Newark Is An Anagram

There are people whose opinion I respect and who regard the works of George Orwell as dross. I would not say that, but I did not read Orwell until I was well into adult life, and doing so confirmed my teachers' judgement that he was one of those writers for pupils who could cope, but not with Shakespeare. In the meantime, the pseudo-Left supporters of the Iraq War had invoked him endlessly. Enough said.

The line about the goosestep, for example, is just plain wrong. As is the claim, either that English intellectuals despised England, or that, if they did, then that would make them internationally unique as an intelligentsia. But that sort of rubbish sounds profound to the likes of Robert Jenrick, who is about one tenth as clever as he thinks he is, and who is, as such people often are, both crooked and vicious, so bent that even Boris Johnson felt obliged to sack him, and so spiteful that he ordered the painting over of cartoon characters on a wall lest they had given some small pleasure to refugee children. On all three counts, he would fit right into the present Government.

Interviewers should ask Jenrick his last cultural experience, and his favourite ones. And Nigel Farage should specify that, as a bigoted extremist, Jenrick would not be welcome as a member of Reform UK, and would certainly fail the rigorous new vetting procedure to be adopted as a Reform candidate at next year's local elections. Very soon, those interviewers should be putting the same questions to Ministers, and Farage should be saying the same thing about them.