He was first elected in 1983 to a safe Labour seat and was, until recently, in the twi­light years of a career of staunch opposi­tion – even when his party was in government. But Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has done more than just exacerbate the feud between the Blair­ite faces of the last decade and the new students of his ‘politics of hope’. It has raised questions about what it means to lead a party and how an opposition frontbench ought to work.

It was his mantra of internal party reform and debate that encouraged support from Labour’s wings in last year’s leadership race, along with his scandalous rough-and-ready image that jarred with the stale nerdiness of Miliband. Yet far from a constructive and meaningful policy debate, what has actually taken place is a series of blunders and mis-steps at the top, and a sus­tained pressure of opposition from the bottom. The Labour hierarchy has been reversed. While Corbyn shunts his way from the public knifing of several of his ministers over Trident to the quoting of Chairman Mao during the Shadow Chancellor’s response to the Autumn Statement and his Shadow Foreign Secretary’s vehement advocation of intervention in the Syria debate experienced policy formers like John Cruddas,

Alan Johnson, Yvette Cooper and Harriet Har­man sit, wasted, on the back benches. Hilary Benn, who survived the reshuffle, assured the press that he will continue to campaign for Britain’s membership of the EU (Corbyn is a Eurosceptic) and represent Labour on foreign policy (where the two men disagree.)

There is a reason that his experiment in openness has failed. Parties already have an in-built system for deciding on a new ideological direction – it’s called a leadership election. The leadership, once chosen, needs to give the party direction and deliver a coherent policy message to voters. Without that, Corbyn is forced to admit, as he did on The Andrew Marr Show, that he still is yet to convince his Cabinet of his posi­tion on Trident, while John McDonnell supposes publicly that there will be a three-line whip that many will disobey. 85 Labour MPs did. By cam­paigning on a ticket of generic ‘progress’ rather than specific and constructive change, Corbyn has deferred the real decision-making to the outcome of the promised debate within Labour. That’s problematic for him as leader, because the criterion by which the PLP and the electorate will judge him is his ability to bring order from chaos – to present the debate as a set of policies. He declared in the Guardian on Wednesday that his “great failing in life is to listen to everybody”, and since his central policy is to listen to others in the party, he can’t actually do much with his enormous mandate because it doesn’t empower him to deliver much policy of his own. That’s not good leadership, and it won’t get him into government.

This brings us to the inherent paradox within the rationale of the Corbyn leadership. Labour needs a coherent set of policies to have any scrap of electability, and for that it needs a defining narrative which connects with voters. ‘The politics of hope’ doesn’t work as a strapline if the response from the swing voter is “the hope of what?”. But the only way to get that coherency is to enforce a party line on MPs, and to do that undermines the central tenet of his philosophy. Without the leadership needed to direct it, the debate that he promised Labour voters has de­scended into a slanging match in the press and a back-bench rebellion reminiscent of, well, him­self. The Blairites to the right of the party whinge to the students of Cambridge that they had bet­ter hurry up and graduate to help Labour out, while front-bench MPs who criticise Corbyn are cut from the team. Tom Watson, Deputy Leader, wasn’t even told when the reshuffle would be. Clearly the ‘straight talking, honest politics’ is only for the leader himself. Shadow ministers are required to lie or keep schtum.

All of this hands the Tories a prime oppor­tunity to frame the debate to their advantage; Corbyn is presented as a dangerous extremist leading a ramshackle Shadow Cabinet that can’t decide which way to vote on some of the most important issues of our generation.

He cannot survive while his mandate is built on an indecisive style of leadership which produces rebellion, division and inconsistency. While Jeremy Corbyn is leader, Labour will con­tinue to fail itself, the voters and to challenge the Tories. Her Majesty’s Opposition cannot afford to fail to oppose. 

When writer and philosopher Roger Scruton first published Thinkers of the New Left in 1985 it was, in his words, “greeted with derision and outrage” and “marked the beginning of the end of my university career”. His critique of such leftist icons as Marx, Foucault, Derrida and Gramsci led to “reviewers falling over themselves to spit on the corpse” while “raising doubts about my intellectual competence as well as my moral character.”

