THE FALL OF TUSCANY
Victoria Mather reports as Islington
forces, under Tony Blair, seize Chiantishire
OF ALL the horrors associated with a Labour victory — strikes, higher taxes, the abolition of public schools and hunting, the omnipresence of Mr Blair's teeth one never imagined that it would mean the end of Tuscany as we knew it: no longer Chiantishire but an outpost of Islington. The Blairs are even now drinking chilled Pinot Grigio in the villa between Siena and Florence that belongs to Geoffrey Robin- son, the Paymaster-General. Chris Smith, the Minister for Culture, pledged himself to eat pasta and walk the Tuscan hills before going to the Edinburgh Festival; the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, will descend on Florence in September to go sightseeing with his wife. It was all very well when it was just John Mortimer — who may be a socialist but is excluded from New Labour by virtue of his sense of humour — but the idea of taking refuge in that nice, cool church in San Gimignano and coming across Cherie gog- gling at the pictures of the seven deadly sins (`rony, take Euan out of here immedi- ately!') is a bummer. My own holiday in Cape Cod has just been rendered fraught by the anticipation of running into Gordon Brown, on the north-east American coast to play tennis and confidently expected to be joined by his alleged girlfriend. One has never really thought about where Labour went in the summer, since for a very long time one didn't have to think about them at all. The Conservatives were always pottering around Europe, so it was no surprise when Michael Heseltine pitched UP in the next-door villa in Corfu (I remem- ber that he hogged the local water-skiing instructor) or that Lord McAlpine's country cottage is in Venice. Lord Gilmour's wife, Caroline, once interviewed me in the haber- dashery department of Peter Jones for a job as cook at their farmhouse near Lucca. Should Lord Irvine, or the Blairs, or Chris Smith ever decide to buy a house in Tus- cany, I fear Peter Mandelson wouldn't con- done a brief encounter over the Silko as Positive vetting. Surely in the bad good old days Labour stalwarts tied spotted handkerchiefs round their heads and paddled at Frinton? They thought foreign food was all muck, couldn't understand why the pesky frogs, wops and spies drove on the wrong side of the road and knew the water was lethal. Well, nowadays they all loiter by the Marks & Spencer's new lines in linguine, drive to France to stock the Mondeo with Chablis (the foaming pint has long since gone as a symbol of solidarity with the working-class voter) and drink Evian. Small wonder that New Labour is conspic- uous by its presence in all the old places we love so well.
The problem is where one now goes to avoid Islington Man. Michael and Anne Heseltine have vacated Tuscany for Umbria this summer; Umbria is more rural, more for those appalled by the very Tuscan phenomenon that appeals to Blair, who is reported as saying, 'A lot of British people come here every year — in some places they're even more numerous than the Ital- ians.' This is precisely the sort of sentiment that dumbs down Tuscany to the level of Benidorm. And he says it with such arch surprise: has he never heard of the Grand Tour or seen a Merchant Ivory film? The British in Tuscany once spoke Italian or made lovely gardens like Lord Lambton, or became gracious intellectual giants, like Sir Harold Acton. Even the most English of the English, the flowery-skirted women and Panama-hatted men of the shires, were at home in Tuscany. Now there's a migration eastwards towards Perugia, or way south to Apulia, to flee any possibility of encounter- ing New Labour ministers on a mission to empower themselves with culture.
By choosing Italy and New England, the Cabinet is collectively undergoing an immersion course in middle-class travelling habits. New England's appeal is that it is wonderfully like old England: rolling fog, an opaque and chill sea and, of course, they speak English. It has to be said that the lob- sters are better, but I fear the real appeal to Gordon Brown and his kind must be the draconian American diktats on smoking. Aaah, puritanism — the smell of it.
Of course these swanky hols say more about our ministers than two weeks in Scar- borough ever could. Money is being spent, credit cards are being whipped out in restaurants, what about car hire, hotel bills and villa rental? Alistair Darling, Chief Sec- retary to the Treasury, plans to take his family to France and I think we can be con- fident that he will be travelling with Miche- lin. The days when socialists went caravanning in Brittany, stalwartly loaded to the gunwales with tins of baked beans, are well and truly over. Word has it that Peter Mandelson has encouraged ministers to take their holidays at home. I was half- expecting to find Clare Short on the beach at Bembridge, pushing a Silver Cross pram containing some new-found grandchild. Blessedly she is in Birmingham.
I fear that now we Tories are an endan- gered species an awful lifestyle swap is going to have to be engineered with our holiday plans. There was a splendid chap in John Major's policy unit who, in order to amuse himself on the odd slow day between sleaze dramas, devised a prototype system of Entertainment Zones (EZs). The pack- age tourists, visitors to all the hi-ho-silver- lining places like I an7arote and Majorca, were going to be whisked there in under- ground tunnels, rather like those vacuum tubes into which old department stores used to put canisters of change. The EZs were going to be whizzo, self-contained concentration camps of fun and jollity, and the airports would all be freed for the rest of us to travel to real places. Now the lunatics have taken over the asylum: Tus- cany's gone, Cape Cod is crumbling, France has fallen. Next it will be New Labour New Zealand. The EZ wheeze is beginning to have definite appeal for those of us in retreat who are beginning to resuscitate memories of really rather marvellous parts of Majorca. Failing this, it is perfectly obvi- ous that the only entirely safe, Labour-free place to go is Blackpool.
The author is travel editor of Tatler.
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