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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.

This year, for the first time, the judges reasoned that, for better or for worse, there are two functioning Parliaments: one sovereign in Westminster, the other devolved in Edinburgh.

And it was to Holyrood that the panel’s thoughts quickly turned.

The Scottish elections in May, which delivered an SNP executive, were not only a kick in the teeth for Gordon Brown in his own backyard – though they were certainly that. And the Prime Minister will not quickly forget our winner describing him as “feartie” for deciding not to call a general election.

No: these devolved elections also represented a moment of history in the annals of the Union: a nationalist party established north of the border campaigning for full independence and budgetary control by 2017.

The Tories had already been routed in Scotland. Now Labour has been seen off too, and the ramifications of that are still sinking in. Suddenly, the break-up of the United Kingdom is no longer a remote prospect. The West Lothian Question and the Barnett Formula are suddenly the stuff of taxi driver’s fury – if not quite phrased in those terms. A historic moment of decision approaches that strikes at the very heart of what this country is, and shall be.

Whatever your view on that great question, the judges felt it was right to salute the man whose brilliant tactics in the Scottish Parliament laid the foundations for an extraordinary victory.

This year’s Parliamentarian of the Year – an award that is, for the first time, devolved – is Alex Salmond.

POLITICIAN OF THE YEAR

Our final award today was also the award which our judges bestowed most quickly and with one voice.

The political sensation of the year was not the change of Government, an event which Gordon Brown has been planning and choreographing since he seized control of the political strategy room at Kirkcaldy West primary school in 1956.

No, it was the astonishing up-to-the-wire cancellation of the planned autumn election in October that really shook Westminster to its foundations.

Why did Gordon do it? To give him time to set out his vision, he claimed. Oh, really?

It was the polls wot postponed it – and particularly the polls in the Labour marginals.

In those crucial seats, the Brownite number-crunchers found terrifying evidence that one policy in particular had caught the eye of the public.

The Tories’ proposals to cut inheritance tax, against all expectation, had struck a nerve. This was not in the Labour script, was not compatible with the Gordon 2007 software that had been loaded into the electoral machine. No matter: the figures were clear. Brown backed down, and the election was cancelled in a single, diffident interview with Andrew Marr.

Rarely, if ever, has a single policy proposal by an Opposition politician changed the political weather and shifted the political markets so spectacularly and so suddenly.

The architect of that policy appears most weeks in the Spectator’s secret diary written by Tamzin Lightwater as “Gids”.

But it more respectfully that I invite you to congratulate this year’s Threadneedle/Spectator Politician of the Year: the Shadow Chancellor, the Rt Hon George Osborne.

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