Since then he has written books on a variety of subjects including The Aesthetics of Architecture, How to be a Conservative, On Hunting, a memoir (Gentle Regrets), and two novels. Now, 30 years on from his mauling at the pens of the academic establishment, Scruton has renewed his assault with an updated and revised version of that original book, Fools Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left.

Does he expect the reception to be better this time around? “Of course, since I no longer have an academic career to lose. Also, when I published the book in 1985, people in the academic world actually believed things, usually silly things of a vaguely socialist complexion. Now they merely repeat things – whole paragraphs of Deleuze applied to the obsession of the day, but impossible to believe since meaningless.” 

It is meaningless argument, dressed up as profundity, that Scruton argues characterises the thinking of much of the New Left. Thus he dismantles the Marxist distinction between ‘science’ and ‘ideology’ before proceeding to analyse and dismiss the arguments of such eminent figures as Hobsbawm, Thompson, Dworkin, Sartre, Althusser, Lacan, Gramsci, Said and Zizek. Many of the writings of these intellectuals are rejected as “prodigious waffle, and indeed barely intelligible”. 

Such language might lead one to assume Scruton enjoys baiting left-wing academics. He denies the suggestion. “I don’t enjoy annoying people, but sometimes it saves time. In fact I am far more respectful towards my targets than they or their supporters would be towards me.” 

Others may welcome a book that unapologetically pulls the rug from under the feet of the New Left. I ask Scruton if Fools Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left had been written in part with students in mind. “Yes,” he replies, “I do think students need to know that ideas matter, that they only make sense in the context of an attempt to distinguish the true from the false, and that this attempt requires discussion and the respect for alternative views – things that are disappearing from the culture.” 

In recent months the very ability to freely and openly discuss and debate ideas has been the subject of intense controversy. Calls for universities to be ‘safe spaces’ and the no platforming of various groups have created an atmosphere that many fear will have damaging consequences for freedom of expression. Scruton has written extensively in defence of free speech so I asked him about the difficulties of reconciling freedom of speech with the supposed need to avoid offending ideas that others hold sacred. 

“You should not knowingly and disrespectfully trample on what others hold to be sacred,” he tells me. “But you should also remember that you have the right to do so, and that ‘holding something sacred’ is not a blanket excuse for whatever a person should choose to think or do. Think of what was held sacred by the Nazis, the fascists and the Bolsheviks, and what is held sacred by the Islamists today.” Above all, “the University should be the kind of ‘safe space’ to which you refer, but a space where offence can be safely given, in the cause of rational argument.” Asked if he has a message for the Rhodes Must Fall campaigners, he has this to say: “Learn some history; read some literature; understand what has happened to Africa since Rhodes, and what it was like before Rhodes. And grow up.” Perhaps this interview will provoke a new campaign: Scruton Must Fall. I imagine he would see the funny side if it did. “When dealing with thinkers on the left, humour is essential, as when dealing with Islamists. These are people who cannot laugh at themselves since nothing frightens them more than the (true) thought that they are ridiculous.” 

This sense of the ridiculous and the absurd may well be the result of the influence of writers like Sartre and Camus. Scruton has written of his admiration for Sartre as a writer and a philosopher and he says that of all the leftist thinkers, the most challenging is Sartre “because he made leftism part of the calling of the writer, which is my calling too.” And, like Sartre, Scruton has attempted to create something new, though the something new is naturally much harder for the conservative. As Scruton puts it in Gentle Regrets, he is “searching the world for that impossible thing: an original path to conformity.” 

To describe Scruton as cosmopolitan in his intellectual interests and attitudes might surprise many of his less well-informed critics. Yet on his website he describes himself as “a French intellectual, a born Englishman, a German romantic, a loyal Virginian and a Czech patriot”. He tells me the novelists who have most influenced him are Joyce, Flaubert and Thomas Mann. And in his writing of two novels (Notes from Underground and The Disappeared) and an opera, he reveals he is anything but a dry squire-Tory. 

