Now that the cost of net zero has become a pressing political matter, I have been re-reading the prescient words of Matt Ridley in the House of Lords when, in 2019, he was one of very few who opposed the government’s ‘net zero by 2050’ pledge. ‘I was genuinely shocked,’ he said, ‘by the casual way in which the other place [the Commons] nodded through this statutory instrument, committing future generations to vast expenditure to achieve a goal that we have no idea how to reach technologically without ruining the British economy and the British landscape. We are assured without any evidence that this measure will have, “no significant… impact on business” – but where is the cost-benefit analysis on which this claim is based? Where is the impact assessment?…We are told that the Treasury will run exercises in costing the proposals after we have agreed them, but that is irrational. Who in our private lives says “Yes, we’ll sign a contract to buy a house, and only after the ink on the purchase is dry will we try to find out its price”?’ Now we are finding out the price. We cannot afford it, yet we have been knocking bits of our previous house down. We might become homeless.

Last week, the official Buckingham Palace Instagram account @theroyalfamily promoted a film by RE:TV, an organisation which the King, as Prince of Wales, founded at Davos in 2020. It is headed ‘50 years of speeches’ and consists of famous personages – Glenn Close, Olivia Colman, Idris Elba, Woody Harrelson – reciting passages from the half-century of princely words about the perils of climate change. These are accompanied by film of giant waves, parched earth, teeming cities etc. It was released, says the Instagram post, ‘on the day that the King witnessed a “Climate Clock” begin counting down the six years which remain to act to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees during his visit to the Climate Innovation Forum at the Guildhall in London’. Is this wise? The message is, in effect, ‘I was right’, at a time when growing numbers resist the net-zero timetable. The Climate Clock link commits the King to a forecast which he will, one hopes and expects, live to see proved wrong. There are hostages to fortune here, and to politics. 

The Queen’s English Society was formed in 1972 ‘to promote the maintenance, knowledge, understanding, development and appreciation of the English language as used both in speech and in writing; to educate the public in its correct and elegant usage; and to discourage the intrusion of anything detrimental to clarity or euphony’. Since September, however, the society has had a quandary. Should it become the King’s English Society? Yes, says at least one member, N.M. Gwynne, author of the bestselling Gwynne’s Grammar, because ‘Since the “departure” of the late Queen Elizabeth II, there has not been in existence a language suitably termed and described as “Queen’s English”. The language known as Queen’s English has simply ceased to exist, other than historically…’. Since the society is one ‘brought into being and functioning for the very purpose of defending truth in matters of language’, he goes on, ‘it is clearly inappropriate to compromise on something so fundamental’. The society’s committee, however, has decided otherwise. One reply to Mr Gwynne says: ‘The name was retained… in memory of one whose English was impeccable and in whose reign we were formed.’ A nice tribute to the late Queen, but even the society’s own website seems to confirm the Gwynne point. It states that ‘The phrase “the queen’s (or king’s) English” has been used for centuries simply to imply spoken or written English which is characterised by grammatical correctness and proper usage of words and expressions’. Quite so, and therefore it becomes rather pointed to uphold ‘the Queen’s English’ in the reign of a King who has excellent English himself. Anyway, the important thing is the most sacred right of those of us who fuss over grammar to argue about it for ever. Time for a civil (in both senses) war between the Queen’s party and the King’s?

When Glenda Jackson died last month, obituarists saluted her courage in not conforming to the stereotype of the famous actress. She was ‘obdurately unglamorous’, one said, and took ‘an unconventional view of the great dramatic heroines’. She deserved this praise. More’s the pity then, that Ms Jackson, as a politician, did not recognise the talents of a great fellow actress. When Margaret Thatcher died, the Commons gathered to pay tributes. Ms Jackson’s remarks were the most ungenerous of the day, speaking of the ‘extraordinary human damage’ Mrs T had done. ‘To pay tribute to the first prime minister denoted by female gender, OK,’ she said, ‘but a woman? Not on my terms.’ Don’t the careers of both women prove that women can be women on their own terms, not on terms others force upon them?

We have just been in Évora, a lovely, small and complete old city in the middle of Portugal. The place is at a curious stage of development. On the one hand, many derelict buildings. On the other, a plethora of ‘boutique’ hotels. I have never been sure of the meaning of the word ‘boutique’ in this context, but certainly there is a style common to boutiquery. Everything is spare and modern while trying to suggest context and historicity. The collective effect of lots of such places is deadening, as if one is among well-cleaned skeletons (which, in the Capela dos Ossos attached to the church of São Francisco, one actually is). I noticed that several boutique hotels in Évora already have a neglected air. Why so many? It may be an attempt to cash in on the fact that it has been chosen as a European City of Culture for 2027. Such designations, rather like being a Unesco world heritage site, are well meant, but they have a way of turning a living community into a mausoleum.