Diary

Wednesday, 17th February 2010

Matthew Parris opens his diary

May I have a word with you about Barnaby Joyce? As a former parliamentary sketchwriter may I tell you that celebrated political buffoons are almost never buffoons? Senator Joyce’s powers of communication — combining an apparently rough way with words with a canny ear for the phrase that pierces media walls — are touched by poetic genius. Spectator readers will know we have our own Barnaby Joyce in Britain, Boris Johnson, and I rate him. You might think our Boris the antithesis of your Barnaby: he’s Eton-educated, a Greek scholar and a master of classical allusion — but he’s just a posh version. A former Tory MP, former Spectator editor, now Mayor of London, and still rising, Boris is famous for the disorderly hair, the disorderly suit and the disorderly opinions into which he apparently stumbles, phrased with beautiful memorability. Barnaby Joyce is the Boris Johnson of the bush. The adorable posh buffoon from Islington and the irresistible hick from Tamworth are two sides of the same calculating coin. There is something sleek about these men, however dishevelled their utterances. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

What a curious mixture New South Wales is of an informality the Englishman can find quite startling with an old-fashionedness that can seem almost stifling. Lacking a light summer jacket I assumed Australia would be an ideal place to find one, and looked into David Jones, in Sydney. The menswear department was extensive. You could get thongs there. You could get ripped jeans, pre-faded shorts, distressed T-shirts and swimming briefs as tight as ticks. Or you could get dark, wool, worsted suits, traditionally cut — racks and racks of them, in every shade of grey — and more ties than in Savile Row. But nothing in between.