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Saturday 21 November 2009

Matthew d'Ancona's Parliamentarian awards speech

Thursday, 13th November 2008

Matthew d'Ancona's introductory address - and comments on the winners - for the Spectator/Threadneedle Parliamentarian awards ceremony.

Welcome to the 2008 Threadneedle/Spectator Parliamentarian Awards.

The Oscars of Westminster, the Strictly Come Dancing of the body politic, the X-Factor of the select committee corridor, and sometimes the Nobel prize of the ignoble.

You know each year, as these awards approach, they say we can’t do better than last year.

And I say in the spirit of the times: Yes We Can!

As the proud descendant of Kenyan goatherds myself, let me tell you: The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in 45 minutes or even in an hour. But, ladies and gentlemen, I promise you that, as a lunch, we will get there.

I should add, for those of you who have not yet guessed, that this year as a credit crunch efficiency measure we have teamed up with the Bullingdon Club to hold this as a joint event.

So please, at the end, feel free to roll each other down Brook Street in portaloos or to hold each other upside down by the ankles. Claridge’s accepts all major credit cards should you cause any damage, and promises to keep quiet as long as your father is listed in Burke’s Peerage.

Indeed, I had hoped that Nat Rothschild would be here to read the Bullingdon prayer which as you know begins “Dominos ad nauseam et in Depraska nortius maximus”. But sadly Nat is, apparently, wrapped in aluminium somewhere in the Caucasus and - I quote - sleeping with the sturgeons.

What a year it has been.

A year of global economic upheaval; of disastrous local elections for Labour, and of unexpected comebacks. Who, last November, would have thought that J.M. Keynes and P.B. Mandelson would be back at the centre of the action? Or that an Old Etonian would beat the Crafty Cockney to become Mayor? Or that nationalising banks would become the new black?

Or indeed – thanks to the election of Barack Obama – that black would be the new black?

Last week’s amazing result has led to a remarkable interest amongst MPs of all parties in their possible Afro-Caribbean ancestry, high sales of Reggae Reggae Sauce in the SW1 area, and the unexpected use in the tea-rooms of phrases such as “back in the day”, “word, that speech was fly” and, of course, “shizzle my dizzle”.

When we last met the Prime Minister was in the doghouse for not holding an election. Now he is back in business and - guess what? - all it took was a global economic crisis. He has not only cheated on Prudence but kicked her out of the house and left her clothes outside the front door. Once an Arthur Pewty style accountant, Gordon now models himself on Brando in The Wild One, sneering at girly men who are scared of big borrowing and crippling debt.

Nick Clegg, last year’s Newcomer of the year, revealed that he had slept with 30 women thus beating the previous record for a Lib Dem leader by 28.

As for the Tories, it is a huge honour to welcome now our Guest of Honour, last year’s Politician of the Year.

In 2008, his status has changed from that of Westminster’s most likely lad to a public figure and prospective Chancellor of the Exchequer. As the masters of the Shaolin Temple have observed, with power comes great responsibility – and, of course, great scrutiny.

Last month, he found himself at the centre of a media fire storm which will surely give him a phobia of yachts and certainly of Russian billionaires for life. But by declaring himself contrite and keeping a sense of humour about the follies of political life he showed that he had the greatest asset a politician can have: the capacity to learn.

He is a man of many roles and many talents: election strategist for his party, fixer in chief, ideas man, Shadow Chancellor and - I can vouch - expert on the films of Mr Denzel Washington: a useful skill these days. The one and only George Osborne.

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR

Now normally for this category, the judges look at the most recent intake of MPs – in this case the 119 men and women elected to the Commons for the first time in the 2005 general election.

However, this year the judges felt it was time to think laterally – mindful, in particular, that a parliamentarian is not necessarily an MP.

Though a familiar figure at Westminster and a man who has made more comebacks than Rasputin, our winner is a newcomer to the Upper House, and the judges felt that his elevation to ermine with its electrifying consequences in Westminster was an event that simply had to be recognised.

For let us not forget that moment when that distinctive knitwear appeared in Downing Street: his recall to Cabinet by a Prime Minister whom everybody until quite recently - including our winner himself - assumed to be his sworn enemy was a moment of transcendent political drama.

It meant plenty of controversy, predictably and immediately: by the way, the weather in Corfu today is forecast as good - a high of 20 degrees with good visibility but with the prospects of intermittent showers tomorrow.

However, the return of our winner - and his distinctive knitwear - has also led to an equally instant injection of discipline and aggression to the Govermment’s political strategy - look at Glenrothes - and - key to these awards - a fascination with his feline, not-a-word-out-place, trust-me-I’m-a-doctor interventions in the House and in committee hearings.

Who else but the man they couldn’t drown. Lord Mandelson.

