This week, things are not what they seem for our Britain columnist
THE FIRST time I encountered protesters dressed as nuns was when I lived in the Bay Area of San Francisco in 1984-5. Sister Mary Boom Boom and her fellow Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were fixtures on the flourishing protest scene. This week I encountered another one protesting against Jacob Rees-Mogg’s appearance before a sell-out crowd of 2,300 at the London Palladium. This particular “nun” was a woman, rather than a man like the American sisters.
The nun-protesters’ diatribe set off two lines of thought in my mind. The first was that, despite his love of all things English, including double-breasted Saville Row suits, Mr Rees-Mogg is a rather American figure. He combines an unapologetic belief in free-market capitalism with an equally unapologetic belief in traditional morals.
The Tory Party will surely pay a heavy cost for protecting incompetents like Mr Grayling. The Labour Party can afford a certain amount of incompetence because people judge it more on its intentions than its performance. The Conservative Party is all about performance rather than idealism. At the next election the Labour Party should issue its supporters with giant cardboard cut-outs of Mr Grayling and instruct them to parade around every station in the country.
I note that a similar thing is happening in Britain. From 2007-8 to 2016-17 there was a drop of 11.6% of students taking “historical and philosophical studies” in British universities and a 21.3% drop of students taking language degrees, which have a strong historical component. Mr Boot attracted some vociferous responses to his strictures about “cultural, social and gender history” but I’m sure his explanation applies just as well to Britain as it does to America.
There is a lot of talk these days about “decolonising the curriculum”.
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