Diary – 15 August 2019

I lay low during the ‘season’ as I can’t think what to say to people any more. I went to only two summer parties, a personal worst for me: Lady Annabel Goldsmith’s annual gold-plater in Richmond, and Jenni Russell and Stephen Lambert’s Notting Hill do, where I found myself introducing David Cameron to Seumas Milne. ‘You were at Eton and you went to Winchester,’ I said, as if the pair were shy teenagers at the Feathers Ball before the snogging, ‘so you two should get on like a house on fire!’ Seumas tried to recruit me in 2017 but I never came across. ‘Which party should I enter as a sleeper cell next?’ I joked (after I quit the Lib Dems they surged and as soon as I joined Change UK they tanked). ‘The Lib Dems,’ said Milne. ‘Labour,’ said Cameron. Which was elegant of the former PM as Labour is destroying itself without needing any outside agency to complete the job. Note: I’ve been a member of only two political parties. When I joined Change UK you could only be a ‘registered supporter’. Founder membership is now available for a fiver a month for any homeless progressive centrists out there. Don’t all rush at once!

I know what I did last summer. I crouched in a river valley in Somerset, as I worried that if I went away before the change of editors at my paper I might be sacked. In mid-August an email landed. It was from the incoming editor of the Mail on Sunday, Ted Verity, suggesting a coffee. How nice! I thought. Ted wants to meet his ‘star female columnist’ (not my words) before he gets his feet under the desk. I emailed back saying how much I was looking forward to working with him when he started in the autumn, but I was four hours west.