‘The War on Terror’. It is not a phrase you hear much any more. The reason for its decline in usage is simple enough. We lost. If we had won, we would have never have heard the end of it.

The War on Terror was never going to be won or lost the same as other wars. Tell-tale signs of who wins or loses a war usually come at the end. It comes in the form of who surrenders, where the new borders are, how many bodies are buried, whose anthem you are made to listen to and whose flag you find yourself saluting. Not so with the War on Terror. The War on Terror was not a fight over land. The War on Terror was a fight over freedom. Apparently we had it, and the terrorists did not like it. They were going to take it away, by killing a few of us and scaring the remainder. That means that a victory in this war is measured in increased freedom. And that is why I am sure we must have lost.

The truly scary thing about terrorism is the idea that you live your meaningless, hum-drum and generally unexciting life and suddenly - boom! - you are dead. You get on a bus or plane or train, walk down the wrong street or into the wrong building and there you come to an abrupt end. One minute you are considering what to eat for dinner. The next minute you are never going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature or become an international playboy or win the lottery or a million other things you were never going to do anyway. Whilst alive, you have hope. When dead, your story is over. The terrorists will randomly, meaninglessly, cut your life short. Of course, people lose their lives every day because of a million-and-one random, meaningless acts. Your car crashes because the accelerator got stuck. You fall off your skis and hit your head. You do not visit the doctor and ask her to check that new lump. You live in Haiti and there is an earthquake. You live in the Congo and a mosquito bites you. So why no War on Skiing? Why no War on Malaria? Why no War on Earthquakes or Cancer or Toyota? It is because we do what we want to do and we want to drive cars and to ski and to spend our time watching television instead of seeing the doctor or designing a better accelerator pedal. And it is because we live in a world with earthquakes and diseases and danger and we accept that. The difference with terror is that, unlike skiers or Toyota or mosquitoes, terrorists mean to kill other people, and if their tactics seem to work, they may do it more.

The problem with dealing with terrorists is they do not know what they want. Or rather, they know what they want, but have no idea how to get it. Terrorists want things like a planet where everyone thinks like them, or glory in the afterlife. Their ultimate goals are fantastic. They are unattainable and disconnected from what the terrorists actually do. The terrorists chances of success are as good as the chances of doctors finding a cure for cancer with bombs or the chances that Toyota will build better cars using bombs. In this world, it is perfectly possible for somebody to want something and have no idea how to get it. That somebody may then do something irrelevant and nasty in the false belief it will help them achieve their goal. We have seen this conundrum with the human race many times before. Worried about the next harvest? Sacrifice someone. Suffering bad luck? Burn the local witch. The terrorists are just the modern incarnation of the innate human propensity to foolishly attempt to solve problems through a futile murder. The War on Terror was a war on a method, not on a country. The method is flawed, because violence does not beget a better harvest or a brotherhood of man. But then, the method to fight terrorism is just as flawed. Killing the terrorists is pointless if new people are born who replenish the ranks of the terrorists. The education that murder is a potential route to success lasts longer than the fear of retributive violence.

We could allow terrorists to believe what they want to believe and then kill them if they act on their beliefs. A better approach might be to change their beliefs. In Afghanistan, the US scored a great victory over the ailing Soviet Union by giving weapons to people who, by most definitions, deserve to be called terrorists. I call that a kind of education - the education that terrorism can lead to success. When the Soviets were defeated, the American money stopped. A better US investment would have been to put dollars into schools. Education would have been a better long-term investment than waiting until the time to fight another war. The West started losing the War on Terror even before it realized the War had begun. We started losing by placing our trust in the wrong methods to achieve our goals. In that respect, we were just as misguided as the terrorists. We were wrong to believe that the threat of greater violence can stop people being violent. We were wrong to believe that spending on being violent to our enemies and spending on security at home is more cost-effective than educating people to stop being violent. Our beliefs were as wrong as those of the terrorist.

It is a poor doctor that treats symptoms and not the cause. We lost the war because we became preoccupied with symptoms and ignored the ailment. Terrorism is a cancer, but killing the cancer with violence only prompts more cancer. Better to live a healthy life and reduce the chances of getting sick in the first place. The discipline of freedom is that we must use it well in order to preserve it. We had the freedom to educate; we did not use it well. Now, we fight violence with violence and sacrifice the one thing we were fighting for: our freedom. We spend on spying on ourselves. We spend on listening to our own conversations. We spend on searching ourselves as we board flights. We spend and spend and spend, and mostly we spend to make ourselves less free, because we do not trust what the terrorist will do with his freedom. We could have spent on educating our potential enemies. We could have given our potential enemy something valuable that would have been diminished each time they kill: the loss of friendships, trade, knowledge, and of their own freedom. If these things have no value to the terrorist, we should spend more on making them valuable to all. Better that than spending on making them less valuable to us.

[An unoccupied, windowless but otherwise plushly decorated hotel room. The single door opens and a valet escorts Tony Blair, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher into the room. Churchill and Thatcher take seats on either side of the room. Blair stands in the middle.]

Blair: I have no regrets.

Thatcher: I have no regrets.

Churchill: I have many regrets. A man without regret is a man who has done nothing or cared even less.

Blair: Look, what I mean to say is…

Thatcher: Will you keep on doing that? Will you keep on reinterpreting what you say, like a chorus of commentary upon yourself? There’s no voters here. There’s no need to maintain the pretense. Stand by what you say and do. There’s no pretense here - here, of all places.

Blair: The thing is, I really don’t see why I’m here. The decision I took — and frankly would take again — was in the best interests of peace. If there was any possibility that Saddam could develop weapons of mass destruction…

Churchill: Any possibility, do you say? By that principle I assume you’d enslave us all, for the possibility always persists. The man of judgement balances probabilities, not possibilities. When Stalin sequestered half of Europe within his iron curtain, his tyranny was certain. The reason for our not acting was not based on possibility, for we knew what he would do and the threat he posed to our continued security. We did not act because of probabilities, not possibilities. The probability was that further war would have resulted in greater tragedy. It was imaginable to have continued the war, to have kept our forces mobilized and turned them on our allies of convenience, the Soviet war machine. We gave it thought. I had the report written, though in those days we mostly used military intelligence to make decisions, not to make propaganda. We thought about it; I thought about it, but we did not strike against Stalin. To have done so would have done more harm than good, no matter how terrible his tyranny proved to be. Possibilities did not come into it.

