UFO Info Week-End

He was mustard-keen even then and never missed a trick to bark back at his critics

He was mustard-keen, even then, and never missed a trick to bark back at his critics. He would spend his time parading up and down the Kings Road in all the very latest “with- it” knitwear in the hope of catching the eye of some eagle-eyed fashion photographer. I remember well those days in the late 1950s when he was scratching a living as a male model. Michael responded by calling these whingers “silly” and “hysterical” and “totally synthetic” Spot on, Michael!

Michael has never lacked pluck. I applaud his reaction after the two feeble Chief Whips of the Labour and Liberal (dread word!) Parties began to whine their little heads off after falling for the Conservative Party’s good-natured and highly seasonal “doubling-up” gag. Tony Blair still has time to call a halt before whole Cabinets end up on Celebrity Squares; his successors will find the task progressively harder.

So far, we have had only one Prime Minister standing on a Little Chef ticket. As fast as we are calling for committees to ensure our politicians tell the truth, Blair may complain, we are requiring new and elaborate ways in which they are to be inauthentic.This is not good enough. Could it be that we, the voters, have muddled up democracy with the notion that politicians should be boys-and girls-next-door? Or confused the requirement that a politician be of sound character, which is not unreasonable, with a demand that he or she be a lovable character, which is quite unnecessary. But he has been the most assiduous maker of speeches in the country since Wilson again.
All these laudable performances and worthy achievements lose their lustre when set beside the near-universal belief that he is going to win the election and that nothing can now stop him They may, to be sure, have contributed to this belief But what counts is the evidence of the opinion polls. He has avoided the set-piece House of Commons confrontation, as Mr Neil Kinnock imprudently did not.

But in 1995 he possessed no such knowledge and still managed to make a successful speech. This year, admittedly, he had a fairly shrewd idea of what they were, owing to the leak to the Daily Mirror. Mr Blair has also done well in his replies to the Budget, the most difficult speech a Leader of the Opposition has to make, because he has had no prior notice of the Chancellor’s proposals. In fact (by which I mean, as people generally do when they use the phrase, in my opinion) he is in this respect the most accomplished Leader of the Opposition since Harold Wilson, who inaugurated the vulgarisation of this slice of parliamentary life 33 years ago. He is the equal, sometimes the master, of Mr John Major at Prime Minister’s Questions.