SPLITS and SPATS

Thursday’s multifarious elections changed the UK’s political map in various ways, some of them unexpected. One hesitates to use a phrase like “seismic shift” but the reverberations will go on for months and may yet have further, unimagined consequences. Already three party leaders in Scotland have said they will step down. The balance of the coalition in Westminster and Whitehall has been significantly altered. Something may have been set in train that leads to departures from the government, perhaps the collapse of the coalition, maybe even an early general election, certainly now (anyway, sooner or later but within five years) a referendum on the dissolution of the Union.

Let’s begin with Scotland. Not in its wildest dreams did the SNP – or at least anyone except its permanently chipper leader Alex Salmond – expect to emerge with an overall majority of nine in the Holyrood parliament. Proverbially, the complex voting system set up by Labour for Scottish elections was designed to obviate just such an eventuality. But opinion polls just before the ballot suggested that the SNP had overhauled Labour’s earlier projected lead so, given that polls are always a few days behind the momentum, we all ought to have read the signs better.

Alex Salmond, the cat who got the cream

The data is interesting, however, and as always tells a more complex story than do media headlines. What it shows is that the two parties opposed to the government in London both did well. It was the coalition partners, the Conservatives and – disastrously – the Liberal Democrats, who saw their support haemorrhage.

Members of the Scottish parliament come in two kinds. More than half emerge as winners of a First-Past-the-Post system as used at Westminster (and confirmed last Thursday in the nationwide referendum). The rest prevail through a Proportional Representation scheme operated on a regional basis. These are informally referred to as List MSPs. Retiring Tory leader in Scotland Annabel Goldie stands as one of these List MSPs, perhaps because it gives her a better chance of retaining her seat.

The Conservatives lost a quarter of their Holyrood seats and, in the constituencies, are almost entirely confined to the Borders. They shed one-and-a-half percent of their regional support but getting on for three percent among the more critical FPTP constituency MPs. The Lib Dem vote fell by six percent among List MSPs and more than eight percent in the constituencies. They lost more than two-thirds of their MSPs and were pushed back to the constituencies of Orkney and Shetland.

Labour lost much the same among List MSPs as the Tories in the constituencies, but only 0.45 percent in the FPTP vote. Indeed, Labour took more Scottish seats from the Tories than did the SNP and as many from the SNP as from the Tories. But the way the maths panned out, the SNP had a net gain from Labour of 21 seats, even though the most significant transfer of votes was from the other parties to the Nationalists. In that sense the result flattered to deceive.

Goldie woman with golden boy

Nonetheless, Salmond’s Cheshire Cat grin will remain long after the astonishment of the election has faded. Most of the cards appear to be in his hands. As I argued in a letter to The Guardian today, the Nationalists have a distinct natural advantage. All their leading lights want to sit at Holyrood. The most accomplished Scots in all the other parties seek to make their careers at Westminster. Consequently, since the estimable Donald Dewar, the Scottish Labour Party has been led by nonentities and time-servers who attract few votes. Indeed, two of Dewar’s successors were obliged to stand down because of dubious practice.

If Gordon Brown had led Scottish Labour instead, he might now be on his fourth term as first minister in Edinburgh and David Miliband might be on his second as prime minister in London. But unless Ed Miliband can persuade the brightest and best of Labour politicians – Douglas Alexander, Jim Murphy, Anne Begg, Tom Harris, Alistair Darling – to go home and stand for Holyrood, the SNP will surely continue to win overall majorities.

As to the referendum on Scottish independence, Salmond is playing it long and cautiously. Conventional wisdom says that support for the SNP does not transfer wholesale into support for UDI. In any case, referendums are what is called indicative only; that is to say that they put no obligation under law on the governments that call them. They are weaker than a plebiscite, weaker still than a direct election, the results of which are binding. Salmond could summon the Scots to a referendum and still follow a course opposite to that preferred by his people. But for someone who evidently hugely relishes being much the largest fish in a relatively small pond, he is not likely to want to risk his Holyrood majority by alienating his electorate.

The late and much loved Donald Dewar

For the Tories in London, the calculations are very different. David Cameron’s immediate reaction to the SNP’s success and the prospect of a Scottish referendum was to say that Holyrood could of course have its vote but that he would fight for the Union “with every fibre of my being”. Well, he’s got to say that. Many Tory MPs, on the contrary, would be perfectly happy to kiss goodbye to Scotland. After all, the country delivered just one Tory MP to Westminster last year, as against 41 for Labour. They picture a House of Commons without members from the independent nation of Scotland – or indeed from Wales where Labour also dominates – but with a big advantage for the Tories in the remaining English seats, especially after the shake-up of boundaries being proposed by the government that – would you credit it? – favours Conservatives still further.

