For his plan to retain Trident submarines but subtract the nuclear warheads from them, Jeremy Corbyn has been mocked, but perhaps should be praised. His scheme would fit a pattern in which Britain has aircraft carriers but no aircraft to go on them; and it would be another step towards keeping guns but banning bullets, thus to rule out war as a national policy. I admire the way his principles are uninhibited by reason. I also like his beard, which reminds me of one of the beards I grew at various times in my life when I wished to prove I was still a student, even though the years had passed. Corbyn is a student at heart. I was part of the press corps that followed Michael Foot’s kamikaze 1983 general election campaign, and I recognise the look. Foot didn’t have the beard, but he had the same eyes, glittering with goodness.
No doubt the students who want to discuss the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford have that same sparkling gaze. They are good people, and he, they have correctly decided, was a thug. But should a cull of statues according to criteria of political acceptability be encouraged? Usually it doesn’t need to be: the matter decides itself. Germany got rid of all its Hitler statues. Russia got rid of its statues of Stalin and Lenin – although Lenin’s corpse, smelling of formaldehyde, is intact in his Red Square mausoleum, and Mao’s corpse, smelling of the same stuff, is being carefully looked after in his mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. Meanwhile, Cromwell’s statue still stands outside the Houses of Parliament in London, no doubt enraging every passerby of Irish extraction. There is no statue of him in Dublin. The matter usually doesn’t need discussing, except by students convinced that if they talk long enough, they can save the world for justice. I was one of them once, and perhaps I was nicer then.
In the BBC’s War And Peace, Andrei is gorgeous but Pierre is nice. Millions of young women have been deciding these things as they watch, weighing the two young blokes in the balance. If I were still a TV critic, I could spend a page saying that the adapter Andrew Davies has heroically overcome an obstacle he set for himself by making Elena more vivid than Natasha, whereas Tolstoy made Elena a zombie.
But really it comes down to Andrei and Pierre, and Pierre takes all the biscuits because of his goodness. He is the man to be married to. He cares. His eyes shine with compassion. Hand Pierre a Trident submarine, and he would take the nuclear weapons out of it without hesitation, whereas Andrei would have to think.
