ALAS, THIS WASN’T HEZZA’S FINEST HOUR

EMILY MAITLIS is not known for her indulgence as an interviewer: she is perpetually alert to any dodgy claim by politicians in her studio. So I was amazed by the way, on BBC2’s Newsnight last week, she allowed Lord Heseltine to get away with a characteristically brazen association of himself with Winston Churchill.

The former Deputy PM, in arguing his case that we should remain in the EU regardless of the 2016 referendum, told Maitlis: ‘Every Prime Minister I’ve worked for, and I started working for Winston Churchill after the war, has told me that Britain’s self-interest is inextricably linked to the peace and security of Western Europe.’

Leave aside the fact that it was Nato and not the EU that maintained our security during the Cold War, Heseltine never worked for, with, or under Winston Churchill.

To be clear, he first stood for Parliament in 1959, four years after Churchill resigned as Conservative Party leader. And Heseltine didn’t actually succeed in becoming a Conservative MP until 1966 — when Churchill had already been dead for a year.

I say this is characteristic because when Heseltine addressed the rally outside Parliament to demand a re-run of the referendum, he very personally linked his insistence on remaining in the EU to Winston Churchill’s heroic leadership in the dark year of 1940. He declared: ‘Churchill did everything in his power to end our isolation [from Europe]. I was there. I saw our Army evacuated, our cities bombed, our convoys sunk.’

Hezza was there? Well, he was certainly alive. But at the time of our Army’s evacuation from Dunkirk, he was seven years old. And not a precocious confidant of Winston Churchill — nor on any occasion later.