Thatcher: I admire you, Winston.

Churchill: Admire yourself, dear lady. I made my choices as best I could, and see where I am now.

Blair: (to Churchill) I admire you too.

Churchill: I’d offer the same advice as proferred to Margaret, but I fear you have no need of it. You’re too full of self-admiration already.

Blair: Now, see, what I did was within the law… (interrupted)

Churchill: You remind me of that manipulating schemer, Gandhi. He knew the law. He was also a wizard who knew how to beguile people. When I compare you to that fakir of fakery, I don’t mean it as a compliment.

Thatcher: You shouldn’t be here, Winston. You saved democracy in World War II.

Churchill: I suppose I’ll find out why I’m here in due course. Perhaps I sent too many to their deaths, or perhaps too few. Perhaps it was the lives lost at Gallipoli, or refusing to turn on the Russians in order to save the Eastern Europeans at the end of the Second World War. Or perhaps it was returning Britain to the Gold Standard, and all the trouble that caused. Who can say. In this universe there’s a judgement wiser than that of men.

Thatcher: You shouldn’t be here, Winston. We all make mistakes. The General Strike, riots, political upheaval, the end of empire… you faced it all. A leader cannot afford to second-guess every decision. If you were brutal sometimes, it is because you had to be firm to be fair.

Churchill: I had to be firm to be fair? Perhaps. But it sounds like you’re justifying yourself more than you’re consoling me. When asked if we make mistakes, we assure that we do, for we are human after all. But when asked to identify a single mistake, our memory fades and not a one comes to mind.

Blair: I made mistakes. The former Yugoslavia for instance… (interrupted)

Thatcher: (To Blair) You would have made a tolerable leader of the Tory party. You’re greatest mistake was to join with Labour.

Churchill: Give the boy some credit. Leaders pick their parties, not the other way around. I was a rat more than once. The boy picked a side and it suited him - at least he stuck to it, unlike me. There’s no great harm in his choosing to sit opposite you. It shows he had the foresight to swim with the tide, not against it. And at least he deserves credit for never being a socialist.

Thatcher: Yes, at least you were never a socialist, were you Tony?

Tony: Look, I think we’re drifting off the point here a little, don’t you think? We should… (interrupted)

Churchill: (Lifts his cane, to point angrily at Blair) The point you say? What point would that be? I was battling with the House of Lords before you were born. I was introducing taxes to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor before it became fashionable. And what, in comparison, did you do? You turned the second chamber into a monstrosity of government lackeys, and the welfare state into a drain on every decent working fellow. The point is that we are here, and by God’s will we deserve to be. That is the only point that I can see, beyond this here point (waves cane) that I’m pointing at you.

Blair: Well, I don’t understand why I should be here. I was a good Christian all my life… (interrupted)

Thatcher: So was I. I was brought up a strict Methodist. We’re here because we failed, to some degree. Perhaps it was the impossibility of the decisions we faced that has led us to be here.

Churchill: I rather suspect that vanity was the deadly sin that pays for our lodging in this establishment. It’s vanity to think a man can rise himself above his fellows and be much better or wiser than the rest of them. A necessary vanity, perhaps, but vanity all the same.

Blair: Listen, we’re not tyrants. We were elected. I was elected to protect and serve the British people, by the British people. To do that, I realized that regime change was necessary and inevitable in Iraq if we wanted to protect… (interrupted)

Thatcher: We don’t have to listen to you. Please stop now. You’re making this intolerable.

(The room falls silent as Blair realizes the truth of this.)

Churchill: That’s the greatest torment the poor boy can imagine - to not be listened to. He has been listened to all his life, as was I. I think only you, Margaret, can understand what it was like to fight for the limelight.

Thatcher: I am a woman, but I never saw that as a serious impediment.

Blair: Nor should you, opportunity should be for all in equal measure… (interrupted)

Thatcher: You say that without irony, don’t you? And I thought you were only allowed to be Labour Party leader, only had the chance to be Primeminister, because you were a well-spoken, well-schooled white Englishman that the middle classes could warm too. That was the essence of your attraction, wasn’t it? As Primeminister, my government delivered social mobility. Your government eroded it. You talk about reducing social barriers yet you built them higher for all, and took advantage of them for yourself. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Gordon Brown.

Blair: I’m not inclined to take a lecture from you on how to reduce division in society. My point is that… (interrupted)

Churchill: (Points with his cane) And this, is my point!

Blair: (Resumes and talks over Churchill) There is a point and I intend to share it, even if you’re unwilling to hear me out. We’re politicians and we did what we thought best. I’ll plead my case and I’ll plead it to anyone who’ll listen. If you’re not listening, then fair enough, I’ll practice and you can talk to each other or sit in silence as you please. I can account for what I’ve done and that’s what I intend to do.

Churchill: There’s no need to give your account. You’re not surrounded by journalists any longer, except in so far as I was once counted an exponent of that profession. No, accounts are not needed here. To atone is what is needed, not to account.

Blair: (Getting angry) Look, I did nothing wrong.

Thatcher: (Grave) I did what I believe was right, but I still sent British troops to their graves. War is not a topic for frivolous equivocation.

Blair: (Gesticulating) We had to deal with this threat of WMD. Because of terrorism, the calculus of risk had changed immeasurably since the two of you were leaders. I believed it was beyond doubt that Saddam had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons. But suppose we put it the other way around. It’s really really important to understand the decision I took, and would take again, was that the primary consideration was not to take any risks with Saddam. This was a man who showed his willingness to use WMDs against his own people, when he gassed thousands of Kurds… (interrupted)

Churchill: In my time, I also ordered the use of poison gas against the Kurdish rebels. They were uncivilized and it proved to be effective if also cruel. (To Blair) I suppose that means you could have justified the overthrow of my regime, if it had suited you.

Thatcher: Please stop with the speech-making, both of you. I think I’d rather like to sit in quiet now.

Blair: I’ll not sit in quiet. (Looks upwards) He is listening to us, as always. He can hear me defend myself…

Thatcher: You’re not the only lawyer in this room. But that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to a judge or jury.

