DIARY
The only thing the Conservatives got right', one of Downing Street's most power- ful young Blairites whispered to me as he watched a plummy-voiced, tanned, dou- ble-barrelled, designer-drenched girl go past at a louche magazine launch last week, `. . . was female. Tory Girl is best. Every Labour boy wants a Tory Girl.' In the week before Labour's conference, the hunt for that exotic creature, the fleshly manifesta- tion of the spoils of victory, is the closest Blair's young apparatchiks come to blood sports. Since May, I have observed the behaviour of a zoological study group of these predatory Blairite lion-cubs as they pursue their prey in their natural habitat of ministerial press conferences, new restau- rants, book launches and Tuscan villas. Here are my findings. These fit Labour predators are now the dominant pride of lions in the political Serengeti, and increas- ingly come into contact with Tory lionesses whom they never met in their hungry wilderness years. In those lean times, when they knew no better, these magnificent young hunters had had to make do with the meagre, sanctimonious charms of their own females. Now they have espied an altogeth- er richer, more playful attraction: the glossier coats, whiter teeth and shining claws of Tory Girl. I should explain that Tory Girl is not a Conservative activist, merely the Blairites' jargon for a lissome, well-spoken, privately educated daughter of the Tory heartland. Even their names sound more imperial, more . . . yes, Blair- ite. While she-Blairs are called Sheena, Hilary or Angela, Tory Girls' names seem emblazoned with the glory that was Byzan- tium and Gloucestershire: Alexandra, Tatiana, Jocasta. Modern Tory Girl is not the galumphing Sloane of yore, she has evolved into a sleek, right-on, perma-tan lounge cat, working in glossy magazines and PR to combine media spin with social sophistication. Tory Girl was used to power. Now, confused by Conservative emasculation, she is inevitably attracted to the strange accents and meritocratic dynamism of Blair's savvy lion-cubs. Isn't it a relief to know that class action is still so important to our ruling socialists?
Historians may debate the significance of Tory Girl meets Labour Boy. Is it the magnanimity of the victor towards the van- quished, like Alexander the Great and the defeated Darius's princesses? the attraction of opposites, like Ramsay Macdonald and Lady Londonderry? the conqueror's rough vengeance, like the Red Army in 1945 Berlin? Is Tory Girl offering herself to save her class, her nation, like Marie Waleska with Napoleon, Contessa Castiglione with Napoleon III and Pamela Digby working
SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
for American alliance in the arms of Averell Harriman?
There was a drama when I recently did Radio Four's Sunday Commentary. I said that the first time I was ashamed to be British was in the days after Diana, Princess of Wales's tragic death. We allowed an intolerant televised lynch mob to seize con- trol of the television news and, effectively, government, while ministers and bishops, soi-disant moral leaders, were too afraid of unpopularity to guide the crowd towards basic Judaeo-Christian values. I suggested that this was not living democracy, simply the hanging of people from gibbets in the age of satellites. The BBC was naturally cautious about my talk. After three drafts and two separate recordings, they very bravely broadcast it. I too expected lynch- ing, but instead hundreds wrote supporting it and asking for transcripts. This is reassur- ing. But you realise how easily democracy and decency are endangered when govern- ment and Church cravenly idolise the 'peo- ple' above morality. BBC television's bril- liant The Nazis is subtitled A Warning from History. This is a warning from two weeks ago. . . .
The Secretary of State for Culture, Sport and Media keeps giving interviews about me. This is a bizarre thing for a min- ister to do since we're supposed to pontifi- cate about them, not vice versa: it turns out to be almost a satire of Labour media man- agement. Months ago, I interviewed Chris Smith for the Sunday Times. At the last minute, I decided to ask the first openly gay Cabinet minister which colleagues he found
The writing was on the wall.' attractive. He named the PM and the Agri- culture Secretary. Peter Mandelson was as irritated by Mr Smith's answer as he was by my whimsical question. To placate the sat- urnine Mandelson, Mr Smith's advisers came up with a silly conspiracy theory which he accepted. But now, months after the interview, these ludicrous advisers are still sending out decent, gentle Mr Smith, the best Culture minister we've ever had, to avenge my naughtiness in any interview he gives. The theory is that, until seconds before the interview, the interviewer was Sarah Baxter, the News Review editor, but at the last moment, in an act of dastardly cunning, person or persons unknown sinis- terly substituted me as a journalistic Trojan horse. Since I had been the Sunday Times interviewer for almost a year, this is prepos- terously untrue. In the Guardian, Mr Smith blamed his loquacity on me, 'about whom the less I comment the better', and then repeated his conspiracy theory, which his interviewer took so seriously that he earnestly asked, 'Did you sense that the Sunday Times had always intended to sub- stitute Montefiore?' In the Independent, Mr Smith said I asked him 'the most personal of questions which he wouldn't have dreamed of asking any other member of the government'. I had asked Baroness Blackstone the same question. Mr Smith's coming out displayed noble courage. But last week, his lover needlessly revealed far more to the Times than the Minister did to me. Contrary to his aspersions, my mistake was to treat a gay man exactly as I would treat a straight one. While Mr Smith obvi- ously wants to be treated with kid gloves because he is gay, I naively believed, and practised, the equality he preaches.
When my novel My Affair with Stalin was launched last week, sensitive Labour spin doctors suspected that my tale of an 11-year-old schoolboy Stalin referred to those attacks on 'Stalin' Blair. Was it an allegory of New Labour — the Stalinist who becomes neo-Conservative? Special advisers were flatteringly instructed to scour it. Though the comedy is very politi- cal, I haven't written A Portrait of Tony as a Young Stalinist. The best moment at my book launch party was when the ambas- sador of Georgia, Stalin's homeland, alarm- ingly called for silence from the confused company, which included a mixture of Tory grandees like Portillo, Soames and Lilley, Russian film-producers, Tatar adventuress- es and Caucasian potentates. 'The man who plays with Stalin', declaimed Ambassador Mamatsashvili, 'plays with fire, so Simon deserves this . . . ' and he pinned a golden, Stalin-emblazoned second world war ser- vice medal onto my undeserving chest.
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