Returning to Britain I find our Prime Minister, in at least one deep and mysterious sense, still away. What, when it comes to the release of the Lockerbie bomber, are Gordon Brown’s mental processes? What did he think when — as must have been the case — Scottish proposals to release al-Megrahi were disclosed to him. What did he think of the decision to release the Libyan before the row erupted? What does he think now? I’m reminded of a remark made in what is still the most penetrating book about Margaret Thatcher, One of Us, by the late Hugo Young. Young describes one of her Cabinet ministers: “He had a mind not so much open, as permanently vulnerable to a succession of opposing certainties.”
Weird-sounding to say this, I realise, but I have the strongest of impressions that Mr Brown has already resigned. I’m not sure on what level I mean that — whether perhaps I just mean he is resigned; or that he has taken a mental step still to be followed up by action; or that an agreement has been reached but has yet to be disclosed. But of one thing I’m strangely sure: that in some way, and on some level, Mr Brown has gone.
Goths for Dave
The behaviour of one of my nieces is beginning to concern me. She’s gone straight from being a Goth to being a Cameron Conservative, without any sort of intervening philosophical transition or quarantine. One month it was Goth — black fingernails, black eye shadow, monosyllabic communications, the whole works — and the next she’s getting up early because David Cameron’s going to be interviewed on television.
Could it be hormonal? Her father (my brother) and his family — nice people, liberals, herbivores, not really Tory types at all — were worried enough about the Goth phase, but are equally perplexed by what has replaced it. She’s pining because the Marr programme and The Politics Show are off air. She studies Mr Cameron’s every utterance, enthralled. Her parents wring their hands.
As for me, it’s not the direction of ideological travel that concerns me, but the speed. Does the movement of opinion follow Newtonian laws? Is there such a thing as ideological momentum? I fear that by autumn my niece may have hurtled right past Caring Conservatism, and by Christmas be reading Nietzsche and experiencing an awakening interest in eugenics. Goths for Dave — now there’s a T-shirt.
Lethal for Labour
Talking of T-shirts, I saw one recently on a most un-Tory-looking youth: across its front I’M NOT INTERESTED IN POLITICS BUT I DON’T LIKE LABOUR. Polling experts emphasise the importance of what they call DA (differential abstention: meaning more stay-at-homes among one party’s declared supporters than another’s) but this looks more serious. For Labour, GA (or galvanised apathy) could prove a lethal force. I’d recommend the Tories have a million of these T-shirts produced — anonymously.
Rumbling road
I write this by a window on to the Thames. Outside it’s overcast. A cool breeze blows in from a grey river and for the first time this August I give (a slight) shiver. But then again I prefer an open window. Carried away with this column, I skipped lunch and feel now a (slight) pang of hunger. But then again it will be supper soon enough. And I’m pondering a remark I’ve turned over so often in my mind, ever since one of my fellow secretaries in Margaret Thatcher’s office reported it.
“One should always,” she had retorted, apropos of some slight discomfort or other “be a little bit hungry and a little bit cold.”
What did she mean? I doubt she had reflected long, or meant to make a pronouncement of huge significance. This came to her casually, thoughtlessly, and from somewhere deep. Taken literally, the advice is almost meaningless, yet thrills me with a subterranean truth.
Blair blank
Sad that Lady T’s too worthy memoirs lacked that instinctiveness: the sort that prompted one colleague to lament that “the trouble with Margaret is that when she speaks without thinking she says what she thinks”. And the Blair autobiography? Will it be candid? Relaxed?
A deal has, it’s said, been done, but still no manuscript. Recording a BBC Great Lives programme this week, in which the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, chose as his hero that great man of letters, Samuel Johnson, I was reminded of a scurrilous little ditty, penned to mock the ever-delayed arrival of Dr Johnson’s promised edition of Shakespeare:
He for subscribers baits his hook, And takes their cash — but where’s the book?
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Matthew Parris joined The Times as parliamentary sketchwriter in 1988, a role he held until 2001. He had formerly worked for the Foreign Office and been a Conservative MP from 1979-86. He has published many books on travel and politics and an autobiography, Chance Witness, for which he won the 2004 Orwell Prize. His diary appears in The Times on Thursdays, and his Opinion column on Saturdays
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