DIARY
BORIS JOHNSON Alast. For hours we had seemed to tramp the cobbles, and there it was: the warm lights of the 'M and M' coffee-house, the cheerful decor of sci-fi heroines in fur brassieres, the yellow smoke that rubbed its muzzle on the windowpanes. The Amster- dam summit was over for the night, and we were on a fact-finding mission. One of us hailed the waiter: `Could you possibly bring us the drugs menu?' and then we pored in wonder over the bill of fare. There was `super afghaan' and `zero zero', `doppel dunker' and hash cake, all very reasonably priced thanks to our soaraway pound. Eventually, in the name of science, I bought a ready-made spliff for a mere 7 guilders 50 (just over £2). `It's only what you might call house wine,' said one of my companions, an expert. We sniffed the spliff. We whipped out our — no, not our cigarette lighters — we whipped out our copies of the new Treaty of Amsterdam, and all the implications of what we were doing were made clear. Perhaps there are some of you who do not realise what has happened, that the Schengen acquis has been incorporated into the Treaty of Rome; that Europe is now virtually a single country. The Amsterdam Treaty calls it `an area of freedom, security and justice'; and, it might have added, an area of sex, drugs and rock and roll. This little spliff, this dope, or `doop', as the Dutch probably call it, is now the only substance I can think of which it is perfectly legal to ingest in one EU country but not in another. And the Treaty of Amsterdam accentuates that absurdity, annihilating borders so that spliffs can radiate unchecked across the Continent. It is a disjuncture between the law and the facts, and in the end the law will have to follow the facts. It is as if the government permitted the sale and con- sumption of chardonnay in Islington, but nowhere else in Britain. It cannot last. Soft drugs will either have to be banned in Ams- terdam or decriminalised across the Conti- nent; and that will mean us. True, we have an opt-out, but as the Amsterdam Treaty says, smacking its lips, `Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which are not bound by this acquis, may, at any time, accept some or all of the provisions of the acquis.' So perhaps, in advance of the day when the British opt-out collapses, we should get real; adjust to the fact that thousands of us are taking £49 coaches to Amsterdam for as much doop as we like. Perhaps Tony Blair should come clean (in an Oxford rock group in the Seventies and he never tried pot? Come on). Perhaps we should stop being so feeble and admit we have once had a puff. If Blair and Straw are too cow- ardly, we will have to wait for the coming to power of William Hague and his prospec- tive home secretary, Alan Duncan. As far as I can remember from his book Saturn's Children, Duncan wants to bring back opium dens, never mind doophuises. That may be pushing it. But if the New Tories have a watchword, it is freedom.
The reason it is so easy to order doop in Amsterdam is that the Dutch speak such supernaturally perfect English. They learn from the BBC, and take a keen interest in British politics. This is a shame, not just because so many Dutch folk seem to sup- port the IRA, which they pronounce `eera', but also because they do down their own splendid tongue. You will recall the great Josef Luns, former prime minister and sec- retary-general of Nato, announced that he preferred to speak English because `when I speak in my own language I feel as though I am vomiting'. This finished his political career, and quite right too. Some of us treasure the fact, or perhaps the belief, that the Dutch cavalry order to mount horse is `grovel op de beestjes'. Anyone who has roamed the bemerded streets of Amster- dam will know the problem of `honder- poop'. If you wish to understand the dependen- cy culture, you only have to study your own behaviour on one of the horizontal travela- tors at Schiphol airport. You instinctively slow your own pace to a dawdle. See? Such is the malign effect of state intervention upon human incentive. As for London Underground escalators, to continue this Peter McKay-style point, why oh why do so many people stand rather than walk up? Are you a stander on the right? What's the attraction? Just resting? Or is it the fleet- ing, Dante-and-Beatrice-style eye contact with people coming down? On the other hand, maybe we can't all swarm up like commandos; maybe this division between standers and walkers is part of our social balance. I walk, puffing like a coolie under the weight of the `gifts' of the Dutch EU presidency. All the 3,000 hacks received an air stewardess-style suitcase, shoe-cleaning kit, bottle of gin, guide to doophuises, and so forth. The New Labour Roundheads claim they will stamp out this disgusting freebyism. As usual, they are just aping the Tories. Foreign journalists still shudder at the memory of the last British EU presi- dency in 1992, a byword for meanness. After much badgering, the Foreign Office produced nothing more than a mug.
Asoon as I reach the Telegraph office in Westminster, it is obvious that some- thing odd is happening to the Hague cam- paign, a certain glassy-eyed sweatiness about his myrmidons. If Mr Clarke wins in the final round, I would draw his attention to an article in this magazine two years ago, in which I said he was the man for the job. If Mr Hague wins, I would point out in grovelling self-defence that this was written before he had emerged as a realistic con- tender.
Somehow our children need greater protection from the Spice Girls, not so much from the music as from the lyrics. It is frankly eerie to watch a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy dance around a room wiggling their hips and singing, `If you want to be my lover/You have got to geeet/Making love for ever/That's the way it iiis!' We have tried to wean them by join- ing in the dance, but substituting `lunch' for love: no use. My daughter has also taken up the feral chant of the Bodyform tampon advertisement. In Amsterdam, where chil- dren are probably encouraged to sing all kinds of things, they would no doubt think this anxiety very quaint. But we are in such despair as to be on the verge of writing to Agony Atkins, the Daily Telegraph's famously brutal problem page. Smack them. That is what she will say.
Previous page
