PETERBOROUGH
All bets on a 2023 election
“Why not get your shopping for free?” ask Conservative Party leaflets being sent out to activists this month, offering £75 for 75 “lucky donors” to spend at the party’s shop. Prizes include a copy of Saatchi & Saatchi’s famous poster “Labour isn’t working” for £14.99, a jigsaw of Boris Johnson (below), wearing his “Get Brexit Done” boxing gloves (£18) and the official Cabinet photo (£19.99).
The leaflets are accompanied by a begging letter from Johnson himself, pledging that any funds raised will go towards helping Red Wall Tories hang on to their seats. The letter even says it includes a map showing where the key seats
are. “At the last election, we won 16 seats by fewer than 1,000 votes,” the PM says. “You can see a few of them on the map enclosed with this letter. Trust me: these seats will decide the next election. Labour and the Lib Dems know this only too well.” The odds of a 2023 election must be shortening.
Unwelcome emissions
The ongoing Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow is all about cutting greenhouse gases. But one world leader failed to get the memo.
During a high profile meeting this week the politician produced his own audible emission, which led to other dignitaries having to ignore it to save his embarrassment. One source said: “Everyone pretended it hadn’t happened.” Time to hold your nose.
If the suit fits
Martin Bell (right), who defeated Neil Hamilton at the 1997 election by campaigning on an anti-sleaze ticket, is backing calls for an independent candidate to fight the Tories in Owen Paterson’s vacated North Shropshire seat. Bell, the former BBC war correspondent tells me: “The idea of putting somebody forward in this rock-solid Tory safe seat is worth exploring. I think it is a good idea. It needs somebody outside of politics, preferably with good local connections that the Lib Dems, Labour and Greens could all agree to support.”
Bell is even open to lending them his lucky white suit he wore when reporting from war zones. “I am quite happy to be of any assistance that I could but the possibilities are limited at my age,” he says. “If I were 20 years younger, I would do it. This is such an appalling story. But I am 83. I don’t think I would even vote for myself at the moment.”
The art of lunch
Planning minister Chris Pincher – whose wine cellar is legendary – laments that “lunching has become something of a lost art, like courtly dancing or sonnet writing”. He writes in this month’s Critic magazine: “We are certainly conscientious about what we eat... But should we not have more of a care about the pleasure we get out of it? I think so. And so does my old friend, David Ruffley.”
Pincher describes Ruffley – a former government whip who was Tory MP for Bury St Edmunds from 1997 to 2015 – as “an expert, more than that, he is an artist” when it comes to lunch. “When lunch is over, most importantly, he has planned where to go on. For ‘Ruffers’, like the old school whip he is, knows where the bottles are buried.”
That place is often 5 Hertford St, the private members club in Mayfair run by Robin Birley, which he says is a “lifeboat to London’s top boulevardiers”. When shall we go?
Star turn
Rod Stewart’s 10-bedroom mansion set in 46 acres in Essex is clearly not enough for the veteran rocker. The former Faces lead singer has bought an apartment in Dublin near the Aviva stadium. “If I get out on my balcony. I’m going to see the [rugby and football] crowds down the street. It’ll be a bit noisy on a Saturday afternoon. The ocean and beaches, it is gorgeous. I’ve been looking for a house there for some time. I love the pubs in Dublin. So I hope to move in during the next six months.”
Stewart (below, with his wife Penny Lancaster) also tiptoed into the world of politics, expressing sympathy for Boris
Johnson (“he’s got a lot on his plate”) and offering career advice to Michael Gove, who took over the Levelling Up department in September’s reshuffle. “He always moves sideways, doesn’t he? He should be on Strictly Come Dancing. i like him. He’s funny,” he says.
Keeping sane
Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis dodged a tricky Parliamentary question about how many bedrooms there are in Chequers by instead setting out what Sir Arthur Lee had in mind when he donated the country house to future prime ministers 100 years ago.
Sir Arthur recommended two days a week at the Buckinghamshire mansion for occupants of No10, according to the Chequers Estate Act 1917. He wrote: “The better the health of our rulers, the more sanely they will rule and the inducement to spend two days a week in the high and pure air of the Chiltern hills and woods will, it is hoped, benefit the nation as well as its chosen leaders.”
No wonder Boris and Carrie Johnson spend so much time there.