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Saturday 22 November 2008

The winners of the political year

This is the text of the remarks that Matthew d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, delivered at the Spectator Threadneedle Parliamentarian of the Year awards lunch at Claridge’s Hotel.

Thus it was that the man who says No became Ulster’s very own man from Del Monte and said yes. On May 8, he and Martin McGuinness – a self-confessed former member of the IRA – formed a coalition government together. The skies over Stormont blackened with pigs merrily flying, to the noisy sound of a thousand newspaper columnists chewing on their hats and the announcement that an ice-skating rink has just opened in Hell.

Ladies and gentlemen: please join me in saluting our Marathon Man. The Revd and Rt Hon Dr Paisley.

CAMPAIGNER OF THE YEAR

Our winner last year, Jon Cruddas, was commended for his magnificent fight against racism.

This year’s winner has taken on another, no less rampant blight, namely the scourge of social breakdown.

A former leader of his party, who then styled himself the Quiet Man, and even then was told to pipe down, he has come back with a bold and impressive vengeance, pursuing his career-long interest in the alleviation of poverty.

His work for the Conservative policy review process on “Breakdown Britain” has attracted plaudits across the political spectrum and was the subject of a moving address to the Tory party conference in Blackpool.

But he has also made his case often and well in Parliament, notably in an Opposition debate on social policy and the alleviation of poverty in July.

Rehabilitated from the unhappy events of 2003 and more influential than ever, he is a parliamentarian of impeccable integrity and guts, who has truly changed the terms of political trade.

Ladies and gentlemen: the Campaigner of the Year is the Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith.

PARLIAMENTARIAN OF THE YEAR

The coveted award of Parliamentarian of the Year, though not our final honour, is the Oscar di tutti Oscari in this sense: it embodies the core value of these awards, namely that Parliament still matters in an age when much, perhaps most politics goes on outside the walls of the Palace of Westminster.

But what – in an age of devolution – do we mean by “Parliament”?

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