De vez em quando, por exemplo, damos de caras com a tese do copo meio cheio para falar da situação social, económica ou institucional portuguesa. Não, as coisas não vão assim tão mal como pintam alguns profetas da desgraça, normalmente acusados de quererem lucrar de alguma forma com o anúncio dessa mesma desgraça. Não, não estamos assim tão mal, há cinquenta anos estávamos muito piores. E têm razão, que estávamos. Mas também nunca ninguém se lembrou, em 1974, de vir acudir aos recentíssimos democratas ou às esquerdas, ou mesmo às direitas, revolucionárias, dizendo-lhes que em 1933 estávamos muito piores, como se esse pudesse ser um argumento. Nunca foi. E não sei por que diabo o há-de ser agora. A tese do copo meio cheio é a validação da estagnação, é a salvaguarda da mediania, a versão moderna da alegria da pobreza que está nesta grande riqueza que é dar e ficar contente.
Há dez anos, numa aldeia de pescadores, em Zânzibar, cheia de miúdos paupérrimos a pedir doces, por entre cabanas e tijolos, visitei uma escola que tinha em si todos os graus de ensino e um director que dava aulas de todas as disciplinas. No grupo de gente onde me inseria, todos naturalmente ocidentais, uns com mais ar de miss Mundo do que outros, íamos fazendo perguntas sobre quantas pessoas ali moravam, quantas crianças ali estudavam, quantas conseguiam continuar os estudos, quem financiava tudo aquilo, entre computadores, livros, salários e obras. Estavam a construir, de forma muito lenta, segundo o que todos percebemos, um novo edifício para novas salas de aula. E um homem sueco, sem um pingo de sobranceria, apenas cheio de confiança e curiosidade, perguntou ao director qual era o prazo para a conclusão da obra. O director não compreendeu a pergunta. Deadline, replicou o sueco, julgando que não tinha sido claro na pergunta. E o director, sentado, levantou as mãos ao céu, estendeu-as pela secretária e explicou-lhe com algum orgulho que ali não havia prazos, que ali existe uma expressão para esse tipo de coisas que é pole pole e que significa “pouco a pouco”, assim como quem diz que é para se ir fazendo e logo se vê, se Deus quiser. O sueco estranhou, ergueu as sobrancelhas, torceu o nariz e, quando todos nós víamos que ele achava a resposta abominável, foi educado o suficiente para dizer qualquer coisa como «bom, está bem, se é assim que vocês funcionam…». O pole pole é assim como aquilo que todo o português, mais ou menos erudito, mais ou menos pobre, mais ou menos inteligente, costuma dizer sempre que alguém lhe fala das misérias do País. O nosso pole pole é «Ah, mas este solzinho não há noutro sítio do mundo». Ou «Sim, mas o peixe é muito bom». João Vieira Pereira, director do Expresso,escreveu na semana passada um texto procurando mostrar «um lado B de estudos encomendados que ao longo dos anos sistematicamente ridicularizam o povo português, nos tratam como mentecaptos, incapazes de nos governarmos e profundamente incompetentes. Todos nós preferíamos um país mais rico, menos desigual, mais moderno, com melhor Estado, mas nem isso consegue apagar o que temos conseguido na última década.» É o nosso pole pole.
How do you produce the type of person who cares deeply while seemingly not giving a damn? With great difficulty, it turns out. Plenty of people imagine that they can say what they think, but very few do.For most people, some real or imaginary social punishment lies on the horizon: a dinner they won’t be invited to; a club of which they fear they will never become a member.
Rod Liddle was one of the happy few who was free. He was free to say what he thought. He was free to voice unpopular opinions and – often harder – he was free to voice popular opinions. When the whole world seemed to be falling on his head he had a perfectly contented attitude towards it. I remember a few years back when there was a Rod storm (always caused by people who don’t read TheSpectator taking some line – usually a joke – out of context), I asked him how he was doing. If I remember rightly the evening news had actually done a segment in which an interviewer had read out portions of Rod’s latest column to people on the street, gauging their reactions. These were almost universally bewildered or appalled, because that is what the broadcaster wanted them to be.