Asked why he has experimented with the novel he responds, “I think that there are some matters, those that concern the ‘what it is like’ of experience, that can only be explored through art or something approximating it: and when art and philosophy meet, as in the writings of Diderot or the music of Wagner, something is said about our world that could not be said in any other way. Not,” he adds, “that I can compare myself with geniuses like Diderot or Wagner, or Sartre and Camus for that matter.”

What the writings of Diderot and the music of Wagner have in common is that they give meaning to our experiences of the world and help to explain those experiences. Reading much of Scruton’s work, especially his memoir Gentle Regrets and Notes from Underground, one is made to feel that our existence is in many ways a search for consolation. Consolation found through art, music, and literature. 

Are these things on their own able to reconcile us to our individual existence? According to Scruton, “Consolation is hard to find in a world of random association. The old-fashioned view that faith, love and family are the best that we have has yet to be refuted. But we can seek consolation in imaginary things too, and this is not an imaginary consolation.” 

At the heart of Scruton’s philosophy is the idea of redemption. His conservatism is not, other than incidentally, concerned with economics or the organisation of the marketplace. His is the conservatism of Rilke or T.S. Eliot, where culture acquires a consolatory and redemptive quality. What is that redemption? “To know that this, here, now is worthwhile, and that its being worthwhile justifies also the rest of your life.” 

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left is published by Bloomsbury, £16.99 

No sooner had I left Oxford than the University began calling me back. Suggested readings, essay assign­ments, lecture lists – and yes, the dreaded collections timetable, slowly but surely began to clog up my Nexus account. 0th week, that mysterious anomaly of the term calendar, is a busy, unforgiving time – and not least of all for porters. In a frantic rush to organise yourself for the term ahead, it is all too easy to let the extraordinary work of staff go unnoticed. Briskly strolling toward Trinity lodge, I had one such experience. Richard, the on-duty porter greeted me cheerfully. “Patrick, welcome back! Did you have a relaxing break?” he asked, smiling. I stopped, had a quick chat and then went about my way, admittedly feeling a lot more upbeat than before. Realising this, I took time out with Richard later that afternoon to find a little bit more about his role around college.

Having moved to Oxford roughly twenty years ago, Richard took up employment with BT before coming to work at Trinity – a position which he has held for six years and counting. Reflecting on his time working at the lodge, just off Broad Street, Richard spoke fondly of how he “enjoy[s] meeting students the day they arrive and wishing them well the day that they leave.” He also went on to say how much of a pleasure it is “watching them mature while they’re with us, watching them graduate, and sharing a bit of that journey with them.”

Yet it is saddening to see people come and go; in fact, “it’s like losing a bit of family because you get so used to everybody being around you… but a lot of students, when they’re back in Oxford, usually pop into the lodge to say ‘Hi’, which is always nice. It makes you feel as if you’ve done something right if they’re bothering to pay a visit!”

While looking out for the welfare of stu­dents is the main focus of being a porter, Richard believes that “to do the job properly” one needs to create a friendly atmosphere.

“I like to think we look after the students here, as we would like our own children to have been looked after when they were at university. That’s the basis I work along.”

However, students and tutors are not the only people to come through the College’s gilded gates. Actresses like Joanna Lumley and broadcaster, Melvyn Bragg, are but a few of the names to have recently been welcomed by Richard. “They were very pleasant, I must say. But we don’t ask for autographs: that wouldn’t be very professional, would it?” he chuckled. “And, in any case, I don’t usually take too much notice. No ‘special treatment’ or any of that nonsense. There’s only one way to treat people, and that’s equally, with kind­ness. It doesn’t matter if they’re a student or the Chancellor himself.”

Looking to the future, Richard had this to say, “I have ten years left until I retire – I hope to finish off those ten years here, if the college will have me. Although it’ll be tough to leave, I feel very at home here.”

Richard Dean was in conversation with Patrick Mulholland, Comment Editor. 

The Minnesota dentist vilified for shooting Cecil the Lion in July has emerged as the unlikely leader of the international Rhodes Must Fall campaign. Dr Walter Palmer, 55, has been hailed as a progressive figure by liberation groups globally for bringing down this alleged symbol of colonial oppression.

