It’s so unfair
James Delingpole
You don’t have to look very hard for signs that the Tories are going to romp home in the next general election. There was another one on TV this week: a drama showing Margaret Thatcher as an achingly sexy young woman who made fantastic speeches and whose hard-won victory, after numerous setbacks, in gaining the Tory candidacy for the Finchley seat had you weeping tears of joy.
Imagine the BBC commissioning something like that ten years ago. Or even two years ago. It just wouldn’t have happened. The Thatcher brand was so badly contaminated you simply weren’t allowed to admit that this was the woman who rescued us from the economic Dark Ages and made our country great once more. All you were really permitted was the Spitting Image caricature with the man’s suit, the deep voice and the handbag.
As a natural Tory, with lots of friends and nodding acquaintances about to become PM, chancellor, education minister, and so on, I suppose I should be delighted by this. But actually it has made me quite despondent. Partly, it’s that Gore Vidal thing: ‘Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies.’ Partly, also, it’s because I’ve never been much use at parlaying friendship into career advantage.
I was reminded of this the other day when I bumped into Boris at The Spectator’s 150th anniversary bash. I told him how pleased I was he’d become mayor and made some lame joke about not knowing much about policing but that nonetheless I’d surely make a better fist of it than Ian Blair, and Bozza didn’t even grace me with an ‘I know you not, old man.’ He cut me dead. And I thought, ‘Bloody hell. It’s not like I’m Toby Young. And I did go on the Jeremy Vine Show at the beginning of your campaign when everyone said you were a joke candidate, and say to the world that if people thought that then they were seriously underestimating you ... ’ There is a lot more of this to come, I’m sure — and worse. In my dreams I see myself as a sort of right-wing Robert Harris figure, holding salons for Cabinet ministers in my country seat, rallying the troops, writing uplifting speeches, offering insights into the workings of the PM’s mind for two quid a word. In reality, I shall be exactly the same person I am today, only older, poorer, and more bitter with friends going, ‘Gosh, it must be terribly exciting, your being so well in with the ruling clique,’ and me forcing a rictus grin and saying, ‘Yeah. I guess so.’ But enough self-pity. Actually, no, more self-pity — for I haven’t got to the most depressing thing of all about the Tories being back in charge. I refer, of course, to the mill our fair nation has had to go through in order to get them there. After 11 years of Blair and Brown we are once more the economic basket case we were in 1979. Our gold reserves have been sold for peanuts, our public services are a shambles, the Thatcher legacy has been squandered, everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong.
And I didn’t vote for any of it, that’s what annoys me. Unlike some of my friends — Damian, hang your head in shame — I never once believed in the Blair project or the Brown project, not ever, ever, ever. I’m a deeply ideological right-wing libertarian and if the country had just been destroyed by people with politics akin to mine I’d take it on the chin and say, ‘OK. My whole philosophy has been proved wrong. I deserve it.’ Instead I feel rather as you do in the classroom when the naughty kid has put a condom on teacher’s chair and because no one will own up the whole class is going to be punished. But why should I be? I’ve been in the right all along. It’s so unfair.
Which leaves me just the briefest of space to say how much I enjoyed Margaret Thatcher — the Long Walk To Finchley (BBC4, Thursday). Besides some stellar performances from the luminous Andrea Riseborough (her pert bottom sashaying beneath her nip-waisted Fifties jackets is going to haunt me for months to come) and Rory Kinnear as a loyal, chirpy, jack-the-lad Denis, it abounded in great jokes none the worse for being sledgehammer subtle.
There was the one where young Mark Thatcher taunts his sister Carol: ‘When are you ever going to go to the jungle?’ (she went on to win I’m a Celebrity ... , geddit?), and the one near the end where they go to the beach and, titter, Mark gets himself lost in the sand dunes. I also liked the one where Ted Heath (an enjoyably vicious caricature by Sam West) treats the ambitious young Margaret to a threatening orchestral analogy about overloud French horns drowning out their more subtle neighbours. ‘Is that why you prefer to be on your own, playing with your organ, Mr Heath?’ a blue rinse innocently inquires. Ah, those oldies never stale!
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