ANOTHER VOICE

What I'd like my friends to do when I'm disgraced

MATTHEW PARRIS

It really is most unhelpful of Neil Hamil- ton not to have been a member of his local Conservative Association. He has deprived them of the capacity to expel him, and the press of an opportunity to demand they do so forthwith.

Still, the ingenuity of Fleet Street is limit- less and editors are unlikely to take this set- back lying down. Does Christine Hamilton, perhaps, belong to a Conservative Associa- tion? Or the Women's Institute? Would we wish to buy jam made by the wife of a dis- graced Tory? She will almost certainly have contributed a choice recipe to a local chari- ty cookbook. The offending pages must be pulped immediately.

Does Mrs Hamilton possess a Tesco clubcard and, if so, shall we threaten to return our own clubcards on the grounds that we do not wish to belong to any club of which Christine is a member?

Or has Neil, perhaps, diverting into pub- lic philanthropy some of the private money he has received from his political consul- tancies, become (like me) a Friend of Kew Gardens?

Do I, I ask myself, wish to remain a Friend of any Gardens in whose social cir- cle Neil is still counted as a Friend? I can scarcely restrain myself from going there now and rooting up a cactus.

With whom does this modern demon bank? Shall 'we all withdraw our accounts? Does he belong to the Automobile Associa- tion? Then let us switch to the RAC. If he drives a Ford, should we?

Happily the Hamiltons are childless or the news media would by now be demand- ing that their children be expelled from whatever school they attended. In a Britain in which a child is thrown out of a school because her mother's estranged husband has been accused of drug-dealing, surely no blood relation of Neil or Christine should be allowed anywhere near a public class- room?

Indeed, now that (thanks to Michael Howard) sex offenders finishing a prison sentence must inform the police of their whereabouts wherever they move (and the police, the Sun and the local authorities have taken to informing everyone else), is there not a case for imposing the same restrictions on the Hamiltons?

There must be a danger they may leave Talton, adopt disguises and — Neil in a false moustache and Christine posing as a brunette — try to infiltrate other Conserva- tive groupings. Everybody knows that local Tory Associations now contain many sad and confused people, as well as vulnerable pensioners and impressionable young per- sons. I suggest that from now on those who attend meetings should carry passes identi- fying themselves, lest the Hamiltons run amok among the party membership, spreading their wicked practices abroad.

And talking of abroad, should these peo- ple not have their passports withdrawn? Already we try to prevent the peregrination of football hooligans and the migration of major criminals. But yobs only break win- dows, and all Ronnie Biggs and his pals did was steal a few millions and leave a train driver dying. Just high jinks really, com- pared with the evil that Tories can do. The horrors of sleaze outstink other forms of wickedness in 1997.

Already Jonathan Aitken has slipped the net, resigned from the Privy Council and disappeared abroad, selfishly depriving the British press of months of opportunities for breathless news of his daily diary, indigna- tion about his not being expelled from everything he has not remembered to resign from, and photographs of him crouching in limousines with a blanket over his head. This must not be allowed to hap- pen with the Hamiltons. How about elec- tronic tagging?

. . . And is this all not becoming perfectly ludicrous? I shouldn't wonder if the accel- erating velocity of circulation of news and comment concerning the habits and where- abouts of the Hamiltons, Mr Aitken, the most recent bishop's mistress's love-child and the latest lottery love rat is contribut- ing a good half percentage point to Britain's buoyant gross domestic product.

I feel about the baiting of Tory miscre- ants rather as I feel about hunting foxes. I am not sentimental about foxes — wily creatures whose sufferings I count light on any scale of animal woe — but the hunting of them is a disgusting exhibition which degrades both huntsmen and onlookers. It is the same when journalists hunt Hamil- tons or trap Aitkens.

So intensive and fascinated has the atten- tion become that a new secondary industry has arisen recently. Columnists who can boast any prior acquaintance with the prin- cipal villains of these dramas now write columns about their own personal agonies over deciding whether to write columns about the man they knew; and whether they think other columnists ought to; and how they feel about their old friends now. This column starts, I suppose, a tertiary industry — a column about the columns about the columns about Aitkens and Hamiltons.

For the record, I side with the Worsthor- nian view: if or when any of the many pri- vate disgraces of my own life come into public view, I shall thank the friends I count as friends to maintain a tactful public silence on the subject.

A little card marked 'personal' express- ing sympathy for my plight and no opinion at all about the cause of it — and offering lunch on my return in 18 months from Tier- ra del Fuego — will be perfectly sufficient. For those quite unable to stay their pens, I shall establish a charitable trust in favour of Kew Gardens, into which the fees their columns earn may be paid.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and columnist of the Times.