Dr Palmer hit the headlines in July when he shot Cecil the Lion in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. Cecil’s brother Jericho was also thought to have been shot dead. Cecil the Lion controlled swathes of territory in southern Africa, as well as two prides, containing six lionesses and twelve cubs. Oxford University was monitoring the region following Cecil’s aggressive expansion of his domain. He had previously been celebrated as a national figure in Zimbabwe. 

Tim Paul, a leading campaigner at the Cecil Must Fall in Oxford movement, exclusively told The Oxstew, “Frankly it’s outrageous how Dr Palmer has been treated. In shooting Cecil the Lion, Palmer has felled a symbol of western oppression. We need to see this as part of the broad decolonising movement globally, as we fight to reclaim our jungles from imperial oppression.”

When questioned over why the death of a lion many thousands of miles away affected Oxford students, Mr Paul responded, “This is about clarity. These symbols of oppression need to be brought down wherever they are. Shooting Cecil the Lion has brought this home to Oxford.”

Mr Palmer’s hunting expedition was plunged into further controversy when it emerged it was funded by a Raw Meat Foundation (RMF) scholarship. 

Accused of hypocrisy, the dentist responded, “Zimbabwe has been a wonderful country for me to hunt in, and I have always followed the laws. The resources of the jungle should belong to all animals, not just this oppressive lion who controls all the territory. “

Animal Welfare groups from across the world however were more mixed in their response. Oxford-based campaigner for animal rights Henry ‘big head’ Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes told The Oxstew, “Frankly this shooting is indicative of a nauseating and moralising movement spreading across the jungle. Cecil’s pride should be ashamed at caving in to such a group.

“If we were really serious about tackling the issues of Cecil’s presence in the jungle, Cecil Must Fall would abandon all notions of writing their most successful ever lion out of history. 

“Instead, they’d look at the issues that really matter: who owns the jungle? Is it right that other prides are so underrepresented? If we were really serious about tackling the legacy issues of Cecil the Lion we’d use RMF’s money to fund further conservation.”

Yes: Akshay Bilolikar

Brazil had a fairly rotten 2015. Protests took place against rising unemploy­ment, a crippling recession and un­precedented corruption; against this back­drop of deteriorating public finances and living standards, Brazil is set to host the world’s biggest party. Bigger even than Bra­zil’s last party, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, this year’s Olympic Games are expected to cost the indebted South American giant just over $11 billion. 

The situation couldn’t be more different from October 2009, when Rio de Janeiro roundly defeated Madrid to become host in 2016. The economy soared out of reces­sion to yearly growth of 7.5 per cent; as Old Europe and the United States faltered, Brazil and its fellow BRIC economies would be the engine of global prosperity. After Russia and China’s Olympic Games, Brazil would stake its claim to the future world economy.

A new world order was being forged, and Rio 2016 would an­nounce Brazil’s proud new role to the world. Like Sochi and Athens before it, Brazil has fallen into a trap. The Olympics, in all their splendour do not pay. Just days after the closing ceremony, the Greek government was warning the European Union of poor debt and deficit figures; though the $7.5 billion taxpayer bill would barely have put a dent in Greece’s then $168 billion national debt, it was money that could clearly have been better spent. In the agony of austerity Greece, many Greeks regret the ex­pense.

Even in the face of enormous bills, there is talk of the ‘Olympic legacy.’ The investment in often impoverished parts of inner cities can deliver economic and social benefits for generations, while a tur­bocharged interest in sport and exercise can improve health on a mass scale. With these aims in mind, the London Olympics redeveloped much of Tower Hamlets, Ne­wham and Hackney. Transport for London invested heavily for the games, with an up­graded Overground and DLR to show for it. Four years on, though there has been no real uptake in exercise, ordinary people in less af­fluent parts of London have benefitted from investment at a time of government cuts.

The Rio games, by contrast, will be hosted almost entirely in the city’s wealthy Copa­cabana, Maracaña and Deodoro districts, with relatively few resources focused on the city’s poorer residents. Indeed, residents of the city’s favelas (slums) are to host ‘Police Pacification Units.’

