Will normal people understand him? (Photo by Stefan Wermuth - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
In these isles Mark Carney is mainly known as the smoothly suave former Governor of the Bank of England, imported from Canada by George Osborne in 2013 at no small cost to the taxpayer. The tagline “reassuringly expensive” could have written for him. After his term at the Bank ended last year, Carney headed back in Canada (“bloody Ottawa”, he said in one recent interview), where he’s making yet another mountain of money and is clearly a bit bored. So he’s written a book setting out his ideas about fixing economics and politics and generally saving the world.
Carney, of course, is a near-perfect specimen of homo financicus, a recent offshoot of common humanity that seems to sleep less, read more, earn more, do more than the rest of us. Among other things, Value(s) could be a field-guide to the subspecies: its PhD-holding author runs marathons, gets up before dawn to meditate and read the Classics. He analyses international finance with penetrative intensity. A father of four, he’s 56 years old but doesn’t even have the grace to look it. Some people think he looks like George Clooney. If he sometimes sounds a bit pleased with himself, we should remember that he has quite a lot to be pleased about.
But if Carney himself is relatively easy to describe, his book is much less so. Several famous names have had a go. Subtitled Building a Better World for All, it comes larded with glowing quotes from the likes of Bono (“a radical book that speaks out accessibly”) and Christine Lagarde (“Indispensable”). These endorsements are a pointer to the worst thing about the book: Carney’s namedropping. He frames the entire narrative as the result of a slightly over-written lunch with the Pope, and his cast of characters comes from the upper slopes of Davos. Not that Carney is wowed. Most super-famous people are disappointingly normal, he declares, though he admits to being impressed by Emmanuel Macron, the Grand Shiekh of the Al Azhar Mosque, Bono himself, and Greta Thunberg.
Unlike some of the names thus dropped, Thunberg’s walk-on part in this book makes sense. The author meditates long and hard on the greatest problem facing twenty-first century politics: climate change. He’s impressive on the technical and intellectual challenges involved in making huge changes now to avert a disaster that could still be several decades and many electoral cycles away. But can a matinee idol technocrat with a big brain and sharp suit take the people with him? Is Value(s) Carney’s first step into real politics?
He certainly likes to talk about “leadership”, dedicating page after page to the topic. But sadly, it turns that out what he means, most of the time, is “management”. Cue endless lists of the sort of bland wisdom familiar to anyone who’s ever set foot in a business school:
“Leaders are different in that they have to decide. In the end, to lead is to choose… When you take decisions as leader, it will obviously help greatly if they are the right ones… People will respect a leader who has integrity and who is benevolent, but they won’t always follow them if they are not deemed to be competent.”
Sometimes this stuff is sprinkled with some erudition and cod humility: “When I worked at the Bank of England, I would remind myself each morning of Marcus Aurelius’ phrase ‘arise to do the work of humankind’.”
Frankly, the classical references are easier to swallow than some of the jargon. Carney’s thoughts on the nature of the company, corporate purpose and how to encourage businesses to behave better — and make a profit by doing so — are genuinely impressive. If politicians engage with them, we may end up with a better, fairer and more sustainable capitalism. But Carney’s editors haven’t helped him welcome new readers to the subject. See, for instance: “IIRC is working with IASB, GRI and SASB to create a cohesive interconnected reporting system (though the IMP work).” To which even readers who like to think they’re au fait with corporate governance reform might say: WTF?
Carney’s lapses into impenetrable jargon are understandable; he’s never really had to communicate clearly to the masses. Yes, central bankers talk in public, but generally as opaquely as possible. Among his global colleagues, Carney was a chatty charmer, but the bar was low. He talks a good game about always remembering the need to win and maintain public confidence — and even makes a stab at claiming deep legitimacy for independent central banks by invoking Magna Carta. But the truth is that, while those banks are given considerable autonomy by politicians to take decisions that have profound effects on the lives of voters, they are not directly accountable to those voters.
Carney is no rabble-rouser. His idea of the BoE getting down with the people is updating the portraits on bank notes. More telling is what he doesn’t mention. Nowhere, in almost 600 pages, does he find space to discuss quantitative easing — the “extraordinary” monetary policy that continued on his watch. Creating new money to buy bonds, and lower interest rates, had a profound social and political impact. It saved businesses and saved jobs; without it many people, especially younger and poorer ones, would have suffered significant hardship. But the side-effect was pumped-up asset prices. Effectively, central banks made people who own property much richer, and made it much harder for people who don’t own property to buy it. Voters are owed more of an explanation for this than Carney offers.
