The Spectator's Notes

People have often said that George Osborne is ‘very political’ and have not meant it as a compliment. People have often said that George Osborne is ‘very political’ and have not meant it as a compliment. But it is, in principle, a good thing that politicians should be political (see what happens when they’re not). To understand the Cameron/Osborne political success, you need to see how quickly they have changed. A year ago, think-tanks like my own dear Policy Exchange were saying that the deficit should be cut, over the parliament now begun, by £100 billion in real terms. This was considered intolerable in polite society.

As a would-be historian (engaged on the biography of Margaret Thatcher), I feel envious of Lord Saville. I could do with having all my hotel bills paid for 12 years, a full legal team to assist, the right to demand the presence of witnesses and £191 million. His 5,000 pages are the most expensive history book ever written. But however judicious Lord Saville has tried to be, his report cannot escape its ultimate political purpose — to please Sinn Fein. In that sense, its author is not Lord Saville, but Tony Blair, who set up the inquiry as part of a political deal. As people call for the soldiers who shot people on that day 38 years ago to be prosecuted, a running commentary is kept up by Martin McGuinness.

We are all being asked by the government what should be cut. I bet the British people will take part happily. Contrary to what you read in the papers, cutting is great fun. One serious contribution is already being offered by Paul Goodman, the excellent former MP for Wycombe, who stood down at the last election. Mr Goodman’s argument, in a new paper for Policy Exchange called ‘What do we want MPs to be?’, is the counterintuitive but correct one that the new restrictions on MPs’ earnings are against the public good. Once they depend on payment from the state, and are forced to account for all their time not spent on the state’s business, they cease to represent the variety of interests in this country and become simply second-rate civil servants.

Last Thursday, I got a rush-hour train out of London and sat down in a second-class carriage. Soon I found myself sitting opposite a minister in the new coalition. I was surprised by how much pleasure it gave me that, following the new guidance, he was not travelling first-class, or by official car. I let him doze, and when he woke up, I asked him a few questions in pursuit, as we like to say, of journalistic inquiries. Having drivers on hand at all times is, of course, a huge convenience for ministers, but that is why it is also a bad thing. They quickly forget that one of the main features of life for most people who pay their salaries is its sheer inconvenience.

The most moving thing was the photograph of the handshake between the Queen and her new Prime Minister. It is an excellent innovation to allow the ceremony to be seen, because it reminds people how the constitution works. After the days of uncertainty, we needed this more than usual. There is also something touching in seeing this beautiful old lady confer authority on a man who was minus 15 years old when she came to the throne. If it were not slightly unconstitutional to suggest it, I would add that the Queen looked very pleased. No doubt the mood will pass, but the fact of coalition actually feels more appropriate and satisfying than a small Tory majority would have done.

The Dispatches programme which entrapped Messrs Hoon and Byers, Patricia Hewitt et al wanted to set them up as villains (which, indeed, they seemed). So it failed to notice the rather sad undertow of what they were saying. Geoff Hoon put it most clearly: ‘There’s nothing in my diary for April.’ Stephen Byers confirmed it when he said, when caught, that he had been ‘exaggerating’. The simple point is that these people are desperate, and virtually unemployed. They are largely pretending that companies beat a path to their door. What Mr Hoon described as ‘Hoon work’ — as opposed to the work for which the taxpayer pays him — is not coming his way in big enough quantities.

Much was made, in advance, of the fact that Samantha Cameron was at last speaking in public. She did it on Sunday night, interviewed by Trevor Mcdonald — very well, and in a surprisingly old-fashioned way. She looked lovely when she said that she was proud of her husband and that it would be ‘an honour’ to be married to a Prime Minister. But what the pre-released publicity did not prepare viewers for was Mrs Cameron’s accent. It was perfect estuarial. The words ‘really, really’, for example, came out as ‘reelly, reelly’. I could not detect a hint of the tones of her father, Sir Reginald Sheffield, 8th baronet. Sam could have passed herself off as a call-centre worker from Essex, or a weather forecaster, without exciting suspicion.

At last, the BBC has caught up with me. Readers may remember that I have been keeping and watching my television, but refusing to pay my television licence, for as long as the BBC continues to employ Jonathan Ross. (I sent the sum to Help the Aged instead.) The anti-Ross campaign has had some effect and Ross’s contract will not be renewed, but he continues to collect his £6 million a year from the Corporation until July, so I won’t contribute until he is off the books. I have just received a Summons, which begins ‘Brenda Curry TV LICENSING of TV Licensing, PO Box 88, Darwen, BBS 1YX says that you committed the offences listed on the following pages’, and tells me to appear at Hastings Magistrates’ Court on 1 March.

Part of the purpose of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war is what has become known, post the end of apartheid, as ‘truth and reconciliation’. Part of the purpose of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war is what has become known, post the end of apartheid, as ‘truth and reconciliation’. That is why it does not matter much that material already studied closely in the Hutton and Butler reports is being gone over again: this time, the hearings are public. The trouble is that truth and reconciliation are rarely compatible with general elections. In a classic example of the lack of courage for which he is known, Gordon Brown neither refused to have the inquiry at all, nor agreed to have it as soon as he became Prime Minister.