Blair: (Ignores Thatcher) The fact is, force is always an option. What changed after September 11 was that it was necessary — and there was no other way of dealing with this threat — for us to remove Saddam. (To Thatcher) You, of all people, should appreciate that, to stand up to terror and to tyrants. The primary consideration for me was to send an absolutely powerful, clear and unremitting message that, after September 11, if you were a regime engaged in WMD, you had to stop.

Churchill: Unless you’re regime is too powerful or too inconvenient to stop, like the Communists in Korea or the Jews in the Middle East. I think now you should stop. Margaret is right. We’ve had our opportunities to talk throughout our lives. Now may be the time to turn to quiet contemplation of what we did.

Blair: I take responsibility for what I’ve done. I have no regrets.

Thatcher: I’m not for turning back and retracing my steps. However, perhaps now might be a time for looking back and admitting a regret or two.

Churchill: I have many regrets, although I’m also prepared to admit that I did what I thought was right at the time and would doubtless do most, if not all of it again. That’s why I expect we’re here. For good or bad, we’re irredeemably human, and prone to err. I intend to ask for forgiveness. Even if I can’t divine my faults, I’m confident that they exist anyhow.

Thatcher: You must be sincere to ask for forgiveness.

Blair: (Shakes head) There’s no forgiveness that I seek. I’ll be judged by what I’ve done and the consequences, which were good. That’s good enough for me.

Churchill: Perhaps forgiveness is beyond us. We’re tools of the master, or of whatever forces that exist in his place and that we just imagine must take his form. We are made as well as we were intended to be, save for any defects in the exercise of our free will, for which only we can take the blame. For my faults, I’ll take my punishment however it’s administered. I served my short time on Earth, and filled it as best I could. That time I treated not as a gift, but as merely borrowed. If now I must serve as your fellow inmate, locked in this asylum of reflection, I’ll take that as my fit and proper punishment, and my just reward.

When actors land a big part, they do not get much bigger than Commander-in-Chief. Sometimes the role is played crooked, sometimes played true. Sometimes the President is a hero, sometimes a fool. Here is my shortlist of the actors who set the precedents for playing the Presidents.

President: Merkin Muffley of the United States
Actor: Peter Sellers
Movie: Dr. Strangelove
Plausibility: 7/10
Statesmanship: 9/10
Electability: 6/10

Peter Sellers gave three outstanding performances in Stanley Kubrick’s pitch black cold war satire about nuclear war. The most understated was his portrayal of Merkin Muffley, the mild-mannered President who gets exasperated with his military for exceeding their authority (by launching a first strike on the USSR) and then calls his drunken counterpart, Premier Kissoff, to persuade him not to retaliate…

Hello?… Uh… Hello D- uh hello Dmitri? Listen uh uh I can’t hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?… Oh-ho, that’s much better… yeah… huh… yes… Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri… Clear and plain and coming through fine… I’m coming through fine, too, eh?… Good, then… well, then, as you say, we’re both coming through fine… Good… Well, it’s good that you’re fine and… and I’m fine… I agree with you, it’s great to be fine… a-ha-ha-ha-ha… Now then, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb… The *Bomb*, Dmitri… The *hydrogen* bomb!… Well now, what happened is… ahm… one of our base commanders, he had a sort of… well, he went a little funny in the head… you know… just a little… funny. And, ah… he went and did a silly thing… Well, I’ll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes… to attack your country… Ah… Well, let me finish, Dmitri… Let me finish, Dmitri… Well listen, how do you think I feel about it?… Can you *imagine* how I feel about it, Dmitri?… Why do you think I’m calling you? Just to say hello?… *Of course* I like to speak to you!… *Of course* I like to say hello!… Not now, but anytime, Dmitri. I’m just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened… It’s a *friendly* call. Of course it’s a friendly call… Listen, if it wasn’t friendly… you probably wouldn’t have even got it… They will *not* reach their targets for at least another hour… I am… I am positive, Dmitri… Listen, I’ve been all over this with your ambassador. It is not a trick… Well, I’ll tell you. We’d like to give your air staff a complete run-down on the targets, the flight plans, and the defensive systems of the planes… Yes! I mean i-i-i-if we’re unable to recall the planes, then… I’d say that, ah… well, ah… we’re just gonna have to help you destroy them, Dmitri… I know they’re our boys… All right, well listen now. Who should we call?… *Who* should we call, Dmitri? The… wha-whe, the People… you, sorry, you faded away there… The People’s Central Air Defense Headquarters… Where is that, Dmitri?… In Omsk… Right… Yes… Oh, you’ll call them first, will you?… Uh-huh… Listen, do you happen to have the phone number on you, Dmitri?… Whe-ah, what? I see, just ask for Omsk information… Ah-ah-eh-uhm-hm… I’m sorry, too, Dmitri… I’m very sorry… *All right*, you’re sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well… I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don’t say that you’re more sorry than I am, because I’m capable of being just as sorry as you are… So we’re both sorry, all right?… All right.

President Muffley takes charge, is diplomatic, wastes no time on press conferences, speaks plainly and passionately wants to avoid war. But apart from that, it is a very realistic portrayal.

President: Dave Kovic/Bill Mitchell of the United States
Actor: Kevin Kline
Movie: Dave
Plausibility: 1/10
Statesmanship: 9/10
Electability: 0/10

When they talk about the film-making being a creative industry, they were probably were not thinking of this particular film. From the stupendously unimaginative title to the hackneyed plot device of having a character replaced by their double, the most challenging thing about this movie is watching it to the end. Why the normally so-selective Kevin Kline agreed to appear in this film is beyond me. In the story, Kline plays Bill Mitchell, the philandering President and Dave Kovic, the decent nobody who looks just like the President and ends up taking his place. Of course, the decent nobody is a caring sensible sort who does a great job as President. In other words he is exactly the sort of fantasy President that people wish for - without asking why they would never vote for someone like that in the first place…

President: James Marshall of the United States
Actor: Harrison Ford
Movie: Air Force One
Plausibility: 0/10
Statesmanship: 2/10
Electability: 10/10

The President’s security goons are caught sleeping on the job, allowing terrorists to take over Air Force One and put the President’s family in jeopardy. Following the maxim that ‘if you want a job doing properly, do it yourself’ the President is forced to kick the butt of the terrorists himself. The worrying thing is that some people probably do expect their world’s most powerful man to solve problems with his bare fists.

