Quentin Letts | The Spectator columnists & writers

In this season for miracles, the rise of June Sarpong continues: she has been made a trustee of the Donmar Warehouse, that London theatre attended by City snoots and funded partly by taxpayers. Every era has its Widmerpool, the slaloming careerist in A Dance to the Music of Time. Who is our Widmerpool? Gove? Sir Peter Bazalgette? James Purnell? I’d plump for Sarpong. This London-born daughter of aspirational Ghanaians forewent university to work at Kiss FM radio. She became a teenagers’ TV presenter, appeared on Blankety Blank and was David Lammy’s girlfriend. Soon she was a Prince’s Trust ambassador and pals with Alastair Campbell. She now writes, adorns the British Fashion Council and does corporate gigs. Her agent calls her an ‘activist’ — unusual for an executive at the BBC, where she pockets £75,000 to be Director of Creative Diversity three days a week.

Quentin Letts: The unstoppable rise of June Sarpong

Eton’s free-speech rumpus must surely become a David Hare play, Goodbye Mr Had-Yer-Chips, starring Jeremy Irons as the headmaster and Maxine Peake as the staff member who sneaks on the English beak teaching non-feminist critical thought. Like most attempts at suppression, Eton’s will be counter-productive. Teenage boys adore political martyrdom. Eton’s top man, Simon Henderson, looks a very poor version of John Rae but he may have done us a favour by turning a generation of Etonians into tingling sceptics of wokery. In this season for miracles, the rise of June Sarpong continues: she has been made a trustee of the Donmar Warehouse, that London theatre attended by City snoots and funded partly by taxpayers. Every era has its Widmerpool, the slaloming careerist in A Dance to the Music of Time.

Lady Hale’s Christmas diary (as told to Quentin Letts)

They say I must retire next month when I turn 75. Irritating. I have been a member of the Supreme Court since 2009 but its president — a term I do like — only since 2017. There is still much to be done. Julian, my current spouse, indicates he has little desire to have me under his heels at home. I would merely get in the way of his dusting and the Tupperware parties he holds every month with other SW1 house-husbands. Jolyon Maugham QC — a slightly familiar young man, but I am told he has the right views — comes to see me. He proposes challenging the legality of my compulsory retirement, perhaps using the Scottish courts. We could ‘crowd-fund’ the costs, he says. I doubt there are that many fools in the world. ‘You’d be surprised,’ says Mr Maugham.

The unbearable pointlessness of Parliament

Christmas books pages usually invite columnists to nominate their publishing event of the year. Well, here’s a corker: The Ties that Bind: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in the 21st Century, published by the House of Lords Citizenship and Civic Engagement committee. That obscure body has 12 members and takes itself seriously. The Ties that Bind was the fruit of hearings it held into ‘civic engagement through the prism of the civic journey each one of us who lives in Britain will undertake’. Its 168 luxuriant pages of red and black print, published ‘by the Authority of the House of Lords’, has nine chapters, bullet points, footnotes, boxes, appendices and a further wodge of evidence online. The word ‘evidence’, once reserved for blood-stained kerchiefs at crime scenes, now means ‘waffle from vested interests’.

Paper chasers

Christmas books pages usually invite columnists to nominate their publishing event of the year. Well, here’s a corker: The Ties that Bind: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in the 21st Century, published by the House of Lords Citizenship and Civic Engagement committee. That obscure body has 12 members and takes itself seriously. The Ties that Bind was the fruit of hearings it held into ‘civic engagement through the prism of the civic journey each one of us who lives in Britain will undertake’. Its 168 luxuriant pages of red and black print, published ‘by the Authority of the House of Lords’, has nine chapters, bullet points, footnotes, boxes, appendices and a further wodge of evidence online. The word ‘evidence’, once reserved for blood-stained kerchiefs at crime scenes, now means ‘waffle from vested interests’.

Causes without a rebel

One of the better plays at the National Theatre in recent weeks has been about a 21st-century banker, Judy, who quits her job to become a 1950s-style housewife. In Laura Wade’s Home, I’m Darling, Judy ditches her corporate wardrobe for a kitchen pinny and feather duster. She could have stepped from the Good Housekeeping domestic guide my mother was given after her wedding in 1954. Judy scorns modern technology and she dislikes coarse language. She is, at initial view, a faux-nostalgic figure, to be mocked. Yet the word used for her stance is ‘rebellion’ and by the end of the play she may, to a small extent, have made us re-examine today’s assumptions about work and happiness. Judy, though slightly mad, is fresh.

