Charles Moore
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An oddity of the story is that, precisely because the Telegraph was anxious not to expose Mr Laws’s sexuality, it had planned to run the story in a low-key manner. It was only after it put it to Downing Street for a reaction that Mr Laws responded with a statement of contrition, in the course of which he revealed that his landlord was his sexual partner. He may have been right to do so — it avoided accusations of evasiveness — but he undoubtedly turned his own story into the ‘splash’. If it made any difference at all, Mr Laws’s sexual orientation probably made the press more hesitant: if he had been secretly claiming for rent paid to a female lover, he would have been undone even faster.
Years ago, I remember being told by a Tory politician who regarded David Laws highly that he agreed with Tory ideas on most points but felt that he couldn’t safely join the party because of what he saw as its anti-gay attitude. So it was fitting that, by circuitous means, he ended up in a Conservative-dominated government, justly admired by his Tory colleagues. Matthew Parris says that it is ‘stinking hypocrisy’ to want Mr Laws to come back while also arguing that he had to go. Surely it is simply logical. He did something indefensible, so he resigned; but he is much needed in government, and so, soonish, he should come back.
The troubles of the euro should remind us of something important. For years and years, people who opposed it were described as ‘head-bangers’ and ‘swivel-eyed’. We should wear that badge with pride, like those Conservatives who formed a Vermin Club after Aneurin Bevan said all Tories were vermin. It is only because we banged our heads for so long that it became impossible for governments of either party to take Britain into the single currency. And it was only because of James Goldsmith, widely believed to be mad, that politicians, in the run-up to the 1997 election, were forced to promise a referendum on the subject before going in. As a result, we stayed out. If Britain survives the economic and political catastrophe which now threatens the Continent, it will be because all the mad people were sane, and all the men of moderation were barking.
In the great list of government employees who earn more than the Prime Minister, two things stand out. The first is the proliferation of people called ‘chief executive’ (of the Met Office, the Shareholder Executive, the Pension, Disability and Carers Service etc) although they are, in fact, civil servants. This inappropriate title was conferred to pretend that they were businessmen, and thus, subliminally, to increase their pay and bonuses. Unlike businessmen, however, they cannot be sacked, so they should be retitled with the honoured clerical descriptions (permanent under-secretary, chief clerk etc) which would once have applied. The second is that [see last week’s Note about the World Cup], any link with sport is disproportionately rewarded. Jeremy Beeton, who is the Director General of the Government Olympic Executive, is near the top of the tree, with £225,000–£229,999 per annum. Wouldn’t it be closer to the Olympic ideal if he got nothing at all?
It may have been something to do with the sudden change from chill, lowering skies to the sunny summer freshness which, when it finally appears, makes Scotland the best place on earth, but on Monday we came upon a garden that seemed perfect. We were staying in Angus, and our host, James Stourton, took us to the House of Pitmuies, near Forfar. It is the epitome of what people mean by a ‘female’ garden, with its emphasis on plants rather than grands projets. Visitors enter through the wall to the kitchen garden and the outhouses, so it is like seeing the pantry of a big house before reaching the drawing-room. One feels flatteringly let into the place’s secrets. On the brochure, it says ‘limited disabled access’, but Mrs Farquhar Ogilvie, the garden’s owner and presiding genius, is herself in a wheelchair, and her devotion to her garden is such that nothing limits her access at all. It was an inspiring sight to see this old lady motoring herself round the borders and sitting happily amid her life’s work as other old ladies sit surrounded by their grandchildren.
As we drove away, James, who is the chairman of Sotheby’s UK, started talking about the art world. I was sitting in the back and could not hear him very well. At one point, I thought he referred to ‘Hannibal Lecters’. Actually, he was saying something about ‘collectors’, the subject of his next book. It struck me that ‘Hannibal Lecters’ would be fitting cockney rhyming slang for these people, famous for their ruthless obsessions: ‘’Ere’s another of them ’Annibals to see you, Chairman.’
I recently met a New Yorker who said he had been testing his eight-year-old daughter’s knowledge of geometry. ‘What is the shortest distance between two points?’ he asked her. ‘A taxi’, she replied.
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