Presidential Candidate: Governor Jack Stanton
Actor: John Travolta
Movie: Primary Colors
Plausibility: 10/10
Statesmanship: 10/10
Electability: 10/10

It is a cheat to include John Travolta’s approximation of Bill Clinton in this list, not least because the film follows him on road to the White House, not his time in it. But the depiction of a man who would be President is so compelling, it is hard not to carried along by it. Clinton is a man of considerable charisma, and so is Travolta. With Charisma like that, he gets my vote.

President: David Levinson of the United States
Actor: Bill Pullman
Movie: Independence Day
Plausibility: 1/10
Statesmanship: 4/10
Electability: 9/10

So the aliens invade the whole earth, but apparently it is up to the yanks to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to fighting them off. The Americans do not need to coordinate with any other nation, and they get their asses royally kicked, as you might expect when fighting a race that has mastered interstellar travel and has put some thought into how they kill every living human living. Then, in rather a twist, the American government discovers that hacking can be a good thing. Some nerd finds that the aliens have not updated their admin passwords. Down comes the alien forcefields and up goes the President, a former pilot, in his jet fighter. The aliens lose and apparently the rest of the world gives them a blooded nose too, but the fighting by the rest of the world is off camera. It makes you wonder why anyone would put the United Nations in New York. Was it just to the only way to persuade the Americans to participate?

President: Andrew Shepherd of the United States
Actor: Michael Douglas
Movie: The American President
Plausibility: 2/10
Statesmanship: 4/10
Electability: 2/10

Did I say that “Dave” lacked imagination? In “The American President” it turns out the American President is a decent guy who has to deal with complicated political stuff and finds it hard to find time for dating between being a President and a single dad. There are only two original concepts in this film: (1) that American Presidents find it hard to meet women, and (2) that former sex addict Michael Douglas finds it hard to meet women. Both are extremely unlikely.

President: Thomas Wilson of the United States
Actor: Danny Glover
Movie: 2012
Plausibility: 5/10
Statesmanship: 7/10
Electability: 5/10

When Obama was on the campaign trail, there was a joke that they would never let a black man be President unless the country was in real trouble. Judging by Hollywood, they will not let a black man be President unless the world is about to end. Morgan Freeman set the mould for forlorn Black President watching as the world is destroyed, in the 90’s disaster movie Deep Impact. Danny Glover is equally forlorn in this latest formula excuse for lots of CGI and frantically screaming extras. Glover gives a decent performance as a man who cannot do much about the end of the world, and he does what any decent black President should do and makes no effort to save himself from disaster. This movie would have been significantly helped if, instead of just giving up, Glover had called up old pal Mel Gibson and the two of them had tried to save the day with some high-octane, high-kicking and high-explosive action, all the while complaining that they are “too old for this shit”. It probably would not have saved the world, but it would have been an entertaining way to try. At least they would have gone down fighting. “Riggs!”

President: Laura Roslyn of the Twelve Colonies
Actor: Mary McDonnell
TV Show: Battlestar Galactica
Plausibility: 4/10
Statesmanship: 5/10
Electability: 2/10

In the ground-breaking reworking of Battlestar Galactica, the President of the twelve human colonies was a woman. Clearly a double-X chromosomed President is only imaginable in a world set millions of light years from our own. Apart from the fact that she is a woman, the President of the Twelve Colonies is obviously based on the US Presidency. This can only leave you bewildered at the mixed emotions Americans must have about their leaders. She never wins an election, but tries to steal one. She behaves like a bashful schoolgirl when someone flirts with her, mere minutes after ordering the execution of someone in cold blood without a trial. She takes the mantle of religious messiah and is intolerant of those with differing beliefs. Unlike the others on this list, the viewer is given no clues about whether they are expected to despise or sympathize with this President. In Independence Day, McDonnell played the First Lady to Bill Pullman’s President. She consistently did nothing whilst the President consistently took the fight to the aliens. A decade later, McDonnell’s twisted President flip flops on every issue, and at times is caught loving her enemies, screwing her colleagues, and hating her neighbours. Compared to this, I would take Harrison Ford’s terrorist thumper or Bill Pullman’s alien dogfighter every day of the week. They may not be smart, but at least you know whose side they are on.

President: Josiah ‘Jed’ Barlet of the United States
Actor: Martin Sheen
TV Show: The West Wing
Plausibility: 8/10
Statesmanship: 7/10
Electability: 7/10

When the Democrats could not get a President into the White House, they could still get one on to television. Martin Sheen as the President is the supposed to be the right man in the right place at the right time. Yup, the program showed politics is complicated and full of compromise and it tried to track the substantive issues of the time. The real question though was how anyone found Martin Sheen’s depiction of an erudite and faithful President to be plausible, after Clinton’s personal failings and George W’s mangluage (mangling of language). Perhaps, for all its realism, The West Wing was the ultimate in Presidential escapism?

In her last Christmas message of the decade, the Queen Elizabeth II began by saying:

Each year that passes seems to have its own character. Some leave us with a feeling of satisfaction, others are best forgotten. 2009 was a difficult year for many, in particular those facing the continuing effects of the economic downturn.

The Queen should know. She has given the summary of every year since 1952, with just the one exception. If anybody is in position to objectively scrutinize the vicissitudes of time, it is the immutable Elizabeth II. Her reign is in its fifty-eigth year, she lived through World War Two, and she is the head of a church. Her broadcasts began on radio; now they are on YouTube. In her time Elizabeth has been the Queen of thirty-two separate nations. In 1952 she was the queen of seven independent countries and is currently the monarch of sixteen states. The numbers went up and then down as the British Empire died and spawned newly-independent countries, whilst half of those countries later walked the road to republicanism. Across all those nations, she has had a hundred and fifty Prime Ministers. On a personal level, she bore three sons and a daughter over the space of sixteen years. Elizabeth has seen all four children marry, three divorce and two remarry. Each of her four children has blessed her with two grandchildren. If anyone is qualified to talk about the travail of time, it is the Queen. If she says that some years are best forgotten, then she should know. And if some years are best forgotten, is it not fair to extend that idea to a period of several sequential years, and suggest there might be some decades that are best forgotten?