The authorities in Rio as a whole have been criticised by Human Rights Watch for ‘rou­tine manipulation of evidence’ in their fight against violent criminal gangs. In one of the world’s most unequal countries, the Olympic legacy is not likely to be widely spread. The hangover will be felt by all, but all the fun will be restricted to a small élite.

This year, the Olympics look set to be an expensive indictment of the Brazilian political class, rather than a celebration of Brazil’s emergence as an economic power. With inflation in double digits and the Rous­seff presidency embroiled in the Petrobras scandal, around half of Brazilians think that military intervention is necessary to combat corruption.

The President’s approval rating currently hovering around nine per cent, will not be helped by the exuberance shown to a lucky few. Just as the World Cup led to protests in 2014, so too could the Olympics catalyse the anger and disillusionment felt by many Bra­zilians into something far more fiery.

There are still many reasons to be positive about the Rio games. Rio might just buck the Olympic trend of reduced tourism, and the Olympics could provide a much needed boost to the Brazilian economy.

The games could provoke a sense of popu­lar optimism about Brazil’s future. However, historical example cautions against such optimism.

Hosting the Olympics has always been a gamble, but after a disastrous 2015, it seems unlikely that the Olympic Games could do anything but worsen the pain for a nation racked by inequality.

No: Jamie Huffer

When it was awarded the Olympic Games in 2009, Brazil was the world’s sweetheart. Ex-President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva had navigated his country through the stormy waters of global financial crisis and into a veritable boom, and Lula retired with every confidence for the future of Brazil. Then, it took its rightful place alongside the world’s other emerging markets of the ‘BRIC’ (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and decided, as many emerging economies do, that it was ready to show off its vast progress to the world by hosting not one, but two major sporting events, the World Cup of 2014, and this summer’s Olympics. The sky was the limit.

But was this decision a mistake for Rio de Janeiro and Brazil? The easy – and perhaps, at first glance, most obvious – answer is “Yes, of course!” When you take into account the fact that the country’s President, Dilma Rousseff, is currently embroiled in the largest corrup­tion scandal in Brazilian political history, that the approval rating of her presidency has reached a historic low due to fallout from the scandal, as well as a severe decline in economic performance, the picture is looking fairly bleak for Brazil.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, and, due to all of the above, if the vote were to be held today there is almost no chance that Rio de Janeiro would be selected as the Olympic host city. Unfortunately, Brazil has made its proverbial bed and, come the summer, it will have to lie in it. The Olympics, however, should not become synonymous with the doom and gloom that many commentators expect it to bring. As the first Latin American host city in history, Rio 2016 should be seen as an op­portunity to galvanise both the capital and the rest country and to attempt to recapture the positive spirit of 2009, much like the effect the 1992 Games had on its host city, Barcelona.

Admittedly, like many, I am very sceptical about the level of impact that the tourism from a major sporting event like the Olympics can have on the Brazilian economy. However, the opportunities for and role of international investment in the city since the announce­ment of the successful bid are undeniable. Moreover, Rio will benefit from much-needed improvements in infrastructure, yet it is obvi­ous that this or even greater infrastructural improvement would have been possible with the money used to build the number of Olym­pic venues. It’s obvious that the reasons why hosting the Olympics is not a mistake cannot be economic, as whether there are tangible economic benefits to hosting remains unclear.

Where the Games can make an impact, however, is on the country’s social landscape. In spite of the enormous social progress of the governments of the early 21st century, which have seen tens of millions of people climb either into the middle class or out of poverty, Brazil is still a very divided country, with a vast number of socio-political, racial and historical factors at play. It makes sense, then, that its bustling capital, Rio de Janeiro, is a microcosm of this nationwide divide.

Outside of Brazil, we are all guilty of thinking of Rio as one of the world’s great party cities, of seeing the glamorous, golden beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana through Samba-and-Carnaval-tinted lenses. For the upper-middle class, well-to-do Cariocas that inhabit these beachside districts, this exter­nal perception is largely accurate. Looking down on these affluent districts from the hills that surround, however, are the equally ‘iconic’ favelas, shanty towns that are riddled with extreme poverty, drug use and violence. The divide, then, becomes as much physical as it is social. As Brazilian artist Vik Muniz puts it, “[Rio] is like St. Tropez surrounded by Mogadishu”.

