The Sue Gray phenomenon fascinates me as an example of the perils of thinking you are good. (A related case study is that of Sir Keir Starmer.) It strikes me again and again that the most self-deceiving people in modern public life are those who publicly set themselves on the side of virtue. You see this in senior civil servants, judges, university vice-chancellors, NHS administrators, green businesses, heads of big charities and aid organisations. ‘We do good, so we can do no wrong’ is the great non-sequitur of the age, and the proliferation of ‘standards in public life’, ‘propriety and ethics’ committees, experts on ESG, diversity, inclusion, decarbonisation, transparency etc only makes things worse. Ethics are a matter for every single human being and cannot be delegated to a priestly caste, often taxpayer-funded. Many of the people in these trades may be well-meaning, but their déformation professionelle is that identified by Jesus in the scribes and Pharisees, ‘ye are like whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones’. If Sue Gray had done a more normal job than exercising power through ‘propriety and ethics’ for years, she would have quickly seen that her secret negotiations to go and work for the Labour leader while being highly paid as a neutral civil servant were not ethical and her desire to enter government by other means, leveraging her experience for political ends, was not proper.

The Daily Telegraph’s publication of Matt Hancock’s lockdown texts reveals that he cast about rather desperately when the Sun exposed his affair with his special adviser. Could his CCTV-captured cuddle with Gina Coladangelo come within the social distancing rules which his own department had imposed? One exemption from distancing was ‘for the provision of voluntary and charitable services’. ‘Well it was voluntary and arguably charitable!’ Mr Hancock joked, slightly ungallantly, to his aide Damon Poole at 1900 hours on 25 June 2021. He held out for versions of this argument for some hours, but it got nowhere. Mr Hancock resigned the following evening. For many years, Private Eye used the phrase ‘discussing Ugandan affairs’ (origin too long and obscure to be explained here) to indicate illicit sexual activity. I propose it now be replaced by ‘providing voluntary and charitable services’.

The hunting season is just ending. It has been a difficult one. Labour is still promising to ban trail-hunting. People in a couple of hunts have behaved badly. And the ground was too hard to hunt in many places for weeks in January. So I was particularly pleased to receive the following charming card after a private day I had organised for the younger hunting generation. It is from a boy called Jack, who is eight: ‘Dear Lord Moore, thank you very much… It was a great start to the day with all the sausage’s [sic]. (I had 15.) But then sadly the sausage rolls came and I was full up. ☹ My favourite part was when we jumped the gate. Which will be very memorable because it was my first gate. One of the best things was that we were out for so long so we could do lots and lots. I hope you had a whacking brilliant day like we did. Love from Jack.’ With such spirit among the young, I feel the sport has a future. 

On the way to this particular meet, I realised I had not brought enough drink for the older persons attending, so I stopped at a village shop. ‘Have you got any port?’ I asked. ‘What’s port?’ came the reply. I realised that the assistant did not even know it was a drink (though the shop did, in fact, stock it). This must be the first period in 300 years when a normal English person has not heard of port. Like sherry, it has somehow slipped out of national consciousness, which is odd because it is both quite cheap and quite nice, though rather headachy. 

By chance, my sister was recently in Oporto. She and I went there, as children, in 1970, and the Moore family was entertained at Cockburn’s port lodge by a kind and well-named director of the firm, Felix Vigne. The previous year, aware even then of a port image problem, Cockburn’s had launched its new Special Reserve, designed to bridge the gap between the grand vintage stuff and pubs’ basic Ruby. Nowadays, Charlotte tells me, Cockburn’s has an excellent museum of port, and in the lavatories is a continuous tape of the television advertisements with which it launched Special Reserve (it is also visible on YouTube). The scene is of two smart, white-clad Royal Navy officers dining on board a Soviet submarine as guests of their Russian counterparts who have rescued them from some mishap at sea. The British produce a bottle of Special Reserve. ‘Ah,’ says the Russian officer, ‘Cockburn’s’, sounding the ‘ck’. ‘Not quite,’ says the Brit with a cut-glass accent and a patronising smile. ‘It’s Co’burn’s.’ The Russian starts a sort of tease. ‘So that,’ he says, pointing at the clock on the wall, ‘is a “clo”.’ Then he pulls up his trouser leg to reveal his red hammer-and-sickle sock: ‘And that is a “so”.’ The men from the Senior Service correct him: the ck is sounded in both cases. ‘Ah,’ says the Russian, being clever, ‘So I come from Moscock?’ ‘Yes’, says the older English officer drily, ‘I think you probably do.’ Given current relations with Russia, I think this ad is due for revival. 

We caught up at home with The Banshees of Inisherin, loving the dialogue, slightly less convinced by the melodrama. My wife, who is attentive to such things, noticed a twist which does not work. For a disgusting reason that I cannot reveal without spoiling the story, the plot depends on a donkey vomiting and dying. Her point is that donkeys, like horses and cows, cannot vomit.