But when you have a hammer, problems look like nails. If you’ve worked as a carpenter, you tend to want to make things out of wood. And so Carney is keen to take the model of independent central banking into climate change policy, proposing “independent Carbon Councils” that would make quite profound decisions about the price of carbon emissions. He’s careful to maintain that, in the end, elected leaders must sign off big distributional decisions, but makes no bones about trying to find ways to keep those decisions away from voters: “Delegating responsibilities helps insulate decisions with significant long-term implications from short-term political pressures.” Never mind addressing such pressures, let’s just duck them — a novel approach to “leadership”.
For all that, Carney’s book is still good — and the best bits are very good indeed. Unlike some global-minded liberal types, he recognises that the nation still matters. He sees patriotism as not just legitimate, but a way of actually helping countries work together on big problems. He understands that markets haven’t worked for everyone and won’t without sensible state action. He offers a lot of ideas about things like skills, education and employment that would make economies more productive and societies fairer. And his critique of “market societies” in which common values have been eroded, and individualism trumps social obligation, should be read and absorbed by every technocratic centrist wondering why those terrible populists do so well despite their terrible policies. “Building social capital requires a sense of purpose and common values among individuals, companies and countries,” Carney says.
That might sound like an uncontroversial statement of post-liberal orthodoxy — but remember that Carney himself is no post-liberal. He’s not just a Goldman Sachs-educated archduke of Davos: he’s a potential Liberal Party prime minister of Canada. And whereas the current holder of that title, Justin Trudeau, has largely embraced the identity politics that is rendering liberalism illiberal and unattractive, Carney’s book has no time for any of that — or for Trudeau himself. Other technocratic leaders get approving namechecks, but there’s not a single word about Canada’s current PM. Subtle, eh?
Value(s) has enough ideas to fill a manifesto, but gives no overt sign that Carney is plotting a political career — an omission that suggests he wants to keep his options open. Could homo financicus make a sudden evolutionary jump to become a full-blooded politico? Less accomplished men have done so before him: Macron is an ex-banker who had a fraction of Carney’s experience when he took the Elysée; Trudeau, on the other hand, was a supply teacher. Barack Obama a law lecturer.
But those leaders are not the real comparators here, not least since they have all, in different ways, failed to live up to expectations. The liberal centre, the tribe of just-do-what-works technocrats, has lacked truly successful leaders since Bill and Tony were taken from us. Clinton and Blair were policy wonks and globalists who could still instinctively feel the mood and priorities of people who loved their communities and their countries. They have had no true heirs. Obama talked the talk, but in the end couldn’t hide his scorn for “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion”. David Cameron put on a decent act but lacked conviction or spine. Even his greatest fans wouldn’t claim Joe Biden will define an era in the way Clinton and Blair did.
Could Mark Carney take the good ideas from his impressive book and try to make them work in the messy world of politics? If he did and it worked, he’d be the closest thing the real world has seen to the West Wing’s Jed Bartlet: a liberal intellectual technocrat with a devout Catholic’s social conscience — every sensible centrist’s political fantasy. But then, fantasies are fictional for a reason.
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SubscribeSpot on analysis by Kathleen Stock as so often. In a slightly different way, people despise the “bigot” Farage (who had a German wife!), there is no rational reason at all for this personal animosity except of course that the reason people hate these figures is that they have exactly the wrong non-approved political views.
“Viewed in this light, perhaps what people really hate about Jacob Rees-Mogg is what people hate about eccentrics generally: that he won’t give in to pressure to conform even a little bit, as the cowardly rest of us do.”
I think that hits the nail right on the head. People dislike being reminded of how much they allow the crowd to determine how they behave. An example of someone being true to themselves come what may, and having the mental fortitude to hold that course just puts their abject capitulation to the mob into even greater contrast.
I always say that if someone or something attracts such irrational opprobrium then it must be the result something within the person casting aspersions, rather than within the object of derision. People hate on JRM because they hate something about themselves that he reminds them of.
I’ve always thought itwas one of Angela Rayner’s few redeeming features that she aleays got on with JRM, although she might not admit it now.
American here, no clue as to who this guy is so just a short reflection on the “mass” – “arse” rhyming thing: I remember I had a British lecturer in linguistics who said something like “how lucky you Americans are, you can tell passing and parsing apart”.
Well, one of the things to be lucky for, at any rate.
I don’t speak, dress or look anything like JRM. Yet have utmost respect for him to be exactly who and what he chooses to be. Is this not basically the way that things should be?
