I had just finished a talk at Oxford University, when one of the students exclaimed: “White smoke, white smoke … we have a pope.” Among atheist and believer, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, there was a real sense of excitement.
At this stage, we didn’t know the name of the new pope, and I said to the group of people now gathering around to watch live coverage on another student’s phone: “Is this not incredible? Inside that building, right now, there is a human being whose name most people in the world would not know, and whose face we would not recognise, and in a few minutes’ time he will become one of the best-known people on earth?”
This is surely unique. When a new king is crowned, he has long been a prince. We have known presidents and prime ministers for years, often decades, before they get there. There are plenty of “overnight sensations” in sport or entertainment, but many of us knew about Messi and Ronaldo long before they became global household names, and rare is the movie star who hasn’t spent time treading the boards or working through roles and films that helped them make their name.
So out steps Robert Prevost, now Leo XIV, and tens of thousands looking up to him from St Peter’s Square erupt in the kind of joy and passion that normally only sport, live music, or the fall of a brutal dictator can inspire.
Weirdly, given that I know little about the Catholic church, I had mentioned Prevost when Rory Stewart and I had discussed runners and riders for the papal vacancy on The Rest Is Politics. I just happened to have seen his name in an article in the New York Times that morning. However, in common with most of the rest of the world, I knew nothing about him.
And now, there he was, his every last utterance about to be dug up for scrutiny, his brother in Illinois doorstepped to tell us what kind of child he had been, leaders all over the world sending their congratulations, hopes and invitations, media all over the world eagerly building a picture of the man, so that public all over the world could have a sense of how the new pope would carry out his role, how he would influence the big issues and challenges of our time.
“Oh no,” several of the students had said, “not an American!” More evidence, if any were needed, of the self-inflicted harm to America’s soft power caused by the decision to re-elect Donald Trump. But then, one of our podcast production team pinged into the TRIP WhatsApp group a tweet Prevost had posted when the US vice-president, JD Vance, engaged in a social media spat with Rory Stewart on the issue of “ordo amoris”, which translates as “order of love”.
Vance, a recent convert to Catholicism, insisted that the order Christians should follow is love for family, then neighbour, then community, then fellow citizens, then rest of the world, adding with a Trumpian flourish that Rory’s IQ was a lot lower than he thought. This was very convenient for someone busy justifying the kidnapping and deportation of what he and Trump like to call illegal aliens. Rory, on the other hand, was adamant that the Bible teaches us that there is no such hierarchy of love, and that while love for family was essential, love should first be directed to God.
The Prevost tweet sent to me started with the splendid words: “JD Vance is wrong,” adding “Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others”. So Rory was right. Unlike me, he does God.
I was further encouraged that the new pope may be a force for good when Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist who tells the president which national security officials to hire and fire, went on a Twitter rant against the “anti-Trump, anti-MAGA… Marxist puppet in the Vatican”.
She was especially riled up about a tweet Prevost had posted urging that “all hatred, violence and prejudice be eradicated”. I don’t know about you, but I quite like the idea of popes being broadly against hatred, violence and prejudice. He may have been born American, but Leo XIV’s experience, views and values strike me as being as far from Trumpian as were his predecessor’s. Amen to that.
A busy week on the Brexit-bashing front, first writing the foreword for the Good Growth Foundation’s report on UK-EU relations, The Third Rail of British Politics, and then a long read for the Italian newspaper Il Foglio.
The report includes some fascinating polling which, while showing little appetite for re-running the referendum, reveals that even Reform voters want to see much closer relations with the EU. When it came to questions about trade and the economy, and security and defence, on which more than 70% want more co-operation, the numbers for Labour-Reform switchers were higher than for the general public. Furthermore, over a third of Labour-Reform switchers actually want to rejoin the EU.
Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that in a list of perceived threats to the UK, though Vladimir Putin comes top, Trump is second, ahead of terrorists, and a lot higher than China.
The report goes big on security. People understand that our economic security and national security are closely linked. As the US seeks to weaken its European alliances, Brits seem to understand we need to strengthen ours.
A little extract from my piece in Il Foglio: “I’m writing this for an Italian audience, but the message is meant for all our European friends: do not mistake the madness of Brexit for the settled will of the British people, any more than we should believe that the isolationist, racist, norm-breaking, guardrail-smashing, Putin-surrendering, abusive politics of Trump represents the totality of the USA.
“Just as there is another USA, there is another Britain. A Britain that knows our future lies in partnership, not isolation. A Britain that values friendship, co-operation, shared progress, shared values. A Britain that is still European in spirit, even if we’ve been forced out of so many of its institutions.
“Don’t write us off. Don’t close the door. Because there is a road back, and millions who wish to walk it. Young people feel especially strongly that they have lost so much more than they gained in the actions taken by their parents and grandparents in that vote back in 2016.”
Highlight of the week was going to Pentonville prison to join with the “Music in the Ville” team, professional musicians who run music classes for the prisoners. A bit of opera, Vivaldi on the violin, an awesome Bob Marley singalong session. The moderator also got us all improvising and composing our own songs, and it was good to see quiet and reserved men slowly getting into it. As for a prisoner named “Blue”, wow… a rapper who makes the backing track music by slapping his chest, and whose lyrics were superb.
Yes, of course I had my bagpipes, and after playing in the class, and getting some of them dancing, I was then asked to play to the whole prison, in the central hall to which all the wings are connected. There is a lot wrong with our prisons (for example, Pentonville was built in 1842 to house 520 prisoners, and now holds more than 1,200). But my God, the acoustics for bagpipes in that central hall are fantastic, as was the very loud, and touching, response to my mix of marches, reels, jigs and, by popular demand, Amazing Grace.
