[Magdalen] An educational day

[Roger Stokes]

Each year my alma mater (Clare College, Cambridge) has a Gala Day. For 
one reason or another I haven't been before but I did this year and 
heard three informative lectures as a result. The first was on 
"Elizabeth I - Age, Sex and the Virgin Queen". The lecturer pointed out 
that Elizabeth was determined from an early age never to marry as to do 
so would mean always being subservient to her husband. Even when she 
came to the throne her male courtiers continued to pull the strings 
until she was 50, hence menopausal and so never going to bear the son 
they wanted to continue the Protestant monarchy. Even though her 
half-sister Mary had been Queen in her own right it was her husband, 
Philip II of Spain, who effectively ruled the country. About this time 
Elizabeth managed to belittle her senior courtiers and so exercise her 
rightful authority.

The title of the second talk, "Racehorses to Rhinos", did not sound 
promising but was very interesting. Little time was spent on horses 
(beyond the phenomenal fees a quality stallion can get for covering 
mares) which was her first responsibility on qualifying. Much more time 
was spent talking about what is clearly her real love, working with wild 
animals which are under threat and helping with breeding programmes. 
Each year she takes students to South Africa where they are trained and 
work at the Game Capture School in Anakala but also at Sanctuaries in 
Shamvari and Addo as well as the aquatic animals near Port Elizabeth. 
Her main concern is clearly to reverse the sharp rise (100 fold) there 
has been in rhino poaching to get their horns to sell for use in China 
in particular by a combination of approaches. As she observed the 
sentences passed on poachers that are caught are not a real deterrent 
and what needs to happen is to cut off the demand in China, where they 
have enlisted a popular sportsman to help promote the cause.

After lunch came the talk that attracted most interest. The lecture 
theatre was almost full for "President Trump: A Preliminary Assessment 
of His Place in History". The lecturer started by admitting that last 
Summer he had told his students Trump could not secure the nomination, 
and then in October and the first week of November that he could not 
possibly win the General Election. He sees Trump as the first truly 
populist President, but one who had built his success on the efforts of 
McCarthy, Wallace, Buchanan and Perot. All of them had a popular appeal 
that transcended the traditional party loyalties. He said that Trump 
owed more to Nixon who was an active witch-hunter in his approach and 
the Southern strategy and the redefining of what class meant. Henceforth 
it would be the elite and the common person.

Having his projections twice proved wrong last year he was not happy 
(though the audience reaction suggested they were) when I asked "Given 
that history and experience show we don't learn from history and 
experience what should we learn from what has happened?". He lamented 
the tone of what now passes for political debate in the USA and thought 
that Trump is a poison pill for the Republican Party, leading it in the 
wrong direction. Rather than engaging the issues he tends to set up a 
straw man to knock down and is too erratic to have any consistent 
foreign policy. However he drew a parallel with McCarthy whose 
popularity waned sharply when he criticised the Army and thought that 
Trump's fortunes would ebb away if he did something that harms his base, 
the healthcare proposals being a possible area for conflict. Depriving 
the white working class to whom he appeals of their insurance (or 
putting the cost up sharply) and cutting the reach of Medicaid would not 
be popular. That could be his undoing.

Roger