I want to share with you an exchange I had with a faraway friend. It seems to say a lot about what’s wrong in the world – and a bit about what’s right too.

You may remember Jamie Allen, if you saw the BBC series A Country Parish back in 2003. He was the vicar whose daily life and work the programme revolved around. Since then he’s emigrated to New Zealand, where he was dean of Taranaki cathedral and is now an advocate for poverty relief charity Tearfund. Having built himself and his family a wonderful-looking home he then sold it to help pay for a suicide-prevention project. It’s fair to say he’s one of the good guys.

Jamie wrote: “Some days I find that the ache for the sheer scale of social injustice and the extreme rich/extreme poor divide is almost unbearable. There is a temptation to close your eyes to it and be swept along. The conversations and progress seem constantly, of late, to have been derailed by political machinations too ridiculous and self-serving for belief.”

Well said, that man.

As a good Christian, he was promoting something called The Justice Conference in Auckland. The flyer for the conference reads: “Now, more than ever, people of faith need to come together to wrestle with the injustice in our world.”

Take out the words “of faith” and that remains true. In fact, it becomes truer.

I know only too well that ache Jamie speaks of. Revulsion at the rich/poor divide and the way power works to widen it is a very real, very familiar sensation.

It is by no means exclusive to “people of faith”. And I’m sure it’s not universal among them, either, whatever faith they may proclaim.

I’m glad to see people – any people – standing up against injustice. I’m less thrilled when any group appears to claim special status in that cause. Whether they are people of faith generally, or any particular creed – or none.
Decency and humanity are not the special preserve of any one club or tribe, religious or otherwise.

Jamie, I know, would say “amen” to that.



Hard Brexit, soft Brexit - or no Brexit at all?


Am I reading the runes right or am I just imagining that the chances of Britain actually pulling out of Europe are declining fast? This may be wishful thinking, but there are a number of reasons for it.

One is the brilliant manoeuvring north of the border. When it comes to playing the politics game, the SNP leaves every party at Westminster flat-footed.

If the UK leaves the EU, Scotland will leave the UK. This, obviously, is not certain – but it’s much more than an idle threat. And, from a Scots perspective, it would be only right and proper.

So we have the real prospect of Scotland prospering in the EU while its neighbour to the south dives down the economic plughole. A prospect that should concentrate a few minds.

Then there’s the suggestion that Scottish universities should let EU students study free. Which might leave English students at Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews mired in debt, surrounded by Scots and other Europeans with no such burden to bear. You have to admit, it’s brilliant.

Last week’s Economist – hardly the most anti-Establishment publication – gave a detailed breakdown of how public opinion has swung away from Brexit since the referendum.

And, let’s remember, only 27 per cent of potential voters actually voted Leave then. Just a few more than the 24pc who voted Conservative last year (although a lot more than the precisely nil who voted for Theresa May to be prime minister).

Some leading Brexiteers have called for anyone still expressing support for remaining in Europe to be charged with treason. Which is so hysterical it can only stem from fear. Fear of not getting their own way, like kids in the playground.

But the biggest remaining hope for the Remain camp lies with Parliament. A majority of MPs always did back that side. And if “bringing democracy back to Britain” means anything, it surely means letting our elected representatives do what they were elected to do. Decide stuff, so we don’t have to.

Because – in theory, anyway – they know more than the rest of us do about the big things. Things like Europe, what we can get out of it – and whether we should.

Very little about Brexit is certain, but some things are. It’s a mess that will run and run. And while it may sometimes be amusing, it will never be pretty.

It will continue to be a massive distraction from things that really matter, like climate change, the wanton destruction of public services, the rampant enrichment of the rich at the expense of the poor, a crazily cock-eyed energy policy and its unconfessed links to nuclear weapons – none of which is likely to handled better out of Europe than in it.

Did you know the Duke of Wellington was still alive? It came as news to me. I don’t mean, of course, the chap who led the victorious British forces at the Battle of Waterloo. He died in 1852, a full 37 years after his finest hour and 22 years after his brief stint as one of Britain's worst prime ministers.