INQUISITOR THE YEAR

The winner of this category has been called many things from “the new Enoch Powell” to the “scariest bishop in England”.

The judges lit upon him unanimously and swiftly as their choice for the year’s most brutal, effective and Torquemada-like inquisitor.

His campaign over the abolition of the 10p tax rate combined rapier-like precision with moral authority: cutting through the spin and ethical confusion that had gripped his own party once again.

As he said the concern about the abolition was “different from any other expression of disquiet from the back benches.” And as the tribune of that disquiet there were a few weeks where he held the future of the Government in the palm of his hand.

The cobbled together package that Alistair Darling unveiled before the Crewe and Nantwich by-election did Labour no good on polling day and added £2.7 billion to the nation’s credit card bill. It was a shambles, frankly.

But one man emerged with his already formidable reputation burnished. That man is our inquisitor of the year. The MP for Birkenhead, the Rt Hon Frank Field.

THE PEER OF THE YEAR

The judges mulled over this category, and were impressed by Lord Darzi’s work on the NHS and the dramatic intervention in the Upper House by the former defence chiefs over defence cuts.

But in the end they settled unanimously on an individual whose emergence from the shadows of her former life as head of the security service to attack the 42 days measure, perhaps more than any other single intervention, ensured that that most controversial of measures was doomed.

In her maiden speech in July she told her fellow peers: "I have weighed up the balance between the right to life - the most important civil liberty - the fact that there is no such thing as complete security, and the importance of our hard-won civil liberties. Therefore, on a matter of principle, I cannot support 42 days' pre-charge detention…"

The effect was devastating and the mood in the Home Office afterwards plate-smashingly angry.

A lesson to us all: don’t cross a spook. Especially one whose nickname is Bullying Manner.

Our peer of the year is Baroness Manningham-Buller of Northampton in the county of Northamptonshire.

SPEECH OF THE YEAR

In an age when parliamentary oratory is assumed be dead or moribund at best, it is a pleasure to record that this was one of the most hotly contested awards with lively debate on the merits of all sorts of rhetorical devices from the Ciceronian tricolon to the good old cheap shot.

Honourable mentions should go to Andrew Tyrie’s cool and courageous speech on the Climate change bill in June and Peter Lilley’s deft and eccentric speech on MPs pay in the same month.

But the winner was a parliamentarian who, it was felt had come into her own as an orator this year, speaking on a range of issues with fluency, passion and, above all, doughty independence.

Again, the issue on which she shone most brightly was 42 days in a debate five months ago. In her impassioned speech, our winner said of the proposal: “It is the purest politics. It is about the polls and about positioning. It is about putting the Conservative party in the wrong place on terrorism. I put it to colleagues that we should not play ducks and drakes with our civil liberties in order to get a few months' advantage in the opinion polls.”

Queen of the ducks and drakes, and this year’s queen of parliamentary rhetoric: please give it up for the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington: Diane Abbbott.

RESIGNATION OF THE YEAR

There were some who thought that, given his previous, Lord Mandelson might be in line for this award too by the time the judging procedure was complete.

Happily for the Business Secretary this has not come to pass although some may wish to put a modest punt on an anniversary resignation to mark 10 years since Peter’s first departure in December 1998.

But there was speedy agreement that this honour should be bestowed upon a politician who, having talked about the SAS all his career, put his money where his mouth is and proved that Who Dares Wins.

At St Stephen’s on a bracing June day, he resigned his Haltemprice and Howden seat in protest at the Government’s erosion of civil liberties, lost his portfolio as Shadow Home Secretary and quite possibly ended his prospects of returning to the Conservative front bench or indeed a major office of state under Prime Minister Cameron.

No matter: our winner threw caution to the wind, brandishing Magna Carta like a copy of Guns and Ammo, and risked all for a cause that had moved ever closer to his heart.

Who would have thought it? The tough guy of the Shadow Cabinet becoming its most fervent and committed civil libertarian. Ten out ten for the unexpected and for sheer parliamentary panache.

The resignation of the year, by a country mile, goes to the Rt Hon David Davis.

MINISTER TO WATCH

Our winner in this category enjoyed a remarkable year in which he rose from the status of popular second-stringer to full-blow political star with a growing number of people in his own party suddenly tipping him as a potential leader.

Long assumed to be a likeable backroom boy and egghead by inclination, he has only been an MP since 2005. Even his elevation to the Cabinet in June 2007 was overshadowed by the fact that his brother was already a member.

It has not all been plain sailing. In June, as Cabinet Office Minister, he had to deal with the embarrassment of files left on a commuter train by a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee assessment staff.

But last month he was appointed Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change – a new department and a vast portfolio, defying those who had assumed, and in some cases hoped, that the green agenda was now firmly on the backburner.

