The Joy of Six 1424

"By learning from Farage, the Greens risk becoming more like him in form, even if utterly different in content. And in politics, form matters. A democracy shaped by perpetual outrage and binary framing cannot easily sustain pluralism, however noble the cause. If we pick fights and make enemies now we will build a future full of fights and enemies." Mike Chitty worries that Zack Polanski has learnt too much from the populist playbook.

Caspar Hobhouse argues that Ukraine needs support from the European Union to transition towards a long-term energy system that is resilient, flexible and secure.

Rachel Sylvester on William's plans for a downsized monarchy.

"Kate Murphy’s work has changed how we think about the history of women’s roles in radio and television production forever. Had she not had the opportunity to make the transition from maker to scholar of BBC programming, and to do the serious detective work of tracking down these women’s stories via the archive, our understanding of women’s roles in the BBC would still be partial and centred on the stories of 'great men; that Asa Briggs and others have told us." Helen Wheatley joins the campaign against the BBC's decision to effectively close its Written Archives Centre to independent researchers.

Owen Hatherley reviews two books on the postwar architecture of South-East London: "It is stark, unpretentious modernism, but James and Audrey Callaghan were very unhappy to leave it for Downing Street when he became chancellor in 1964; it had, Audrey said, become 'like a second skin' – designed wholly around their needs and wants."

"Watkins based his thesis on three decades of legwork, on his interest in archaeology, history and architecture, and on his research into etymology, folklore and legends. And it’s hard for the non-expert not to be affected by his enthusiasm and sheer piling-up of what he sees as supporting evidence from these different disciplines." Chris Lovegrove looks at Alfred Watkins' The Old Straight Track, the book that gave birth to "ley lines" on the centenary of its publication.

The Joy of Six 1352

"He inherited an economy from Wilson suffering from low growth and high inflation which threatened to destroy all Callaghan and his party held dear. 'There are,' he told MPs on his election, 'no soft options facing Britain.' His solution - attacked by the left as the one Conservatives would have followed - was to reduce public spending while encouraging private sector investment." Steven Fielding argues that Jim Callaghan is the prime minister Keir Starmer most resembles.

"Both sides of the culture war profited from caricatures of Francis as Pope Woke. The reality was less clear-cut. He distrusted the liberal impulse to make the church a vague, hand-wringing Roman branch of the human rights campaign. His positions on war, free-market exploitation and climate change were all in the mainstream of Catholic Social Teaching, though articulated with unusual directness and clarity. His interviews often gave the impression that he thought the church’s hang-ups about sexuality were just that - symptoms of an un-Christlike clerical trend to flee from real humanity." James Butler on Pope Francis.

Eliza Apperly examines how Hilter's favourite film director, Leni Riefenstahl, spent a lifetime covering up her central role in the Nazi propaganda machine.

"The story of the divide between the right and left brain has become one of the most cherished ideas in psychotherapy. It shows up virtually everywhere we look, branching into a myriad of techniques and approaches, creating an entire ecosystem." But, ask Pascal Vrticka and Ana Lund, is there any truth in this story?

Keith Frankish remembers the philosopher Daniel Dennett: "Dan didn’t see philosophy as a specialism remote from everyday life or distinct from the work of scientists. He saw it as an attempt to see how science and everyday reality fit together - how a world of subatomic particles obeying strict physical laws could at the same time be a world of free, conscious agents, with thoughts, hopes and dreams."

The Digital Dickens Notes Project allows you to explore the working notes Charles Dickens kept as he wrote his novels in monthly or weekly installments. In as few as 19 pages per novel, his notes are concise, dynamic records of Victorian serial composition.

Peter Jay's Guardian obituary is a comic gem

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Peter Jay is one of those people of whom, if I had any younger readers, my younger readers would not have heard.

His Guardian obituary by Stephen Bates is a comic gem. That's not how most of us would wish to be remembered, but there you go:

If ever a man was damned by being described as “the cleverest young man in England” it was the economic journalist Peter Jay. When Time magazine decided on the epithet and chose him as one of its 150 world leaders of the future in 1974, Jay was already 37, so rather old to be a young hopeful.

However, he needed next to no encouragement to believe it, having already garnered a reputation at the Times, where he was then economics editor, for arrogance. It was scarcely the magazine’s fault that his highest elected office ended up being mayor of the Oxfordshire town of Woodstock, but as his career went into a slow decline following his brief period as British ambassador to Washington in the late 1970s – having been appointed to the post by his father-in-law the Labour prime minister James Callaghan – each mishap was accompanied by the sound of chortling schadenfreude in the British press.

Sunak should not resign as Tory leader after he loses the election

He has not, God knows, been much of a leader, and it's not even certain that he will be returned for Richmond and Northallerton next week, but Rishi Sunak should not resign the Conservative leadership if he loses the election.

Martin Kettle makes the point in the Guardian today:

He should wait until at least after the autumn party conference before making any announcement, to allow the Tories some time for reflection and, if possible, to change the leadership election process. 

And Kettle links to a whole article on the subject that he wrote back in March:

Many Tory MPs seem to take it as read that Sunak, if he loses office, will do the same thing.

He should not do so. Instead Sunak should stay on as Conservative leader if he loses the election. He should prepare the ground for staying on with trusted colleagues. He should then stand at the Downing Street lectern and say responsible leaders do not just jump ship. He should say it is his duty to see the party through a period of necessary reflection. He could even say what Callaghan told Labour MPs in 1979: “There is no vacancy for my job.”

