Diary – 28 July 2006

It’s been a busy week. There was Charles Finch’s dinner for Cate Blanchett at Drones (Jack Nicholson as louche as ever; Juliette Lewis surprisingly normal); a Calvin Klein dinner at Locanda Locatelli, the YSL Serpentine party and the BSME party at the Ritz. Everyone has Cameron Tourette’s these days, and you can’t go anywhere without being bombarded with opinions about the Vigorous Young Leader. Having done more fieldwork than is strictly necessary, I’d say that six out of ten people I meet want to vote for him, with, on the one hand, people like Links chairman John Ayton saying, ‘His world is bigger than politics’, and those on the other wondering where all the policies went. This week one ridiculously famous actress told me, ‘My problem with him is the fact he’s not sexy. Although compared to Blair he’s Daniel Craig.’

I like DC a lot, but, having just read Compassionate Conservatism, the manifesto produced by Policy Exchange, I’m not sure decentralisation is such a sexy proposition. Not on a broad scale, anyway. No, what we want is a serious commitment to overhauling the criminal justice system. After all, it wasn’t the Tories who badgered John Reid into shaking up the Home Office, it was the media. 

I went to Le Caprice for lunch twice this week, and I don’t say that to show off, just to illustrate the fact that it has, over the years, become the Condé Nast canteen. So much so that when it sprouts in New York next year it is opening right next door to the CN headquarters. In September it celebrates 25 years as the restaurant of choice for the ladies (and occasional gentlemen) who lunch, a quarter of a century during which it has catered for everyone from Princess Diana to Jeffrey Archer.