Even his political opponents, too, must have a sneaking regard for his persistence as a redistributionist and believer in active government whose views, to the horror of all true Conservatives, are now firmly back in vogue. And he has hit the ground running in his new role.

Once known as the “other Ed” when they couldn’t get Balls, and the “other Miliband”, in the shadow of his brother David, he is now emphatically his own man clearly in charge of his destiny and with all to play for.

Our minister to watch is Ed Miliband.

CAMPAIGNER OF THE YEAR

Our campaigner of the year is arguably the bravest man in Westminster as well as the most principled.

Refusing to bow to the cosy rules and nudge-nudge conventions that govern the political village he became the Serpico of the Commons: the Mr Clean who risks all every time he goes out on patrol.

In February, in the wake of the Derek Conway affair, he became the first MP to publish an itemised account of his expenses: listing more than 200 claims, including how much he claimed for a second home in Clapham; how much “petty cash” he withdrew; how much he spent on mobile phone calls and office furniture; and how much he paid his staff.

All but two items are supported by a receipt: a strike rate which may send a shudder down the spines of journalists in the room.

The stables are not yet clean: the fabled John Lewis list survived a Commons vote in July. But the issue is now inescapable and will have to resolved sooner or later. Our winner, by daring to be first, campaigned in word and deed, and set the ball rolling.

It may not have done much for his tea-room popularity but then virtue is its own reward.

And as a bonus the judges decided that he deserved one of these prizes. Our campaigner of the year is the MP for Lancaster and Wyre: Ben Wallace.

READERS’ REPRESENTATIVE

We now come to the new category of Readers’ Representative which fuses the Spectator’s age-old reverence for its readership with its more recent relish for all things online.

As any lover of our Coffee House blog knows, the Spec is positively web-tastic these days and long careered off the information superbridleway into the outer limits of cyberspace.

So what more logical innovation this year that to give our readers their own chance to pick their own winner: the politician whom they felt had best represented their anxieties and aspirations.

The winner of this first online ballot made vigorous and unstinting use of parliamentary procedure to raise concerns about the law governing abortion, tabling an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that sought to reduce the legal limit from 24 to 20 weeks. Her amendment was defeated in May, but not before the issue had been successfully aired and fired back into public consciousness. It, and she, will be back.

Here is what one reader, Richard Hamilton said of her:

“…her oppponents dealt in emotion, clustering together in the chamber in an attempt to intimidate. her eloquent speeches and interventions dealt with the issues in a quite remarkable way… It is for her selflessness, courage and dignity - on an issue that only parliament can determine - that I believe she deserves to win this award. Some say that the age of parliamentary democracy and of great parliamentarians is behind us. As a read of Hansard will reveal, that will never be the case while she is in the House.”

Our first ever Readers’ Representative is the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire: Nadine Dorries.

PARLIAMENTARIAN OF THE YEAR

We turn now to our penultimate award, the coveted title of Parliamentarian of the Year.

Our winner sprang to the lips of the judges almost instantly so clear and unanimous a choice was he.

His parliamentary rise in the past year has been in the words of one judge “nothing short of meteoric”, transforming him from the status of respected caretaker of a party in crisis to a level of national popularity of which most politicians can only dream.

As the first malevolent shoots of the economic crisis sprang from the soil, he always seemed a step ahead not only of the Government but of the Conservatives: incisive, dry, impeccably informed and – as it turns out – terribly prophetic.

On personal debt, Northern Rock, the loss of 25 million benefit claimants’ details, and the Labour Party’s funding travails he was always right on the money.

And in his quip last November that the Prime Minister had undergone a “transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean” he coined the best parliamentary line of the year.

He says that his ambition is to win Strictly Come Dancing. Until that day, he will have to make do with this honour.

The Parliamentarian of the Year is Vince Cable.

POLITICIAN OF THE YEAR

And so we come to our final award: the Politician of the Year.

The judges looked at the movers and shakers of the year and mused that the outstanding political survivor of the year was Gordon Brown who, even if the ship is still sinking, remains its captain.

But there was really only one candidate for this category.

A man who, uniquely in my experience, is as celebrated for his hair as for his prodigious intellect.

A Renaissance man who is more properly described as a one-man Renaissance.

A politician who broke every rule of London politics to supplant an incumbent Cockney monarch who had survived Thatcher and seen off Blair and Brown, providing a political night that few of us forget

A Mayor who has already gone global, a firm friend of Mayor Bloomberg of New York, who provided one of the iconic images of 2008 with his majestic brandishing of the Olympic flag in Beijing

And on top of all this, a man of letters who put the term “whiff whaff” back into common parlance where it belongs.

Our Politician of the Year 2008: Boris Johnson.

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