Politics
Names to conjure with
L'our Christmases ago, in this column,
Ferdinand Mount introduced readers to some of 'the less well-known faces around Westminster', backbenchers who were the 'warp and woof of our legislative tapestry'. There was Derek Sponge, who had given up a promising academic career in catering technology to occupy the dead centre of the Parliamentary Labour Party. 'Very much one of the newer breed of younger technocrats', Sponge thought Michael Foot was doing a first-class job. There was Adrian Twigling, one of the brightest of the 1964 Conservative intake. Poor Twigling, who was wondering whether to 'articulate my concern about the way the party is going', had known no advancement since the days of Edward Heath. He could not be more different from Ted Bumshaw, the 'deceptively bluff, rude and disagreeable' self-made Thatch- erite whose business, 'making machine tools for jacuzzi bath fittings' had been 'experiencing cash-flow problems'. Last, there was Bodge Crunch, 'the first Labour MP to have attended a Militant Tendency Workshop instead of Sunday School'. The 'deceptively quiet-spoken and mild- mannered' Crunch was interested in 'soli- darity as praxis' and believed that he had a mission to 'drag the Labour Party back from Methodism to Marx'.
Since we first met these men, the slump has past, the Falklands have been lost and won, and Mrs Thatcher has returned triumphant. There has been what Twig- ling, who has read a book or two, calls 'a sea-change in British politics'. I am afraid that it has left Twigling rather stranded on the beach. He found that his unique knowledge of Latin-American affairs, de- rived from a close working relationship with the Argentine business community, did not impress his masters in the dark days of 1982. Four more years have scarred Twigling badly, wrinkled the features which once so impressed the leafy sub- urban selection committees, and removed most of the hair which he used to sweep extravagantly backwards and wear just a little too long. Twigling does not like what the Government is doing to local auton- omy in this country — he had a walk-on part in Peter Walker's local government reforms. He wants to articulate his con- cern, but unhappily he is embroiled in a messy divorce case and his able young research assistant, who usually helps him with his speeches, is too upset to be her normal competent self.
Four years have not been very kind to Derek Sponge, either. Not that he knows it yet. Sponge bought the Dream Ticket as soon as it was on offer last year, and quickly
became, on his own admission, 'one of Neil's backroom boys'. He is happy to be in the engine-room of the sea-change which Neil's youth and radicalism are bringing to the Labour Party. In the Shadow Cabinet elections, Sponge made a respectable showing (17 votes), and is more than satisfied with the portfolio of junior spokesman on Waste Disposal 'there's so much more direction to the job than when I held it under Michael'. No one is more vigorous than Sponge in his opposi- tion to violence: he is against it from whichever side it comes. But it is no good. The Militants have got Sponge's number, and reselection stares him in the back.
The same is true, funnily enough, of Crunch. Although he takes only an aver- age worker's wage and gives most of his MP's salary to his local party, Crunch encounters growing hostility from his Slap- ton ward committees who believe that he secretly enjoys life at Westminster. There was a nasty incident when a party activist reported him for sharing a joke with Denis Healey in the Central Lobby. Crunch was lucky to survive. It is thought that only his devastating question to Peter Walker ab- out the export of miners' babies to Chile saved him from oblivion.
If anyone ought to be content, it is Ted Bumshaw. For years he had been saying to any that cared to listen to him (there were not many) that Maggie understood what made your average bloke in the saloon bar tick. Bumshaw is back with a thumping majority with a mandate to get the state off the backs of the people and particularly of his still-ailing business. But Bumshaw is not content. It is partly disappointment he was virtually promised a PPSship to the Minister for Clerical Procurement ('not exactly my bag, but I think I could make those faceless bureaucrats sit up and take notice'), and partly an uneasy feeling that the Prime Minister might be losing touch with 'our people'. Layabouts, says Bum- shaw, still do all right, but you work your arse off 25 hours a day trying to turn your company round and you don't get so much as the time of day from the Treasury. The real reason for Bumshaw's unease, though, is more personal. At the last election, his wife, Eileen, was returned ('with a vengeance' jokes Bumshaw ruefully) to Parliament for the neighbouring seat of Chingmansworth and Ruisford. Eileen yields to no one in her admiration for Mrs Thatcher — or on any other subject — and she comes and fishes Ted out of the bars.
Sometimes she finds him having a jar with a new Member who was still looking for a seat when Mr Mount described the scene. The Hon. Jamie Bolge (pronounced
Bulge; family motto: 'Not bloody likely. I'm off.') is not much more than 30, but he likes people to say that he is the last of the old brigade. Bolge, who threw a small Indian prince out of the window at Har- row, and ball bearings, lamp-posts and the like at policemen while at Christchurch, is rich, though not 'mega-rich', and well- connected rather than blue-blooded. 'God, Uncle Harold is a funny man,' he says. Bolge wears expensive dark suits and good leather shoes which bang tremendously on the stones of Westminster Hall. He swears tremendously, drinks tremendously and is to be found at White's and Pratt's. I fear that his wife will soon have to be 'a great source of strength' to him.
But no one should think that Bolge doesn't understand what is happening in Britain today. True, he is by caste and inclination a bit of a Wet, 'but then I cam afford to be,' he admits disarmingly. He has taken on board (there is a lot of room) the lessons of Thatcherism and is as keen as the next man — usually Bumshaw, with whom he has struck up a typically unex- pected friendship — to get taxes down. Bolge is well placed to take up one of the positions reserved for statutory nobs in the Government. I do not think that he will be disobliging and take a stand on matters of principle, so long as Nigel doesn't get it into his head to raise death duties.
Bolge and Bumshaw are seldom joined by the ablest Member of the new intake. Peter Politti is too busy to sit around drinking. He is as clever as a cage of monkeys and has got an academic record as long as their arms to prove it. After a first in PPE, a doctorate, a spell at INSEAD, and an advisory role in Brazil, Politti graduated, at the age of 23, into a fast-moving career in and out of (mainly in) government. Politti has been special adviser to all the really big names of the Thatcherite revolu- tion. Known and feared as a number- cruncher, Politti seemed at one time to be getting ahead too fast for his own good, but in the nick of time he managed to get selected for the West Midlands marginal of Brickborough North. It was, Politti now concedes, 'a humbling experience', which knocked some of the edges off his econo- mic doctrines. Ably supported by wife Suzy, an investment analyst, Politti has worked hard to get to know the real problems of real people. He practices saying 'the despair and sense of hopeless- ness which the tragedy of unemployment brings' in front of his shaving mirror and waits, a little impatiently now, for the job for which his abilities so painfully obvious- ly qualify him. These are just a few of the many and varied characters who make the Westmins- ter scene what it is today, but quite enough to read about at a season such as this. Now they are off for a few days to nurse their constituencies and their wounds. God bless them every one. God help the rest of us.
Charles Moore
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