Chris Patten gets a proper job at last

Chris Patten, former Cabinet Minister, former Governor of Hong Kong, and current EU Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, has been elected Chancellor of Oxford University. One of my colleagues was an undergraduate at Balliol with him and remembers sprawling on a lawn with the great man after Finals ended. The conversation turned to what they were going to do after university. “I’m going into politics”, Patten said. “Oh really”, said my colleague, “which party?”. “Don’t know yet”, replied Patten, “I’ve written to both”. I liked what Patten said recently when a journalist asked him whether the EU would contribute to the rebuilding of Iraq after the Anglo-American invasion. He replied that he thought the appropriate rule would be what china and porcelain shops all over the world say to browsing customers: “If you break it, you own it”.