Shameless

On the right’s lack of self-reflection. Also this week: I can’t bear to look at the US election, so instead let’s all remember 1824; and London, upside down.

“Can I respectfully remind you,” Eric Pickles told the inquiry into the fire at Grenfell Tower when he gave evidence back in 2022, “that you said we would be away this morning.” The fire at the block killed 72 people. Lord Pickles had been the housing secretary at the time it had been refurbished with flammable cladding. “I have changed my schedule to fit this in,” he went on. “I do have an extremely busy day meeting people.” He did catch himself a moment later, stressing that “this is more important”. Nonetheless, this intervention did not feel respectful in the slightest. 

I’m not going to claim that this was the most shocking moment of the Grenfell inquiry: as last week’s report reminds us, that inquiry has uncovered far, far too many shocking things for that to be true. But a former minister, who must surely have known he could face personal consequences, telling the inquiry to hurry up because he had lunch plans, is up there, nonetheless.

One possible explanation for this behaviour – others are available – is that he genuinely thinks this is nothing to do with him. A striking line from the report itself notes that Pickles’ claim that fire safety regulations were entirely excluded from the deregulation drive was “flatly contradicted by that of his officials and by the contemporaneous documents”. There is an obvious reading of this line, as a diplomatic way of suggesting something more damning even than incompetence. But perhaps the surface reading is correct: perhaps Pickles genuinely did not understand the programme he was overseeing. 

At any rate, there is no sign he has connected his government’s policies with the tragedy that cost six dozen lives. The same can be said of Harry Phibbs of Conservative Home, who seemed primarily exercised about the length of the inquiry itself, and argued that the report “didn’t really tell us much new”. (He also blames the EU.) And really, have you noticed anyone from the anti-regulation, small state-ist, let-the-market-rip side of politics questioning their beliefs or publicly considering the links between those and this disaster? The silence, as Ian Dunt has noted, is deafening. 

We’ve been here before. The financial crisis happened under a Labour government – but the decades of deregulation that allowed it was an ideology of the right (albeit one which too many on the centre-left had acquiesced to, too). That crash wasn’t followed by much soul-searching of the “are we the baddies” sort, either. It was followed instead by yet more deregulation, and the dismantling of the state. 

Contrast, too, the difference between the self-recrimination in at least some parts of the Labour party over accusations of antisemitism, to the almost complete indifference to accusations of islamophobia in the Conservative party. Or consider the lack of debate about whether Brexit turned out to be such a whizzo idea after all. The problem, those leavers who criticise still argue, was never with Brexit itself. It’s just been badly delivered. Or perhaps real Brexit has never been tried. Either way, it absolutely isn’t their ideas which were to blame. 

I don’t mean to imply this is an entirely one-sided problem. I can think of thoughtful and self reflective conservatives¹, just as I can those on the other side who exhibit no such characteristics. But nonetheless, as a movement, it feels that the modern right has entirely abandoned the caution once preached by the likes of G. K. Chesterton or Edmund Burke. Such self-certainty may at times be part of the appeal – people love strong leadership, caring more about the sense we’re going somewhere than they do about the actual destination. 

Only, though, at times. The Tory leadership race, which is still, believe it or not, going on, has seen remarkably little discussion of the bread and butter issues – the cost of living; the state of public services – that led the party to its worst result in its history. The arguments put forward are always that it didn’t pursue its own ideas enough. Neither members, nor candidates, seem to believe the last government did anything wrong. The voters may not agree. 

As for Pickles, the Fire Brigades Union has made the case for kicking him out of the House of Lords. Such a move would require an Act of Parliament, but it feels the right course, nonetheless. We describe life peerages as an honour. After his record, in government and after, it’s hard to believe he has any such thing. 

Book promo, but I’ll keep it quick, okay?

Hey, someone was enjoying my book A History of the World in 47 Borders so much on holiday that the kept reading it even though it looked like this:

Want to find out what all the fuss is about? You can buy it now from Amazon, Waterstones, Stanfords, Foyles and Bert’s Books. North American edition out in just four weeks! 

Who-tus? Of forgotten US presidents

If you’re reading this in the week of publication, then 45 men have served as president of the United States. If you’re reading this more than a couple of months hence, then – well, 45 men will almost certainly still have served as US president, because either Kamala Harris will have been elected as the first woman to serve in the role, or – oh, wizard – Donald Trump will be back.

Either way, that is quite a lot of people, the vast majority of whom were drawn from a single, fairly narrow demographic – all of which means that it is extremely hard to remember all their names or what they did. If you have a passing interest in the US and its history, it is likely you’ll recognise the names of the first few presidents, who are numbered among the “founding fathers” or otherwise played a huge role in establishing a new nation (its foreign policy doctrines, its low-key genocidal approach to the people whose continent it was engaged upon stealing, and so forth). You’ll probably be aware of those who’ve served as president since some time in the 20th century, too – because it’s in living memory, or because it’s in the period when who is in the White House has had a knock on effect for everybody else on this rock, or just because they popped up in The Simpsons sometime. (Be honest, it’s the only reason you remember Gerald Ford, isn’t it?)

In between, though, there’s roughly a century in which the US was up and running but had yet to start stomping around either the globe or its culture, messing with all our lives. In that time the US ran through a couple of dozen presidents, of whom most of us can name perhaps four.² 

I have definitely included this clip before and I make no apology for doing so again.

So: given my long-standing interest in the history of the modern imperial throne, and given the fact I really don’t want to spend the next two months staring at polling aggregation websites and panicking, I’m going to write about some of them, in the bit of this newsletter where I’d normally do weird animals or maps. Here we go now: 

Half-Forgotten US President of the Week: John Quincy Adams

Lived: 1767-1848

6th President: 1825-1829 

Phwoar, check out the whiskers on that. Image: portrait by Matthew Brady/public domain.

John Quincy Adams is the earliest president commonly referred to using his middle name. This is not unusual – JFK, LBJ and so on – but in this particular case it’s more like George W. Bush: the reason you need the “Quincy” is specifically to distinguish the guy from John Adams, who had also been president and who, by a staggering coincidence, was John Quincy Adams’ dad. Between the moment the American Revolution threw off the shackles of hereditary monarchy, and the one when dynastic politics reached the White House, there passed just 48 years. Great work.³ The “Quincy”, incidentally, was to honour the notorious JQA’s maternal great-grandfather Colonel John Quincy, who died two days after his birth. 

Adams Jr was a high flyer even before his dad was president: after Harvard, he was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands by George Washington, at the age of just 26, and was later sent to Prussia and Russia, too. After stints as state senator for, then US senator from, Massachusetts, President James Monroe appointed him as his secretary of state. In that role, he agreed with Spain the terms by which Florida would become part of US; negotiated with Britain to jointly occupy Oregon Country (today’s Pacific Northwest and British Columbia); and was the first to formulate the novel and then mildly optimistic idea that any interference by European powers anywhere in the Americans was a hostile act against the United States. (Sure, why not.) He’d probably be a bit annoyed to learn that, by the time this policy became believable, everyone would call it the “Monroe Doctrine”, after his boss.

John Quincy Adams’ arrival as president in the election of 1824 – hey, it’s the 200th anniversary! I hadn’t even noticed – wasn’t noteworthy just for its nepo baby overtones. He was also the first president elected without winning the popular vote, like George W. Bush in 2000 or Donald Trump in 2016. Unlike those guys, though, Adams didn’t win the electoral college vote, either.