My immediate family, bar uber-enlightened step sister Flea, are all deluded lefties and thus take the view that if Uncle Chris (Chris Booker) holds one view they should naturally take the opposite line. I tend to take an alternative view. Other than his one little blind spot (a failure to support the only democracy in the Middle East), Booker’s judgement is never wrong. On issues such as the global warming scandal, the EU and inner City development he has for decades been way ahead of the curve.
Today my mother’s brother writes in his Sunday Telegraph column about the West’s failure to appreciate the Islamofascist threat from Iran. Again he is bang on the money. Perhaps we should all have listened to the Israelis a bit more?
But he also picks up on my piece last week about the National Trust and how it is losing the plot. In that snippet he observes correctly why my father’s father, Sir John Winnifrith, would today have been disqualified from being head of the National Trust. It is a good and fair comment which my immediate family will find it hard to disagree with. But on (misguided) principle they probably will do so anyway.