The Spectator's Notes

29 September 2007

Was there a single respect in which Gordon Brown made a good speech at Bournemouth?

It is strange that people keep being surprised at Mr Brown’s ‘all the talents’ technique of including slightly wistful non-Labour people in his ‘big tent’. In this, as in so much else, he is only continuing Tony Blair’s practice. I wonder whether the next Tory to be seduced will be Michael Ancram. You might think this impossible, since Mr Ancram recently, subversively reminded everyone that he was truer blue than David Cameron, and called for a return to Conservative principles. But Mr Brown, speaking against a blue backdrop at Bournemouth, is happy to play up to such people. I doubt if Mr Ancram will actually join the Labour party, but he has reached that stage in his career when he would obviously like an interesting job of some kind. I notice that the president of his foreign policy think-tank, the Global Strategy Forum, is Johann Eliasch, the multi-millionaire who has drifted away from the Tories to help the Prime Minister with something or other. I notice, too, that Mr Brown has suddenly become very strong on the wickedness of Robert Mugabe, and this is a cause that Mr Ancram (to his credit) has long espoused. In the early Blair years, the former Tory deputy chief whip, Alistair Goodlad, became the high commissioner to Australia. Is it unimaginable that Mr Ancram should get something similar? Perhaps he could be our ambassador to the United States. That post was once held by his grandfather who, unlike Mr Ancram, traded under his real name, the Marquess of Lothian.