DIARY
ANTHONY HOWARD hat is Mrs Thatcher's single greatest achievement as a national leader? I sup- pose most people would say something like restoring faith in Britain, taming the trade unions or repairing the economy (now, admittedly, looking a bit shaky). True to a New Year resolution to try to be fair to the Prime Minister, I propose something quite else. To my mind her most remarkable triumph has lain in the way she has transformed the whole nature of the Tory Party. When I started out in political journalism the Conservatives were still defiantly the Toffs' Party — indeed, I can remember Harold Macmillan boasting as late as 1959 that one reason why the country had done so well under his lead- ership was that he had double the number of Etonians in his Cabinet that Mr Attlee had ever had in his. At least we never have to listen to that kind of snobbish twaddle today.
The tendency has always been to regard Margaret Thatcher as one of the most media-conscious political leaders of the modern world. But I wonder if that is correct. Here, anyway, is a story that I am quite satisfied is true. Not so long ago — at about the time of the American presiden- tial election — the Prime Minister deli- vered a speech on foreign policy. With the ordeal safely over, the Downing Street minion — sitting beside her in the back of the car — risked a comment on her performance. 'Well, Prime Minister,' he said, 'there were at least two or three Pretty good "sound bites" in that.' To his discomfiture, he found himself the immedi- ate victim of the PM's best Medusa glare. `Charles, what on earth are you talking about? I simply do not know what you mean. Please try to talk in English.' He felt, I'm told — and perhaps he was meant to — like poor Bernard in the Prime Minister's favourite television programme.
Anew biography of Somerset Maugham is, I see, promised for the spring. It is supposed to be some sort of answer to Ted Morgan's vacuum-cleaner of a book (successfully sucking in most of the dirt) published eight years ago. The new work, entitled simply Willie, is said to be much more charitable and, though written by a Canadian called Robert Calder, apparently depends a good deal on inter- views granted by Maugham's devoted post- war companion, Alan Searle. In which case, Searle — who died in 1985 — was clearly a remarkably patient and forbear- ing soul. I met him, I recall, in 1958. Invited that summer to the Villa Maures- que, I found him a far less intimidating figure than my host — though, as ill luck would have it, it was poor Searle who provoked easily the most chilling moment of my visit. We were sitting in the garden after lunch and he was prattling away, with 'Mr Maugham' — as I was instructed to call him — giving every sign of being asleep. Searle had just got to the end of a story about Churchill's latest visit to the Villa and the punch-line was: 'Do you know, he nearly died in my arms?' Suddenly there was a stirring from the legendary, lizard- like figure dozing in a chair. A tongue shot out and, for once, there was no trace of any stutter. 'Pity he didn't,' came a malice- filled voice, 'and then you'd have been famous — and that's about the only chance you've got.' As an example of wanton cruelty, that still seems to me hard to beat.
Could not something be done about London's parking meters? No, I am not making the normal, churlish complaint about traffic wardens, a much maligned race. (I was interested to learn from a young barrister friend of mine recently that the only exception to her rule of never accepting prosecution briefs arose in cases where middle-class oafs had attempted to assault meter-maids.) My protest is a much more limited one. It really is a complete disregard of everyone's convenience that there should be absolutely no uniformity about the coins that the meters will accept. Outside my home in North Kensington, the choice is between 5p and Wp pieces; elsewhere — for example, near the House of Commons — it is a case of 20p or 50p or nothing; in Doughty Street — as I learned to my cost (or rather that of The Spectator's deputy editor) the only open sesame to legal parking is a £1 piece or a 20p one. If all this is supposed to be an advertisement for 'privatisation' — and some councils have already sold off their franchises (in one case at least to the Japanese) — then give me democratic centralism any day. The same, I may add, goes for the much more formidable threat of the clamping wagons. Ever since they became an arm of private enterprise — paid per nob on the basis of the number of cars they nab they have wantonly ignored vehicles caus- ing genuine obstructions and instead have concentrated on the easier scalps of penalty-parked but harmless offenders in places like St James's Square.
Someone should commemorate the art of William Rees-Mogg. As I remember it, his parting shot on leaving the editorship of the Times in 1981 was: 'I have been serious for far too long.' He has certainly made up for it since. He is today the most success- fully solipsistic of contemporary journal- ists. It sometimes seems that no event takes place that cannot be compressed into the variegated kaleidoscope of his own experience. He is no slouch at advertising the width of his contacts either — witness his column the other week: 'I telephoned Rupert Murdoch on his farm in Australia.' If there were any justice in this life, he would win both the Granada and the British Press Awards as 'columnist of the year'. Of course he will do neither — not for any resentment on the part of the judges against the Independent but simply because, so far as journalists are con- cerned, he is the `baddie' Chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Council. Let me, though, enrol in the band of his samizdat journalistic admirers and say that — on purely professional grounds — I regard him as the champion columnist of the past year.
N
ot so long ago I was asked to tea in the House of Lords tuck-shop. My host was a retired Law Lord and, with muffins, crumpets and toasted teacake much in evidence, it was a suitably old-world occa- sion. The peace of our tete-a-tete was, however, disturbed by an insistent waving from another table. I failed to recognise the person who seemed determined to demand my attention and had to inquire of my host as to his identity: 'That', I was told with some judicial distaste, 'is Lord Kagan.' I managed a thin wintry smile back by way of reciprocal greeting, asking my- self in what other country could a man formally stripped of his knighthood by the Queen cheerfully continue his public life by other means as a peer of the realm. No wonder foreigners find it difficult some- times to take us seriously.
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