Diary - 19 April 2018

Our ducks are back. Two wild mallard have spent the last five springs on the brook which gurgles past us in Herefordshire. Each year they produce a paddling of chicks; each year most of the ducklings are killed by predators. Our friend Becky thinks she spotted an otter, more likely stoat or mink, in the brook. The fluffy ducklings have little chance of survival. We wish the mother duck would nest somewhere safer but there is no telling her or her green-headed drake. If I have felt kinship with the ducks lately it was because I was being pursued by sharp-fanged ferrets from the anti-meritocratic, politically unrepresentative, over-indulged arts establishment. In a Daily Mail theatre review I questioned diversity targets and colour-blind/gender-blind casting.

New Year, new world order

Old establishment New establishment Order of the Garter BBC Sports Personality of the Year Parliament’s Woolsack The Supreme Court The Borgias Sir Nicholas Serota and friends William Rees-Mogg Owen Jones Jacob Bronowski Simon Cowell Ciggy soak and TV cook Fanny Cradock Clean-living (Deliciously) Ella Mills Shirley Williams Lily Allen MCC committee members BBC trustees Sid James Lord Sugar Oxbridge high-table dinners Institute for Government lunchtime talks Toad in the hole Sushi Richard Ingrams Guido Fawkes website Bishop of Sodor and Man Emma Thompson Young Conservatives Tinder The Astors The Kardashians The Dimblebys The Dimblebys Athenaeum Babington House BBC Fa

The Establishment of 2018 – a who’s who

Old establishment New establishment Order of the Garter BBC Sports Personality of the Year Parliament’s Woolsack The Supreme Court The Borgias Sir Nicholas Serota and friends William Rees-Mogg Owen Jones Jacob Bronowski Simon Cowell Ciggy soak and TV cook Fanny Cradock Clean-living (Deliciously) Ella Mills Shirley Williams Lily Allen MCC committee members BBC trustees Sid James Lord Sugar Oxbridge high-table dinners Institute for Government lunchtime talks Toad in the hole Sushi Richard Ingrams Guido Fawkes website Bishop of Sodor and Man Emma Thompson Young Conservatives Tinder The Astors The Kardashians The Dimblebys The Dimblebys Athenaeum Babington House BBC Fa

Order, order | 13 December 2017

Diet nannies will spend Christmas telling us ‘you are what you eat’ but in the House of Commons ‘you are where you sit’. Are you a Tory Whips’ stooge or a Dominic Grieve groupie aching to block Brexit, a braw new blue Scot or an English provincial plodder without hope of advancement? Parliament-watchers discern plenty about your political leanings from where you park your posterior. Each side of the Commons chamber has five green-leather benches that are divided by a gangway. On the government side of the chamber, all MPs are Conservatives except for a couple who have had the Whip withdrawn. On the opposition side, the lower four benches ‘beyond the gangway’ (i.e. further from the Speaker’s chair) belong mainly to the Scots Nats, Lib Dems, Northern Irish and Plaid Cymru.

The Establishment of 2018: a guide

‘Our children are horrified’

Wrexham, North Wales To window cleaner Andrew Atkinson, Theresa May’s ‘blue-collar Conservatism’ is not just a slogan. It’s what he is. For the duration of the general election, gap-toothed, 32-year-old Atkinson has hung up his chamois leathers and water-fed poles and taken to campaigning on doorsteps in a bid to become Wrexham’s first Conservative MP. The campaign is costing him a fortune in lost jobs. Atkinson is a broad-shouldered lad who left home at 17 to earn a living as a self-employed squeegee wallah (‘glass hygiene technician, please,’ he jokes). He has the square jawline of Buzz Lightyear and an unaffected way with housewives. You half expect them to say: ‘Give us a squirt of Windolene and a quick rub-down while you’re here, love.

