This article is taken from the October 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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Policy matters

Your article (OXFORD ELECTS, 5 SEPT) about the Oxford Chancellor election criticises me for defending Ukrainian oligarchs in court.

I will never be embarrassed about defending unpopular people. Nobody chooses the country of their birth, and everyone has a right to a fair defence.

More to the point, if you wanted to besmirch the Stratton family name, you should have started with the client who allegedly decapitated her husband before serving up his head with some vegetables.

I would rather you focus on the substance of the election, because I am not just the only left-wing candidate, but the only candidate offering any policies of substance.

That includes a £15 minimum wage for all staff, abolishing 100 per cent final exams to ease Oxford’s mental health crisis, and opposing any increases in tuition fees. Your readers can see my full platform at harrystratton.com

Harry Stratton, Candidate for Oxford Chancellor

Temple, London

Game of Chairs

Paul Goodman (REVIVE THE ROOTS, AUG/SEPT) exaggerates a little: Richard Holden, a charming former party official and special adviser, was the ninth, not the eleventh, person to serve as Conservative Party Chairman during the last five years — all of whom did well to avoid becoming mere chairs (a term now used everywhere in the House of Lords).

However, the first nine holders of the post, created in 1911, presided over Conservative Central Office for a total of 35 years. That would be a useful historical point for the next Conservative leader to bear in mind.

As for reversing the decline in party membership, Goodman slightly underestimates the glorious total achieved in the early 1950s. There were 2.8 million members in England and Wales. Scotland took the total to over 3 million.

I am not sure that the 90,000 or so members of the Ulster Unionist Party ought to be excluded. The Ulster Unionists were then fully integrated into all aspects of the Conservative Party’s life. In the era of the great Lord Woolton, the Conservative and Unionist Party flourished in all parts of one British nation. Could that ever be achieved again?

Alistair Lexden

House of Lords

Defending Carson

In his otherwise excellent profile of Terence Rattigan (AUG/SEPT), Alexander Larman includes the oft repeated statement that Sir Edward Carson was the man “who notoriously prosecuted Oscar Wilde”. But he didn’t, did he? It was Wilde who was doing the prosecuting, and Carson merely represented the defendant, the Marquess of Queensbury.

Of course it was Carson’s devastating cross examination of Wilde that led to him abandoning the case and his subsequent prosecution, but Carson was not involved in that trial.

Keith Miller

Billericay, Essex

From Bard to Worse

Echoing Shakespeare, Toby Young says the legislation dropped by Bridget Phillipson would have ensured that universities’ free speech duties “were no longer more honoured in the breach than the observance” (BRIDGET PHILLIPSON: CULTURE WARRIOR, 29 JULY).

But when Hamlet says the Danish custom of boozy revelry is “more honoured in the breach than the observance”, he means that it is more honourable to ignore the custom of drunken carousing than to follow it.

Shakespeare refers to a practice that is better flouted than followed — not one that is often ignored.

Dr John Doherty

Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

Ooh, matron

As illustrative of The Critic’s rounded sense of humour, the juxtaposition on page 21 of fundamental advice on good manners “[S]tripped of all its jargon” (SERIOUS BUSINESS, AUG/SEPT) with a farcical cartoon of a trouser-challenged mechanic at work on his engine, really is a cracker.

But does it not raise the slippery issue of builder’s bum as a hot topic for the inclusivity well-turned-out “allyship bootcamp” bending over backwards to cover every bone of contention; or for a more demotic Debrett? As Ned puts it at the tail end of his/her/their piece: “Remember, no one likes a Flashman.”

Dr William Keenan

Nottingham