The Joy of Six 1469

"What matters is not the books themselves, but the thinking they reward. They cultivate a taste for compression over depth, for transferable lessons over context, for confidence over uncertainty. They attract people who want the world to be legible in a handful of rules, who prefer inspiration to explanation, and who mistake momentum for understanding. Over time, this becomes a habit of mind: a way of approaching problems that privileges clarity and speed over patience and complexity." John Oxley fears British politics is suffering from Airport Book Brain.

Rosalind KennyBirch looks at the way Finland counters fake news. "There is no vaccine for fake news, but media literacy can come close."

Rose Runswick has posted Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's election address from 1906. Here he is on the record of the Conservatives: "The legacy which they have bequeathed to their successors – and I say it in no partisan spirit, but under a full sense of responsibility – is in the main a legacy of embarrassment, an accumulation of public mischief and confusion absolutely appalling in its extent and its ramifications."

"The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed as a religious struggle between Muslim and Jewish groups, but the witness of Palestinian Christians exposes the hollowness of that narrative. It is a nationalist struggle between Israelis and Palestinians." John McHugo highlights the plight of Palestinian Christians.

"Stoke-on-Trent says it is facing a heritage emergency and needs £325m in public and private funding to safeguard its historic sites and stories," reports Rebecca Atkinson.

Gráinne Maguire lists five things Is This Thing On? gets wrong about the world of stand up: "Will Arnett has all the natural funny bones of a dead family pet. He wears the same expression the entire time—startled and blinking, like Eeyore caught looking up porn at work and hauled into HR. Yet we're supposed to believe this set – more misguided late-night voice note than comedy – is all it takes for him to be embraced by the world of comedy."

Lord Bonkers 30 years ago: Instructing Campbell-Bannerman to "eat my shorts"

Lord Bonkers pointed out at dinner this evening that I am yet to publish an excerpt from his diary for August 1992. He also assured me that you are all bursting to read it.

Whatever the truth of that, here is a glimpse of the then Liberal Democrat MP for Truro, whom Lord B. must have known even then was the great-grandson of his old friend Sir Percy Harris. (He was less sure in those days of Paddy Ashdown's correct name.)

Wednesday

Consider Master Taylor: once a sweet, biddable child, he now lolls upon our benches listening to some dreadful row upon his "Walkman" (and yet he assures me it is Radical, so perhaps it is sound in its way). As for his behaviour towards Ashfield,,, all I shall say is that I should never have dreamed of instructing Campbell-Bannerman to "eat my shorts" or "get outta my face".

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

How Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman got his name

Country Life - I flick through it in the Library at Bonkers Hall - has a feature on Hunton Court in Kent, which is currently yours for £12.5m.

It tells the story of the estate. Fast forward to the middle of the 19th century and you learn this:

In 1850, Henry Bannerman - scion of an enterprising Scottish family of farmers and distillers who, by the late 1820s, had created a cotton-trading and manufacturing empire based in Manchester - retired from the business and moved to Kent, where he had invested his profits in the Hunton Court estate, located in a thriving hop-growing area near Maidstone. 

By 1848, he had already enlarged and remodelled its 18th-century farmhouse, adding the imposing Georgian façade, with its central pediment, canted bay windows and balustraded parapet. The interior was refitted with delicate plasterwork and painted decorative panels depicting Classical scenes, foliage and flowers. 

Mr Bannerman lived at Hunton Court until he died in 1871, leaving the property to his wife for life and then to his nephew, Henry Campbell, on condition that he took the additional name of Bannerman, which he did in 1872.

As all my readers will know, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman led the Liberal Party from 1899 to 1908 and was prime minister from 1905 to 1908.

GUEST POST For Liberalism to succeed we must embrace all of its creed

Patrick Maxwell fears identity politics and the fight against Brexit are undermining Liberalism in the Liberal Democrats.

Liberalism is the most popular political ideal in the world. The notions of freedom and justice have had the power through the centuries to inspire and drive social, political and economic freedom.

Despite this, the creed espoused by the greatest civil rights activists and the big beasts of international suffrage seems in danger of succumbing to the identity politics mob and losing its original purpose and soul.

The dawn of identity politics has led to liberal values being widely distorted. Centrist politics remains in danger of becoming ignored in favour of a clear left-right divide ignoring any compromise and sensible pragmatism.

The 'culture wars' in the United States have driven many into their respective moral trenches, never to be reconciled from their echo-chambers. The 'no-platforming' evident in many universities in a quest to conform to the 'respect' agenda has driven many on the right to cry wolf about their new found state of victimhood.

