It is a mark of the sad political times we live in that finding anyone at the top of the Conservative Party worthy of respect is a notable occurrence. Rory Stewart, in his contribution to the Diary (7 June) and elsewhere, has shown himself to be such a figure. He stands in a great tradition of Tory pragmatists from Disraeli to Macmillan to Ken Clarke, and we could do a lot worse than him as PM.
The only question remains: why would he seek the approval of what is increasingly a Republican-esque party of the populist right, divorced from the tradition Stewart stands in? Stewart left us by appealing to Heraclitus, but it was his great admirer Marcus Aurelius who put it best: “Do you want the praise of a man who curses himself three times an hour? Do you want to please a man who can’t please himself?” Well, Rory, do you?
Edward Ford
Oxford
Schools test
Much of Francis Green and David Kynaston’s analysis of Britain’s private school problem falls into the usual trap of discussing all private schools as if they were the one inevitably used to illustrate your article – Eton (Observations, 7 June).
The majority of independent schools operate on much smaller budgets with fine margins of surplus at the end of each year. Changes to business rates or the imposition of VAT on fees is likely to be a false economy; many more than 40,000 pupils will return to the state system, thereby increasing the cost to the taxpayer thanks to independent school closures.
However, while I may not agree with your writers’ assessment of the problem, I do agree with their proposed solution. Independent schools work hard to provide subsidised places on a means-tested basis for lower income families and, while there is still much to do, there is no underestimating the life-changing impact these opportunities can afford.
In addition, I and most other independent school heads would agree that the state system is chronically underfunded; our fees are set at the level we believe necessary to provide a first-rate education. Our offer to educate 10,000 pupils at state-school fee levels remains on the table, and is a start towards Green and Kynaston’s fair access scheme, but this cannot be expanded until government significantly increases the resource available to state schools to match ours. That is the real problem facing state-school pupils.
K McLaughlin
Headmaster, Durham School
Might the best solution to the issue of private schooling not be to improve the quality and standards of state education? Were it possible to get an education in the state system every bit as good as that which one can buy in the private sector, who (other than parents temporarily posted overseas) would wish to make the sacrifices required to pay such high fees for their children’s education?
It is not a 7 per cent problem, but a 93 per cent one.
Sandy Corbett
Tain, the Highlands
I read Francis Green and David Kynaston’s article with interest and found myself thinking: “Why isn’t the private school sector incentivised to take selected pupils who are excluded from mainstream state schools or the care system?”
Their numbers are growing considerably; they cost society a great deal of money sooner or later; they need the extra resource available in private schools; many of them need to have their considerable intelligence positively channelled and their self-confidence enhanced. All these needs are well provided in public-school education, and I suggest that many would also respond to being treated with the dignity, respect and care available there.
Roger Gordon
North Shields, Tyne and Wear
I well remember my disappointment at Shirley Williams, then education secretary, for failing to honour Labour’s 1974 manifesto to withdraw tax relief and charitable status from public schools.
And now, without even having the task of implementing it, Francis Green and David Kynaston bottle out by proposing a so-called fair-access scheme, under which the state would continue to subsidise the schools that contribute to the inequality blighting Britain.
David Murray
Wallington, Greater London
Corbyn a realist
Your Leader (“The chill winds of isolation”, 7 June) is right to warn that “… leaders must with dispassionate realism face the world as it is…” Sometimes, however, the demands of democracy may necessitate disengagement from the world as it is. Jeremy Corbyn may, as you suggest, be on course to dismantle two pillars of our foreign policy, the US and the EU, leaving us to “experience the chill winds of isolation”. But rather the chill winds than the swamp of demagoguery and capitalistic exploitation in which the world is drowning.
The absolutism of EU capitalism is no more democratic than the populism of Trump’s America. Corbyn is perhaps the only dispassionate realist in the game. By standing beyond and outside the “world as it is” he presents the last hope for the democracy we all believe could yet arise from the chaos of the world we have created.
