The Spectator's Notes | 4 August 2007

Enoch Powell once said to me, ‘I love the humbug of the English. I worship it. But I reserve the right from time to time to point it out.’

Enoch Powell once said to me, ‘I love the humbug of the English. I worship it. But I reserve the right from time to time to point it out.’ I thought of this last week when I took part in Radio 4’s Any Questions?, set up in the nave of Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire. The programme always has a ‘warm-up’ question before it goes live, and this time it was something to do with travel. Jonathan Dimbleby, the chairman, then asked the audience how many of them would be going abroad for a holiday this year. About three-quarters put up their hands. On air, a question about the floods (in which Oxfordshire suffered particularly badly) produced much nodding and clapping when my fellow-panellist Peter Tatchell blamed it all on climate change. A question attacking the British Airports Authority for trying to injunct a protest camp on the site of the fifth terminal at Heathrow inspired a similar reaction. Presumably most of the three-quarters of the audience going abroad will be flying there, yet roughly the same proportion seemed to think it was a good idea to stop airport development. If it is true (which I doubt) that the energy consumption of aeroplanes is destroying the planet, then the duty to ground oneself is clear. Yet the English middle classes are not proposing seriously to alter their behaviour: they prefer to disapprove of those who try to fly them to their destinations instead. Brilliant, beautiful English humbug. I felt ill-mannered for pointing it out.