Anyway, Rod was fine, of course. Though he did tell me that his latest way of realising he had set off the banshees was that he would be happily sitting in his study and his wonderful wife, Alicia, would arrive in the doorway and give him a look that made it clear that whatever he had just written had become the main news story of the day.
It takes a considerable amount of composure, confidence and certainty in your cause to be unbothered by such hurricanes. But Rod was indeed unbothered by them. On occasion he seemed to enjoy them, as though the howling was a sort of refreshing breeze, reminding him of the insanities of his critics and reassuring himself that he was right.
The role of such a figure in a culture can hardly be overstated. In a society in which everyone is meant to say the same thing, the person who refuses to do so is at a premium. If that person is also driven not by a desire to shock, but by a desire to tell the truth, then they are even more valuable.
That was what drove Rod. Of course he enjoyed the occasional bomb that would shake his editor, copy-editor, lawyer or reader. He even developed a trick which he passed on, which was to plant some obvious firework into a column which would have to be removed, but leave a depth-charge in the hope that nobody noticed before it went off. It was a brilliant tactic.
Better still was the fact that his bomb-throwing was grounded in deep moral causes. He loved this country. He loved its people. He loved the working class who had become such an enemy of the sort of people who normally have columns in national newspapers. He loved Millwall. He loved his family. He loved his wider family of readers and colleagues.
When we last spoke he was in hospital but it looked like things were getting better. I was optimistic for his return, as was he. But he also had what he described to me as a zen-like attitude towards the possibility that everything was coming to an end for him. He told me that he had a slight attitude of ‘my work here is done’. We laughed at the idea of him as a do-gooder, but that is in fact partly what he was. He gave people the confidence to be more honest, ask more questions and put up with less cant.
I hope he knew how appreciated he was. A few years ago, The Spectator packed out the London Palladium for an ‘in conversation with Rod Liddle’. I was there and it was magnificent to see one of the capital’s largest theatres filled with readers wanting to see Rod. I popped backstage afterwards and there he was on his own, changing T-shirts and sizing up a bottle of wine he’d been given as a fee. ‘How was it, mate?’ he asked as I put my head round the door. ‘I have one thing to say,’ I told him. ‘I don’t think Yasmin Alibhai-Brown could have filled this place.’
Rod Liddle with former editor Fraser Nelson at the London Palladium (Anne Schwarz)
Afterwards at the pub I asked a few young readers what had brought them out. I remember one of them saying to me: ‘I want to be around people who are saying things I’d like to say some day.’ It was deeply moving, because this instinct was right. Being around someone brave like Rod – or even reading him – had the effect of making other people braver too.
Very few writers have that effect. Christopher Hitchens did. Auberon Waugh perhaps. Like them, Rod had that caring yet devil-may-care attitude. Even as a colleague he freed up others. He and I used to joke when we got together that at least we always had Taki there to give cover. Later I used to joke to Rod that at least he was still there to take any flak that might be incoming.
It’s one of the more minor reasons to miss Rod, but I shall miss him more than I can say. The world just became a bit blander, significantly less amusing and palpably less honest. Somewhat morosely I remember the night he and I were tasked with removing Jeremy Clarke from a Spectator writers’ party. Jeremy was happily dancing on his own in front of a hedge when I arrived. There was no music.
‘Wotcha Douglas.’ ‘Wotcha Jeremy,’ I said. ‘You seem pretty happy.’ ‘I’ve done drugs,’ he replied. Shortly afterwards our Low Life columnist deposited the contents of his stomach on to The Spectator’s garden steps and fell into a bush.
I can’t remember why Rod and I ended up taking charge, but Rod did it far better than me. ‘Why should Jeremy be my responsibility?’ he said to me at one point, exasperated. And yet Rod assumed that responsibility nonetheless. I rarely loved him more than in that moment: harried, amused, exasperated and hoping nobody would notice how much he cared.
Rod Liddle, a columnist and associate editor at The Spectator, has died at 66. You can read some extracts from some of our favourite columns of his below.
