I n the Independent last week, I compared Stephen Byers's performance
in the Commons to Marshal Foch, a man whose centre was giving way and whose right was in retreat, and duly concluded, 'Situation excellent. I shall attack.' Or rather, I had always thought he did. Angus MacKinnon, a former military history publisher, wondered whether I didn't mean Joffre. I jolly well didn't. I said, hurling the Penguin Dictionary of Quotations his way. A penitent Angus conceded that Sir John Keegan, to whom we all bow in such matters, was on my side, citing Aston's biography of Foch as supporting evidence. In this version, Foch composed the signal, but never sent it. Angus isn't convinced, though. The late father of a friend of his father (that's Angus's father, not Marshal Foch's — am I losing you?), who served on Joffre's staff in 1914, insisted that the Fochistes misappropriated the quote in an attempt to burnish their man's reputation for wit under pressure. Hang on, though: the counter-source, although British, was an ardent Joffriste, so we can't trust him either. And there are those who insist that it wasn't Foch or Joffre at all, but De Castelnau or De Langle de Cary. But let's not go there.
The Anguses of the future will be playing the same game with 'Who Said What'?" in the annals of New Labour. The permanent secretary Sir Richard Mottram's liturgy of despair, 'I'm f—d, you're f—d, We're all f—d' (attrib.) will be set as a gobbet on the political history paper, with a first for anyone who can make head or tail of the Wars of the Department of Transport 2001-02. Rousing debate will continue about the origins of 'Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime', Tony Blair's battle cry as shadow home secretary. It is claimed most fervently by Gordon Brown as his phrase, nabbed by Tony without acknowledgment in an adumbration of the great outwitting of Gordon for the leadership.
Since his marriage, Mr Brown can no longer be properly called 'dour', the adjective that has unfailingly attended him throughout his political career. The leaving party for the outgoing Times editor, Peter Stothard, was the first social event the Browns had attended since the death of their baby. As such, it must have been a trial for them, and their grace and cheerfulness were exemplary. Indeed, the Chancellor has even become a bit of a flirt — in an entirely proper social way, I should add. He now does a lovely twinkly-winky sort of 'fascinated to hear your views' face and chuckles merrily while conversing on tax credits and welfare-state
reform. Only when the talk turns to the euro does he come over all flustered and decide that it's time to move on. Is there something bothering him?
Right-wing London has become very pro-Gordon. I keep meeting Ayn Rand worshippers who have clearly fallen for a man who stands for pretty much everything they don't believe in. There is obviously some spooky transference going on here, because London taxi-drivers are becoming fantastically left-wing. Thatcher's motorised stormtroopers have given way to drivers who tell you that 11 September was a conspiracy by the West in order to attack Iraq, and that everything is a conspiracy by the oil cartels to keep up the prices. The last one I met wanted Tony Blair done for treason and Dennis Skinner for Speaker (now you're talking). Dave Spart has relocated to Chingford.
Aastair Campbell is at Mr Stothard's revels. He is on less relaxed form than the Chancellor because he has a story to stifle, a task which he rushes off to complete with all the grim efficiency of a professional kitten-strangler. Alastair objects to his caricature on Bremner, Bird and Fortune because the actor who plays him is a bit portly, whereas the serial news-killer prides himself on the effects of his three-mile daily run on Hampstead Heath. Ile telephones the next day at the crack of (newspaper) dawn, and instructs me to tell my husband to get something that sounded like a megaflow boiler. `Ah,' says Martin. It's
those amazing jogging shoes — the ultrasupergrip-dynoflow-superbouncers. I was telling Alastair last night that my feet ache when I go running because of my fallen arches.' Turns out that Alastair, a fellow sufferer, has located the finest running shoe on the planet for chaps with no arches and a winding road ahead, If the government is caught flat-footed in the propaganda war, it's not for want of the right kit.
Neil Bartlett's production of Kleist's enigmatic drama, The Prince of Homburg, at the Hammersmith Lyric is a harrowing treat of an evening. Go — if only because there's hardly ever any 19th-century German drama on the stage here. Only one cavil: he does that thing contemporary directors do when dealing with formal modes of speech — namely, to drive every line for ironic resonance until no figure in authority is ever addressed in less than a sneer. Kleist's play is so destructive of Prussia's rigid self-belief precisely because the characters preserve the language of respect and obedience, albeit with ambiguities and undertones, against the pull of their emotions. If they were so obviously a bunch of stroppy subversives, the Elector would have had them all court-martialled before the action began.
Staff at the Harvard Business Review have demanded that the editor resign on the rather puritan grounds that she began an affair with the businessman Jack Welch after interviewing him. The relationship 'developed over lunch at the exclusive "21" Club'. Now there is a name I never wanted to hear again. Last year I went to New York to discuss a magazine commission, and took my one-year-old baby along. The magazine executive thought that the '21' Club would be the easiest venue for all three of us. The first glimpse of the pushchair caused the doorman to respond as if we were emissaries from al-Qa'eda. Inside the oak doors was a flight of steep stairs. We galumphed down it unaided, while the cream of Ivy League America looked away in horror. We sat down. The baby spilt his milk on the miniNasdaq screens by the side of each table. I could feel the mental resignation letters being written all around us: 'Sir, is this a creche or a club. . . ?' Every captain of industry in America hated us and showed it. 'Sorry,' said my host. 'It's just that nobody ever brings their kids into Manhattan.' I know that now. An affair is so much less disruptive than a baby.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor of the Inde N., pendent on Sunday and an Independent columnist.
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