Such a development at Westminster would finally lay to rest Tam Dalyell’s legendary West Lothian Question, wherein the then Labour backbencher asked how it could be proper for the MP for West Lothian (himself) to be permitted to vote on an issue peculiar to the citizens of Blackburn, Lancashire but not on an issue peculiar to the burghers of Blackburn, West Lothian; under the terms of the devolution bill then going through the house, Westminster MPs would lose executive jurisdiction over domestic Scottish affairs. Meanwhile, the formal agreement that launched the Westminster coalition includes an undertaking to have a commission examine the West Lothian Question.

Tam Dalyell, the West Lothian questioner

Another school of Tory thought argues that a referendum on Scottish independence ought to be put before the whole of the UK because unionists in each constituent country have a view on the matter, whether they be Scottish or no. This notion might appeal to Cameron but of course would be rejected outright by Salmond.

Cheerleader for the Thatcherite wing of the Tories, Siphon Effluent of The Daily Telegraph, repeats a familiar cry: “why [should] the English taxpayer … send £23billion a year to Scotland to pay for it to have free prescriptions, free tuition and frozen council tax?” The answer of course is that Holyrood has not been granted tax-raising powers and if it were obliged to disburse the funds it receives from Westminster as the coalition dictates, its very existence would be negated. The same applies to local councils across Britain. It suits the government to have devolved authorities being blamed for the cuts they perforce have to impose. That the SNP is smart enough to disburse its funds in a way that attracts voters sticks in the craw of Tories.

Effluent is also one of the loudest voices telling the PM to call a snap election: “there simply won’t be a better chance of a Conservative victory than now”. It’s easy to see why Tory backbenchers and commentators fume at the notion that the Lib Dems should be somehow “rewarded” for their catastrophic showing in the election and the comprehensive rejection of the voting method referendum that seemed to many to be their raison d’être, rewarded by having their role in government bolstered and, as Tories would see it, being offered concessions over such matters as the selling off of the NHS. Doesn’t electoral rejection weaken rather than strengthen the grip that politicians exert on power and policy?

Again, Cameron says publicly what he has to, that the coalition is the thing and must go on and that the Lib Dems still have a central role. “No crowing” he has told those party workers who enjoyed watching Lib Dem councillors tumble, quite a few of them to Tories. But equally he may not feel as triumphal as do those who long for a Tory administration governing alone.

There was a single parliamentary by-election last Thursday, at Leicester South. You can argue that, given the nature of the poll, this was perhaps the purest and most accurate gauge of opinion about the national government taken on the day. It has been little reported but the result was striking. After all, it was an “unnecessary” election in that the sitting MP decided instead to run as local mayor. Historically, the electorate has generally punished parties that call elections purely for the benefit of the sitting party. But here the Labour majority rose by over 3,000 votes and by 12 percent of the total. The Tory candidate’s vote was halved and fell by more than that of the Lib Dem (who came second).

Analysis of the voting figures in the council elections reveals little to support the theory that the Tory vote “held up” and that, because many more Lib Dem seats are vulnerable to a Tory swing than to a Labour one, Cameron’s crew would do well at a general election.

I am not privy to how the voting is projected but those who reckon to know how to do it say that a UK-wide general election that replicated the voting patterns in the local elections would give Labour 318 seats (up 60), Tories 270 (down 37). Lib Dems 26 (down 31) and others 36 (up eight). So Labour would be the largest party and could govern by concluding what Ed Miliband put forward some weeks ago, a deal with the Lib Dems. And this is before the full impact of the cuts is felt. Effluent is right, from the Tories’ point of view, to urge Cameron not to wait. For Labour, things can only get better.

The LOUD LAUGH that SPOKE the VACANT MIND

In today’s Daily Telegraph, the columnist I love to hate, Simon Heffer, has once again voyaged into a subject of which he knows nothing: humour. Here is the link:

http://bit.ly/k4klbX

I shall now make Mr Heffer chuckle uncontrollably (given his susceptible funny bone) by revealing that my own name for him is Siphon Effluent. Did you see what I did there, Simon? Good, isn’t it.