I remember when he spoke at a Terrace Reception I attended. He was very funny and self deprecating. Dislike his politics by all means, but less of the personal attacks, please
Says Kathleen ” … nor even the rampantly Right-wing views; such things are hardly scarce in the Tory party at large.”
More appropriately
… nor even the rampantly conservative views; such things are hardly scarce in the Tory party at large.
Writing from Australia, I can say without reservation that I find him charming, clever, amusing and agreeable – in the non-Jordan Peterson sense.
I don’t agree with *everything*, but then I don’t agree with anyone all the time – including myself.
“What Rees-Mogg’s example convincingly tells us is that, at base, the high-minded demand to be authentic — to show “the real you”, to act in accordance with your “true self”, and so on — is only a covert inducement to display a particular kind of approved persona, carefully calibrated to socially acceptable mores, and then manifested with a convincing impression of sincerity and self-deprecation.”
That’s the standout sentence from this excellent article. I’ve noticed for some time that the word “authentic” when used by any Progressive is usually a redflag that precedes yet another plan to forcibly define and control the multiplying number of aspects of our lives that seemingly now reside within the political domain.
As for JRM, I have to admit that I’d never really heard of him at all until Brexit emerged as a red-hot political issue shortly before the referendum. He did of course make the immediate impression of being supercilous and, while not remotely too posh for me to dislike personally, would very obviously annoy millions of small-minded people elsewhere across the political spectrum, so I was surprised that “call-me-Dave” Cameron had allowed such a figure to emerge as part of high profile Tory politics.
But then, once I started hearing his resolutely calm, polite and thoughtful method of debating, I started to like him rather a lot. There is something to be said for a man who never loses his temper even under the most trying of circumstances and who remains reasonable and civil for years throughout the most divisive and poisonous period of politics in living memory.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is a loss to British democracy as a consequence of the Tories 2024 election result, I don’t care what anyone says to the contrary. He was a civilising influence within a progressively more ugly, febrile and reductive ideological landscape. I hope very much to see him back in politics one day.
Although I think we can criticize JRM, as with many the other Conservatives, for the outcomes of the previous government, you are absolutely right that deportment nd behaviour also matters rather a lot, in politics as in life. And here unfortunately Rees Mogg seem to be in a declining minority of politicians who actually do treat opponents and indeed everybody with respect and politeness.
This is the man who campaigned for Brexit, and simultaneously moved his financial business to Dublin. It marked him as a hypocrite.
I have always thought he seems like a nice chap. Pity about all the Catholicism, but at the end of the day, it’s a free country.
You remind me of the RUC of the 1970s who so disliked Catholic upper class Scots Guards Officers, and were such dangerous bigots.
I missed his contribution to the euthanasia debate and would like to have thought he’d have found some humour in it, gallows though that might be.
I’m afraid JRM is so fundamentally Catholic that he could never treat this conversation lightly.
Just a quick point. Some may not like him but quite a lot do
They hate him because he is impervious to their hatred.
What? You couldn’t tell us how floccinaucinihilipilificationis pronounced?
Floccinaucinihilipilification means the act of assessing something as worthless. There could however be a longer word than this which means an ideological position that opposes the practice of assessing things as worthless: Antifloccinaucinihilipilificationism.
This little thought experiment of mine makes me wonder if this is how modern German ended up the way it is.
“the rampantly Right-wing views; such things are hardly scarce in the Tory party at large”
If only this was true!
Saying you don’t like JRM sends off immediate alarm bells in me.
“The double-breasted posh-speak, Latin tags and ludicrous names for his six children are all pastiche panache, a country house charade.” [Polly Toynbee]
What a poisonous woman!
The thing is here is Polly Toynbee breaking every single rule that she would normally piously uphold, about evidence etc. She has none whatever that JRM has a put on persona. In fact one could go further – on all the evidence going back to him a a teenager, JRM behaves more “authentically” than most of us who do tend to act differently in different situations and with different people.
Narrow minded Toynbee seems not to be able to actually just believe that people could think or behave differently from her and progressive -liberal types. If they do they must weird at the best and bigots at the worst.
A wonderfully entertaining and colourful man. I was genuinely sorry when he lost his seat as he made politics enjoyable. I recall seeing a clip of him being interviewed aged 12 or so, where he said that he invested his pocket money in the stock market. He’s of a similar age to me and I frittered mine away on Jesus and Mary Chain singles and trying to buy bevvy underage. Still, I’ve probably got a better record collection than he has.