Many a commentator has lamented the loss of freedom of speech, which has led to 'freedom fighters' and keyboard warriors to launch a more visceral attack on their 'social justice warrior' opponents. This war of attrition could have desperate ramifications for centrist and liberal values. Honest, pragmatic politics must respond.

Liberalism can only work when economic freedom and social and personal emancipation go hand in hand together. The task for progressive parties across Europe and America is to make the case for a Liberalism that allows for personal freedom but also the right to offend. This challenge includes standing up for all liberal principles, in positive and compassionate capitalism, cultural and social freedom and the right of equal opportunity.

John Locke, one the greatest Enlightenment philosophers and a founding father of the modern Liberal creed, was instrumental in the rising popularity of British freedom of religion, separation of Church and state, arguing the case for every man to have the right to life, liberty and property, the phrase also used by the Founding Fathers of America in their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness expression in the opening lines of The Constitution.

It was this early promotion of civil rights, free trade and democratic suffrage that founded the basis of the Welfare State in the early 20th century under Campbell-Bannerman, Lloyd-George and Asquith. The Liberal Democrat party today seems to have forgotten its original roots in the vain hope of stopping the biggest issue of the day in Brexit and distancing themselves from the mark the party made during the Coalition years.

For a party that had long been seen as a fringe protest movement, having members around the Cabinet table showed what progress the party had made. With Vince Cable as leader, a man who cites capitalism as only practical, not morally positive, the party is in danger of becoming that fringe wing that does not visibly promote the widespread benefits of modern free-trade policy out of a fear of being called a right-wing neo-liberal.

This position is not sustainable for the long-term future of the party and the obsession with Brexit and a second referendum, though honourable causes, won't do them any good come the next election.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman's two-and-a-half year stint as Prime Minister led to the beginning of the Welfare State and the Liberal reforms in the run to the great People's Budget of 1910. CB's pragmatism in ensuring 'peace, retrenchment and reform' secured widespread popularity, friendly foreign relations and better conditions and rights for workers, the man himself affirmed that he was 'keenly in sympathy' with members of the newly-formed Labour movement.

Yet he was still labelled an old-style Gladstonian Liberal by many, despite his large reforming stance. His example as leader is one of pragmatism and compromise to achieve progress, and the modern party could take a lot from his example.

To make headway in the age of identity politics, the winner-takes-it-all type of politics that has enveloped many of the movements in Westminster, the Liberal Democrats must present a reforming, pragmatic, socially and economically progressive message to the electorate, which means including all the aspects of their core belief to ensure a positive and influential future for the party.

Patrick Maxwell blogs at Gerrymander.

Charles Sydney Buxton (1884-1911)

I went to the antiques market in Market Harborough this morning. The best thing there was a table of ephemera. On it I found this little piece of Liberal Party history, which obviously dated from one of the 1910 general elections.

Charles Sydney Buxton, it turned out, fought Woodbridge at the January 1910 election. It had been gained from the Conservatives in the landslide of 1906 by Robert Everett (a veteran fighter for farmers' interests against the landlords).

Charles proved unable to hold it and the Woodbridge division remained Conservative until it was abolished after the 1945 election. The prominent Liberal journalist Roger Fulford managed a second place there as late as 1929.

Charles's father, grandfather and great grandfather were all Liberal MPs. His father served in the cabinet under both Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith.

His mother was Constance Mary Lubbock, which makes him a kinsman of Eric Avebury who died today.

Charles did not live to contest another election. He died from peritonitis in 1911 aged 27.

Not so long ago he would have been described as a forgotten figure. But thanks to the internet you can read all about his short life.

Go the University of Toronto website and you will find a PDF of a book about Charles commissioned by his father - Charles Sydney Buxton: A Memoir by H. Sanderson Furniss:

I had thought of calling this last chapter "The End," but on thinking it over I changed the title to "Plans for the Future"; for it was not the end. 

In the Sussex Memorial scheme, founded to bring education to the agricultural labourers in the Sussex villages ; in the Buxton Memorial Scholarship, which brings each year an agricultural labourer as a student to Ruskin College; in the annual scholarship, founded in his memory and provided by past and present students of the College; in Buxton Cottage on the Chiltern Hills, bought by the Workers' Educational Association and opened in his memory as a resting-place for those who are devoting their lives to working-class education; above all, in the hearts and lives of those who were inspired by his example, Charlie still lives.