High life | 13 June 2019

A lady once offered to go to bed with me if I could ensure that she would write The Spectator’s Diary. This was some time ago, but what I clearly recall is that I didn’t even try. To help her land the Diary, that is. I don’t wish to start any guessing games among the beautiful ‘gels’ that put out the world’s best weekly, but to my surprise that particular lady did get her wish some time after, with no help from yours truly. (What I can tell you is that all this did not happen under the present sainted editor’s watch.)

I was thinking of the Diary as I sat down to write because of the one by Jonathan Sumption in the 1 June issue, mentioned by a reader in a letter to the editor last week. The letter was headed ‘Power to the people’ and I totally agree. Jonathan Sumption’s claim that Brexit was ‘an act of economic vandalism by a bare majority’ is intellectual snobbery at best, and willful ignorance at worst. But who am I, a lonely Greek boy scratching out a living in a garret, to pass judgment on my intellectual superiors? I should stick to tennis and karate, two things I know a little bit about. But first something about the dreaded C-word — no, not cocaine, a substance I know so little about, nor Corbyn, someone I really don’t want to know anything about, but ‘C’ as in Conservative.

Here is the greatest exclusive since a Rothschild pigeon informed the banker about the victory at Waterloo: the Conservatives are up shit creek, no ifs or buts about it. Theresa May, Philip Hammond and the poison dwarf John Bercow, among many others, have made sure of it.