How good a deal for Britain is it that the president of China got a state visit and a nuclear power station and Prince William got the chance to go on Chinese television and complain about the ivory trade? The Prince was listened to politely, of course, but the Chinese will not give up their enthusiasm for the stuff. The elephant in the room, to misapply that expression, is that only a legal trade in ivory will save the species. Just as cows exist in any numbers only because we eat their flesh and drink their milk, so elephants have a future only if it is profitable to breed them. Throughout the commodity boom that has now ended, Africa has done very well out of China’s demand for raw materials. If it were permitted to breed elephants, let rich people kill them, and then sell their tusks, it would be a richer continent, and the bush would echo to the trumpeting of plentiful herds.
Sentimental, I know, but I found it infinitely touching to see snatched photographs of Jeremy Corbyn in his white tie at Buckingham Palace. He reminded me of his fellow north London resident Mr Charles Pooter attending the Lord Mayor’s Ball.
Supporters of the hereditary principle will be pleased to see that Justin Trudeau has just led the Liberal party to victory in Canada, but the trouble with such grandees is that they cannot get old imperial ideas out of their heads. Mr Trudeau is a firm supporter of the ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court that Muslim women immigrants should be allowed to wear the niqab throughout their citizenship ceremonies, thus hiding their faces from those conferring these rights upon them. In the old colonial days, the white man’s attitude was that it didn’t matter how the various tribes and sects behaved towards their women so long as they accepted his authority.
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