It's ignoble to spend your life defending the strong against the weak, but it's more ignoble to make a living pretending the strong are hard done by
Maybe I'm obtuse, but I don't see how Tony Blair can ever move on from Iraq. Surely, by definition, a convincing leader has to be ahead of his people. Because he's unable to speak to the legality of the invasion or the disaster of the postwar arrangements, Blair is way behind us, still silent on issues that everyone else in the country can discuss much more easily. Tory myth-makers, for reasons of their own, have spent 15 years pretending that Margaret Thatcher was expelled from office because of the actions of a disloyal cabal. It's not true. Thatcher had to go because she was saying increasingly ridiculous things. When she claimed that the poll tax was a great success, she just looked super-foolish, and the party properly got rid of her. When Blair asserts that terrorism in Britain has nothing to do with Iraq or that the coalition has been doing a wonderful job, then he, too, looks stupid. Eventually all politicians become trapped behind the bars of their own rhetoric. Bush, always unscrupulous, now stands on a shameless platform of "I'm the idiot who got you into this mess, therefore I'm the best person to get you out". But to our Prime Minister's credit, he doesn't quite dare offer what you might call the scoundrel's last defence.
It has been an unusually rotten year for deaths. We lost two extraordinary British artists: Eduardo Paolozzi and Patrick Caulfield, neither of whom was anywhere near the end of his artistic life. One of the many fine obituaries of Caulfield described a friend meeting him in the street and asking him why he was looking so depressed. "I can't think what to paint." The next week, the same friend saw him looking much more cheerful and asked why. "I've decided to repeat myself." In fact Patrick went on painting sublime and sublimely new things to the very end, even when he could barely move his arm. He was, in that awful phrase, the painter's painter, so remains less well known than some of his flashier contemporaries. A live jazz band played as he was buried, at the age of 69, on a perfect autumn day in Highgate Cemetery. You'll find him opposite Ralph Richardson, which seems wonderfully appropriate: two everyday masters of suppressed emotion. The most moving evening of my summer was spent in Patrick's back garden in Belsize Park. He was thin as a ghost. We'd been swapping DVDs - I'd introduced him to some Jean Renoirs, he'd introduced me to Ulzana's Raid, his favourite film. Patrick couldn't speak, so he passed beautifully written notes across the table. "Forgive me. It's six o'clock in the evening, and this time always makes me sad."
Digby Jones is leaving the CBI. Surely everyone who watches television will be delighted to see less of him. Viewed from your sofa, he is the most egregious example of what you might call the whingeing capitalist - the man at the head of a fabulously rich organisation who is forever complaining that the world is doing him down. This is an entirely new phenomenon - the capitalist as victim. The rich once knew how fortunate they were. They blessed their luck and went about quietly to buy land, build houses and found charities. Jones is more than lucky to have lived under a right-wing Labour government which has stabilised the economy and provided many of his members with sustained prosperity and ludicrously large personal fortunes. Yet still he spits irony-free resentment against the public sector. It's ignoble to spend your life defending the strong against the weak, but it's more ignoble to make a living pretending the strong are hard done by.
The South Bank is changed out of all recognition - and for the better. Nowadays it teems with life. But how typical of the redevelopment of the Festival Hall that they make sure to open the shops before they bother to reopen the concert hall. This is like a terrible admission of defeat, as if they were trying to say: first things first. OK, so if we can't draw the crowds with concerts, then let's give them retail outlets. All the familiar signs are there - Wagamama, Foyles and so on - and the premises are packed. Is shopping now the only available model for urban regeneration? Two doors down, the National Theatre has been further redeveloped to give its foyers that Sock Shop look. More than ever it reminds you of the words of the wise Maggie Smith. When told by an actor friend that he was going to appear at the National, she asked: "Which auditorium? Gatwick or Heathrow?"
David Hare is writing the screenplay of Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