David Clarke
Witney, Oxfordshire
Social capitalism
The “partial exoneration of Marxism” in the post-2008 era, as described by Gavin Jacobson in his review (The Critics, 7 June), is not, unfortunately, going to answer the socio-economic issues confronting us in the future. And neither is democratic socialism, as broadly considered by Jacobson, going to lead us much further.
An entirely new approach is called for. This would necessitate a pro-business ethos entailing the management and ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange on an individual and not a collective basis, only now made viable through the evolutionary stage of technology linked to skills at the base of society.
In other words, the promotion of marketing, competition and profit should be maximised in benefiting majority interests, so there is no longer a conflict between capital and labour.
The theory and practice of this comes under the heading of “social capitalism” as elaborated in several publications sponsored by socialcapitalistnetwork.org.
Robert Corfe
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Picking on Trump
I admire and enjoy Helen Lewis’s writing but for her to quote Donald Trump’s remarks about Sadiq Khan (“The Trump playbook”, 7 June) as “picking on him”, without putting them in context – namely that they were a reaction to Khan’s deliberately unpleasant criticism of Trump in the press – is unfair.
I hold no brief for Trump, but “fair is fair”.
John Talbot
Via email
May’s not to blame
I read Jason Cowley’s column on Theresa May (Editor’s Note, 31 May) and I don’t know why there is such surprise or condemnation. Surely the latter should be reserved for David Cameron, who brought this disaster upon the country.
As for May, she is a product of her English stiff-upper-lip past and education. No different from some of the men in the game. We are just surprised when women don’t display much emotion; though we somehow don’t ask that of a man. I’m sickened by it all.
Marina Marangos
Brisbane, Australia
Christian love
Charles Grant caused me no small pain in identifying Orbán, Le Pen, Farage and Salvini as the protectors of Christianity in Europe (Observations, 31 May). The connection he draws between the objective of “sustaining Christianity” and that of “confronting Islamic extremism” suggests that Christianity will be protected in Europe by closing the borders of the continent to Muslim immigrants and refugees.
Yet it is difficult to see how a specifically Christian viewpoint can characterise Islam as a more objectionable force than ordinary secular humanism, such as prevails in most European politics and life.
More significant, though, is the suggestion that Christian witness and practice is stymied by the presence of Muslim immigrants and refugees in culturally Christian nations. On the contrary, more diversity in society presents Christians with richer opportunities to practise a Christ-like love, which must be extended not just to people who are the same as us if it is to be worthy of the name.
Thus, instead of protecting Christianity by closing borders to Muslims, these leaders actually threaten it by trying to close Christianity off into an ever tighter circle of cultural and (worryingly) racial homogeneity for which it was never intended.
Billy Backhouse
Cambridge
Bread propaganda
Sigrid Rausing (“The Diary”, 10 May) remembers a campaign of the 1970s in Sweden, with “dreary billboards stating that Socialstyrelsen, the department for social matters, ‘wants you to eat 6-8 pieces of bread a day’. Propaganda, even when driven by virtue, lowers the spirits.”
At that time Socialstyrelsen (The National Board of Health and Welfare) was much ridiculed for the campaign. It was seen as an example of paternalistic socialism. It’s just that this propaganda was not driven by virtue, it was driven by commercial interest.
Brödinstitutet, a lobby group for the Swedish bread industry, had read a research report funded by Socialstyrelsen that said we had too little fibre in our food. In the report this was described in technical-chemical terms and as an explanation there was a footnote: “…which corresponds to 6-8 slices of bread a day”. The campaign was based on this footnote and financed by Brödinstitutet.
Many people in Sweden still remember the campaign and most of them probably think that Socialstyrelsen was responsible for it. It was not.
Bo Månsson
Lund, Sweden
Special delivery
Perhaps “Letter of the Week” should be renamed “Mail of the Week” to satisfy your correspondent Stephen Powers (Correspondence, 7 June). After all, both forms of correspondence are “mail”, and surely it is the words that are important, not the mode of delivery.
Lynn White
Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd
Proof of identity
As a recent “Subscriber of the Week” I would like to assert that I for one am not Dr Phil (Correspondence, 7 June).
Terry Maton
Southend-on-Sea, Essex
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