I write this as I leave the Tory conference in Birmingham. I have covered most of these events (and many Labour ones too) since the beginning of the 1980s. They do not lift the heart, but it is always interesting to watch the activity of the tribe. I attended the 1997 conference at Blackpool after the Tories had been broken by Tony Blair. William Hague had just become leader. The tribe was in a state of tongue-tied mourning. The party faithful were perplexed that the Conservatives had bequeathed extremely favourable economic conditions and public finances and yet had been utterly rejected. The trappings of power still hung about the agenda and the rituals, but Blair had ‘stolen hence the life of the building’.
This time, though the defeat is even worse, the mood is far better. I think the Tories do want to recognise their failures. I even think a lot of them are pleased to have been beaten. The years from March 2020 (Covid begins…) have been agony. The cathartic stage of Greek tragedy has now been reached. It is a positive advantage that this year there is no leader’s speech to end the show. There is a choice of leader, and so the party members feel empowered. They (including far more young people than I had expected) crowd into the debates and listen responsively to what is said. They like ‘Why did it all go wrong?’ discussions. It should help unity in the coming years that so many activists were in at the beginning.
It is also marked how hard many of them are finding it to make up their minds about the candidates. They see the virtues and the faults of all four. Here is a summary of what they say: Kemi Badenoch is simultaneously the most striking and the riskiest. Robert Jenrick is the most skilled and well disciplined campaigner but his appeal to party atavism may put off non-Tories. Tom Tugendhat is the one who sounds most clearly suited to leading a nation but his message is not easy to encapsulate. James Cleverly could win ‘by mistake’, because he is everyone’s second choice.
Representatives want to back a candidate who really wants the job. My unscientific canvass says that, on this measure, Jenrick comes first, Tugendhat second, Badenoch (over-preoccupied with second-order rivalries) third, and Cleverly fourth – though one cannot discount the possibility that he is the tortoise against three hares. The candidate not present is Nigel Farage. Slightly against the mood of the moment, I suspect he won’t make it.
Birmingham, especially in the rain, is a grim place to navigate. It is something to do with its incomprehensible relationship between roads, waterways and pedestrians. Nowadays, there is the added hazard that hardly anyone knows where anything is. My Uber driver took me to the wrong conference centre and had not heard of the right one, though it is vast and central. Nor had he heard of the Library, the Symphony Hall or the Hyatt Hotel, all right in the middle and very famous. Later, I had to speak at the Grand Hotel. I had gone astray for 25 minutes and asked seven people and Google Maps (who misdirected me) before I found someone who knew. Did people predict the great unlearning of geography which technology has produced? I see it as a metaphor for our 21st-century predicament: we have lost the map.
When I was convicted for failing to pay my television licence, I noticed that everyone else up on the same charge appeared to be a single mother. The BBC’s enforcers pick on the vulnerable. I am glad that ministers are now talking of decriminalisation. But beware of what happens next. Labour, being Labour, will instinctively reach for the solution of charging the taxpayer for the licences of the poor, thus guaranteeing the BBC an income in perpetuity.
Now that French champagne houses are buying up land for making wine in Britain, they have begun to get more interested in the Channel Tunnel. They realise that the Eurostar will be useful for sales and tourism. They note that, since Covid, the Kent stations of Ashford and Ebbsfleet have ceased their international service. They want them revived. It is true that Ashford is charmless and Ebbsfleet is rather far from the wine country. I can’t see either becoming an Anglo version of Épernay, but I think the French are in the right. The current Eurostar is a tremendous missed opportunity to ensnare gourmets. The time approaches when, for the first time in human history, the French might cross the Channel for something to eat and drink.
This is the last Spectator of something like 750 edited by Fraser Nelson, easily a post-war record. I would argue that he is one of the two most consequential editors in the same period, the other being Alexander Chancellor. I would not like to decide which should take precedence. Sufficient to say that Alexander gave the paper the kiss of life and Fraser made it an unprecedented success. The two men are utterly different characters – Alexander was lazy and unpolitical, Fraser is hyper and steeped in Westminster – but both had/have the great gift of being respected and loved by their staff and contributors and I hope, by extension, their readers. Not the least of Fraser’s service has been to hold everything together so well during these 16 months of doubt about our ownership. At last, we have a new owner, Sir Paul Marshall, and now a glittering new editor, Michael Gove. The former has kindly asked me to become chairman, my task being to protect the ‘spirit’ of The Spectator. I hope this does not make me an unwelcome, ghostly presence, but I must admit that, 40 years after I became editor of The Spectator, I do not feel able to refuse. I have also been asked to continue with these Notes, and the spirit has moved me to accept.
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