Home > The Magazine > Features

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

‘I’m not an ambassador for New Labour, I’m an MP’

Martin Rowson

Wednesday, 6th August 2008

In the latest of his occasional series, Martin Rowson talks to Bob Marshall-Andrews, serial Labour rebel who had the entertaining cheek to accuse Miliband of disloyalty

You can see her point. After all, we’ve all come to think of Marshall-Andrews and disloyalty in the same way that we think of horses and carriages or Keats and embarrassment. Like the Bishop of Southwark, it’s what he does, which means that anything else Marshall-Andrews might do is almost beyond analysis. And because the normal rules don’t apply in his case, I can’t tell if his intervention was a joke, or mischief-making, or an attempt to get Miliband on to the backbenches so he can deliver the coup de grace, or what. Still, it’s worth pausing for a moment and essaying a brief deconstruction of Toynbee’s use of punctuation. That defining exclamation mark (the kind you’d use after, say, Herod the Great in a discussion on nursery provision) is pure Marshall-Andrews. Despite his rather squat physiognomy — Simon Hoggart has described him as looking like a cross between Dennis the Menace and Dennis’s dog Gnasher — Marshall-Andrews is almost a walking exclamation mark, like the one at the end of Oklahoma!

This is a cheap way of pointing out that, like the previous subjects of this series, Ann Widdecombe and the Hamiltons, Marshall-Andrews straddles that blurred dividing line between politics and showbiz. All of them have either achieved or augmented fame or notoriety beyond the House of Commons by willingly embracing light entertainment, and all of them have appeared on Have I Got News For You, a programme which can bestow on its guests the mantle of either National Joke or National Treasure, depending on how they cut the mustard. But while Widdecombe freely admits that she plays the media in order to get the widest possible audience for her political programme, and the Hamiltons, more or less by accident, achieved a kind of redemption through comedy, Marshall-Andrews is different.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 Next page

More articles from: Martin Rowson | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Thank goodness we can have a run on the pound when we need one

Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer looks ahead to next week’s Pre-Budget Report and reflects on George Osborne’s contentious remarks about the devaluation of sterling. It looks like Gordon Brown is getting away with his borrowing binge — leaving the Tories isolated

I loved Oliver Stone’s Bush film — and I know why the critics hated it

Rod Liddle

The movie W. did not provide the crude anti-Bush agitprop that the reviewers craved, says Rod Liddle. This was precisely its strength: we need to get inside the minds even of those we most deplore

The great Tory tax and spend battle: seconds out...

Fraser Nelson and Daniel Finkelstein

In the wake of Cameron’s decision to drop his pledge to match Labour spending, Fraser Nelson and Daniel Fin kelstein of the Times trade rhetorical blows over the issue that is gripping and troubling the Conservative party as it adjusts to the transformed economic context

Where is our inspiration when we most need it?

Bryan Forbes

Bryan Forbes remembers listening to Churchill as a 14-year-old evacuee and now looks with envy at Obama’s capacity to galvanise hope. Where are his UK counterparts?

For a bit of perspective, try thinking Jurassic

Christopher Lloyd

The first takeaways originated about 150 million years ago, says Christopher Lloyd; global travel is pretty ancient, too. And as for democracy...

Want to cut taxes? First cut spending. Here’s how

Fraser Nelson

After a week of clamorous competition between the parties over tax cuts, Fraser Nelson offers a guide to paying for them: a programme of spending cuts that would preserve core services but shave off the fat of the Brown years. All that is needed is political will

The Tory quest for a fiscal Holy Grail is doomed

Irwin Stelzer

Brown’s golden rules have been exposed as a sham, says Irwin Stelzer, but the Tory response has been feeble. Their target should be the PM’s feathering of Old Labour nests

Amid the financial turmoil, Peter versus George is the key battle

Fraser Nelson

Stand by for a mighty clash between two politicians, says Fraser Nelson. The now infamous dinner between Mandelson and Osborne was a cordial parting for power-brokers of different generations who will fight each other savagely for electoral advantage

If Miliband becomes PM, I’ll join the right-wing coup to topple him

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is outraged by the Foreign Secretary’s alleged comparison of himself to Michael Heseltine: like comparing a Big Beast to a stumpy little Muntjac deer. Where have all the political giants gone?

Welcome to the new austerity era, Mr Cameron

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson says that the Tory leader must not be tempted by a ‘safety first’ strategy at his conference in Birmingham. The global financial crisis has transformed the political context and left an opening for the Conservatives to promise true radicalism and to be proudly bold