Any other business

For a party which all agree is unlikely to win a general election in the foreseeable future, the Conservatives arouse disproportionate interest. For weeks, an unprecedentedly open dispute between Mr Blair and Mr Brown has racked what has long looked like becoming the natural party of government. But hardly anyone is really interested. Nearly everyone assumes that an unprecedentedly open dispute between Mr Blair and Mr Brown always racks the natural party of government. But the Conservatives? Now there is an interesting situation, everyone seems to agree. Not just what is going to happen but will having a ‘big beast’ of a leader make all the difference, and so on? People still seem to be interested in what happened. What brought about the fall of the little beast?

Earlier this week my dear friend the writer William Shawcross left a message on my answerphone. I am sure he will not mind if I repeat it. ‘Hi, Stephen, it’s William, your old friend. How are you? I have just heard some wonderful rumour today that you are going to use your entire column to denounce Associated Newspapers for its contemptible torture of both the Prince of Wales and George Smith. If this is true, I am so pleased. Congratulations, old bean.’ This message, it can be fairly said, is delivered in tones of jocular irony. Nor do I think that Boris Johnson, the editor of this magazine, will mind if I repeat what he said to me on the same subject.

If the Daily Mirror reported the Second Coming, would anyone believe it? Probably not. There is a general view in polite society that the newspaper and its editor, Piers Morgan, are not entirely to be trusted. This may be an opinion based on prejudice, or it may have its roots in solid fact. This week the Mirror has been serialising the new book by Paul Burrell, former butler to Diana, Princess of Wales. My impression is that many people are not taking its revelations completely seriously, particularly Mr Burrell’s claim that ten months before she died Diana predicted the circumstances of her demise. An allegation which might have rocked the nation had it first appeared in the Guardian or the Times has had a limited effect.

Nigel Dempster was the most famous print journalist of modern times, even though he seldom appeared on television. I remember his coming down to Oxford in the early Seventies. A group of admirers lured him to the Saraceno restaurant in Magdalen Street. Foremost among them was Tina Brown, already setting her compass in the direction of Fleet Street. Everyone was entranced by Nigel. There was scarcely anyone in the world whom a group of undergraduates would rather have met. Last week Nigel left the Daily Mail after 30 years. He was a raffish and glamorous poacher who gradually turned into a grand gamekeeper. To start with, he saw much to mock in the ways of the aristocracy. As time went on, he found these people less risible, and grew to like them.

Ninety-eight per cent of the British population, according to the results of the government’s ‘national debate’, say that they do not wish to eat genetically modified food. Eighty-four per cent say that GM food is ‘an unacceptable interference with nature’, and 93 per cent say that not enough is known about the long-term health effects of GM foods. So much for the views of the average Briton, chomping his way through a burger of mechanically recovered meat and slurping some lurid concoction from a can plastered top to bottom with E numbers.

It strikes me, as I follow the Hutton inquiry, that almost any human activity can be made to appear questionable, even dodgy. I think of my – not untypical – hurried departure for London yesterday morning. Already late, I filled the dog's water bowl directly from a jug, though I knew it needed washing out; threw a bank statement into the bin unopened; ate half a chocolate bar left by one of my sons on the kitchen table; and induced the taxi driver to break the speed limit as we raced to the railway station, where I just caught my train, and thereby accomplished my mission.

Last Saturday the Times raised its cover price to 90 pence, which is what the Daily Telegraph sells for on that day. On Monday it went up to 50 pence, pricing the paper at only 5 pence less than the Guardian and Telegraph. Thus ends the price war between quality newspapers which began ten years ago almost to the day, on 6 September 1993. At that time Rupert Murdoch did something that most people thought was mad. He reduced the price of the Times from 45 pence to 30 pence. The general view was that buyers of quality papers did not care overmuch about the price they paid. Writing in the London Evening Standard, where this column then resided, I doubted that the price cut would lead to an increase in sales. How wrong I was.