Charles Moore
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It must be true — because Mr Brown says it — that he has never hit anyone, but he has laid angry hands upon at least one. In the run-up to the 1997 election, Labour’s Welfare Committee was discussing Mr Brown’s ‘New Deal’, and Frank Field MP said he was not happy with it. Mr Brown came up to the relatively small and slight Mr Field, and shook him by the lapels: ‘Why do you disagree with me?’ he cried, ‘I thought you were my friend.’ ‘It’s because you’re my friend that I am disagreeing with you’, Mr Field is supposed to have replied. In this exchange, much of Mr Brown’s problem is encapsulated.
Before the bullying Brown and his ‘forces of hell’ story got going, the media were having a go at — I nearly said bullying — David Cameron. Mr Cameron has the temperament which understands that the Story is like a great wave, lifting people up and hurling people down, so you need the skills of a surfer to survive, and must not complain. But I did suddenly feel sorry for him when I heard about his New Year’s Eve. He went to a small party given by Jeremy Clarkson, his country neighbour. A witness present relates that, throughout the evening, almost every person came up to Mr Cameron, one by one, to tell him what he was doing wrong. Can you imagine a more dismal way of seeing in the New Year? People sometimes say that the worst thing about modern politics is having to affect an interest in the opinions of the Many, but it can never be as much torture as having to endure, when imprisoned at a social occasion, the opinions of the Few.
MPs are ‘state-catamites, upon whom any votes whatsoever may be begotten’. Thanks to Stuart Wheeler, businessman, philanthropist and sometime contributor to Tory coffers, for this quotation from the 17th century which appears in his new book, A Crisis of Trust (see page 17). It is somehow comforting that the problem of ‘lobby-fodder’, and even of abused allowances, has been with us for hundreds of years. But Mr Wheeler’s most powerful history lesson is more recent. He looks into the first granting of accommodation allowances under Ted Heath, in 1971. It resulted from MPs placing their case before the Top Salaries Review Board. By doing so, they for the first time made themselves ‘comparable’ — with middle-ranking civil servants — collecting allowances whenever they had to work in more than one place. Enoch Powell denounced the change, which also instituted MPs’ pensions, as ‘public and open corruption’, because it moved MPs from being unique representatives of voters to being part of the state apparatus. Mr Wheeler points out that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority recommended by Sir Christopher Kelly deepens this corruption, because it makes it even harder for the public to have any control, and it turns officials into the paymasters of those we elect. The counter-intuitive, but entirely right, Wheeler recommendation is that MPs should recover total control over their pay and allowances, with no comparators, no enhancements, no evasion of tax. ‘That is the only way we can retain a democratic say,’ he explains.
It would seem to be a pity that the Duke of Devonshire, of all people, says that the aristocracy is dead. He will give up his title, he promises, if hereditary peerages are entirely abolished, because ‘then it would be clear-cut what the people wanted’. Why should the popular will be the arbiter of rank, one might object. But one must bear in mind that remarks of this kind are part of the camouflage which aristocracy has adopted, to greater and lesser degrees, ever since the French Revolution. The Duke’s words have the same resonance as the phrase, ‘You must come again soon’: they are more polite than they are sincere. It is strange, though, how strong the imaginative pull of a title remains. Who would have thought that an American pop-star, wishing to ascend to the top of her profession, would have styled herself Lady Gaga?
And then there is Lady Goga, as she deserves to be known. Goga Ashkenazi is a Kazakh billionairess. She is in the latest edition of Hello! magazine because of her 30th birthday party at Tyringham Hall, Bucks, which cost £1.3 million. Hello!’s report mentions top guests like ‘property developer Nick Candy’ and his ‘lovely girlfriend, Australian singer Holly Vallance’, ‘Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova’, Nancy dell’Olio, and Robert Hanson making ‘hilarious and unrepeatable jokes’ while wearing a Borat mask. It also describes how a picture of Goga and her dog Mata Hari was projected over the entire facade of the house. Drinks were served — though I learn this from other sources than the coy Hello! — via four colossal ice sculptures of naked men. Vodka was poured through holes in their heads, coursing visibly down the inside of the bodies and then issuing from the penises. Goga Ashkenazi’s role in British society comes from the fact that it was she who persuaded a Kazakh friend to buy the Duke of York’s not very lovely house for £15 million, which was £3 million more than the already ambitious asking price. Prince Andrew was duly in attendance at her party. Another great friend of Goga is Saif Gaddafi, son of the great Libyan dictator, who sends her astonishing texts. Readers of this column may recall that it was Saif who joined the shooting weekend with the Rothschilds at Waddesdon at which Cherie Blair and Peter Mandelson were also, for parts, present, though, as lawyers remind me I must point out, they did not shoot anything or anyone. The aristocracy is dead. Long live the aristocracy!
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