MEDIA STUDIES
There's more to Lord Archer than you will read in the Evening Standard
STEPHEN GLOVER
Will this do? I'm not sure. Over at the London Evening Standard our old friend Sir (if I may anticipate the honour) Max Hast- ings has been building up an enormous head of steam. Like most of the rest of humanity, Sir Max spotted some time ago that Lord Archer is a bit of a bounder. The difference is that, while most other people thought the point too obvious to be worth mentioning again and again, for several months Lord Archer's hopes of becoming mayor of London have made Sir Max rage like a bear with a bad foot. On Monday he uttered a great my, partly of anguish and partly of triumph, in the leader column under the headline, borrowed from Trol- lope, The Way We Live Now'.
Sir Max's point was that 'a man who has lied, bamboozled and battered a path to public office' should never have been given houseroom by the establishment — that's chaps like Max. He couldn't for the life of him understand how sensible people could have attended the awful little man's parties and eaten his shepherd's pie. On another page of the Evening Standard there was a list of those foolish people who have taken nosh at Lord Archer's place. Among the journal- ists listed were Michael White, political edi- tor of the Guardian, and Charles Moore, Sir Max's successor as editor of the Daily Tele- graph. It's a bad show, according to Max, a very bad show. At the end of his diatribe, he called Lord Archer 'a small man whose chief asset was limitless cheek, who never achieved real power'. Aha! Are we to infer from this that if he had been truly powerful Max would have had more respect for him?
Of course Sir Max Hastings is right, as he bludgeons the political corpse of Jeffrey Archer, to tell us that such a man was unfit
to be mayor of London. (In the old days someone like Michael Ancram would have had a quiet word with him and told him that it was not on.) But I fear that Max does not grasp the whole point. We don't expect the News of the World or the Daily Star to show any imagination, but Max — well, I had my hopes. Surely the question he should have asked himself was why high-minded people like Michael White and Charles Moore ate Lord Archer's shepherd's pie and doubtless drank his Krug. Was it because they were corrupt? Of course not. Or in search of a free meal? It seems unlikely. Nor was it Lord Archer's power which drew them to his penthouse overlooking the Palace of Westminster, since, as Max has pointed out, he didn't have much of that.
So what was it? Michael White offers us some clues in a piece he wrote about Lord Archer for the Guardian on Monday. 'Pushy, manipulative and ambitious, his vices were obvious to most people, including friends and colleagues. So were his virtues. When it suits him he can be hinny, charm- ing, hard-working (always), enthusiastic and loyal.' So Max was not, in fact, the first per- son in the world to notice that Lord Archer does not have the manners of a gentleman. But while Max cannot conceive that he has any good characteristics — like me, he has never been near the shepherd's pie, though perhaps we should seek confirmation of that — Mr White is smart enough to see that he does. In a way I sympathise with Max: I, too, can't see the point of Lord Archer. But since others can who know him much better than either of us, and since these people are virtu- ous and clever, we should stop and think.
Another man who can see the good side of Lord Archer as well as the bad is Stewart Steven, Max's predecessor as editor of the Evening Standard. Indeed, when he was edi- tor of the Mail on Sunday Mr Steven was successfully sued by Adam Raphael, the Observer journalist, after he had published a leader critical of Mr Raphael, and by implication supportive of Mr Archer, as he then was. Later, as editor of the Evening Standard, Mr Steven welcomed Jeffrey Archer's elevation to the peerage in Octo- ber 1992. 'At least there is one positive ele- ment in the news today — the pictures of ffagrant, ermine-clad Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare taking his well- deserved seat in the House of Lords. A nation which can appoint Jeffrey Archer to its most noble councils cannot have lost its sense of fun entirely.' I don't believe Mr Steven should be ashamed of those senti- ments, which convey his ironical approval of Lord Archer as someone who has added to the gaiety of the nation.
Who were the heroes of the Archer years? Non-combatants like me can hardly claim much credit. It was easy for us. Michael Crick, the BBC journalist who has waged an obsessive war against Lord Archer, deserves some sort of medal. The Charles Moores and Michael Whites and Stewart Stevens have nothing to be ashamed of. Let their names be remem- bered with pride, and add to them that of the novelist Fay Weldon, friend of Lord Archer, who said on BBC 2's Newsnight on Monday that she thought her pal would still make a good mayor of London. She is wrong but romantic.
And Sir Max Hastings? Some will say that he, too, deserves a medal for master- minding his campaign in the Evening Stan- dard. But I don't believe he saw things in Lord Archer's soul that the rest of us had missed. And I do believe that he himself has missed something, and that his analysis is bare and limited. The artist in him, after Lord Archer's fall from grace, might have responded to the drama of his life. Here is a man whose father was a fantasist, who rose from obscure and humble origins, re- inventing himself as he went along, who had the determination to run for Britain and made himself a great fortune after he had been ruined. Max is wrong, in his faux grand way, to say that Lord Archer is 'a small man' who has achieved nothing. He is a talented man who has achieved a lot, and went horribly wrong. It's altogether much more complicated and interesting than Sir Max Hastings is able to see.
Here is a mystery. On Wednesday of last week — pre-Archer, pre-Blair baby — the Guardian carried its latest ICM poll. In the paper's own words, 'Labour's opinion- poll lead has dropped to ten points — its lowest since the general election two years ago'. Surely the Guardian put this sensation on its front page? Well, no. It was tucked away, half of it below the fold, on page four. Someone at the paper was either looking after New Labour — or displaying appalling news judgment.
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