I remember the Berlin Wall falling so well. We had lived in Moscow until 1988 and to see the whole Eastern Bloc collapse was astonishing and exhilarating - the first real geopolitical event I even began to understand.
This rather poignant scene in the Royal Palace in Potsdam, which I saw yesterday, is a reminder of the brutal end of that brutal war which led to four decades of Communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe.
Within my lifetime these places - which now seem the quintessence of freedom - were loving under an almost indescribable tyranny. Thank God for Nato. (Very tempted by some Nato stash.)
Interesting that they’re selling front pages of @thetimes from the momentous two days when the Wall fell and freedom came to Eastern Europe (and my dad missed being a part of this enormous story, having left the USSR only a year before 😢).
Also selling these though. 😡
Given the mass murder perpetrated in this place following his wicked ideology that’s in rather poor taste. (The museum, however, is excellent, with none of the moral ambiguity you’d expect to see in our museums these days.)
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Well, well, well. Did you know that Paula Vennells is the progenitor of the Church of England’s Governance Review? The massive project to centralise all the power - currently dispersed to ensure checks and balances - across the Church?
The whole thing comes out of a secret Lessons Learned Review written by Paula Vennells and presented to the various Church authorities in 2020 (!! 👀 !!). This was a consequence of a failed Church Buildings Review where the various church bodies could not find consensus.
So what happened? Well basically it’s all about the big question that has since blown up and triggered the founding of @SaveTheParish: church closures.
So Napoleon. Why was it so bad? 1) It was just… dull. Nothing sparkled. There was no excitement. They somehow made the rise, reign, and fall of one of the most characterful men of history be boring.
2) There was no storyline. No drama. No tension. There was every opportunity to create a storyline but somehow they didn’t. History was just one thing after another, with a hint of ennui.
The scriptwriter needs a new day job.
3) Who even was he? He wheezed his way through the Siege of Toulon, wimped out of Egypt because he easily being cuckolded, fled his own coup d’état screaming. You are left with no hint of a reason why anyone would follow him to the bar never mind across the world.
This study, ably reported on by @MadsDavies, is an absolute shocker and should be a game changer. I hope you will forgive a long 🧵 but this is so important given how many other dioceses are implementing schemes following what we can safely call the Failed Wigan Model.
The plan?
😖Merge all the 33 parishes of Wigan into one super benefice with seven “parish hubs” (they love “hubs” in the new CofE).
😢Slash the number of clergy from 24 to 15 (they actually only got 13).
🎓Boost training for the laity.
📎Merge back-office functions.
I keep coming back to this interview and keep thinking how it betrays one of the huge unresolved questions in British politics: to what extent can a person whose whole philosophy runs against that of a gov’t oversee the implementation of their objectives? newstatesman.com/the-weekend-in…
In diplomacy it feels starker than elsewhere. If you believe in appeasement of Russia and China (which McDonald clearly did), how does that not affect the various options you present or arguments you make to ministers?
One of the shadow-scandals of the Raab resignation was that the British Ambassador to Spain was offering the Spanish that they could station police and troops in Gibraltar - entirely contrary to government policy. Was this supported by the Permanent Secretary?
So day three of Conference. What is it like? It’s like a wake, but no-one’s sure if the corpse is the Conservative Party or just Liz Truss’s ministry and, like every good wake, everyone’s getting smashed.
I presumed this would be like conferences in bad times before but it is a different level of bad. I have not met one person, not one, who weighs-in to defend her or the government (apart from those explicitly paid to do so - and even then… 👀).
This is totally different from conferences in the dark days of IDS or May, when people were debating questions of leadership and policy and there were genuinely two sides. The last few months of Boria saw strong defences of him being mounted. This week?
So the problem for Liz Truss & the party is this: the conservatives are no longer trusted on the economy and no longer trusted to be competent. This is no longer a question of winning the next election, it’s one of survival now. What should she do? Form a Grand Tory Coalition.
All parties under FPTP are coalitions and that is an unmitigated good thing. When Truss took power she decided to appoint only those who were internal political allies which, when not commanding the support of a majority of either MPs or total members, is foolhardy.
One consequence of this is that many of those appointed are untried and untrained. Like the Derby Ministry, a “Who? Who? Government”. In many cases Labour are fielding a more credible front bench than the governing party - that’s astonishing 12 years into power.