Ephraim Hardcastle
ROMAN Catholic voters in Scotland are deserting the Labour Party for the SNP, hoping to give its local leader, Jim Murphy, ‘a bloody nose’, I’m told by Liz Leydon, editor of the Scottish Catholic Observer. She thinks Catholics disapprove of Murphy’s support for easier abortion. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is content to leave the abortion law as its stands. Isn’t there another, less discussed factor: that some Roman Catholics, understandably, are attracted by the strain of republicanism in the SNP, despite the leadership’s protestations of loyalty to the Queen?
APROPOS Nicola Sturgeon, she chose not to accept an invitation to join the Queen for the Gallipoli commemoration. Instead, she laid a wreath in Scotland. Last month, she failed to join the Queen at the national service for those who died in Afghanistan. Pleasing for the SNP’s republicans, as well as displaying her independence from London.
THE Queen is determined that a visit by President Barack Obama, pictured, to mark the 800th anniversary, on June 15, of the Magna Carta, at Runnymede, won’t disturb her traditional lunch for Garter Knights, followed by their grand procession to St George’s Chapel, Windsor. My informant says she wouldn’t consider moving the date of Garter Day but will race back to Windsor from Runnymede, adding: ‘Whoever is next PM will have to make her apologies to the president.’
DO journalists drink enough now? Veteran newspaperman Robin Esser’s entertaining memoir, Crusaders in Chains (Palatino, £9.99), says the late Derek Marks, editor of the Daily Express, began lunch (for two) with two bottles of champagne at El Vino, the local wine bar, and two dry sherries at the restaurant they favoured. There was a bottle of Chablis for the first course at lunch, then two bottles of claret and cognac with the coffee. After dinner ( with wine, naturellement) Marks would visit the Press Club, where he drank gin sours until midnight. Esser notes: ‘Perhaps not surprisingly, Derek died at the comparatively early age of 54.’
FORCED to stand down from his Kensington and Chelsea constituency after being caught on camera offering lobbying services, Tory MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind is now looking for a publisher for his memoirs and has approached the agents Curtis Brown. They look after Jeffrey Archer. Who, let’s face it, has overcome greater image problems than Sir Malcolm.
EIGHTEEN years after his shock 1997 General Election defeat in Enfield Southgate, former Tory leadership hopeful Michael Portillo reflects: ‘I think in many ways it was the making of me. I knew the Conservatives were going to be in Opposition…’ Portillo was only in it to win it, it seems. So much for the ‘public service’ they all talk about.