The 75 worst things about 2016

In the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge, here, in no particular order, are my current irritants: • Paddy Ashdown • Lady (Shami) Chakrabarti of Kennington • First Minister Nicola Sturrrgeon • Brussels grands fromages Michel Barnier, Guy Verhofstadt and Monsieur Tipsy Jean-Claude Juncker • Three out of five Newsnight discussions • Dance judge Len Goodman (those teeth are whistling again, Len) • Donald Trump’s hand gestures • Sir Philip Green • Lady Green and that dog of hers • Nicky Morgan • Business Secretary Greg Clark, the cabinet’s fruity-voiced answer to Clifford the Listerine dragon • Benedict Cumberbatch • Caitlin Moran • The National Secular Society • Ukip braggart Raheem Kassam • Diane Abbott, particularly when she closes her eyes while speaking • Advertising man Sir Martin ‘£43 million a year’ Sorrell • Anti-press windbag Evan Harris • Mumsnet • Hugh Grant • Labour chief whip Nick Brown • Cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood • Telly scientist Prof Brian Cox • Gary Lineker • James Purnell, the former Labour culture secretary who now poses as a non-partisan BBC radio boss • Emily Thornberry QC MP • Political aide Rohan Silva, who ‘became too big for No.

My naughty list

In the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge, here, in no particular order, are my current irritants: • Paddy Ashdown • Lady (Shami) Chakrabarti of Kennington • First Minister Nicola Sturrrgeon • Brussels grands fromages Michel Barnier, Guy Verhofstadt and Monsieur Tipsy Jean-Claude Juncker • Three out of five Newsnight discussions • Dance judge Len Goodman (those teeth are whistling again, Len) • Donald Trump’s hand gestures • Sir Philip Green • Lady Green and that dog of hers • Nicky Morgan • Business Secretary Greg Clark, the cabinet’s fruity-voiced answer to Clifford the Listerine dragon • Benedict Cumberbatch • Caitlin Moran • The National Secular Society • Ukip braggart Raheem Kassam • Diane Abbott, particularly when she closes her eyes while speaking • Advertising man Sir Martin ‘£43 million a year’ Sorrell • Anti-press windbag Evan Harris • Mumsnet • Hugh Grant • Labour chief whip Nick Brown • Cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood • Telly scientist Prof Brian Cox • Gary Lineker • James Purnell, the former Labour culture secretary who now poses as a non-partisan BBC radio boss • Emily Thornberry QC MP • Political aide Rohan Silva, who ‘became too big for No.

From Lord Sewel to Karen Danczuk, 2015 was the Year of the Cad

Now that former Central Office favourite Mark Clarke has been banned for life from the Conservative party, he could pursue a career in copy-writing. He seems to have a twisted aptitude for that sort of thing. When leading the Tories’ general election RoadTrip 2015 of young activists, many of them peachy girls, Mr Clarke was said to have had the slogan ‘Isolate, inebriate and penetrate’. Though he denies the bon mot, his approach was apparently wildly successful — which is more than can be said for his attempts to land a parliamentary seat. Several women, including at least one serving cabinet minister, fell for this plausible smarmer over the years. Mr Clarke called to mind the character played by 1960s film actor Leslie Phillips, who greeted women with the words ‘Well, hello — ding dong.

The year of the cad

Now that former Central Office favourite Mark Clarke has been banned for life from the Conservative party, he could pursue a career in copy-writing. He seems to have a twisted aptitude for that sort of thing. When leading the Tories’ general election RoadTrip 2015 of young activists, many of them peachy girls, Mr Clarke was said to have had the slogan ‘Isolate, inebriate and penetrate’. Though he denies the bon mot, his approach was apparently wildly successful — which is more than can be said for his attempts to land a parliamentary seat. Several women, including at least one serving cabinet minister, fell for this plausible smarmer over the years. Mr Clarke called to mind the character played by 1960s film actor Leslie Phillips, who greeted women with the words ‘Well, hello — ding dong.

How the BBC Trust found me guilty of climate change heresy

In July I made a short Radio 4 programme with them called What’s the Point of the Met Office?, which accidentally sent orthodox warmists into a boiling tizzy. Amid jolly stuff about the history of weather predictions and the drippiness of today’s forecasters, we touched on parliamentary lobbying done by the state-funded Met Office. All hell broke out. Cataracts and hurricanoes! The Met Office itself was unfazed but the eco-lobby, stirred by BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, went nuts. I was accused of not giving a proper airing to ‘prevailing scientific opinion’. Apostasy had occurred. I was duly flogged on the Feedback programme. That was the last I thought of it until last week, when I was sent an enormous draft report from the BBC Trust’s editorial standards committee.

