Charles Moore

It is worth fixing for posterity the feelings which, on polling day, swirled in the breasts of many who wanted a Boris victory. Being a journalist, I normally enjoy the electoral scene with some detachment. I cannot claim to be neutral, since I have never, even in Tony Blair’s pinkish dawn of 1997, wanted a Labour government; but I can take it in my stride. This time, however, millions, including myself, were knotted with fear that anything other than a clear Tory victory would destroy Brexit and make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister. The risks were actually frightening. We sought distractions. Listening to the Radio 4 Today programme that morning, I heard the sports presenter admitting he did not know how to pronounce his tipster’s selection for the 2.30 at Newcastle, Calliope.

Leaving an evening meeting in Westminster on Monday night, I walked to Charing Cross. Approaching the public path which runs across College Green by Parliament, I found, as so often nowadays, that it was fenced off to allow those pop-up studios which the big television channels erect to create their instant news circus. Fed up that the normal way was yet again blocked by what Psalm 84 calls ‘the tents of wickedness’, I lifted the barrier open and walked through. Two security guards leapt out of the nearest hut and tried to block me. I pressed on, however, and they could only scamper after me calling out ‘Health and safety! Health and safety!

The number of parties represented in national election debate multiplies. There are now seven crowding on to television podiums and local hustings. Yet this impression of diversity is, like the current public policy use of that word, misleading. Five of the parties — Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru — are essentially the same. They see achieving Remain, growing the state and destroying the Tories as the most important causes. The Brexit party is merely an epiphenomenon of Tory Brexit weakness and is therefore passing into history. So it is the Conservatives vs the rest, and ‘the rest’ includes all the broadcast media.

On Wednesday morning, I was hoisted into the air of Whitehall on a cherry-picker. A century ago the proto-Cenotaph appeared in time for the London Peace Parade in July 1919, which followed the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In that first year, the Cenotaph was only a timber and canvas structure, built to last a week; but Edwin Lutyens’s design seemed so right that the present structure, more precisely designed, was built in Portland stone for Remembrance Day 1920. English Heritage, now a charity rather than a government body, cares for the monument — as it does for 400 monuments in England, including 46 in London. The chairman, Vice-Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, husband of the Princess Royal, wanted me to see its annual clean before this Sunday’s Remembrance Day parade.

I walked down Villiers Street to Embankment Tube station. In front of me were two Extinction Rebels, a mother and daughter. Strapped to the little girl’s back was a white teddy bear. Strapped to the bear’s back was the handwritten slogan: ‘You selfish gits. Stop burning down my house.’ I wonder how they knew I was a selfish git, since I wore no emblem to announce the fact. Luckily they did not know I was off to a large party of fellow selfish gits to launch volume III of my biography of Mrs Thatcher. It was taking place in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, yards from XR’s encampment, and was eloquently addressed by our git-friendly Prime Minister, who referred to them as ‘uncooperative crusties’.