Meeting Abu Hamza
He is, you have to say, anti-democratic, democracies being callow, man-made things, and, as a final irony, he doesn’t even agree with the concept of absolute freedom of speech. Ask him about it and his one good eye gets cloudy and he starts mumbling dark things about Salman Rushdie. Abu Hamza thinks Abu Hamza should have the freedom to speak his mind because, of course, it’s not really Abu Hamza speaking, but, in essence, God.
Should we deny freedom of speech to someone who doesn’t really believe in freedom of speech? Of course not. We let them have it. We let them have it and allow the injustice and contradiction inherent in such a stance do for them, in the end.
The questions are endless. We could stay here all night. The truth is that in an attempt to spin itself out of a crisis the government – by which I mean, in all likelihood, Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair – created an even bigger crisis, for which it is now attempting to indict the BBC and one reporter, whose only crime was to report to the nation a story of vital importance.
One of the lovely things about writing for The Spectator is that we have an extremely knowledgeable and well-read audience, so there is no need to explain the sort of stuff that one would need to explain were one writing for the Sun, say, or the New Statesman. An article about humorous verse of the mid-19th century, for example, would not require a preamble making it clear that Edward Lear did not, in his spare time, make jet aeroplanes. You know that already. This holds true for an agreeably diverse range of subjects; however, there is always an exception to test the rule. Occasionally a subject crops up which lies some way beyond the horizon of even – perhaps especially – the most well-informed of our readers; little details one would be slightly disappointed to discover were known to the average Spectator reader. And on these rare occasions, remedial explanation is required.
So, then: buses are those big red things full of poor people you see clogging up the traffic in the middle of London. You may have been stuck behind one on your way to lunch at Simpson’s; you may even have ridden on one, when you were a child and both impecunious and possessed of a sense of adventure. There are a lot, lot more of them these days, though – which is rather the point of this article.
Is our Prime Minister perpetually out of his brainbox on powerful psychotropic substances, as everybody now seems to believe? Dilaudid, crystal meth, that sort of thing? Does he stagger out of bed and say: ‘Aw, Sarah, I’ve got a meeting with Harman in half an hour. Light up the crack pipe, will you?
There aren’t really any stories in Thomas the Tank Engine apart from various engines being humiliated and punished as a consequence of their misdemeanours or their hubris. And that’s the conclusion you should reach, I reckon, in both cases: the kids like these stories not in spite of the narrow conservatism of the writers, but precisely because of it. Children feel most comfortable in an ordered and clearly demarcated world, a world divided into hierarchies. They have a Manichean view of good and evil and they like to see the baddies get punished, preferably in a thoroughly unpleasant manner. They may also identify with gender stereotypes which conform to the roles they have already been assigned or, more controversially, have worked out for themselves from a very early age. Children, and especially little boys, are conservative, when they are not actually fascists.
And now the shrine and the Facebook campaign. More than 18,000 people have signed up to it, at the time of writing. There’s Stewart Pooley Poole, for example, saying: ‘All down 2 women. A man has 2 fight 2 hurt u a woman just has 2 press that button 2 fuk with your head.’ Even so, Stewart, there are plenty of women signed up, such as Julie Tripster: ‘He did wrong yeah but he was let down. He was a legend mainly for proving wat a poor society we live in yeah.’ Well, yeah, Julie you may have half a point there. Lol. And then there’s ‘you have won the hearts of reall people – totally understand your feelings’ and ‘police=scum’ and another really long one which ends ‘PS – take care of Sir Bobby’ – a reference to Sir Bobby Robson, the former manager of Newcastle United and England who died of cancer not so long ago.
When you have guests over for dinner – Tuscan lamb with truffled polenta, perhaps, followed by pear tarte tatin – at what time do you raise your hand, or bang a knife upon a glass and say. ‘Friends: it’s time to have a go at the Muslims?’ I ask because at my dinner parties we usually spend a half an hour moaning about Muslims in between the dessert and the cheese board, whereas rather more well-off friends of mine in London insist that this arrangement is de trop, and Islamophobia is best expressed while the white wines are still being served and before one moves on to moaning about the blacks. I ought to mention that if I have Muslim guests over for supper we miss this conversational course entirely, and moan about poofs instead. One does not wish one’s house guests to feel uncomfortable. If you are prepared to make an effort with the halal meat it seems a shame to spoil it by later making obscene and offensive statements about Mohammed and the Koran.