Diary - 3 December 2015

First, an apology. Thanks to me, all journalists at BBC Radio’s ethics and religion division are being sent for indoctrination in climate change. Sorry. In July I made a short Radio 4 programme with them called What’s the Point of the Met Office?, which accidentally sent orthodox warmists into a boiling tizzy. Amid jolly stuff about the history of weather predictions and the drippiness of today’s forecasters, we touched on parliamentary lobbying done by the state-funded Met Office. All hell broke out. Cataracts and hurricanoes! The Met Office itself was unfazed but the eco-lobby, stirred by BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, went nuts. I was accused of not giving a proper airing to ‘prevailing scientific opinion’.

I know just the vicar for my parish church. Pity he’s fictional

For cheap laughs you should look at the situations vacant column of the Church Times — pages of jobs for Anglican clergy. The language, with its dreary emphasis on compliance and its neglect of individualism, may help to explain why the Church of England has become the Labour party at prayer. Number one word in these adverts is ‘team’. Applicants need to be ‘team players’. Other hot words: ‘passionate’, ‘change’, ‘management’ and ‘skills’. A couple of weeks ago the Diocese of Lichfield needed a ‘team rector’ near Tamworth — ‘a visionary, imaginative and inspirational team leader, passionate for evangelism and discipleship, with experience of managing change and able to enjoy modern styles of worship’. ‘Managing’ change may be a euphemism for ‘enforcing’ it.

The charming little airport that ruins thousands of holidays

Horror films occasionally use the device of the deceptive idyll. An apparently restful place — a clearing in the woods, a pretty cottage — is the site of a fiendish atrocity. A goodie escapes and breathlessly reports the matter to the police. Next morning the authorities race to the scene, and find nothing. Wickedness has been concealed. The deceptive idyll has returned. Such a place is Chambéry airport in south-east France. Framed by mountains and fringed by Lake Bourget, it was founded in 1938 and has not grown much. On weekdays little disturbs the airfield daisies save the tinkle of distant cow bells and a cooling Savoyard breeze. You can imagine the Milka girl dating the guy with the ping-pong bats. Yet on winter Saturdays, Chambéry’s mask drops.

Quentin Letts: Why hymns are the true voice of England

When all seems too gloomy to endure, I take myself up to the British Camp in the Malverns, there among the windblown tufts and Iron Age ditches. With the rain lashing and my trousers flap-flapping like two Spithead flags, I lean on the gale and claim my birthright: to hum hymns of England and think of our forefathers. The Camp, by legend the fort of gallant Caractacus, is this kingdom’s greatest hill. At 1,110 feet it is not the tallest. It is not the broadest, sharpest, steepest or most remote. But from that ridged summit (a wedding cake, say some, though from boyhood I’ve thought of it as an enormous nipple) you can see far into the three-choir counties: Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford. Hymnshire. At Christmas we go all gooey over carols.

Diary - 14 March 2013

The week starts with a bang — literally — when my 1986 Land-Rover explodes, mid-gear change: CLANK and the exhaust pipe burps blue smoke. The old girl rolls to a halt. All we lack is the tinkle of a dislodged hubcap. I feel like Peter Cook’s Maj Digby Dawlish in the 1969 film Monte Carlo or Bust after coming a cropper. Daughter Honor, ten, will be late for school so I palm her off on a passing car. Its driver seems friendly. I suppose Social Services would want me to have had her CRB-checked. The AA tows me to our mechanic in Ledbury. Lewis has a poke under the bonnet. His oily head emerges, teeth twinkling in his gums. ‘She’s well an’ truly knackerrrrred,’ grins Lewis. It made his day, though not mine. The media insist David Cameron is well an’ truly knackerrrrred, too.

A speech for Europe

On Wednesday the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, gave a ‘State of the Union’ address at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Here is the text of the speech Senhor Barroso did not give: Amigos! Citoyens! You there! This is my State of the Union address. Our European Union is, after all, in a right old state so I thought I would make a speech about it. Anything Mr Obama can do, your unelected president José Manuel Barroso can do better. It has been another magnificent year. Borders have crumbled. National sovereignty has shrivelled. As you can see, all is going according to plan. Here on the mothership, even we have been surprised at how fast things have developed. There have been days when my special advisers have been so overcome by the news from corners of the empire that they have had to retire to five-star restaurants for lunchtime consultation sessions.