It is not in keeping with the zeitgeist to find fault with now. We may face problems, and there may be dissatisfactions, but the fault is never with the present moment. Problems may be rooted in the past, or in a lack of progress, or there may be troubles ahead, or there may be a minority to blame for our ills, but overriding every difficulty there is a cosy consensus that we, the great majority, are good. We are fine, and there has never been a better time than now. But if all is well with us, then how do we explain a year to forget. And what was 2009 apart from the natural conclusion to a decade of disappointment. From 9-11, through the tangential response of the second Iraq War, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, political scandals and the failure of the climate change conference in Copenhagen, the noughties were a decade to forget.

What went wrong with the start of the 21st Century? One source of discomfort comes from our own aspirations. Aspiration is easy. It is realization that is hard. The higher the bar, the likelier we are to fall short. In the 1940’s the prevailing aspiration was to defeat totalitarian dictators - except in Russia. The 1960’s were a period of liberation - the start of a process to overcome barriers that society erected for itself. In the 1980’s and 1990’s the barriers were coming down literally, first with the fall of the Berlin Wall and then with the fall of the Soviet Union. Mandela was released from prison. Miscarriages of justice were overturned, like those suffered by the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six. Communism was dying in most countries, whilst a concern for the Green agenda was on the rise. In 1985, Live Aid raised money to ease the famine in Ethiopia. The world was getting freer, richer and safer, and the inevitable exceptions helped to prove the rule.

Whence come the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they came out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Did we reach the highest heights in the noughties, the decade whose very name told a story of indecision and derision? Comfort breeds self-satisfaction. Self-satisfaction breeds complacency. Complacency is a downhill slide. If mountains rise from the sea, it follows that they return to the sea also. Across the world, wanton, selfish and aimless destruction has come to dominate our thoughts. One source of destruction is the nebulous forces of ‘international terrorism’, as much the creation of the war on terror as it is its justification. At the other end of the spectrum from the isolated lunatics who want to end their meaningless lives with a big bang are the overwhelming majority of worker ants, slowly nibbling away at our environment, with no clear thought about the consequences. By ants, I mean all of us, who all contribute to climate change whilst mostly pointing fingers at others in preference to looking to ourselves.

The inheritance of the nineties was squandered in the noughties. Mandela’s truth and reconciliation gave way to dithering about Mugabe’s inversion of racism and killing of democracy on South Africa’s doorstep. The Russians retreated from the chaos of a real democracy to the guided democracy where Putin is either on the throne, sitting behind the throne, deciding who sits on the throne, or is in charge of anything to do with the throne, including how (and if) pretenders to the throne are reported in the ‘free’ press. Meanwhile, the world’s greatest autocrats were rewarded for the economic prosperity of their hardworking and under-rewarded people, and not punished for their continued and unrepentant oppression of them. Their reward was the Beijing Olympics, whose impressive construction program and execution served to show that the world would gladly bury freedom and democracy so long as it was laid to rest in a luxurious coffin.

Western democracies lost their way, and their mandate to preach an agenda that is pro-rights and anti-corruption to the rest of the world. There was a glut of politicians who linked power to wealth in a cycle of seediness: Chirac, Berlusconi, Cheney and even Tony Blair, though the latter had the sense to let his wife do the dodgy deals whilst he was in office, and only spent his time in office laying the groundwork for his future fortune. As his Director of Public Prosecutions told us recently, Blair was a sycophant and that sycophancy has paid off with a string of lucrative deals since. Whether Iraq had WMDs that could strike Britain in forty-five minutes was seemingly unimportant, per the leader’s own report. The objective was bigger than questions about whose lives were at risk and whose lives would be put at risk. The stage was the UN and that most corrupted of all ideas, international law. Abu Ghraib and extraordinary rendition permanently scarred the features of so-called liberal democracies. Away from the public’s gaze, the real action was found in the flow of money between business and state. An oil tanker was renamed ‘Altair Voyager’ because its old name, ‘Condoleezza Rice’ made some connections too obvious. Ms Rice got a promotion after foolish former General Colin Powell wasted his enormous credibility by proving to the UN that Iraq must have been hiding WMDs (and that was just the intelligence he was allowed to show…) Powell outlived his usefulness soon after. During the noughties, the real leaders of the West were afloat, their feet not touching the ground. They were carried away by a stream of money, a stream that promised to carry them to all their personal and public ambitions. Whilst private ambitions may have been realized, the public ones were not. On the contrary, the deregulation of business and banks proved only that money is always available for a pliable politician, no matter what the price paid by the public. The petty greed of Britain’s Members of Parliament only served to show how far the rot had gone.

The cynicism of the politicians needed to keep pace with that of celebrity. Divorced of talent, the greatest source of fame became fame itself. Non-entities competed to outdo each other on ‘reality’ shows, in the hope of securing riches to follow. Damien Hirst proved that the ‘Young British Artist’ scene was a victory for marketing over art-making, as he turned his idealess dross into a printing machine for money. The public voted for ‘ordinary’ people to be their next stars, living vicariously through their success and failing to see any irony in this circle of self-realization where ordinariness begets fame and fame is its own justification. Bono became more like Bore-o with his endless offering of solutions to the world’s ills, all whilst merrily socializing with the very elite who must be most at fault if anything is wrong. Whilst giving out lots of advice without being asked for, Bono was careful to listen to his tax advisers and effectively become a tax exile from his home nation, even though the Irishman was already benefiting from one of the most generous tax regimes for rich music stars like himself. His countryman Bob Geldof showed that fame fuels vanity more often than it feeds the poor, by reimagining the glory of Live Aid as the pointless publicity exercise that was Live 8. Live 8, for those who forget, was going to persuade the G8 nations to “make poverty history”. At date of writing, poverty is not history, though Live 8 proved a great boost to the sales of the musicians who took part - bands like U2, for example.

