Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

My advice to Boris’s keepers

I had never heard of Mark Field until he was suspended for removing, in a commendably vigorous manner, the Greenpeace protester Janet Barker from a black tie event in London, where guests had gathered to listen to a speech from the man who is still Chancellor for a bit, Philip Hammond. I wondered immediately if Field could be shoehorned into the leadership contest somehow, given his decisiveness and admirable restraint. Faced with Ms Barker, I might have acted with less restraint, even if I agree with most of the stuff she’s protesting about. She posed a possible danger to guests and for feminists to say that she didn’t, because she’s a lady, seems to be having one’s cake and eating it.

But it is not that that enrages. It is the sense of entitlement on her part, the preening narcissism. Mind you, on the other hand, if I had been listening to a speech by Philip Hammond I would have welcomed any interruption — even plague, pestilence and locusts. Free me from this interminable bondage! With the possible exception of Barry ‘Chauncey’ Gardiner, is there a more boring man in British politics?

It has been reported that 92 per cent of left-wing protesters in Berlin still live with their parents. In other words, they haven’t grown up. They have no real stake in the wider society, just — like Ms Barker — an epic sense of entitlement, the right to be serially indulged, to be spoon-fed and assuaged in their confected anger at the world and their need to feel important, without being manhandled from the room. I assume the proportions are pretty much the same over here, and that maybe the 8 per cent who don’t live with their parents live instead in accommodation bought for them by their parents, which is kind of the same thing, no?

Such is the status, I suspect, of that repulsive couple Tom Penn and Eve Leigh, who called the police when they heard an argument coming from the flat next to them, which was occupied by Boris Johnson and his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in