I remember a section of BBC ‘satire’ ‘the Mash Report’ aimed at JRM which just seemed to be blatant anti-Catholic bigotry, while also seeming to be under the impression that there were no other Catholics in parliament, and that Catholics were intrinsically bad, sneaky and untrustworthy people and should be forthwith banned from all roles in public life.
This from the Good Tolerant mainstream ‘liberals’
I get the impression that he despises us, which is why the picture of him lounging on the green benches found such purchase, His firm and loudly proclaimed Catholic views, on, eg, abortion and gay rights, shows a complete lack of sympathy for the little people. And his Brexit views reinforced the ivory tower image.
Having said that, he did say that we should have two referenda, one on the principle and one on the final deal, but the others ignored that. Shame, really, it would never have got through both votes.
Plenty of us despise sore losers.
Catholicism is the religion of mainly ordinary and ” little” people: and anti Catholicism is SO lower middle class….
I’m so glad I renewed my subscription (I did tell them it was because of you).
A Greggs in West Harptree?
Hello again Jack. On one occasion when I was wicketkeeping for the Old E at the East Harptree ground, which we shared back then, JRM dropped by and watched us. Pretty sure there was no Greggs in the neighbourhood. Perhaps he went into Frome for his treat.
Nicely turned column! Good swipe at the New European – for that publication to accuse anyone else of being ‘sneaky, snobbish and snide’ is a choice example of stones in glass houses!
Britain or should I say ” nu Britnstan” is infected by a venomous period of upper class loathing and hatred, perhaps best illustrated by the hyper informative Daily Mail on line readers comments section. The self same aspirant and Pooteresque ” Ohh what will the neighbours think” intra M25 bourgeoisie, who will compete to the death to have a newer Tesla, or send Courtenay and Tyger Jade to a minor public school, wreak their emerald green faced envy and loathing on any mention of titled, upper class, landowner, Etonian, or Harrovian.
“What Rees-Mogg’s example convincingly tells us is that, at base, the high-minded demand to be authentic — to show “the real you”, to act in accordance with your “true self”, and so on — is only a covert inducement to display a particular kind of approved persona, carefully calibrated to socially acceptable mores, and then manifested with a convincing impression of sincerity and self-deprecation.”
This is the same concept as when people say, “Think for yourself.” “Think for yourself” doesn’t mean to arrive at a conclusion based on independent research; it’s said as a reproach, it’s code for, “You don’t have the correct beliefs because you don’t follow the correct media outlets.”
Regardless of what one thinks of him, JRM was responsible for one of the great modern political quips. When campaigning with one of his children he was filmed outside a tattooist and piercing studio which had a “F*ck the Tories!” poster in the window.
Resplendent in 3 piece suit, he turned to his similarly attired offspring and commented, “Well I suppose we shall just have to take our business elsewhere.”
That’s very good. Could there be anything more totally pathetic than people who put these kind of notices in their windows?. They might as well put one saying “we’re a bunch of narrow minded bigots in here”!
The New European “shit list” — out this week — dedicated to rooting out “the sneaky, the snobbish, and the snide”.
Why would you need to look any further than those that write for or buy that odious wag?
They’re hardly likely to love anyone who did so much damage to our relationship with the EU. The publication is not called Chicken Breeders’ Monthly
But you only have to look at the front page of the wag to realise that those that write for and read it most epitomize sneaky, snobbish and snide.
The snideness oozes from every front page. Under current legislation it is probably a hate crime
As to snobbery, it is clear that they loath and despise the British public and that is beneath them to credit those that voted Brexit had legitimate and considered reasons for doing so
The British people voted to leave the EU for God’s sake! Also, 550 MPs voted for the Referendum Act, including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens!. Could we actually get over this?
The New European is perfectly entitled to campaign for Britain to rejoin the EU, but descending to such pitiful and childish gutter level abuse hardly raises its prestige and influence or shows its serious mindedness. Actually maybe there could be a good paper focusing on European issues, which was not just a mindless denigrator of Brexiteers and cheerleader for the EU (which has quite a lot of problems of its own). On this evidence the New European doesn’t seem to be that publication.
JRM and Bagpuss in one photograph – I always knew why I liked Jacob.
No Botox for me. I’m keeping my middle class face.
Many south London builders respect Reese Mogg. What left wing middle class, white collar types hate is when they are despised by tough practical working class types yet Reese Mogg and his like earn their respect.