But he needs to have a plan for what he can bring to opposition as well as a plan to then leave later. Here, Michael Howard could be the model. Howard stayed five months after losing the 2005 election before resigning. This had important consequences. The leadership election process was rethought, though not as radically as Howard wanted, and the shadow cabinet was reshaped. This allowed younger faces to catch the spotlight. The result was the election of David Cameron.

The first weeks of a new government can set the tone of a whole parliament. In 2010, because Gordon Brown resigned his party's leadership immediately after leaving Downing Street, Labour had no one to challenge the growing narrative that it had "maxed out the nation's credit card". It was still having this claim hung around its neck at the 2015 general election.

So the Tories need to remain in the debate following their coming defeat and not spend all their energies on a leadership election.

But all this sounds far too sensible for the modern Conservative Party, so expect an immediate resignation with civil war to follow.

Why the general election may well be on 28 January 2025

I now believe it's likely that Rishi Sunak will put off the general election until the last possible moment, which is 28 January 2025.

It's only human for him to hold on to office in the hope that "something will turn up", though it's hard now to imagine anything that could turn the polls round enough for the Conservatives to win. Victory over an invading force of Martian spaceships might just do it, I suppose.

But there may be another human reason for his delay.

In the autumn of 1978 it was widely thought that Jim Callaghan was about to call an election. Instead, in his speech to the TUC Congress, he mocked journalists who were speculating about it by singing the old music hall song Waiting at the Church.

Yes, really.

He soldiered on, but loss control of the unions and then lost of a vote of confidence. There was no guarantee he would have won in 1978, but things only got worse for him after he declined to call an election then.

It was I think James Fenton - now a distinguished poet, then the political sketchwriter for the New Statesman - who pointed out that "Prime Minister 1976-9" would look much better against Callaghan's name in the history books than "Prime Minister 1976-8".

So maybe Sunak wants to be remembered as "Prime Minister 2022-5" rather than "Prime Minister 2022-4".

Sadly, I can't find a video of Jim Callaghan singing Waiting at the Church to embed, so we'll have to make do with Miss Piggy.

You what?

Peter Butterworth was involved in the two most famous prison camp escapes of World War II

There's a well-known - and true - story about the Carry On actor Peter Butterworth. As a prisoner of war during the second world war, he was one of the vaulters who helped in the famous Wooden Horse escape.

When he heard in 1950 that a film was being made about the escape, he auditioned for a part. Only to be told that he "didn't look convincingly heroic or athletic enough". Which is why you won't see him in the trailer above.

Stalag Luft 3 was also the camp from which The Great Escape took place later in the war. In that, the man who was to play Farmer Fiddler, Brother Belcher and Citizen Bidet helped dispose of sand and with forging documents.

Butterworth's involvement in what are probably the two most famous escapes of the war may not have been a coincidence. While a prisoner he had been recruited into the secretive MI9, which existed to organise and encourage escapes by prisoners of war.

Another future Carry On actor involved in this line of work was Jon Pertwee. For a time he worked for Ian Fleming in Naval Intelligence, and one of the things he did was train Naval officers in escape techniques.

The office tea was made by a bright young Able Seaman who would later be Commissioned and write the Royal Navy's guide to the Japanese navy.

His name was Jim Callaghan.

We were Vikings once: British primary schools in the Sixties

A few years ago it was the French who had the secret of parenting: their children ate up their vegetables and didn't get ADHD.

Now it's the Scandinavians, hitherto envied by the British for their tasteful interior design and more adventurous sex lives.

The other day Helen Russell wrote a piece for the Guardian to promote her book How to Raise a Viking – The Secrets of Parenting the World’s Happiest Children.

Those secrets, it seems, include lots of outside play, family meals and singing together in schools.

The more I read Russell's article, the more the enlightened world of child-raising she described reminded me of my own primary school days in the Sixties - particularly of my first primary, which was one of those post-war Modernist schools that Hertfordshire went in for and had enormous playing fields, and seems to have been demolished without leaving a photograph to show it was ever there.

I don't think it is just nostalgia that makes me say that this was one of those rare decades when the English rather liked their children.

Ever since Jim Callaghan's 'secret gardens' speech at Ruskin College in 1976, education has been at the mercy of politicians. Reform has followed reform, with many of them deserving scare quotes.

The right attacks progressive ideas because that's what the right does. While the left's lack of confidence in its own economic ideas has led them to intervene in schools instead.

It's easier to propose yet another reform of the curriculum than to talk about the need to restructure the economy, which is what the left used to do.

The Boo Radleys: Wake up Boo!

Wikipedia elucidates:

Despite critical acclaim and a cult fanbase, the Boo Radleys were still largely unknown to the general public by the time the Britpop phenomenon broke into the mainstream in 1995. 

This changed when the band released the upbeat single "Wake Up Boo!" in the spring of that year. It made the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 9. The single remained on the chart for two months, by far the band's longest run for any of its singles ... [Martin] Carr describes writing the song watching The Big Breakfast after a night on acid.

The Boo Radleys were around well before Britpop, but this reminds us that the phenomenon happened under John Major, not Tony Blair.

Recent commentators have often got that wrong, just as they do not realise that punk was a reaction to Jim Callaghan's government not Margaret Thatcher's.