The occasion of Mr Effluent’s latest outpouring was the wonderfully witty and hilarious wisecrack delivered in the house at Prime Minister’s Questions when the PM advised shadow minister Angela Eagle to “calm down, dear”. He and his backbenchers thought this so much funnier than the complete works of Oscar Wilde, SJ Perelman, PG Wodehouse and Stephen Fry rolled into one that Mr Cameron felt called upon to repeat the joke a further six times. Laugh? I thought I’d have to bite the television remote.

Siphon Effluent with his beloved Thatch

Laughter in the house is not like laughter anywhere else (except probably the Bullingdon Club and the Oxford Union). It is a mirthless howl, the kind of har-har-har braying, accompanied by forced slapping of fat hams, that speaks not at all of appreciative and judicious admiration for a finely-turned phrase but entirely of bullies putting in the boot after their loudest mouth (whom they fear, or at least require to impress with “loyalty”) has played to the lowest common denominator by landing on an opponent a blow to the solar plexus. This kind of knee-jerk oinking is certainly not the prerogative of Flashmanesque Tories. All the other party cannon-fodder do it too, even (I shouldn’t wonder) the Greens. It was noticeable though that, while George Osborne hooted like a hairdresser at a Cher concert, Nick Clegg sat stony-faced throughout the entire episode.

Politicians as a breed are not all that amusing. Even some quite smooth orators, while skilled at rousing an audience, cannot deliver a funny line. Those politicos who are able to reveal a responsive sense of humour in a general way can indeed be funny themselves, regardless of political inclination: Heseltine, Kinnock, Kennedy, Hattersley, Portillo, Skinner, Widdecombe (the latter, perhaps, unintentionally). Ed Miliband shows encouraging signs of being able to mock thoughtfully, helped by some evidence that he doesn’t take himself too seriously all of the time. John Smith had a charmingly deprecating sense of humour.

Angela Eagle: shot down by Cameron's deadly wit

In earlier generations, Harold Macmillan had a dry clubman’s wit, often quite lethal. Harold Wilson could be witheringly funny. Jo Grimond and Jeremy Thorpe were both quick-witted and smart Liberal Party leaders. I remember an edition of Any Questions? celebrating some early anniversary, during which Thorpe astonished all by his pitch-perfect and brilliantly “scripted” impersonations of some of the programme’s stalwarts not present in that edition: Ralph Whiteman, Ted Leather, Gerald Nabarro.

Winston Churchill’s many witticisms have gone down in legend, though some of them would fail modern tests of acceptability. No PM since has matched Churchill’s style, timing and sheer sense of mischief – “Bossom?” he sniffed at the surname of a new member. “Neither one thing nor the other”. But at least one contemporary statesman can deliver a witty speech with perfect timing and aplomb. Go to
http://bit.ly/jDop1g
to laugh out loud at Barack Obama's speech to yesterday's White House correspondents' dinner.

Typically, politicians have ‘jokes’ written for them, which they proceed to mangle in delivery, yet the faithful roar with simulated delight anyway. Tony Blair thought himself jolly good-humoured but the kind of thing that made him weep with laughter was that singing fish novelty that was all the rage among people with no taste for a day and half some time in the late ‘90s. Gordon Brown’s delivery of a joke was as leaden as John Major’s or Edward Heath’s. And Siphon Effluent’s great heroine, Margaret Thatcher, had no sense of humour whatsoever. The antediluvian playwright Sir Ronald Millar – don’t hold your breath for a revival of his plays – wrote the “you turn if you want to – the lady’s not for turning” shtik, a desperately laborious conceit even in skilled hands, but it brought a Tory conference to its knees weeping with uncontrollable mirth, despite that the dear leader had performed it with considerably less panache than Neville Chamberlain announcing “consequently this country is at war with Germany”.

Siphon Effluent: the HL Mencken de nos jours

Siphon Effluent himself does make me laugh, mostly because he contrives to present the appearance of a sugar pig with marmalade smeared on his head. But his writing is dominated by his desire to be disobliging and, if he ever threatens to try for humour, it never ventures further than peevish scorn. He always refers to Mr Cameron as “Dave” – this is known in the trade as a “running gag” – presumably because he disdains a Tory leader who is not Thatcher and because some of the PM’s intimates appear to refer to him by this builder’s-mate moniker. (Not least of these intimates is the first lady, Samantha Cameron. There again, her sense of humour was revealed yesterday when she appeared to think it a jolly jape to roll up at a formal state occasion dressed for a constituency coffee morning; gratifyingly, she was comprehensively outshone by the effortlessly chic Miriam Clegg).