At the very start of 2000, I was like many in London waiting by the Thames for the fireworks spectacular to herald the arrival of the new year. A ‘river of fire’ was promised. What we got was the synchronized setting off of wimpish sparklers at regular intervals down the length of the river. It was a disappointment, only to be followed by a long walk home. In hindsight, it set the tone for the decade that was to follow. Indeed, the Chairman of the business that had been paid - by taxpayer’s money - to put on that dismal show went on the media to confirm that it had been, in his opinion, a great success. But then, the Chairman of that business was none other than Bob Geldof. It was fitting that the decade ended in similar disappointment. Even whilst the world’s population is long past the point where they doubt the reality of climate change, the world’s leaders are unable to do anything substantial about it. They all flew to Copenhagen, mostly in private jets. So many went, that the country ran out of limousines to drive around all these world leaders, none of whom were willing to carpool, and the Danes had to resort to driving in more gas-guzzling cars from Germany and Sweden. After a lot of hot air was expelled at the event, the conclusion was bugger all. Which says everything about where saving the planet fits into the big scheme of priorities. The world’s leaders live now, and unlike the Queen they do not intend to stay in charge for another fifty or sixty years, if they even live that long. That makes global warming somebody else’s problem - the problem of somebody who will need to take tough decisions long after the current elite has reaped the rewards of our current profligacy. Yet in the end, the leaders worry more about their power and privilege than anything else, and will do nothing to risk losing that. If they do not prioritize climate change, it is because their minions do not prioritize it either. Desmond Tutu summed up the confusion of the event when he said:

They marched in Berlin and the wall fell. We marched in Cape Town and apartheid fell. We marched in Copenhagen and we are going to get a real deal!

I do not know the South African archbishop personally, but I am pretty sure he does not live in Copenhagen. People who lived in Berlin wanted to see their relatives the other side of the wall. They were opposed by the interests of a small number who had put the wall in their way. When Berliners stood together in great enough numbers, they could not be opposed. People who lived in South Africa wanted to vote, and wanted to vote for candidates with the same colour skin as themselves. Their rights were denied to preserve the interest of a small number. When South Africans stood together in great enough numbers, they could not be opposed. Who stands against saving the Earth? A small minority, but that is irrelevant. It is not the minority that stand opposed to the wishes of the majority that matters here. It is the majority that stand opposed to their own objectives that matters here. How can Tutu justify flying across the world to tell people what they know already? He can because he sees global climate change in the same way as apartheid or the Berlin Wall, as products of a system that favours the freedom of a few over the freedom of the many. Climate change is the opposite problem; it is caused by favouring the freedom of the many, where too many can justify their own behaviour to themselves even whilst they kill the planet with a death by a thousand cuts, or more appropriately a death by a thousand (self-)indulgences. It neatly epitomizes the failure and self-satisfaction of the noughties. With no convenient bogeyman to overcome, we leave ourselves powerless to act even when we know we should.

The noughties were about now. The decade represented waste in all its forms. For the sake of now, we wasted physical resources, and people, and time, and opportunities. Why work when you can borrow? Why wait when you can have what you want now? If we care for the future, we have to stop thinking of now, and start thinking of something more. We must unlearn what we were taught in the noughties. In the noughties, aspiration was justification and execution was irrelevant. The pinnacle of its central conceit - that how much we care is more important than what we do - was climbed by the Nobel committee when they awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to Obama. That prize was given to Obama for what he is going to do, not what he has accomplished already. The Nobel committee has shown themselves to be like too many of the rest of us. They are too quick to be enthralled by popularity. But popularity is transitory. Real worth is measured by constancy. We can only change the world now if that moment extends into a lifetime.

Politicians concerned with their own popularity and power cannot be consistently relied upon to make the world a better place, not least because they fear to tell us the truths we might not like to hear. It takes a leader to do what they think is right, at the price of risking unpopularity, and that is why many of the world’s ‘leaders’ do not deserve that description. It also takes a leader to do what is right because it is right, not because the cameras are there to document it. And a leader is somebody who leads for a lifetime, whether in the limelight or away from it. When a leader says a year is best forgotten, they speak of a worldview that cannot be encapsulated in twelve short months. They measure the now with reference to the past and future, can be patient whilst treasuring their time and doing the small but important things. The Queen does so; reportedly she travels on ordinary trains not just to cut costs and preserve the environment, but because it gives her more time to do her work. What a wonderful example for all of us. Without political influence, the Queen has still played her part in leading the way. Her example shows that the route to a better world is not found in this present moment but through the accumulation of moments into a lifetime of steadfast purpose. We can be true to ourselves as individuals, and strive to make the world better, even whilst the role we are asked to play and world around us changes. Her heritage will last in the world around us, even if the recognition is not long remembered and even if we all end up as republicans. As the Queen hinted, 2009 was a year best forgotten. 2009 summed up a decade that came to nought. For everyone who lived through the noughties, the onus is on all of us to find more purpose in the decade to come.

If you ever watch children playing football, the preparation for the game begins with locating a ball and picking the two teams. The kids will put down jumpers for goalposts or otherwise agree what the goals are. Then they kick-off. They run around and play football. What they do not do before the game begins is form a committee to review the rules of the game, nominate who will be the referee and his or her assistants, or sit down and familiarize themselves with the Football Association’s handbook in case of a dispute later on. Yes, youthful footballers will break the rules from time to time, but they somehow manage to handle transgressions as they go along. With kids playing football, the model of using common sense to decide who has cheated and what is fair usually works pretty darned well, in addition to saving a lot of time and bother. If children can enjoy a good kick-around like that, what then has gone wrong with adult life?

In Britain, professionalism seems to be ever more backed by rules, and ever less backed by professionalism. The nadir came when two Police Community Support Officers, demonstrating little interest in human life, nor support for their community, allowed a young boy to drown because they lacked the training to wade into the water and pull him out. You can only hope and prey that your own life never comes to depend on people who might need to show initiative in the absence of both pay and education, if this is how the professionals behave. The PCSOs had already had a good example set for them. The boy who drowned did so after climbing in to rescue his own sister, yet two adults shirked any sense of moral duty, safe in the knowledge they had no legal duty to get their feet wet. Whilst a child had learnt right from wrong, the cut-price coppers had learned the rules, and the rules said they could not risk their own lives to save another person’s life. The consequence is that they did their job, by doing nothing, and a life was lost. Sadly, this was not an instance where the exception proved the rule.

