Re: “Person of the year” (TNE #416). Jamie Klingler wants Gisèle Pelicot’s name to be remembered with awe, respect and gratitude for her bravery in giving all women permission to reject shame.
Madame Pelicot has “shone a torch into the dark corners” of my mind also. When I recall my own experiences of being violated by the men in my life I realise that my reluctance to talk publicly about these experiences is because I have been keeping them under a blanket of shame.
I’ve always known the blame isn’t mine, but I’ve held on to the shame and have never reported my experiences to the police. Thank you Gisèle for your courage.
Pat Brandwood
Bournemouth, Dorset
Farage will fail, finally
Re: Alastair Campbell’s Diary on Nigel Farage and Matthew d’Ancona’s “Breakthrough point” on the same subject (both TNE #416).
We underestimate this man at our peril. The only thing that vaguely comforts me is that when the full impact of Trump’s shitshow is felt in the US, it just might become a salient warning to the UK not to elect a populist megalomaniac.
Mary Maclean
Do not fall into the Democratic Kamala Harris trap of underestimating the egoism of the average voter. Candour, audacity and vision did little for her fortunes – people voted for Donald Trump despite all his flaws, just as they did for Boris Johnson and just as they will for Nigel Farage.
After 14 years of declining living standards, people are guided by self-interest over lofty ideals, and unless Starmer can improve those standards he will lose the battle to the snake-oil salesman and his forked-tongue promises.
But Farage has no answers, solutions or remedies so he will fail, just as Trump, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni and Geert Wilders will fail, and a burned electorate will be back to square one.
Ann Shilcock
Reform’s leader was, is, and always will be an opportunistic political surfer. He has no constructive plan, and never will have.
He loves himself, and feigns to love others, who love themselves – Trump for one, Vladimir Putin for two, Viktor Orbán for three, and all those who want the people to be idiots, and for themselves to have absolute power over them.
Those statements made, Farage is a nonentity.
Richard Davison
Opponents need to attack Nigel Farage’s weakness – Brexit. Keep bringing up the £20bn loss in tax revenue, the £100bn+ loss in trade, the 5% drop in GDP. He has no response to factual evidence.
Simon Pocock
As someone coming from a long Liberal tradition, I know that it takes more than a few years to build a local organisation to challenge for a parliamentary seat. It takes several elections. It also requires local councillors to give your party local personality.
Reform will struggle to maintain momentum, regardless of the money thrown at it.
Reform is being fuelled by hot air that is sending its balloon up into the sky. But as it goes up, the hot air cools and it comes down again unless the air is reheated. That becomes more difficult over time.
Voters are fickle. You can be flavour of the month, and then all of a sudden you find you are not and someone else has taken over. A volatile electorate cuts both ways. Nigel Farage and Reform are vulnerable to challenge.
Farage sulks when someone takes him on. The Reform agenda is thin and contradictory. There are plenty of opportunities to highlight the shortcomings of this agenda.
Yes, Reform will make a lot of noise for a while. Its first test will be in May.
On the basis of local by-elections so far, their performance is underwhelming. Will that start to burst the bubble? We shall see.
David Rolfe
One way to steal Nigel Farage’s thunder is to give him what he craves – proportional representation.
Yes, he will have more seats and power, but would he be in government under PR? I don’t think so.
That seems far more likely currently under the terrible and broken FPTP system.
Danny Abrahams
The one positive about the rise of Reform is that it splits the Tory vote. Labour needs Reform to enable them to stay in power – but just enough and not too much.
Paul Nugent
Throughout history, angry young men with no hope have started revolutions. Some end up good eventually, after a few false starts. Some bad (how many dictatorships start out with good intentions?).
Politicians need to give the young hope and a vision of what they will become. Mainstream British politicians do not do this, so the young are being drawn to a leader who is saying “your life is bad not because of you but because of them, if we get rid of them you will have a bright future”.
We need change, a vision and hope. As someone said, “the only thing great about Britain is its people”. So come on – we are so much better than this.
Jean-Marc Le Feuvre
Whither the church?
Re: Patience Wheatcroft’s “Is the Church of England doomed?” (TNE #416).
As a retired social worker, can I say any new archbishop of Canterbury should implement one simple change. ANY allegation of abuse should be referred to the secular authorities.
To the police if the accuser is an adult; the police and children’s services if the alleged victim is a child or young person. Stop thinking that it is Christian to protect the institution, to the detriment of the alleged victim.
By all means, have individuals who facilitate two-way communication between the church and the secular institutions. But they must not have any decision-making authority (that is the prerogative of the alleged victim).
Unless the church behaves in this way it is not only letting down victims, but betraying the ideals of Christianity and therefore should wither on the vine of its own hypocrisy.
Brian Ronson
Atlantic drift
David Quantick’s “When British pop went Euro” (TNE #416) was fascinating and (not being a music pundit myself) linked together a lot of stuff I didn’t previously know. But I wonder how far the “pull” towards American culture was (and is!) linguistic?
Whether it’s music, films, Black Friday, school proms, or Hallowe’en, British people grow up immersed in US culture and still see Europe as foreign.