As alarming as this description is, the Olym­pics offer Rio a chance to take a breath and pause; historically, nothing unites Brazil like sport. Nearly 200,000 people crammed into the Maracanã to watch the heavily-favoured

Brazil take on Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup final, and, as one, the nation mourned their shock defeat. Footballers like Pelé and Garrincha came from abject poverty and, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, grew into folkloric heroes as tales of their skill inspired generations of young, poor athletes across the country. In more recent memory, the scenes of Brazilian fans and players in São Paulo at the opening game of the 2014 World Cup were truly breath taking.

Hosting the Olympics in 2016 may not be ideal for Brazil, but if it can be a catalyst for the country to get back on course, then it will certainly not be a mistake.

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Illustration: Annabel Westermann

Six months into the Conservative major­ity-government, and we’re already bom­barded with scaremongering that we are entering an era of perpetual Tory rule. Some commentators would have you think that this is the end of the left in Britain. Others will try and tell you that the result of the General Election was still a mistake; that in reality, there exists a mas­sive portion of the population that was cheated out of a victory, and now the Tories are going to rig the system to make that cheating legal. This is simply not true.

Last May, the Conservative Party achieved a popular vote of 36.9 per cent of ballots cast. This translated into 50.9 per cent of seats in the Commons. Inevitably, the argument of how a Proportional Representation system would have given a much more balanced result will present itself: but that debate has been settled. In 2011, 67.9 per cent of those voting in the referendum on whether or not to change to voting system firmly said ‘No’. ‘First-past-the-post’ is here to stay for now. As such, any political party worth their salt must work within the system, and not fantasise about what could have been if an unrealistic factor had been in play.

The reason for the Conservative victory was very simple. The majority of the people who turned out at the polling booths felt that the Conservatives were the party most similar to their political beliefs: or, by extension the party best suited to govern this country. That is the magic formula needed to win an election. It doesn’t require trickery or deception. However, the reason for the electoral boundary reform stems from the fact that even if the plurality of voters supported the Conservatives, this still only left them with a slim majority – less than the one they deserved.

Under the current constituency boundaries, the opponents of the Conservatives – most notably the Labour Party – require fewer votes per candidate in order to gain a parliamentary seat. The Conservative-dominated shires tend to have larger constituencies than the urban Labour strongholds. What this means is that voters in urban areas have a higher level of influence in the make-up of Parliament. The reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600, as well as the changing of the elec­toral map by standardising constituencies, is simply an exercise to rectify this irregularity that partially disenfranchises rural voters. 

In a country that wishes to call itself a modern democracy, it is paramount that at its base, there exists a principle that all voters have equal influence. Moreover, the ballot must be blind to institutional factors that might otherwise render voters unequal: class, race, and gender are just some examples. The only criterion that one must meet for casting a vote are holding a valid passport and living in this country, subject to restrictions on convicts. The electoral reform solely seeks to achieve the preservation of a fun­damental ideal of our democracy. Of note is the fact that, had the reforms had been in place be­fore the election, the Conservatives would only have increased their seats in Commons by 1.4 per cent. With such a paltry increase this cannot be called a power grab in any sense of the term. It is merely altering the current system to reflect the will of the voters to a greater degree.

Some, however, will still be unconvinced. They may point to the fact that only 66.1 per cent of the electorate turned out to vote, and argue that any vote would still not be legitimate. But this is simply untrue.

Indeed, it is vital that the importance of voting be stressed at every stage of education, and that as much should be done as possible to avoid disil­lusionment among voters. However, some people still forget, some are uninterested and some just don’t wish to bother. Furthermore, changing the voting system itself will not bring about a miraculous rise in the number of people voting. One just needs to look to the rest of the European Union to see that; my home, the Republic of Ireland, is a prime example. In 2011, with the collapse of the Irish government and in the midst of crisis, the turnout still only reached 70 per cent of the voting population This was a mere 3.9 per cent higher than the proportion last May. It is also a prime example of proportional representation in action, whereby, instead of any election manifesto being implemented, a coalition is formed. In this case, this is not only toxic for the junior party, but it also results in a compromise that no one actually voted on or for. 