The worst rules are Health & Safety rules, of course. These rules are in turn fuelled by a litigious blame culture. In a society where every individual is expected to know the endless government rules for what benefits they can claim, what tax credits they are entitled to, and what tax they must voluntarily and cheerily give up for the greater good, it makes sense to create a grey economy based solely on the concept that if something goes wrong, then somebody should be made to pay, and hence somebody must be held to blame. Of course, there are plenty of circumstances where nobody is to blame when terrible things happen. That, however, is uninteresting, so we increasingly employ people so they can be later blamed. If you own a company and allow it to be run by greedy corrupt imbeciles, blame the company’s auditors, not yourself. If you die from heart disease, blame the people who sold you fast food; do not blame yourself for not buying jogging shoes and running off the lard that clogged both your wide ass and narrowed arteries. And if the rain pours and the wind blows, causing your riverside home to flood or the tiles to fall from your roof, blame the builder, blame the engineers who built the flood defences, blame the weatherman, blame anyone - but never blame yourself by buying a rubbish old house in a perilous location. More than anything, Britain has a service economy, and with moving money at a low ebb, the top dog in services is the service in legal advice. We need an economy that keeps lawyers in business. Otherwise, the aspirations of the middle class will be shown to be uncomfortably ill-founded. The foundations are weak because Britain’s service industry is built on a quicksand of its diminished real industry. Lawyers need to be given the right conditions to thrive and multiply, and rules are to lawyers what sh*t is to mushrooms. The greater the number of rules, the greater the need and advantage in engaging lawyers, so obviously we are all better off if there are more rules. All of which means there should be no surprises that lawyers are so keen to be in government, and governments are so keen on adding to society’s inventory of rules.

There is a clue in the world ‘ruler’. Rulers make rules, and they claim to have the measure fo all things. The news is always full of stories of government passing new laws in order to crack down on this and that. But do you remember the occasion when government reduced the number rules, making the rulebook of life lighter, for a change? Despite my ranting, I can think of an example. Small companies no longer need a company secretary that is separate to its single director. That is a good rule change – the company secretary was a cost but not a benefit to anybody but the people who made money from being company secretary. The upshot is that a company can perfectly well exist with only one employee. But even when the rules are changed by government, some institutions reinstate those rules for the back door. Take Britain’s Royal Mail, for example, well-known monopoly supplier of postal services and net drain on the economy because they always make a loss. They charge about £80 to forward business mail for a year. Yet Royal Mail expect businesses to provide signatures from two employees if redirecting a company’s mail. This is despite the fact the service is identical to forwarding a person’s mail, including a sole trader’s mail, yet you do not need two people to say that one person’s mail should be forwarded. If a company with just one employee wants their mail forwarded, they need to get somebody else to write a letter saying everything is okay. The reason given by the Royal Mail for this rule? They want to prevent fraud. Presumably no fraudster has the imagination or resources to provide a Mickey Mouse letter in order to hijack a business’ mail. Or, rather, Royal Mail can contemptuously say they have done everything they could to prevent such fraud. Of course, it is easier for many modern business to just shift all correspondence with banks and suppliers on-line, and avoid relying on the Royal Mail altogether. Hmmm… now what were those Royal Mail strikers saying about the vital service they provided and how they deserve to be subsidized as a result?

The ultimate in rule-driven paradoxes is when Government, the highest rule-imposing body in the land, sets rules for itself. It is the metaphorical equivalent of somebody who counts the calories whilst shoving another cream pie into their face. However ridiculous it is to set rules for yourself, that is what the British government is preoccupied with doing. For example, they intend to introduce a rule which will bind them to pay off the huge national debt they have run up. What is the point of this rule? It is to say they trust themselves to manage the economy, but they do not trust themselves to manage the economy, so they will manage the economy by imposing a rule that they will follow no matter how much they do not want to follow it. This is from the same people who promised an end to boom and bust. Either government needs to borrow or it does not. If they need to borrow, they should, and if not, they should not. Setting a rule blindly of the circumstances is meaningless. The same government already had a rule about borrowing over the economic cycle. First they stretched it, then they broke it, and they justified this by saying they needed to. Fair enough, but that means the rule itself is pointless. Now the government offers a new rule, which is a rule to pay off the debt. It may be a rule, but is not a consistent yardstick for how they will behave.

The irony is that this is a government well versed in bending and breaking rules, such as the rules on when you can start a war. The Iraq Enquiry plods along. The inevitable revelations focus on how government lawyers thought the government was breaking international law by instigating an attack on Iraq without a UN resolution. The absurdity of rules is exemplified by they interplay. For example, wars cost money. They cost lots of money (as well as lives). That is why troops get killed for want of helicopters and body armour, because troops are cheap but helicopters and body armour are expensive. And now we have a rule on paying down the national debt. Does this mean that, if the situation were the same and there was another Saddam Hussein pretending to have WMDs, we would not go to war? International law on starting wars would not be the impediment, but heavens forbid we break our own rules on managing public sector borrowing and find ourselves unable to pay the price of more military intervention.

There are rules everywhere you look these days. Keep off the grass. Maximum speed 20 miles per hour. No parking between the hours of 8am and 8pm. Inform the dentist of the need to cancel an appointment 48 hours in advance. Tick the box to agree to the personal user licence for this software. Read this summary of the changes in the terms and conditions for your credit card. On top of the rules, there are yet more rules. If you do not read the reams of paperwork explaining the rules for your bank account, then what of it? You can rely on the reams of rules created by Government and the reams of rules created by the banking regulator to ensure the bank’s rules are reasonable after all. If the government’s rules are no good, then go to Europe’s rules. And if America’s rules get broken, they can also be applied to British citizens, ensuring international rule subservience. Subservience, that is, for common people. Politicians tend to be exempt from the rules, reportedly for the good of everyone they represent.

