Already a subscriber? Log in
Enter our winner, whose European Scrutiny Select Committee demonstrated in cool analysis and then heated face-to-face exchanges that the Reform Treaty was, indeed, substantially the same as the fallen Constitution and, no less important, that the deal Britain had struck was not quite as marvellous as ministers claimed.
One judge hailed this as “Parliament at its finest.”
In recognition of this, our winner is the MP for Linlithgow and Falkirk East, Michael Conarty.
PEER OF THE YEAR
The judges’ discussions focused on the general excellence of the Upper House this year in acting as a brake on the wilder decisions of the Commons, and the sound sense enshrined in its walls – a tradition we hoped would not be drained by the next and apparently inevitable phase of reform.
Indeed, it was suggested that rather like the island of Malta winning the George Cross after the Second World War, the award should be bestowed upon the whole second chamber. However, the practicalities of getting all 751 Lords Spiritual and Temporal up here on stage eluded us.
Instead, we quickly decided to give this honour to a peer who is, in fact, without peer.
At the next election there for the first time will be citizens entitled to vote who were not born when she was Prime Minister. But the judges were struck not only by her continued grip on the national imagination but by the enthusiasm with which senior parliamentary figures – not to mention visiting international statesmen – still flock to her side. It seemed fitting that in February she became the first living Prime Minister to be honoured with a statue in the House of Commons.
“I might have preferred iron but bronze will do,” she declared at its unveiling;
Ladies and gentlemen: the Peer of the Year is the Iron Lady herself, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.
SPEECH OF THE YEAR
In the era of sound bites and slogans, it has become commonplace to declare the age of great parliamentary rhetoric.
This year’s winner is living proof that the doom-mongers are wrong and has been since he burst upon the parliamentary scene in 1989, barely out of short trousers but already able to read as many volumes of Hansard a day as he could down pints of beer.
His speech on 20 March to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade was even by his own formidable standards, a tour de force. It laced together a rich understanding of history with a profound sense of the contemporary. It rose so high above party politics that the speaker even found it in his heart to be nice to John Prescott. It
Addressing himself to Wilberforce, he said: “At a time when people in this country are sadly disillusioned with politicians and the political process, his conduct was of a most remarkable parliamentarian, placing mankind above party, principle above politics, and results above personal ambition.”
But this was a spur to action as well as an act of commemoration. Our winner spoke gravely of the evil of 21st Century human trafficking. “Just as the baton from the abolitionists was passed on to other parliaments and nations around the world who followed suit in outlawing slavery, it now rests with governments and parliaments of our time.”
The judges were also impressed by the sheer cheek of the winner in managing to get a plug for his new book – a biography of Wilberforce – into paragraph two.
The winner of the Speech of the Year Award is the Rt Hon William Hague.
RESIGNATION OF THE YEAR
As the First Decade of New Labour gave way to Gordon’s Age of Change, there were plenty of resignations – voluntary or otherwise – to pick from.
Very much in the voluntary category, and smooth as sgian dubh passing through butter was our Guest of Honour’s elegant decision to stand down as Home Secretary. But – much as the judges liked his style – they felt it would be tricky for him to give the award to himself.
There was in any case another resignation which, as exits go, rivalled the final season of the Sopranos.
And there was so much of it: from a school playground, to last year’s Labour conference, on to Trimdon Labour club, back to a special party conference in June and then the final farewell in the Commons on June 27.
The judges felt that the former PM’s Blarewell tour was vindicated by its magnificent final performance in the Commons where all the participants rose to the occasion: other party leaders delivered warm tributes, and the man himself struck just the right note of lightness.
“This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others,” he said, in traditional fashion. “In addition to my duties in the house, I will have no such further meetings today – or any other day.”
His concluding words were – “I wish everyone, friend or foe, well and that is that, the end.” And – friend or foe – the Commons gave him a standing ovation.
Our resignation of the year is awarded to the Rt Hon Tony Blair.
MINISTER TO WATCH
In this category, we were sorely tempted by the frequently photo-shopped Culture Secretary James Purnell, who could be watched or not watched: according to taste. Now you see him now you don’t.
The judges’ discussion in this category was partly semantic. Did the phrase “to watch” imply the likelihood o f future glory – or did it mean “minister to keep under heavy surveillance”.
Happily, our winner ticks both boxes.
Already a rising star in his party since his election as an MP in 2004, he made his name and caught the eye of Tony Blair after the last election with some sharp analysis showing how the next election will be won and lost in Labour marginals.
As health minister, he earned his ministerial spurs in some tough battles, and proved himself an eloquent speaker, but it is in his current role as minister of state for borders and immigration that the judges felt he had, in mafia terms, made his bones.
Bombarded on all sides by media attack and by chickens hurtling back to roost, this minister has shown a remarkable capacity to stay upright and keep fighting. Some in his party talk of him as a future leader. His current job will make or break that ambition.
Then to the second definition: the very day after the judges’ final decision-making lunch, the winner was fined £100 after admitting using his mobile phone while driving. Very naughty: we’ll be keeping an eye on you, minister.
But for all the right reasons, please join me in congratulating this year’s Minister to Watch: Liam Byrne.
MARATHON MAN OF THE YEAR
We come now to a judges’ special award, given to an MP whose sheer tenacity and stamina has earned him a place in the history books.