If opposing parties wish to have a chance at gov­ernment, they need to return to basic principles. The way to win elections is not to lambast the suc­cessful party about a system that was nationally held to be the fairest. Any political party’s success marks the failure of another. Rather, it is to go out onto doorsteps with firm policies that unify both the party and its supporters, and appeals to the plurality of the population that wishes to vote. It is to meaningfully engage with those groups of people that feel that the current party does not do enough for them.

I have the height of respect for anyone of any political persuasion that braves the cruel weather and vicious dogs of Britain to convince people of the merits of their party. However, it’s not just about telling people to vote for a party, it’s about the party showing the people that it can be voted for.

This year, the Department for Education is implementing another set of reforms for modern languages GCSEs. The government wants to see a stronger emphasis on culture, more opportunities for bilingual learning and ‘translanguaging’ skills for a future, global workforce. Currently, the UK loses £48 billion per annum because of people lacking language skills needed for international trade. This will only increase if language teaching doesn’t improve concurrently, especially since, in 2014, the British Council found that three quarters of people in the UK were unable to speak one of the ten ‘most important languages for the country.’ 

The power of languages has also never been more evident. With the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War and the resettlement of many in Germany, Canada and Sweden, for example, volunteers have started to implement language learning schemes to allow for the integration of refugees. The Goethe Institut states that ‘language is the key to integration, to taking part in social life, to beginning studies or in the labour market.’ A Department for Education report in 2014 held that more than 1.1 million children in the UK have English as their second language, speaking a different language at home from in school. These children have a huge advantage both cognitively and in terms of the opportunities they will have in their futures, and it’s important to value that they do have another language, that these are ‘real languages, living languages’ as Leszek Borysiewicz, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and a bilingual, expressed it.

However, not only does the way in which languages are taught in school need to be altered radically, but the general attitude to speaking foreign languages needs to change, too. In a political climate where Donald Trump declared that Muslims should be banned from America, speaking a foreign language can become a badge of ‘otherness’ and even more than that, an acceptance of another, invasive culture. As early as 2012, political economist Will Hutton wrote that a “command of foreign language shows the wrong priorities” according to certain groups since “it shows a willingness to work hard at understanding another culture, its language and mores. Real Americans don’t do that.” Foreign languages, because they are invested with emotional attachments and historical and cultural legacies, can be seen as evidence of the fact that people have not integrated properly into society. But really, the opposite may be true: the statistic showing the number of bilingual children in British society reveals that the rest of us are sharing some of this culture and that there must be a continual exchange between the culture of our country and the cultures of our people. 

In April 2015, a study was published in Psychological Science suggesting that people perceive the world differently depending on the language in which they speak, something linguists have disputed for years. German-English bilinguals and monolinguals participated in it, showing that depending on language use, world view alters; due to a simple grammatical construction, German people tend to see actions as a whole such as walking to a car, whereas English speakers see only the action, walking. Depending on the language in which the German-English bilinguals were speaking, their perspective switched, perhaps proving in Panos Athanasopoulos’ words that the German worldview is ‘more holistic’ and raising another interesting point, that bilingual speakers can make ‘more rational and economic’ decisions in a second language, because first languages carry inherent biases. 

Speaking other languages and having a global perspective is becoming increasingly important in our world, something which is often overlooked or seen as controversial. Really, there are no reasons not to speak another language; not only does it change the way you think, or allow you to learn more about the world we live in, but – if that hasn’t convinced you – there are multiple studies which show that speaking more than one language has cognitive benefits too. Bilinguals cognitively age later and the onset of degenerative disorders linked to age also occurs up to five years later on average. For me, though, the ability to speak other languages is not important because of the associated cognitive benefits, but because it allows an exposure to a whole other way of life, a whole new way of thinking and the ability to talk to so many people in their own language – something which might not seem important in a world in which English is widely spoken, but must be, if the statistics concerning international trade are anything to go by. 