Remarkably, for all the rules in force in Britain, there is never a rule when you need one. In Doha I queued five hours for tickets to a football game, and not a single person pushed in. If only visitors to the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy were as well behaved as those footy fanatics. On a rainy day, the security guard repeatedly asked people to budge forward in the long and winding queue, for the sake of ensuring everyone was under shelter and the building entrance was not blocked. Without complaint, they did so. Yet despite the visible evidence of a long line of people waiting patiently, two old dears bypassed the long line, strolled straight up to the counter and proceeded to reach into their purses to buy two tickets. So much for rules in nation that supposedly loves to queue. I was thankful that the woman behind the counter was made of sterner stuff than the timorous security guard who had been so confident in instructing people to take two steps forward whenever a gap emerged in the queue. The ticket vendeuse, spying my flabbergasted look at these two rude and selfish old women, challenged their presumption and sent them to the back. From appearances, the ill-mannered duo looked like retired teachers, which might explain the need for endless ASBOs for Britain’s youth.

You cannot entirely blame British government for the purgatory of rules taken to inhuman extremes. In the final reckoning, politicians tend to obey their voters and generally follow the fashions of the era. As far as the average Brit is concerned, football is far more important than politics, and football is far from immune to the chronic disease of the creeping rules. Even little children can throw down their jumpers for goalposts and enjoy a perfectly fun kickabout, but for multimillionaire professional footballers, rules are a constant source of frustration, thanks to their application, non-application or misapplication, depending on which side you play for. It is not hard for kids to referee their own games, because football has so few rules. Do not use your hands. Get the ball in the net. Do not try to defeat an opponent by swinging a machete threateningly in his direction. But listen to the endless drivel of overpaid pundits and cry-baby managers, and you would think that football is the unfairest game in the world, in desperate need of a rules overhaul. TV replays, extra assistants, fitter referees, and even the manager’s right to challenge decisions have all been proposed as solutions to the seeming plague of ‘bad’ decisions. Meanwhile, the rules themselves are tweaked for the good of the game. Level is onside, keepers can move sideways at a penalty, kicking the ball away merits yellow and a foul by the last man deserves red… did these rules really improve the game so much?

The eccentricity of sporting rules is that they apply to the other side, not your own. You still hear people still repeating the delusion that British players cheat less than their European counterparts. Presumably anyone who still believes this must always shut their eyes whenever players with extraordinary strength and balance, people like Heskey, Owen, and Gerrard, make a purposeful run in the penalty box. You are more likely to see Gerrard launch into a stream of upper cuts in a bar than see him trip up whilst walking down the street. But put him in that mysterious zone that surrounds the opponents’ goal, a rectangular version of the Bermuda triangle, and strange forces compel him to collapse to ground faster than a tower of cards built atop a jenga tower on a rickety stool. With the stool on the top flight of Blackpool Tower on the windiest day of the year. In the most debated example of rules confusion in recent weeks, the Irish team expected all rules to be rewritten because one decision went against them. To hear the protestations on behalf of the Irish national team, after being unfortunately defeated in the their World Cup qualification play-off with France, you would think they were odds-on favourites to win the tournament, instead of a hapless marginal team that failed to well enough to go through based on the results from their qualifying league alone. But it is difficult to be too harsh on the Irish, as half of their squad is British after all, reliant on mysterious grandparents and great uncles to be eligible to play for a land which they only tend to visit when playing ‘home’ games for Ireland. And tells you all you need to know about the purpose of rules in international football.

Not everywhere in the world is hamstrung by rules. Being abroad, it is a revelation to discover there are places where you can swim in the sea without disclaimers warning that you might be drowned, and fizzy drinks cans that assume you can pull a ring without severing your forefinger. At the aforementioned queue for football tickets in Doha, they kept the store open an extra hour beyond closing time, because serving customers is considered a higher priority than subservience to the employment contracts of the people paid to sell those tickets. Britain has the mother of Parliaments, and she is the happy matriarch of every Brit. Mother’s been parenting her children for a long time. She does not much enjoy letting them off the leash, never mind trusting them to make their own decisions.

Even when leaving rules Britannia, they give you a parting gift of extended rules impositions to tide you over until you return. A bag that was light enough to be allowed in the cabin on the way in is subjected to a precise weighing to confirm compliance whilst on the way out. See-through bags of toiletries had nestled unmolested in hand baggage prior to arrival, but demand thorough inspection on departure. These transgressions, though, are mere peccadilloes compared to the great bête noire of international travel – believing you should be free to move around this world without a piece of paper that gives you permission. I do understand why there is a rule that says I am supposed to have a valid passport. What I do not understand is the remarkable effort is put into enforcing this rule, which at every turn presupposes that previous checks had been performed by bumbling nincompoops. The airline checks my passport when I check-in. At the border control, my passport is checked in addition to the boarding card I got when checking in. At the departure gate, they check my passport and tear my boarding card in two. In the hour or so from start to finish, my passport has not changed once, but it has been checked three times. Then, when sitting in the departure lounge, two border agency goons are wandering around. What are they employed to do? You guessed it. They check my passport. Clearly not overworked, they would have checked my passport twice if the dozy woman, following the same path trod by her burly male colleague a mere two minutes before, had not been challenged about the need for a passport to be checked twice. Which tells you everything you need to know about the quality of the check – what if I had been lying? She did not check that, but just took my word for it.

Rules are imposed by big people on little people, which is why parents set rules for children, and not vice versa. You and I may not be allowed to drive in the bus lane at any time (unless you are driving a bus) but when Tony Blair comes to town, he should stop the traffic, or so the theory goes. All of which explains why certain rules, like those for claiming expenses or paying tax, are so liable to be bent, twisted, exploited, broken and cheated by the ultimate rule-makers, our Members of Parliament.

Rules turn us into children. Not happy children playing in the park and making things up as we go along. Miserable children, bound and gagged and unable to act or think for ourselves. For adults to depend on rules is troubling, because there are no adults who can be relied upon to be more adult than any other adult. Which means we might as well recite rules in the mirror and enforce them by bending over and spanking ourselves. If kids playing football can get by with few rules, maybe they have more sense than the infantilized grown-ups around them. They get by with a sense of right and wrong, of luck and misfortune, of getting up and getting on with it, no matter what the game, or life, sends their way. Adults, in contrast, substitute lengthier rules for shorter rules and consider this to be a sign of great progress. They are wrong, and with rules, we have long passed the point where less would be more. We need fewer rules and to follow them, not more and to ignore them. The problem is, there is no way to turn the tide and have fewer rules in future – unless we wrote a new rule that makes that happen…