This column’s theory that, post-devolution, it is harder for Scottish MPs to lead a British political party seems to be taking some time to come true. Sir Menzies Campbell is considered just the ticket. He looks dignified and trustworthy. Rather as Colin Powell said that he benefited because he was ‘not that black’, Sir Ming is not that Scottish. There is only a slight accent, just the reassuring, prudent yet kindly tone of the lowlander who looks after the family money. Friends in Fife North East, where Ming is the Member, tell me that his imitation of the least threatening sort of Tory is brilliant and that his wife, Elspeth, is even better. If you look up Sir Ming in Who’s Who, you will see his wife described as ‘Elspeth Mary Urquhart or Grant-Suttie, d. of Maj.-Gen. R.E. Urquhart, CB, DSO’. At first I thought that the ‘or’ must be a misprint for ‘of’, being one of those Scottish surnames like Macpherson of Cluny. But no, it turns out that Elspeth was once married to a Mr Grant-Suttie, but Sir Menzies eventually replaced him. At their wedding in 1970, when Ming was still famous as an Olympic athlete, the speaker declared that ‘the fastest man in the world has married the fastest woman’.
In the wake of Charles Kennedy’s announcement that he had a drink problem came a good deal of public anger at the fact that this had been an ‘open secret’ in Fleet Street. ‘Why was this important truth withheld from us?’ people asked. Actually, there had been plenty of published press discussion of the subject for years, mostly jokes and slight hints, sometimes direct accusations. But the full story was never told because of lack of proof. The episode illustrates the sharp difference between a fact that ‘everyone knows’ and an actual admission by the person involved. Such admissions are the key thing that the press need before we can declare open season on somebody. Public figures often feel a great desire to make these admissions, partly because they tend to believe, wrongly, tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. This was the mistake that Prince Charles made with his admission of adultery with Mrs Parker Bowles, and the mistake that David Cameron avoided with his refusal to answer the question about drugs at Oxford. Once the admission is made, it can never be rescinded, and reporters can ask the next question and the next — When? Where? Who? Whisky? Gin? How many bottles? etc., for ever afterwards.
Poor Lembit Opik MP, with touching but misguided loyalty, explained that lying is an inescapable part of alcoholism, which is true, and that therefore Mr Kennedy should not be criticised but should go on being leader because he couldn’t help it. Through the crisis, deployed on both sides of the argument about whether he should stay or go, came the refrain that ‘alcoholism is a disease’. I understand why people say this. They want to point out that addiction is a congenital propensity in some people, and that it has physical and mental symptoms which require medical treatment. But it seems misleading. If you have cholera or TB, your recovery cannot be brought about by clubbing together with other sufferers and making an act of will or of surrender to a ‘higher power’. We congratulate alcoholics who stay off the bottle because we know that they only continue to do so through strength of character. What would there be to applaud if they had simply been the victims of a fever?
David Cameron complains that W.H. Smith offers cut-price chocolate at its checkouts for people buying newspapers. You have only to reverse his sentence to see how irritating it is when politicians start attacking the sale of perfectly legal goods — would W.H. Smith be naughty if it offered cut-price newspapers to people buying chocolate?
No one accused the late Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, of being an interesting figure. Short of something to say to an Egyptian woman with whom he was dancing in a Cairo nightclub, he is supposed to have asked, ‘Ever been to Tidworth?’ But I find the catalogue of his property to be sold at Christie’s at the end of the month fascinating. It gives an insight into the world of pre-war British royalty with its mixture of public duty and heavy luxury. Here is a hideous silver-gilt beaker from the Kaiser for Prince Henry’s christening, there a Victorian silver vesta case enamelled as a white calling card saying ‘Albert of Schleswig-Holstein’. You can buy the Emperor Haile Selassie’s Belgian cigarette case, Queen Mary’s painted bed-tray or five of the Duke’s sporrans. A single lot of books includes The National Stud by George Fothergill, Australian Chivalry by J.L. Treloar, My Horse Warrior by Lord Mottistone and The Holy Koran, presented by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Nairobi. And, yes, on the occasion of his marriage, Prince Henry received a silver inkwell from the Tidworth branch of the British Legion (estimate £100–200, proceeds to Clubs for Young People and the Army Benevolent Fund).
The government seems to be wasting almost as much time trying to ban smoking in public as it did on hunting. As with the latter, problems of enforcement do not seem to deter them. Here is a passage from Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse, published in 1915. The scene is a boxing match in a criminal part of New York. A ‘burly gentleman in shirt sleeves’ enters the ring, introduces the contestants and says: ‘Gentlemen will kindly stop smokin’.’ Wodehouse continues, ‘The audience did nothing of the sort. Possibly they did not apply the description to themselves.’
Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, is fast becoming the mainland’s Fidel Castro, and is lionised for his anti-Americanism. Tom Gross’s admirable Middle East dispatches on the internet picked up Chavez’s Christmas message. The newspapers did not report it, I think. ‘The descendants of the crucified Christ,’ said Chavez, ‘have taken ownership of the riches of the world, a minority has taken ownership of the gold of the world, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good lands, petrol….’ It is interesting how anti-Semitism is creeping back to respectability on the Left. Ten years ago, the idea of Holocaust Memorial Day was the politically correct thing to support. Now the Left edges away from it, mainly because Muslims don’t like it. The new President of Iran says that the Holocaust never happened, as he plans a second one with his nuclear programme.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum, so this column will contain nothing about the death of Lord Stratford, better known as Tony Banks.
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