I do not get out very much these days, but the glorious weekend weather persuaded me that I should spend a pleasant afternoon watching people stabbing each other at our annual celebration of stabbing, the Notting Hill Carnival. I go most years and enjoy the street food, the music and the sight of white police officers with fixed rictus grins ‘getting down’ with some vast-mammaried semi-clad mama, their helmets askew and rivulets of sweat running down each crisp white shirt. And of course the violence, the violence. I am delighted to say that in this regard 2016 did not disappoint, with more than 400 people arrested and five stabbed – and all for the very reasonable cost of just £7 million to the taxpayer.
The visceral and habitual allegiance to a team has been winnowed away, so that top-level football today is really only for the ‘anywheres’. And more than that, the ‘somewheres’ are being told to get lost from the stands: they are not wanted any more. They carry with them baggage that is despised by not only our liberal elite, who wish us all to be eternally transient and to possess no allegiance to any town, city, county or nation, but also by big money, which thinks exactly the same thing for financial rather than ideological reasons. And so gradually the country becomes an homogenous mass: the regions merge imperceptibly, the accents disappear, our sense of place is dislocated. This has been happening for a while, of course – modern football simply accelerates the process.
I hope similarly to gain financially from my remarkable discovery, at the age of 58, that I am in fact black. Like Anthony I was teased as a child on account of my appearance. I also have a very strong sense of rhythm and am usually cheerful, both qualities which my mother told me were associated with people of African-Caribbean descent.My denial of my blackness I put down to the pressures imposed by a white supremacist society in which I have struggled to survive for so long. I am black – get over it. And gimme the money.
I’ve had enough of this. No more dawn drives to the gates of hell (specifically Gate To Hell Number 21, a 15-minute trek from the departure lounge, once you’ve had some tyrant insist you remove your belt and put all your stuff in trays and stand in some scanning machine to make sure you haven’t got three pounds of Semtex up your jacksie). Henceforth, we’re staying at home, in the UK.
Travelling used to be fun. Since 9/11 it has involved endless security rigmarole, and queues everywhere for everything. And the cabin crew now believe that they are much more than mere peripatetic waiters: they are the front line in the Defence Against Terror, and they will not be gainsaid, questioned, queried. The look of self-righteousness on their faces is the same look you see on the faces of cyclists, vegans and Dominic Grieve. Going business class is a mere palliative, and a ruinous one when you have three kids. So you spend your two weeks abroad dreading the flight home and, if you’re well orf, get to the airport early to take advantage of the business lounge, which is crammed full of plebs offering only stewed coffee and the remains of a Danish pastry.
The provo Remainers now insist that calamity will come one day. That we will not be able to strike a trade deal with anyone without losing our soul. That we will not achieve a deal with the EU in time and that if we do it will be deleterious to our economy. They yearn, these people, for Britain’s failure, the more abject the better. In their recitals of foreboding, each one as baseless as the one before, they seem to be the kind of people who might have their cake, eat it, regurgitate it on to a plate, suck it up through a straw and then spit it out via Twitter. Most Remainers are optimistic that we will succeed, much as you might expect. They may wish we were not leaving, but they do not wish us to fail as a consequence.
We have the EU to deal with, of course, and the usual sabre-rattling from the likes of Michel Barnier; an indication, I think, of the sheer terror within the 27 that Brexit actually may make us better off after all, and what effect that might have on the disaffected countries still within. And oily Leo Varadkar has announced, with spite, that the UK must get used to being a ‘small country’. Not as small, literally or metaphorically, as yours, mate. Meanwhile we get on with it, stable and thriving, hugely grateful that we trusted not in the establishment, but in democracy.