Easing made easy

Ghastly moment, isn’t it, when at a supper party (worse, at editorial conference or in a meeting with clients) some drawling know-all asks ‘so what do you think about QE?’ Everyone at the table swivels in your direction. Your mental turbines stall, your eyeballs sweat. QE? Is that a conference centre? Cruise liner? A fashionable disease? Anyone who has been through this experience may find useful the following bull-point presentation. With the emphasis on bull. ● On hearing ‘QE’ do not say: ‘You mean that game show fronted by Stephen Fry?’ People may think you are being serious (which in fact you are, but let’s keep that quiet). ● QE stands for ‘quantitative easing’, the government’s main economic policy in response to the slump.

‘I am in charge’

He needed a trilby and leather coat but there was something of ’Allo ’Allo!’s Herr Flick to the mandarin giving evidence at the Public Accounts Committee one recent afternoon. The PAC is parliament’s prime scrutineer of state spending. Civil servants have it dinned into their skulls to regard it with caution, if not respect. Yet this Herr Flick, with his little sticky-up fringe, his minimalist spectacles, his subtle pouts and sly smiles, conducted himself as a superior mortal. He toyed with the committee. He said he was there as ‘a courtesy’. The MPs should not expect him to make a habit of appearing before them.This lean-livered, bloodless Brahmin was Sir Jeremy Heywood, David Cameron’s new Cabinet Secretary.

Letts for DG

How does Quentin Letts for Director General of the BBC sound to CoffeeHousers? He’s certainly putting himself forward, and in the latest issue of The Spectator he lays out what he’d bring to the role. His seventeen-point manifesto includes such proposals as ‘Cut the DG’s pay to 10 per cent of its current value’ and ‘Sack Jeremy Clarkson’. We’ve pasted the whole thing below. Do add your own ideas for the Beeb in the comments section. Messrs Egon Zehnder, headhunters, are helping the BBC find its next director general. The involvement of these swanky international executive search agents is depressing. Their American-‘flavored’ website brags about helping companies seek ‘competitive advantage’ and identify ‘talented business leaders’.

Me for DG

A manifesto for the BBC’s top jobMessrs Egon Zehnder, headhunters, are helping the BBC find its next director general. The involvement of these swanky international executive search agents is depressing. Their American-‘flavored’ website brags about helping companies seek ‘competitive advantage’ and identify ‘talented business leaders’. If the BBC is to have a future, it must raise its vision above such mercenary concepts. But at least Egon Zehnder may ensure that favourites for this influential position are drawn not simply from the upper, left-facing slopes of BBC management. That danger was evident when the Guardian (whose editor may also be a contender) ran an early list of possible runners. Driven to rage by that slew of establishment liberals, I decided to offer myself as a candidate.

What I really, really want

Dear Father Christmas, please fill my stocking with the following goodies: A referendum on Britain’s future in Europe... Or, a Linguaphone course to brush up my German.A new shadow chancellor. The old one doesn’t really work any more.A straitjacket to stop George Alagiah waving his arms around so much when he is presenting the BBC News.During the Jubilee celebrations, a minute’s standing ovation, nationwide, for the Duke of Edinburgh.A protest march through Islington by striking taxpayers.An announcement from David Cameron that he is scrapping the Ministerial and Other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991, which granted pay-offs to Cabinet ministers. (The Act was also responsible for setting the Commons Speaker’s indecently generous pension.

Diary - 26 November 2011

Nine years ago we moved to Herefordshire from Gloucestershire, where lovely Jilly Cooper was a neighbour. There is less bedhopping here in the Marches, fewer rakes such as Jilly’s character Rupert Campbell-Blacks. Recently, however, we learned that a married friend here was having an affair, bonking away in the marital home like a bonobo monkey. What should we do? Sometime matinee idol Hugh Grant would tell us to mind our own business. Broadsheet columnist Joan Smith on Monday assured the Leveson Inquiry that 21st-century Britain is laid back about marital collapse. Speak for yourself, Joan. I take the view that marriage is a public estate, declarations of love being exchanged in front of the community. It is factually incorrect to say that marriage is completely private.

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