PERSONATION is a CRIME

Yesterday on The World at One, Martha Kearney interviewed the new Liberal Democrat MP for St Austell and Newquay. She said his name was Stephen Gilbert. I object, your honour. Nobody is permitted to pass himself off as me. On Wikipedia, I find that this person calls himself Steve Gilbert. He has traded in both of these brands for 29 years fewer than have I. And the concluding paragraph of his entry reads in its entirety: “He is openly gay”.

How dare this man confuse the public in this manner. Looking further into the outrage, I discover that there is another “openly gay” Liberal Democrat, the returned member for Bristol West. And his name is Stephen Williams. My own first name is William. The whole business is an absolute scandal. You’ll be telling me next that there are “openly gay” Tory and Labour MPs called, respectively, Gilbert Stephens, William Gilbert and William Stephens. I shall go raving mad. Especially as one of David Cameron’s most trusted kitchen-cabinet, behind-the-scenes guys is called Stephen Gilbert. He’s described as “Michael Ashcroft’s right hand man” so he won’t be short of a bob or two.



The Lib Dem chap and the Cameron crony

There have been other Stephen Gilberts. The Irish writer Gilbert Ralston, perhaps most widely known for the movie version of his creepy yarn Willard (his only work of fiction), was born in the same year as my father and took the name Stephen Gilbert as his nom de plume. The Scottish-born English painter and sculptor Stephen Gilbert was far from a household name but highly regarded. I remember coming across one of his sculptures in Kenwood when I was first in London as a student. He died at a splendid age, three days shy of 97, in 2007.

The founding co-director of the New Zealand Institute of Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery is called Stephen Gilbert. All I can say is, he has some face. Another making use of the moniker is the chief executive of the Printers’ Charitable Corporation of Great Britain. I bet he’s a font of wisdom. There’s another one who markets himself as Interim Solutions but he won’t last the course. Yet another is a valedictorian senior at Shiloh High School, California and we say to him “piss off, sonny”. Then there’s the faculty lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University. He’s making me paranoid. Still another has a website called Common Sense Internal Communications. I should sue.



Logoman + US boy with table design

Clearly, my only recourse is to ensure that I am the first up on Google when someone puts the name in a search engine. I have some way to go and this is easier said than done. But if you feel an appropriate degree of compassion for me, you’ll need vast reservoirs for my partner. His name is David James.

HOON GOES HOME

Today two retiring Labour MPs have texted their parliamentary colleagues urging upon them a secret ballot to determine once and for all whether Gordon Brown commands the authentic support of the party. Those MPs are former health secretary Patricia Hewitt and former defence secretary Geoff Hoon and one can only think that they are receiving secret payments from Lord Ashcroft on behalf of the Tory Party. In the six hours since the texts went out, the only publicly voiced support for such a ballot has come from Charles Clarke, Barry Sheerman and Frank Field – in other words, the usual suspects. (Incidentally, when you see the name Frank Field, do you, as I am apt to do, think “I Remember You”?).

For the Parliamentary Labour Party to undertake a secret ballot on the Prime Minister’s support four months from a general election would be wholly self-destructive. It must do severe damage if – at the behest of two members, neither of whom has any constituency within the movement or anything to boast of in their respective ministerial careers – MPs run around like decapitated hens when the prevention of a Cameron government, either of a majority or a minority nature, is their sole mission. Party unity does still matter to the electorate and, even more so, to the party faithful at local level on whom the PLP rely. It is fanciful to imagine that a wholly unprecedented and unpredictable exercise can somehow make the party look more electable.

The febrile atmosphere at Westminster is stoked by the media, in whose interest crisis and hysteria is always to be preferred to calm and statesmanship, and by members who are unduly influenced by correspondents telling them what they have heard (or what they think sounds provocative). All this reporting of off-the-record briefings and “private” opinions (not so private if told to a journalist, I suggest) is deeply suspect. The right wing press necessarily want a change of regime. The Guardian has evinced a depressing level of glee at the Prime Minister's supposed plight, reinforcing a conviction shared long ago among its commentators that Labour would fall. If Labour does lose, nobody will be able to take any credit for pedalling a self-fulfilling prophecy. But MPs need to close their ears to this hubbub and concentrate on the vital task at hand. If there is a Labour prime minister as a result of the election, it will be Gordon Brown and no one else.