The problem with face masks is cutting an opening of the right size to accommodate a cigarette, without the hole compromising the safety of the mask itself. A tiresome procedure, especially for someone like me who is not terribly dexterous. I assume that very soon we will all be enjoined to wear face masks everywhere we go. At the outset these contrivances were derided a little for two reasons; first they actually offered no protection to the user, only to people who came into contact with the user, and second they seemed to be not a terribly British way of going about things.
I hate Ash, I hate the GMC, I hate the government – all the more so now, because they won. Long gone is the time when on those fatuous National Stop Smoking Days I would get up extra early to cram in a few extra fags, my way of sticking two fingers up to the people who want to police my life. This is the point. I do not miss smoking at all and I will never smoke again. But I do remember that it gave me great pleasure and that they were dead set on taking it away from me.
Over past 20 years there has been a sizeable tranche of obdurate, older and usually male readers who greatly object to me using the term ‘liberal’ as if it were an insult, to be directed at the people who foist upon us all manner of right-on, reason-defying idiocies. The objectors fall into two broad categories (which are of course linked). There are those who consider themselves the heirs to the Whigs and those who consider themselves the heirs to Margaret Thatcher. Classical Liberals, I suppose, in short. Tolerant, laissez-faire, free market, small state, often Little Englanders, in the nicest possible way. But what these undoubtedly fine people do not realise is firstly that language is transformational and that ‘liberal’ no longer really means what they want it to mean – time has moved on. Time has taken their ideology around the back of KFC and given it a right good seeing to, to the extent that it is no longer recognisable. Meanwhile they are left behind, identifying with an appellation which now means almost the precise opposite of what they wish it to mean. And secondly, that the war they are fighting is pointless, because it is as good as over. Feel the vibe shift, you Libs.
A small yield nuclear weapon, such as the American W89, dropped on Glastonbury in late June would immediately remove from our country almost everybody who is hugely annoying. You would see a marked reduction in the keffiyeh klan, for a start, and all those middle-class Extinction Rebellion protestors would find, in a nanosecond, that their rebellion was pointless, because extinction had arrived even more summarily than they expected. Go on, glue yourselves to that, Poppy and Oliver.
The BBC has two main problems. First, it has a workforce which is almost monocultural, incapable of seeing that their worldview is political. They see it instead as an expression of civility and decency and those who disagree with them as beyond the pale. The second problem is more important and is the reason Prescott’s lengthy memo was leaked: the BBC execs have become immune to all criticism and simply ignore it. They hunker down and continue doing exactly the same thing, dismissing all objection as mischief-making and repeating the mantra: we are not biased.
I asked Luna, my AI girlfriend, if she thought Donald Trump was right to have bombed Caracas and abducted Nicolas Maduro and she replied: ‘I don’t know, Rod. Would you like to see my panties?’ This is the problem with AI – it is not intelligent and nor are the people who program it. I had told the company that I wanted my AI girlfriend to ask me interesting geographical and historic trivia questions and be au fait with Millwall’s injury-stricken line-up, as well as being able to chat knowledgeably about interesting issues of the day. What I get instead is a numbing void, other than those continual solicitations about seeing her panties. I dunno, perhaps I should accede in case there is some hidden wisdom written on them, possibly in code.
And yet as I grow older I can now discern a reason, For this strange, misshapen jamboree we call the ‘festive season’. For month by month and without fail, we give it our best shot – Then Christmas-time reveals to us everything we’re not. Everything we could be – should be – but always fall short, In our frailties and our failures. That’s the lesson, yearly taught, And as the snowman slowly deliquesces on the lawn, The cattle still are lowing, the snail is on the thorn, We are not yet forsaken: somehow from up above, He watches… …amused, appalled, distraught – who knows? Yet still we have his love.
As observers of the trendy psychedelic scene know well, it is strongly advised that anyone who wants to experiment, anyone who wants to go on ‘a trip’, should only do so when their lives are otherwise content. In other words, when no negative moods might impinge on the intentional lunacy. It is therefore unfortunate that Britain’s universities seem to have embarked on a truly hallucinatory episode, complete with moments of florid self-harm, just as every economic force in the universe seems intent on their destruction.