Tony Jones
Haus proud
I enjoyed “Build, baby, build” (TNE #416), Jonty Bloom’s article about housing and the ills besetting almost anyone in the UK (with the possible exception of Scotland?) when it comes to getting on to the housing ladder.
Jonty does not mention one key factor – the types and quality of the homes being built. UK buyers, first time or otherwise, have got used to buying reasonably sized or larger new first homes with lots of attractive but largely non-essential features – en-suite bathrooms, utility rooms, more bedrooms than they need, garages that nobody parks their car in.
The government and UK housebuilders would do well to look at the German Tiny Haus concept – low-cost, high-quality, energy-efficient and, crucially, smaller homes built on land where there is a presumption in favour of planning permission for new homes. Tiny Haus – along with Fertighaus (where components are made off-site, leading to quick on-site assembly where all the necessary services are already in place) – leads to homes of around 500 sq ft with triple glazing, advanced wall and roof insulation, solar panels, heat pumps, and clever energy recovery systems.
They rarely have more than two bedrooms. They are available to buy, rent from a reputable social market organisation, or rent-to-buy but not to let or use as a second home. The purchase price is around £130,000.
Talking to people – mostly young couples – who live in them, they are seen as a relatively short-term option, meaning there is a good turnover of genuinely affordable, low-cost homes for younger people, meaning in turn that more and more of them can afford to live where they grew up, or where they wish to.
Probably best to avoid mention of Germany, or indeed the EU (other EU countries have similar schemes) though, as that would mean admitting that the UK has things to learn from our close neighbours. Nigel Farage wouldn’t be in favour either – his angry young men would very soon reduce in number… and I suspect our housebuilders would find good reasons not to change tack.
Phil Green
Starmer’s strategy
Re: “The speech he must give” (TNE #415). While I understand the New European’s frustration with the silence of Labour and their refusal to explicitly endorse rejoining the EU, I do believe there’s a strategy at work.
The UK government’s authority is illusory and insecure. Few have polled so badly so soon after election.
Labour won with one of the smallest vote shares in modern history and owes its majority more to the corruption of first-past-the-post than any real enthusiasm. There is no guarantee Labour will win the next election – so, it is keeping its powder dry.
Rejoin is being kept up Labour’s sleeve as its ace. If the polls look uncertain and risk a Tory comeback at the next election, Labour will throw rejoining on the table to force pro-EU voters to switch back to Labour. As rejoining is a pledge that can only be made once (unlike, say, progressively spending more money on the NHS, you can’t re-re-rejoin when you’re already a member!), Labour will be reluctant to spend that asset so soon – if Labour can stay in office without needing to rejoin, it won’t. In essence, EU membership is being held hostage to Labour’s electoral fortunes.
As much as it might turn the stomachs of TNE readers, if you want to guarantee rejoining by 2030, the most tactically sensible action would be to hold your nose and vote Tory in local elections in the meantime – enough to make Labour pollsters panic.
Robert Frazer
Salford, Greater Manchester
The world and its European wife fully appreciate that Brexit has not worked, in fact it has made us poorer and less powerful on the world stage. That is not to say that the EU hasn’t got its own share of problems and issues, but this divorce now needs proactive relationship mediation, for the betterment of all of us.
I have been dismayed by Starmer’s intractability on the youth mobility scheme, as it was a win-win situation for young people in the EU and ours. If this much-vaunted “reset” is to have any credence then obduracy should be parked outside.
Judith A Daniels
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
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Comments, conversation and correspondence from our online subscribers
Re: “Italy’s laughs in translation” (Carousel, TNE #416). When I was living and working in Germany, one of my colleagues related a story about his English girlfriend, who had wanted to buy some sausages.
She had intended to buy some Bratwürste, but instead she asked for 300g of Brustwarze, the German for nipples (breast warts – German is so literal). She was taken aback when the shop assistant collapsed laughing on the floor.
One of my neighbours here in France wanted to buy a new mattress – matelas in French. When asked how hard the mattress should be, she replied that she preferred a matelot dur (a hard sailor), to general amusement.
Red Nassack
Re: Alastair Campbell’s Diary on Angela Merkel (TNE #416). I was always fascinated by Mrs Merkel and the power that she so deftly wielded, particularly as she did not seem to have any truck with the more shallow personality fixation our more recent politicians have sought. She may have made mistakes, as all politicians have, but all hail to the serious competent person – or to coin a more recent phrase, “girly swot” – she was.
Lesley Ibbotson
Of course, as Paul Mason says in TNE #416, liberalism should be muscular. It was never meant to be a wishy-washy compromise between left and right but a political philosophy in its own right.
Diversity, openness and fairness must remain at the core of any muscular liberalism, in which case, it is imperative that the progressive centre does not pander to the right, by recognising that borders are “necessary” and that all calculations on migration must be made within the nation state.
To build a better world, muscular liberalism must seek to reinforce international institutions, which is why the UK rejoining the EU is so urgent.
Liberalism is based on fairness to human beings from wherever they originate and whatever their religion, gender, sexuality or ethnicity. The national state is divisive because it sets up artificial divisions between people. Liberalism is either international or it is nothing.
Mark Grahame
Re: Peter Trudgill’s column. Every article is a school day and I love it. Thank you, Peter.
Christopher Harrison
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