Now in his 82nd year, he has been a prominent feature in political life since the 1950s – a thorn in the side of all who would deal with Dublin or, in his view, appease nationalist sentiment, from Terence O’Neill to Brian Faulkner. First elected as MP for North Antrim in 1970, he has since earned the extraordinary accolade of being a member of the Lower House, an MEP and a Member of the Legislative Assembly in Ulster.
For half a century his palm was a bright red, his name synonymous with the word “No”. John Hume once said to our winner, “If the word ‘no’ were to be removed from the English language, you’d be speechless, wouldn’t you!” To which he replied, “No, I wouldn’t!”
He called the Pope Anti-Christ, the Queen of being Tony Blair’s parrot, described alcohol as the “devil’s buttermilk”.
Then last year began one of the most extraordinary rapprochements ever witnessed in these shores, as the DUP agreed to fresh elections and, crucially the inclusion of Sinn Fein in the executive. Not so much the lion lying down with the lamb, as trying to eat it, stopping at the last moment, apologising and then suggesting the world’s first leonine-ovine civil partnership.
Thus it was that the man who says No became Ulster’s very own man from Del Monte and said yes. On May 8, he and Martin McGuinness – a self-confessed former member of the IRA – formed a coalition government together. The skies over Stormont blackened with pigs merrily flying, to the noisy sound of a thousand newspaper columnists chewing on their hats and the announcement that an ice-skating rink has just opened in Hell.
Ladies and gentlemen: please join me in saluting our Marathon Man. The Revd and Rt Hon Dr Paisley.
CAMPAIGNER OF THE YEAR
Our winner last year, Jon Cruddas, was commended for his magnificent fight against racism.
This year’s winner has taken on another, no less rampant blight, namely the scourge of social breakdown.
A former leader of his party, who then styled himself the Quiet Man, and even then was told to pipe down, he has come back with a bold and impressive vengeance, pursuing his career-long interest in the alleviation of poverty.
His work for the Conservative policy review process on “Breakdown Britain” has attracted plaudits across the political spectrum and was the subject of a moving address to the Tory party conference in Blackpool.
But he has also made his case often and well in Parliament, notably in an Opposition debate on social policy and the alleviation of poverty in July.
Rehabilitated from the unhappy events of 2003 and more influential than ever, he is a parliamentarian of impeccable integrity and guts, who has truly changed the terms of political trade.
Ladies and gentlemen: the Campaigner of the Year is the Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith.
PARLIAMENTARIAN OF THE YEAR
The coveted award of Parliamentarian of the Year, though not our final honour, is the Oscar di tutti Oscari in this sense: it embodies the core value of these awards, namely that Parliament still matters in an age when much, perhaps most politics goes on outside the walls of the Palace of Westminster.
But what – in an age of devolution – do we mean by “Parliament”?
This year, for the first time, the judges reasoned that, for better or for worse, there are two functioning Parliaments: one sovereign in Westminster, the other devolved in Edinburgh.
And it was to Holyrood that the panel’s thoughts quickly turned.
The Scottish elections in May, which delivered an SNP executive, were not only a kick in the teeth for Gordon Brown in his own backyard – though they were certainly that. And the Prime Minister will not quickly forget our winner describing him as “feartie” for deciding not to call a general election.
No: these devolved elections also represented a moment of history in the annals of the Union: a nationalist party established north of the border campaigning for full independence and budgetary control by 2017.
The Tories had already been routed in Scotland. Now Labour has been seen off too, and the ramifications of that are still sinking in. Suddenly, the break-up of the United Kingdom is no longer a remote prospect. The West Lothian Question and the Barnett Formula are suddenly the stuff of taxi driver’s fury – if not quite phrased in those terms. A historic moment of decision approaches that strikes at the very heart of what this country is, and shall be.
Whatever your view on that great question, the judges felt it was right to salute the man whose brilliant tactics in the Scottish Parliament laid the foundations for an extraordinary victory.
This year’s Parliamentarian of the Year – an award that is, for the first time, devolved – is Alex Salmond.
POLITICIAN OF THE YEAR
Our final award today was also the award which our judges bestowed most quickly and with one voice.
The political sensation of the year was not the change of Government, an event which Gordon Brown has been planning and choreographing since he seized control of the political strategy room at Kirkcaldy West primary school in 1956.
No, it was the astonishing up-to-the-wire cancellation of the planned autumn election in October that really shook Westminster to its foundations.
Why did Gordon do it? To give him time to set out his vision, he claimed. Oh, really?
It was the polls wot postponed it – and particularly the polls in the Labour marginals.
In those crucial seats, the Brownite number-crunchers found terrifying evidence that one policy in particular had caught the eye of the public.
The Tories’ proposals to cut inheritance tax, against all expectation, had struck a nerve. This was not in the Labour script, was not compatible with the Gordon 2007 software that had been loaded into the electoral machine. No matter: the figures were clear. Brown backed down, and the election was cancelled in a single, diffident interview with Andrew Marr.
Rarely, if ever, has a single policy proposal by an Opposition politician changed the political weather and shifted the political markets so spectacularly and so suddenly.
The architect of that policy appears most weeks in the Spectator’s secret diary written by Tamzin Lightwater as “Gids”.
But it more respectfully that I invite you to congratulate this year’s Threadneedle/Spectator Politician of the Year: the Shadow Chancellor, the Rt Hon George Osborne.
Also in Politics
Also by Matthew Dancona
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in