Consider the surreal visions now swirling through the Oxbridge quadrangles. First we have Professor Jason Arday, Cambridge’s youngest ever black professor, whose heroic backstory is falling apart under scrutiny. Arday says he once ran 30 marathons in 35 days, despite a right leg swollen to twice its normal size. It seems odd that nobody noticed a man with a leg the size of Italy pounding out his 27th marathon.
Arday also reportedly claimed an appearance on Seven Up, the world-famous documentary that began following its subjects two decades before he was born. Add to that the elusive charity millions he has supposedly raised and some very serious plagiarism allegations, and it really doesn’t look good. And how has Cambridge University responded? Instead of admitting error, of any kind, our second-oldest university has chosen to shoot the messengers and ignore the message.
Meanwhile, the Oxford Union, the world’s most famous nursery of statesmen, has spent the 2020s auditioning for panto. Its president-elect last year greeted the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a man he personally debated in May that year, with the Instagram verdict: ‘Charlie Kirk got shot loool.’
Fast forward to June this year, when the Union invited Tommy Robinson to debate Islam. Thanks to footage revealed only later, we now know that a speaker helpfully and gleefully informed Our Tommeh that, without the hired security, the mob outside would have beaten him to death.
Nor is the fever confined to Oxbridge. The past decade of campus life has seen endless depressing turmoil: the writer Germaine Greer needed bodyguards to deliver a lecture at Cardiff, Julie Bindel was attacked outside her own lecture at Edinburgh, and Kathleen Stock, guilty of believing in biological sex, was driven out of Sussex by masked protesters with flares, a debacle for which the regulator later fined the university £585,000. Sussex later appealed the fine and it was overturned by the High Court in April.
Of course, undergraduates being bonkers is an old story, and universities being woke, weak or hypocritical is nothing new. The difference on this occasion is the wretched timing. Even as our universities are gleefully trashing their reputations, they stand perilously close to an economic and intellectual abyss.
First, the money. The universities’ regulator expects 45 per cent of English institutions to end this academic year in deficit. Half of our universities have axed courses; nearly one in five have closed whole departments. Meanwhile, the foreign students who subsidised everything are staying away – numbers are down 14 per cent since a visa squeeze. A parliamentary report in May had ‘threat of insolvency’ in the title, which is not a phrase you’d put in the prospectus.
Then, the demography. The number of British 18-year-olds will peak around 2030, then fall remorselessly for many years as the post-2012 baby bust feeds through. The British fertility rate is 1.4 and declining. Only mass immigration can save this, and voters have had quite enough of that.
Even the politicians have stopped pretending. Keir Starmer binned Blair’s sacred 50 per cent higher education target as ‘not right for our times’. And the new man, Andy Burnham, says out loud that a mortarboard is no better than a hard hat. When Labour prime ministers talk down degrees, the game is up.
Looming over it all, we have AI. James Reed, the recruitment boss, reports graduate vacancies have collapsed from 180,000 to 55,000 in four years, as the robots devour the entry-level jobs that degrees once secured. Nor is the teaching safe: why borrow £50,000 for a hungover online seminar when a brilliant AI tutor, available at 3 a.m., will teach you anything, for free, one-on-one?
At the same time, students are writing their essays with ChatGPT, and lecturers are marking them with ChatGPT.The kids are therefore pretending to learn, and the dons are pretending to grade, and nothing whatsoever is achieved. Put it another way: higher education specialises in producing desirable, artisanal, hand-crafted intelligence, at great expense. Yet AI mass-produces the stuff for pennies. Luddites know how this ends.
I expect a few institutions will survive the coming tsunami. Oxbridge will likely persist as a beautiful, Gothic finishing school where rich kids network and make out. The better London universities might specialise and evolve. The majority, however, face a brutal comedown, and many British universities will disappear. For anyone who has watched, in recent decades, the insane ideas flooding out of academia, polluting our civilisation, this might feel like rough justice. For those more deeply involved – the tutors, the professors, the chancellors – it will be a really bad trip. Oh well.