Polly Toynbee is a woman whose success in life has been greatly assisted by her grandfather, Arnold Toynbee.
This is quite right and well observed.
I have long assumed the vitriol to be an ‘intra-class’ thing. A sort of dark fraternal hatred about someone who is obviously totally at ease in their own class, type and tradition.
I once heard said something sbout the rivalry betwen minor-public schools and Eton College or some such thing. It was the same, to a degree with Mr Johnson. The hatred he seemed to elicit from those more or less within his own class for his man of the people reputation wass quite extraordinary, viewed from without.
It reminds me of something I first saw described so well, in this comment section, the idea that British society is “horse shoe shaped”. In the army, at the race-course, and in commerce and industry the ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ orders get on really very well and without either condescension or sycophancy.
It is the bit in beteeen, particularly that bit just outside of each end, that feels the angst about class, degree and wealth.
Thank you. It is the strength of character to speak without fear or favour and standfast in face of overwhelming odds.
Those who judge on peoples deeds, their character ignore class. Those who have no deeds worth mentioning, judge according to class.
Are you suggesting the middle class people tout court are the problem here?. Ok this generalisation might have some merit, but I think we should always take personal responsibility for our views and behaviour. In my experience people of all classes can be thoroughly decent people – but people of all classes can also be obnoxious!
He feels like something out of Monty Python (preferably played by Michael Palin).
Nigel Incubator-Jones
Or the guy whose name is spelled “Luxury-Yacht”, but it’s pronounced “Throatwobbler Mangrove”.
A year or so ago Janan Ganesh, writing about empathy in the FT, described a very sympathetic (surprisingly) unnamed upper class person who seemed much like Jacob Rees-Mogg. We shall never know.
For some reason I can see my comment earlier today but no one can approve or disapprove and my current post seems to have a shadow red flag. As I am commending the author I am uncertain why this should be so. I suppose it must be better than having my remark censored – but perhaps it has and no one else can see it. As no one can comment or approve or disapprove I have no idea what others can see. All a bit odd.
PS edit: My comment seems to have recently become readable and commendable.
PPS commentable has been converted into commendable by autocorrect something rather different.
Yet again, I find myself noting how JRM’s opponents are always playing the man and not the ball. It’s always personal. The closest they get to any actual engagement with views and policies is to throw in words like “reactionary” (as Kathleen Stock does here – she tries quite hard to hide her own prejudices here, but can’t quite manage it). Without, of course, ever defining what “reactionary” might mean or considering that in some cases it might represent a majority. common sense view.
I doubt many of us agree with everything JRM says and does, but he does share something in common with Boris Johnson and Donald Trump – he manages to get his opponents to put their very worst selves on public display. Just in a far more poilte and disarming way. And that’s a genuine public service.
People on the left cannot argue without imputing bad faith to those who disagree.
In other words they don’t argue at all, they just abuse.
whereas you….
whereas you people …
Many think that others are like them. It’s usually a pretty good tell.
I largely agree, but JRM’s politics ARE reactionary, aren’t they?. He would prefer things as they were perhaps before the social reforms of the year 1960s, including on abortion. As opposed to “progressive”. Of course if you take that label as itself pejorative, you are rather taking the Left’s position, even if inadvertently. Unfortunately the majority of British people don’t agree with him on most of these issues.
A much more pertinent criticism of JRM.might be that he supported for do long a Conservative government which was so importantly incompetent and / or dishonest on mass immigration.
I admire him for his honesty and strength of character. He can also mock himself. This article confirms my view of him. Thank you. And now to get a chance to use “floccinaucinihilipilification“.
The implication is that he thinks that we are the ones who are worthless.
Eh? JRM is always personally respectful and decent in his behaviour to others, so you have not the slightest evidence (you know….) that he believes other people are “worthless”. But you now claim to be able to peer into his soul, do you?
You will need to avoid any terminological inexactitude.
One very small point. The “passer-by” who called JRM an “horrible person” in front of his kids, was in fact a bloke called Ian Bone. The creator of a pamphlet called “Class War”. Not just some random dude.
And he was wrong in my view to say anything to JRM’s children, or even to insult him in front of them. Politicians should be fair game for criticism but their families must be left alone. And JRM, like all politicians, deserves to have a private, family life.
the kids must be used to it. And his views would no doubt have been instilled into them when he taught them how different they all are.
Ian Bone waited outside the Rees-Mogg house to scream at JRM’s kids. A thoroughly ugly man.
