Westminster Corridors
Many of my fair readers, as well as very gay and right received persons of the other sex, are much perplexed by the damnable procedure that has been devised for the election of a new leader for the Tory Party. No one at the Club seems quite to understand the rules and Whigs and Ruffians are convinced alike that one of their number will 'emerge,' after proper consultations as the successor to Mr Edward Heath.
Only the other night in the Smoking Room, my good friend Sir Simon d'Audley saw Sir Alec Douglas-Home playing with a large box of matches. It will be remembered that the former Peer of the Realm once told the Club that his Administration could not present a Budget to the nation because he had lost some of his matchsticks and so could not do the sums.
This same fourteenth Earl has now been asked to devise a method of election based on what Mr Heath is delighted to call the percentage system. ' Sir Alec claims that the system is foolproof and seems not to have noticed that at a crucial point in his sums, a certain Mr Geoffrey 'Playboy' Rippon, who was supposed to be helping, stole two matches to light an abnormally large cigar.
No wonder the Tribunes of the Press have got it all wrong and are vouchsafing that a candidate will need sixty-five per cent of the votes cast by the Tory MPs to win. This is not the case, as Sir Alec told Sir Simon who told me. If readers can find some matches, I will explain. On the first ballot, Mr Heath will get ten votes together with a number of spoiled papers and a free plastic bucket for his new yacht Morningcloud (which is being built at a cost of at least eighty-five thousand matches).
Mrs Margaret 'Harmony Hair Spray' Thatcher will receive two hundred and three votes and a cupboard full of Campbell's Swedish style meatballs in piquant sauce. This, according to Sir Alec, will give her fifteen per cent more calories than Mr Heath and will enable the Tories to choose Mr Whitelaw as Leader.
In a dry run at the Club, Sir Alec borrowed the Duchess of Falkerider's portable help-me-keep tabs-on-Harold computer and fed in the relevant facts and figures. Before blowing something known as a fuse, the computer established that Mr Stonehouse and Mr Milhench were not one and the same person and that the majority of Czech defectors did not want Mr Heath to remain Leader of the Tory Party.
There is in faith, a strange preoccupation at the Club these days with figures and percentages. That lovable Ruffian Mr Bob Mellish, who is the Government's chief whip and fetishist, became mightily agitated last week when three per cent of the Ruffians joined four per cent of the Whigs and refused to bend over for the lash (oops, I mean whip) in an important division.
As Bob said: "I don't mind these lads dressing up in black leather, but a whip's a whip my darlings." Whereupon, in an emotional scene in the Prime Minister's anteroom, he resigned from the Cabinet. Mr Harold Wilson pleaded and cajoled in vain. It was only when the Duchess produced a tape recording of something described as a bugged conversation made during one of Mr Mellish's amusing and informal whip-rounds that he suddenly (and surprisingly) decided not to resign.
None of which can be very good for poor Mr Wilson's health. My friend Sir Juniper Berry (RN retired) who has been convalescing for seine months after a highly contagious attack of ennui tells me that he saw the Prime Minister in Biarritz. Mr Wilson looked very tired and was said to be suffering from a viral infection following a nasty nosh-up with garlicky old Giscard.
Many members of the Club observe that Mr Wilson looks 'puffy' about the eyes and jowls. Can you blame him? With the ministers of his Ruffian Administration all pulling in different directions it is hardly surprising that the very fabric of the State is being torn apart. The Duchess tells me that Mr Wilson is to meet Mr 'Ian Smith next month on board HMS Morningcloud which is to be moored specially, in the pool of Dolphin Square. That should made for a Happy New Year.
Tom Puzzle
Previous page
