DIARY SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
Simon Sebag Montefiore, you're a wicked fellow,' said Sir James Goldsmith, as he spotted me among the press while he campaigned in Newlyn, the Cornish fish- ing port. 'Yes, you are exactly one of the highfalutin, overeducated, arrogant fel- lows who write for quality newspapers. Yes, a wicked, unpleasant man!' Sir James strides on and then, rather like one of those marvellous scenes in the film The Untouchables when Al Capone, played by Robert de Niro, addresses the press with terrifying affability, he turns again, raises his finger and says to me, 'Yes, you were once a member of a great family.' In this comical moment of Goldsmithian whimsy, Sir James is guilty of grammatical inaccu- racy — or at least sphinx-like obscurity. `Do you mean', I inquire, 'that the family was once great or that I was once a mem- ber of it? Or both?' But Goldsmith prowls off towards the fish-gutting hall. The mer- chant prince's comment is to do with Goldsmith's also belonging to the so- called `Cousinhood' of 19th-century Anglo-Jewish banking families: I have cousins called Goldsmith-Montefiore. Nonetheless I am confused by Goldsmith's excitement since I'm usually attacked for writing too kindly about his political party; Paul Johnson in this magazine bestowed the mixed blessing of saying my Sunday Times piece on Goldsmith's Brighton con- ference was the nation's fairest. I believe that the question of our sovereignty is the only principle at stake in this election and Goldsmith has put it there. Since Canning claimed Britain's duty was to be a `specta- tress' not a participant in Europe's strug- gles, I hereby request the editor to change this organ's title accordingly to The Spec- tatress, which could also increase its female readership. But my real fault in Goldsmith's eyes is probably that I find the cult of personality purveyed by Gold- smith's acolytes to be tiresome and unpro- ductive to the cause. Fascinating as he may be, he simply does not merit hero- Worship. There is only one statesman alive whose achievements merit that sort of idolatry and that is Lady Thatcher. I wrote that Spectator interview with the Spice Girls Asked their view of Sir James, one said, 'Who? Gold-what?' The other said, Is he any relation to Jemima Goldsmith?' Perhaps that is why he thinks I am wicked.
A, t drinks at 10 Downing Street shortly Defore the election was called, I asked John Major about his flat upstairs. 'It's like living above the shop,' he said. 'It's not very big. his the kind of place Fagin would have sent nis boys out from.' This marvellously sinis- ter vision quite belies Major's usual 'grey- ness'. But what did it mean? Did Major see ministers as little urchins to send out on missions across bleak Victorian Whitehall? Was he just celebrating the flat as a cubby- hole in which to hatch plans? I suspect that, like many industrious, well-meaning, if somewhat dull honest Johns, he dreams at night of being a fascinating criminal genius — a Fagin-Moriarty-Blofeld, even a Mobu- tu perhaps. He falls asleep imagining unveiling posters with Bugsy Siegel- Mawhinney that read, 'You're safe with Mobutu-Major', 'Britain's Booming Under Fagin' and 'No More Honest John! Vote for Lucky Luciano-Major.'
Whenever the pundits on the elec- toral battle-buses have a secret chat, they always have what I call 'the Grassy Knoll conversation'. It is in such bad taste that I feel duty-bound to recount it. The journal- ists who have had to spend over a month accompanying our most deadly boring politicians without missing a single event have to believe in a quest or they would lose their minds. Their therapy therefore is to fantasise about a story that would make it worthwhile for them to be in Swansea, Penzance or Sheffield with, say, Alan Beith, so they say to one another, 'I'd better stay with candidate X when he visits that Leeds childcare centre/Paisley widget-maker because . . . there might be a Grassy Knoll there.' Oh my God. A Grassy Knoll! I'd never forgive myself if I missed that! I bet- ter come too!' So out of this hysterical fear of missing the assassination of a beloved British politician, they dare not miss a sin- gle moment and slavishly go to everything. God forbid that this terrible event should happen, ever. But my only fear is that one of these journalistic desperadoes, hearing Mr Blair's battle bus pieties for the 187th time while once again enduring his refusal to answer one real question, might be driven to create this Grassy Knoll story singlehanded.
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Each time Blair and Mandelson are described by another Tory minister as `Stalinist', the metaphor is incomplete: Blair is Stalin, of course, but which old monster in Stalin's entourage is Mandel- son? He's too cultured to be Beria, too tall for Yezhov, too fastidious for Khrushchev, too witty for Molotov, too thin for Malenkov, too loquacious for Mikoyan, and he can't be Bulganin because he's shaved off his facial hair. But I've found Stalin's Mandelson. The satur- nine wit of Stalin's Thirties court was K.V. Pauker, with his Mandelsonian black hair, who shared many of Mandelson's interests. An ex-opera-dresser from Budapest, the half-Jewish Pauker, an effete man of the highest culture, became Stalin's chief bodyguard, secret police adviser, spin-doctor, jester — so close to his party leader that he was the only man who was allowed to shave him with an open blade. When Stalin shot his enemies, Pauker made him sick with laughter by imitating their last desperate cries, just as Mandelson might imitate the squawks of the old Leftists for Blair. Stalin made no move without discussing it with Pauker. Pauker alone in Stalin's circle, like Man- delson in Blair's, would be more at home amongst actors, artists and Carla Powell than amongst drab party activists. Their rewards, however, will be different. Pauk- er was unable to continue his interest in opera because he was shot in 1937, while Mandelson will probably be given the whole of British opera as Blair's first Min- ister of Culture.
0 n this Russian theme, I keep seeing New Labour described as a 'Potemkin vil- lage' — in other words a smiling centrist shopfront with nothing behind it. This is a terrible historical injustice which I cannot allow to continue — not to New Labour, mind you, but to Prince Potemkin, the brilliant administrator, soldier and empire-builder whose arrangement of his lover Catherine the Great's imperial progress to the Crimea (which he had con- quered for her) in 1787 spawned such jeal- ousy that his enemies invented the phrase `Potemkin village' to suggest his colossal achievements were a fraud. As I begin to research my biography of Potemkin, I hope to show how this titan, who co-ruled Russia for 17 years, is the victim of an out- rageous smear campaign by members of the 18th-century media. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Simon Sebag Montefiore writes for the Sun- day Times. His novel, My Affair with Stalin, is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in August.
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