I wonder where Mr Bone lives and where his kids go to school
Yes, I feel vociferous left-wing activists would be far less active in their hate if the Right was less mild-mannered and sensible and instead sought the kind of retaliatory violence you imply
I was implying no such thing. I was just worried that if he lived close to a posh area his and his children might be subject to harassment by the local toffs
I had the rare treat of crossing paths with Bone in a bookshop when I was a student. Recognizing him ftom a magazine aeticle as an acolyte of Black Flag, I asked him whether it was right to vandalise a Jaguar, to punish the owner for having the then requisite wealth. He replied, of course, that it was.
I bet he is now on the waiting list for the new monstrosity, red discount voucher in hand.
This country needs more Jacobs, in both the aristo and the Cockney sense.
Ian Bone founded Class War a thoroughly nasty organisation.
obviously a Bone of contention
The reaction of ‘progressives’ to JRM is more of a comment on them and their infantile psychology.
Could we accuse them of ‘poshism’?
or even ‘poshophobia’?
or ‘posh-shaming’?
I suspect, at bottom, it’s posh-envy.
Quite how one ‘hates’ someone unless they are truly evil I don’t know. There is way too much ‘hate’ stimulated by on line platforms. Be good to just get a bit more perspective.
As regards Mogg, some eccentricity to be welcomed. More interested though in his political views and track record of delivery. Should actually be being asked why he was part of a Govt that increased net migration to almost 1miliion in it’s last year after all the Brexit promises. He should be being asked why were they dishonest about the work that needed doing in specific sectors to wean us off such high net migration – Social care, Universities etc. And if he shows some honesty about explaining why the Tories and the Right had such difficulty being straight about the trade offs that’s would at least be a start to a more mature national discussion. Instead we have a silly TV programme focusing on daft stuff. Just don’t watch it.
Should actually be being asked why he was part of a Govt that increased net migration to almost 1miliion in it’s last year
He wasn’t. But hey, let’s not a pesky ‘fact’ get in the way of the narrative, eh? After all, truth is subjective.
Was he not part of the Tory administration that did so much damage by pushing through Brexit?
the Tory administration that did so much damage by pushing through Brexit?
How do you know it ‘did so much damage’? I’ve yet to meet a remainer who can answer even the most basic questions about the EU.
Same here!
You seem to have an extremely narrow view of how politics works. How is it that the vast majority of MPs voted for the Referendum Act, which enabled the 2016 vote, if they didn’t want to put this question to the public? Was it that, “European style”, the referendum should only have been allowed to come to one result?
No, but he was in Govt till 2022 when net migration reached 600-700k pa.
Er, perhaps not to a million (which we still haven’t reached yet – and here let’s not get into endless exaggeration – it just weakens the case). But JRM certainly was a member of the Johnson administration which massively increased immigration even further than its previous high level.
“Johnson government (2019–2022)
He also became Lord President of the Council and attended cabinet meetings in the Johnson government. This was the first time that Rees-Mogg either served in a government role or the Cabinet of the United Kingdom”.
Yes, here I think you make some very pertinent criticisms of JRM. Because everybody tends to get so obsessed about the eccentric way (which I suppose it is in modern British society) he dresses and behaves, all this much more important and policy stuff gets ignored.
However if people want to watch light entertainment TV which showcases JRM, then I see nothing objectionable about that. (Presuming here that JRM actually wants to be on such television and isn’t being forced to be!!).
I like him even though I don’t always agree with his political views.
Well said! I tend to have the same view of Andy Burnham (bows down before ongoing flak….!!)
As an admirer of Mr Rees Mogg from India, I was told by an irate nephew studying in the UK that he was persona non grata on his Woke campus after blurting out I thought highly of JRM!
I think I might be warming to him.
Yeah, there’s nothing the uniculture globalists and the left-wing, culture-destroying, homogenizers fear more than a true eccentric who’s impervious to their ideology and bullying.
Perhaps, judge him by his enemies?
Any enemy of (the increasingly absurd) Polly Toynbee is a friend of mine.
Goodness yes. Her encomium to every single aspect of the new Starmer regime is extraordinary in its sycophancy. Unreadable tripe.
The left/liberals hate him most because the majority of people who take the time to listen to him realise what a decent chap he is. The haters just can’t deal with their impotence.
As usual a clear eyed and fair summation of someone unlike herself but sharing a determined authenticity of view. Kathleen Stock was not prepared to conform to the conventional posture of her academic colleagues regarding the victimhood of the trans identifiers. Neither bend the knee to the expected conventions.
Loved reading this.