But the title that was given him a year before Waterloo lives on. It currently sits on the shoulders of the ninth duke, the inheritor also of the titles Prince of Waterloo, Duke of the Victory of the Kingdom of Portugal and Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo. He was born Earl of Mornington.

He went to Eton, married a Prussian princess (who knew there could be such a person, more than a century after the unification of Germany?) and had 10 years as a Tory MEP. The long list of company boards he’s sat on includes investment banks, insurance companies, tobacco firms Rothmans and Dunhill and the drinks company Pernod. First I’d heard of him was last week when he unveiled a memorial to his most famous ancestor’s most famous victory at the London railway station that bears its name.

The first Duke was still alive when Mrs Cecil Alexander wrote one of everyone’s favourite hymns, “All Things Bright and Beautiful”. If you know it, you may know the third verse. That’s the one which goes:

            “The rich man in his castle,
            “The poor man at his gate,
            “God made them high and lowly,
            “And ordered their estate.”

Hmm. Believe that if you will. My school hymnbook had an asterisk next to that ringing endorsement of inequality, giving permission for it to be “omitted”.

The ninth duke still lives at Stratfield Saye House, the stately home in Hampshire that was bought for his family in 1817 “by a grateful nation”. It’s not a castle in the fortified sense, but it’s certainly what the French would call a chateau. Very grand indeed.

These days the poor man is allowed past the gate – for a fee – to admire the building (well, parts of it), the grounds (ditto) and an exhibition devoted to the first duke’s grandeur.

Today’s Duke of Wellington, like all his eight predecessors, is the same sort of chap as the famed barons who – 800 years ago yesterday – forced King John to put his seal to the document that has gone down in history as Magna Carta.

The “big charter” is renowned as the original declaration of democracy, but it was never really that.

For one thing, the ancient Greeks had a truer democracy than anything Magna Carta laid down.

For another, it wasn’t about giving power to the people. Only about taking it away from the king and giving it to the rich landowners, who were hardly about to share it with the peasants and other workers.

There was a beautiful irony about the Queen taking part in Monday’s celebrations of the curtailing of royal power. A different kind of weirdness about a 13ft statue of her, in full royal regalia, being unveiled at Runnymede.

But perhaps the weirdest symbol of all of our clinging to the old codes is the honours system, which was wheeled out again at the weekend for its twice-yearly flag-wave. The Queen’s Birthday Honours List – though her actual birthday is in April.

Top of the list, at least as far as the media cared, were the knighthoods bestowed on singer Van Morrison, rugby-player Gareth Edwards and comedian Lenny Henry. They were among 30 new knights, most of whom you’ve never heard of and probably never will.

But what is a knight?

William Marshall, first Earl of Pembroke, whose name was at the very top of Magna Carta, is often considered to be the typical knight: a brilliant fighter on horseback, brave and powerful – and successful – in tournaments and on the battlefield; a man who raises an army to fight for the king; and sometimes gets to decide who’s going to be king.

I can just picture Van Morrison and Lenny Henry donning full metal armour and getting up on horseback to go jousting. My money’d be on Van the Man – until bold Sir Gareth entered the lists.

Among previous title recipients, imagine Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Paul McCartney riding into battle against the infidel hordes of the rebellious Middle East.

Tragic that John Lennon was snatched away before he could be offered a title. Would he have accepted? The man whose best known solo song includes the line “Imagine no possessions…”.

Most of the new knighthoods went of course, as ever, to top civil servants, bankers and businessmen. The sort of people who expect a K as the final rubberstamping of their career status.

One shocked headline at the weekend remarked on “A knighthood for services to the Tory party”, as if that was a surprise. Isn’t that what ennoblement has always been about – services to the ruling elite?

Other folk get lesser honours.

Like Will Pooley, the Suffolk nurse who went back to help Ebola sufferers in West Africa after recovering from the disease. To him an MBE – a patronising pat on the head for an ordinary Joe who did something extraordinary, something truly honourable.

All makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?