Labour activists are quietly amused that Mrs Thatcher’s death may lead to a library being built in her honour. ‘Tricky one for the Tories,’ says a top Labour figure. ‘Presumably David Cameron will open it. And Eric Pickles will close it.’
In Tory circles, meanwhile, the jokes are all about a future Cameron library. Built in a Tory-Lib Dem marginal, fuelled by solar panels, and administered by ethnically diverse and gender-balanced staff, the Cameron Centre for Reading Together will provide nothing but state-run newspapers and learned biographies of Tony Blair and Morrissey, with perhaps a folk music section near the front desk. Gay nuptials will be held in the annex, and there’ll be a permanent suite upstairs for Abu Qatada and family. ‘But seriously,’ a junior minister added, ‘it’ll never happen for Dave. He didn’t quite win an election so he doesn’t quite deserve a library.’
Happy news for Andrew Mitchell. The much-maligned former chief whip has landed a plumb job at Montrose Associates which gives advice to global clients about ‘political and reputational threats’ that erupt in ‘an increasingly complex and unpredictable world’. His daily stipend is said to be three thousand quid. The bicycle-loving Mr Mitchell is an ideal choice for a firm that provides ‘bespoke analysis’ and ‘360 degree external assessment’.
Still it rumbles on. Lord Carey, the last Archbishop of Canterbury but one, grabbed the headlines this Easter by accusing David Cameron of undermining Christianity by pressing on with gay marriage and making the faithful feel like a persecuted minority. But centre-ground Anglicans were incensed that the former archbishop had managed to score two own goals at once. He’d offended No. 10 without securing any concessions, and he’d portrayed the Church as a nest of bigoted homophobes. Father Gillean Craig, the vicar of St Mary Abbot’s church in Kensington, where the PM worships, was so distressed by Carey’s outburst that he sent a conciliatory epistle to Downing Street assuring the PM that mainstream Anglicans support him and not the ex-ABC. ‘Carey’s trouble,’ says a devotee who polishes the font at a smart Oxfordshire parish, ‘is that he’s a doddery, misguided, evangelical has-been — and I speak as a friend.’
A key date looms in our island story. The artist Rachel Whiteread passes the age of 50 on 20 April. Each of us will, of course, be marking this important event with private celebrations in the company of friends and family. And the Government Art Collection wants to join in the general festivities by nominating a Whiteread sculpture as its Featured Work for April. They’ve chosen ‘Untitled (Trafalgar Square Plinth)’, created in 2000. Not the original resin cast of the plinth, which was wittily inverted upon the granite original, but a scale model, or maquette, which appears on the GAC website along with footnotes to help the untutored achieve a deeper understanding of the pallid lump. If you stare at it, you’ll notice that ‘the translucency of the maquette affects the play of light upon it; at times it appears to glow with reflected light.’ Fair enough. But everything in our field of vision ‘appears to glow with reflected light’. Otherwise we couldn’t see it.
Countless treasures nestle in the care of the Government Art Collection. Among the highlights are ‘Things’ by Martin Creed, consisting of the word ‘Things’ in yellow neon. At present it’s on display in Belfast. Bridget Riley’s ‘Reflection’ — a vertical rainbow — adorns our Cairo embassy. And Marta Marce’s ‘I Am Throwing The Ball’ — coloured circles on a white background — has been despatched to Spain. Hats off to the GAC. Clearly someone in charge has decided to protect us from British artists by buying up their stuff and shipping it all a long way away. Keep up the good work.
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