The government is aware that languages are vital to commerce, but the key point is being missed: that languages should be learnt for love and enjoyment, for personal interest and development rather than just governmental ambition. If they take this approach, maybe the ways in which languages are taught can finally be improved and the real advantages of speaking a different language disclosed. As Martin Hoffman once wrote, ‘to speak a single language is to be enclosed in one cultural possibility’.

On a cold day in January the 25-year-old Princess Elizabeth Tudor was crowned in Westminster Abbey. On the one hand much was familiar to the watching congregation: Mass was said in Latin, copious amounts of incense drifted from the Altar, and a Tudor was on the throne for the fifth time in 75 years. However, this image of stability disguised a world and a period riven with strife, both social and religious, which had much in common with the modern world. Britain debated bitterly its role in Europe, while the advancing Ottoman Empire created terrible fear across the continent of a great clash between Islam and Christianity. Finally Elizabeth’s coronation proved the ability of women to effectively maintain prominent positions in politics. All of these issues are topical in Britain today, facing as it does potential constitutional, religious and social upheaval in the second half of the decade, and Elizabeth’s reign provides an excellent model of how to approach them.

England in 1559 was just as split about its place in Europe as it is today. The contrast between the Catholic led mainland and the Protestant England could not decide on their position within the political hierarchy, either as the head of the free Protestant states, as Elizabeth’s father had imagined himself, or as a subordinate to the burgeoning power of Spain, as Mary’s marriage to King Philip II had seemed to imply. The coronation of Elizabeth would settle this question, at least to some degree, for another 200 years, with the trauma of the wars in the Netherlands and the Spanish Armada forcing the kingdom to look abroad, trading throughout the world and founding her first informal colony in the Americas, Newfoundland. Elizabeth’s coronation brought the kingdom to a settled view on the continent, turning it from a second rate European power into a kingdom which looked abroad for trade and exploration. With the increasing likelihood of the European referendum occurring later this year, Elizabeth’s reign stands as an example to a sharply divided nation of how Britain can stand as a self-confident power, either influencing European affairs, or moving beyond them entirely.

The coronation also marked a turning point in relations between the English-speaking world and Islam. Before her reign England maintained a view of Islam in line with the rest of Europe, as a heathen threat to Christianity, particularly Islam personified in the form of the Ottoman Empire, a great and expansionist power, which a century before had finally toppled the last outpost of the Roman Empire, Constantinople, once the most powerful city in Christendom. Elizabeth’s reign saw England start to reach out to the great Islamic powers in the west, forging trade deals with the Barbary States and the Ottomans themselves, with the establishment of the Levant Company, and the dispatching of William Harborne, the first English Ambassador to the Sultan. Elizabeth led a country that encouraged peace and trade with the Islamic world, and was so successful that Sultan Murad III reflected that Islam and Protestantism had ‘much more in common’ than either did with Spanish led Catholicism. When we look at relations today between Muslims in Europe, increasingly unfairly discriminated against on account of the brutal behaviour of the so called Caliphate, and the growing intolerance of men like Donald Trump or the Pegida movement, Elizabeth’s policy offers an entirely different – and ultimately more successful – method of managing relations between the mainstream forms of the great monotheistic religions.

The final thing that Elizabeth’s reign had in common with the modern world was her advancement of the perception of powerful women within society. Prominent women in England had, with rare exceptions, been ill-represented when in positions in power. Matilda the Empress was refused her rightful crown in 1135 on account of her Sex, Elizabeth Woodville was attacked as a witch, Guinevere, the imaginary, archetypal Queen of England, was known ultimately for committing adultery and by doing so bringing the Kingdom to ruin. Even Mary Tudor was trapped by this hostile view, forced to marry a Spanish King, and loathed for it. Elizabeth turned this attitude on its head, remaining unmarried, she ruled as well as any man, and better than many, bringing a measure of religious tolerance and external stability to England. It is not for nothing that her reign is remembered as a golden age. As we move into 2016 we will see elections in Scotland where each of the three major parties is led by a woman, but it stands to Elizabeth’s credit that this should not be an unusual state of affairs, she provided an example to stand alongside Joan of Arc and Livia Drusilla of the way in which women could be prominent in public life just as well as men could.