The Spectator's Notes

7 November 2009

Only a little more than a year ago, Gordon Brown was considered very clever when he had a word with Sir Victor Blank at a cocktail party and encouraged him to merge Lloyds and HBOS to help save the British banking system.

Without taking sides on how to classify cannabis, I feel a little suspicious of Professor David Nutt, the dismissed government scientific adviser on drugs. He said that taking cannabis was less dangerous than ‘horse-riding’. As a columnist, I feel affronted. Flip comparisons like that are our stock-in-trade, and do not become scientists, who are supposed to speak soberly. One is left feeling that Professor Nutt likes the sound of his own voice (an impression confirmed by his description of himself as the government’s ‘major expert’) and has somehow got it in for equestrians. His remark resonates oddly, rather like when the then Bishop of Durham, Dr David Jenkins, was criticised for saying that the Resurrection was ‘a conjuring trick with bones’. What he actually said was almost the opposite — that it was ‘not just a conjuring trick with bones’ — and yet there was a certain arrogance in his choice of phrase which made the criticism of him essentially correct.

There is uncertainty, I gather, about where the Camerons will live if David makes it to 10 Downing Street. The flat there is unsuitable for a family, and besides, Samantha Cameron initially held to the view that family life would be better protected if it could be kept away from the office. Now, though, she is said to have come round to the idea that it is simply impossible to separate the two if her husband is to see his children and her and run the country. The Blairs’ solution was to occupy the larger residence at No. 11 and to shove the then childless Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, into the flat at No. 10. But if Mr Cameron makes George Osborne Chancellor, he will have to contend with the fact that the Osbornes also have young children. One of the difficulties in this matter is that it would be hubristic to think about it now, and yet those involved cannot quite avoid doing so. A mischievous solution would be to make William Hague, who does not have children, the Chancellor instead. It sounds improbable, but one has to remember that, at root, almost every problem in Britain is related to housing.

Recently negotiating to buy a small piece of land, I complained to several people about the cost. The jocular answer was always the same: ‘They’re not making it any more.’ True, but, when you think about it, why not? In the Middle Ages, large bits of land, some of it on Romney Marsh, near where we live, was reclaimed from the sea by ‘inning’, creating flat, fertile pastures. And look at the Netherlands. Is it beyond our modern abilities to do the same?

Seen at the state banquet for the President of India at Buckingham Palace last week: the Foreign Secretary David Miliband facing one way all evening to hang upon every word of the Prince of Wales, never once turning to the unfortunate woman on his other side.