The spreading wen

There’s a scene in Yes, Minister in which the minister, Jim Hacker, and his private secretary, Bernard Woolley, are being driven to Oxford for Hacker to be wined and dined at one of the Oxford University colleges. On the M40 a thought occurs to Jim Hacker, why there are two really good roads to Oxford (M40 and M4) and none to any of the ports, such as Southampton, Dover or Lowestoft. “Nearly all the Permanent Secretaries went to Oxford,” replies Bernard, “and most Oxford colleges do really good dinners…”

I was reminded of this when the local news was again about the “brain-belt expressway” announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond (Oxford University), in his autumn statement designed to run between Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge. Before the summer holiday the Secretary of State for Transport, Chris Grayling (Cambridge University), announced, “We expect to make a decision on the preferred corridor for the Oxford to Cambridge expressway this summer.” Five days ago an indicative route (Option B) was announced, which local naturalists say is the worst of all possible options. “The potential impact on biodiversity of corridor B is so serious that the route should have been discounted entirely” (Estelle Bailey, BBOWT). The potential cost was estimated as just less that £3.5 billion in July 2017, but we know how public spending estimates escalate. It’s projected for completion in 2050. It’s proposed to build lots of houses along the route (lots means, I read, a million – the equivalent of three Sheffields); and so London creeps north. The impact on biodiversity would of course be huge.

Will the Prime Minister, Theresa May (Oxford University), have enough energy or will power after Brexit to question the sense of the scheme? What do you think? You might think that I who had the immense privilege of spending some of my education in both Cambridge and Oxford would be an enthusiastic supporter of this vanity project. I know that it has lots of fancy justifications behind it dreamed up, no doubt, by dutiful Oxbridge civil servants. However there is already a fledgling restoration of the former Varsity railway line starting from Oxford, which could extend to Bedford and Cambridge and have far less impact on the environment and, one would imagine, cost less. More public transport must be preferable to more private cars and juggernauts. And there's something called the internet.

What most perplexes me is what has happened to the famous Northern Powerhouse once so loved by the Tories? Perhaps it was defenestrated along with young George Osborne. So HS2 gets only as far as that great northern city, Birmingham. Heathrow gets enormous investment with yet another runway, while regional airports which are accessible to most of the country remain undeveloped. No one, it seems, has the political courage proactively to resist the metropolitan drift which clogs the infrastructure of the south-east and starves the rest of the country.

It was William Cobbett in his Rural Rides (1830) who described London as the Great Wen (sebaceous cyst) and asked, "But, what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, 'the metropolis of the empire?”

The answer is that, though the empire is long gone (despite the illusions of some Brexiteers), the monster has continued to spread and no amount of green-belt sticking plaster has been able to restrain it and it is as ugly and unnecessary as a boil, since no one has the courage to squeeze it and nourish other parts of the body politic instead.

Keeping religion out of politics

It's commonly claimed that religion should be kept strictly private. There's a long tradition of that view stretching in this country at least back to Thomas à Becket whom Henry II famously called "a low-born cleric" or a "turbulent priest", because he would not put the King's interests above divine ordinance, leading to his assassination in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. In more recent times it was echoed by the Thatcher government when Robert Runcie prayed both for British and Argentine casualties after the Falklands' conflict and then put his name to the 1985 Faith in the City report (a government "source" rubbishing it before publication as Marxist propaganda). It was particularly puzzling and galling that former Scot's Guard and Military Cross winner, favoured Tory choice for the archbishopric, should be so turbulent as to suggest that the individualistic policies of the government might have contributed to poverty in the cities of Britain. And of course Rowan Williams got up the nose of successive governments, including Mr Blair's, with his rigorous questioning. And now David Cameron must be having similar thoughts to Margaret Thatcher concerning Old Etonian, Justin Welby. Of all people, the former oil executive, "within a month", questioning how benefit cuts would affect the poorest children - what is it about the post of Archbishop that suddenly turns sound men into bleeding-heart liberals? Certainly arch-conservative columnist, Melanie Phillips, who sometimes talks good sense, is at a loss to explain it and can only vent her spleen on such meddlesome men.

Strangely enough I heard her on The Moral Maze last week maintaining, I think, that belief in God was needed to underpin ethical behaviour; I recall her mentioning "conscience". It might occur to her that the way we treat the vulnerable, such as children, in our society is, or should be, a matter of conscience. I guess it certainly is for Justin Welby and his 44 merry colleagues. It seems to me that they are doing no more than their Christian conscience demands, as paralleled in the early equivalent of a welfare state. "They only asked us to remember the poor - the very thing I was eager to do." In this case, the Children's Society, because it is that admirable charity which has, I suspect, enlisted the bishops' and other church leaders' support, is asking for the welfare uprating bill to be amended in the House of Lords next week in order to protect children in particular from the ravages of inflation, which the financially robust are able to ride. The letter written by the bishops and published by the Sunday Telegraph seems to me a justifiable request to a still well-off government to remember the poor. And it seems to me that faith without a public conscience is dead. So I am glad that the new Archbishop has already indicated his intention to follow Jesus in being "on the side of the poor" and powerless.

Having said that let me add a postscript concerning the plight of politicians. It is all too easy and all too frequently done to indulge in government-bashing. After all the High Court of Parliament is adversarial, and it is right that governments be held to account. However on Saturday I was talking to someone who has had the closest contact with the highest ranks of government, and he said that ministers have an impossible job; their days are filled with meetings and briefings from civil servants and advisers. They really have no time for quiet reflection about the big issues. Once in power they hardly have time to think. The implication of what he said, I take it, was, "Have some sympathy for these people. They're trying their hardest with impossible jobs."

On Saturday, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, who's not a politician I readily warm to, gave a speech looking to the next General Election. It was mischievously cast by the media as a leadership salvo. For me, more interesting because I suspect more genuine, was what she said at the outset: "It’s often said that politics is about public service, and of course it is. But to me, it’s about much more than that. Politics is a passion. A passion to make a difference. To change lives for the better. To stand up for people who work hard and want to get on in life. To help people to help themselves and their families. To help those in genuine need." I do appreciate that there's a bit of coding about strivers and skivers in those last phrases. Nevertheless the phrase "a passion to make a difference" does, I reckon, reflect the initial and fundamental motivation of the majority of those who enter the risky front line of politics, with its minefield of corrupting power. I guess that's why St Paul urged, "Pray every way you know how,... especially for those in power to govern well".