Diary: Victor Orban, a vintage Lagonda, Fenella Fielding, and me

Not a good week for the European Union – but, then, it never is these days. Never glad confident morning again! The week’s misfortunes (from the point of view of the Brussels oligarchy as distinct from the people of Europe) began on Sunday, with yet another untutored electorate misbehaving itself.

Yet this was no jacquerie of East European peasants with pitchforks, but a betrayal by the electorate of Sweden. Sweden! The nation that is the cultural paradigm of EU “values” – liberalism, materialism, socialism, secularism, multiculturalism and every other post-modern cult that so recently was fashionable – is beginning to turn its back on those totems. This is la trahison des clercs, with a vengeance.

The usual transparent ploy had been put in place before the election: the hyping of opinion polls awarding the “populist” Sweden Democrats an absurd percentage of the vote, so that any outcome that fell short of that could be represented as some kind of “defeat” (cf. Geert Wilders in the Netherlands). In the event, the mathematics rendered that strategy irrelevant.

The ruling Social Democrats recorded their poorest result in a century. In parliamentary seats the establishment’s worst nightmare was realized: a tie of 144 seats for the red/green left coalition, 143 for the “centre-right” (i.e. cosmetic left) bloc, and 62 for the Sweden Democrats whom everyone has pledged to boycott.

That ploy of excluding from parliamentary politics a party that represents almost one in five Swedish voters is a technique pioneered in France to isolate the Front National and flies in the face of democracy. Its sole consequence, wherever it has been tried, has been to advertise the non-establishment credentials of the pariah party and make it more attractive to voters.

Elites are oblivious to such realities: venting their politically correct spleen is all that matters to them. Now they have to form a government in Sweden on those impractical terms. Let’s see who blinks first.

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Things got worse for the EU on Tuesday when Viktor Orbán arrived in Strasbourg to voice a few home truths to MEPs before they moved to enact pantomime “sanctions” against Hungary. A Dutch Green Party MEP, Judith Sargentini, had demanded that sanctions under Article 7 be imposed on Hungary for “abuse of migrants” (thanks to Orbán they don’t have any), restrictions on freedom of the press (this on the day before the EU parliament voted to censor free speech on the internet), “patriarchal attitudes” towards women and other supposed delinquencies.

Orbán, who has won three two-thirds super-majorities in succession at general elections and put the proposals to which the EU objects to mini-referenda of the Hungarian electorate before enacting them, is accused of “eroding democracy” by the unelected EU Commission and a toy-town parliament that is not even permitted to initiate legislation.

“What you are saying,” Orbán told MEPs, “is nothing less than that the Hungarian people cannot be trusted to decide what is in their best interests. What you believe is that you know better what the Hungarian people want.” Well, of course, that is exactly what the Brussels elite is saying, not just to Hungary but to every member state.

The following day the mouse roared and the European parliament initiated Article 7 sanctions against Hungary. Its sense of self-importance, however, was deflated within 24 hours when Poland announced it would veto sanctions, which require the assent of every member state, “in solidarity with the Hungarian people”. This is the rock-solid EU 27 that is unitedly confronting Brexit Britain. Be very afraid.

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Elsewhere in the Visegrad bloc, the Czech Republic has followed the example of the United States in announcing the transfer of its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It might be misleading, though, to attribute any geopolitical motive to this migration since the announcement came close on the heels of confirmation that the Eurovision Song Contest is to be held in Tel Aviv.

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The news of the death of Fenella Fielding reminded me of a rococo experience in the late 1970s. A friend had profitably hired out his vintage motor-car for a week to a film company and arranged to collect it on the Friday evening from the hotel where the cast were staying. Sensing a potentially entertaining scenario, I and another chum accompanied him to the hotel, keeping a vigilant lookout for film stars.

None appeared, but the much-prized Lagonda, in pristine condition, did arrive and was returned to its owner who departed to restore his treasure to its garage. The two of us who remained whiled away some time in the bar then decided to dine in the restaurant.

We were shown to our seats but were completely distracted by the spectacle that greeted us at the neighbouring table. It was unoccupied but was engulfed by a huge number of large floral bouquets (think Stalin’s funeral but a bit less understated). Only when we were finishing our meal did the recipient of these tributes finally appear.

Into the restaurant there advanced a long cigarette holder, followed immediately by Miss Fenella Fielding. Her iconic feline smile and husky voice were exactly as featured on screen as she took her place, like Titania, in her flowery bower. Her entrance was a coup de théâtre and it would have been worse than ungallant to suggest the floral tributes must have cost her agent a fortune. As PR goes, it was spectacular. It transpired she had been the passenger in our friend’s elegant motor-car during the week’s filming.

She was almost upstaged, however, by her colleague Ronald Fraser who was in a distinctly convivial mood and who erratically manifested himself and dematerialized in a will o’ the wisp fashion throughout the course of the evening. When we left the hotel we encountered him in the street, conversing with a group of young women who invited him to accompany them to a discotheque. This was a rather impractical suggestion since the definitive dramatic interpreter of Evelyn Waugh’s Apthorpe was compelled to rely on the support of adjacent railings to defy Sir Isaac Newton’s inexorable law.

“Are you in love?” the famously fruity voice interrogated the young ladies in avuncular style. “Everyone should be in love.” Further discourse was precluded since the unequal contest ended at that moment in a 15-love victory for Newton over Fraser. Sometimes luvvies can actually be lovable.