Bernard Manning: evidently he and Effluent were separated at birth

In his piece on humour, Effluent makes a strenuous joke in calling Angela Eagle “a harridan”. He was so pleased with this that he repeated it. Now, Effluent is very keen on the correct use of English. Indeed, he is the in-house English monitor at The Telegraph, apt to send stinging emails to hapless journalists who have offended his sensibilities. So I find myself surprised that he should use the term “harridan”, which is defined by the OED as “a haggard old woman”, of a personable female of just 50.

Effluent writes further: “I suspect even Dave has the manners not to address a woman with whom he is not well acquainted as ‘dear’ except in jest” and later, on a different matter, “This column prides itself on its gallantry towards the ladies”. Yet he himself has the ungallant lack of breeding to write of a woman with whom he is not well acquainted in such an insulting manner. I think he should stand in the corner.

With brilliant skill and dazzling wit, Effluent turns what his admirers might have feared was a mortal thrust at “Dave” into an all-guns-blazing assault on Labour and “lefties” in general: “His [Cameron’s] mistake, however, was to think that these people are easy-going types who like a laugh. He has, at least, now admitted he realises that the Left doesn't have a sense of humour”.

Jim Davidson: also seems to come in a similar shade to Effluent

Ah yes, the age-old canard that “lefties” have “no sense of humour”. It is of course fair and just to observe that there are individuals who are earnest and single-minded about their politics, but I never found that this degree of dedication was confined to the left. Had it been, we might now live in a more enlightened world. But the myth persists: on Any Questions? this weekend, UKIP leader Nigel Farage spoke of “po-faced Republicans”.

It can be argued – I have argued it myself – that comedy is fundamentally reactionary because it requires a reliable and enduring establishment, status quo, conventional wisdom against which to bounce. So, while pretending to subvert and mock, comedy really reinforces and humanises. It’s Lear’s Fool syndrome – the absolute monarch permits an all-licensed jester precisely because he is absolute and therefore the jester cannot draw blood, only wry smiles.

But there are many conventional wisdoms. Changes of government do not signal the end of satire. Effluent seems to imagine that only reactionary people are capable of being funny. “Comedians who are not Leftists” essays Effluent “have more or less been driven out of business. Bernard Manning was martyred in this cause. Jim Davidson is in the process of following him, not because he isn't funny, but because he was a strong supporter of Mrs Thatcher. Long after she left office, the spiteful little creeps who form the ‘comedy’ establishment of this country would get laughs from their bovine audiences simply by mentioning her name”.

Tom Lehrer: 'We Will All Go Together When We Go'

If Effluent sees himself as a comedian, this is certainly his most laughable passage. The idea that Manning was “martyred” is preposterous. He may have fallen out of television fashion – many entertainers do and politics has nothing to do with it – but his club work (including at his own club) continued to bring him a handsome income. And I can’t help wondering how often Effluent was to be seen knocking back pints with hoi polloi at Manning’s place, roaring with delight and slapping his hams at “fookin’ Paki” so-called “gags”. If nothing else, the vulgarity of it all seems extremely unlikely to have appealed to Mr & Mrs Effluent as an alternative to their beloved Wagner, any more than one can picture them tripping to the end of a pier to rock with joy at Jim Davidson’s version of fun.

Perhaps Effluent is thinking of Ben Elton when he writes of “the spiteful little creeps” mentioning Thatcher’s name for a laugh. Elton certainly used to do stuff about the woman he called Thatch but that was back in the ‘80s in his spangly-suited phase. I would gently suggest that if Effluent were to take tea with Elton at the Ritz and probe him for his present political views, he might find that they have more in common than he imagines.

Roy Battersby: as you see, an archetypal po-faced leftie

There have been plenty of intelligent, thoughtful and far from spiteful comics who are not reactionaries. In Effluent’s youth, he might have been aware of the American Tom Lehrer, a finely witty, talented and scrupulous social satirist who announced his retirement when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, on the grounds that the award rendered satire obsolete.

But even staunchly committed left-wingers have sprightly senses of humour. Tariq Ali, whom I knew a bit at one time, is a warmly funny and witty man. My old chum Roy Battersby would certainly fill the bill for Effluent when looking for a fully paid-up leftie. Roy was a key member of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party in the 1970s and ‘80s, took five years out of his directing career to work full-time for the party as its chief representative on the Palestinian question (he made a moving documentary called The Palestinian, fronted by Vanessa Redgrave), stood for parliament and was involved in the supposedly notorious Red House centre which was a constant target for MI6. Yet my abiding image of him is of a man wreathed in a beatific smile, relishing the pleasures of life and laughing uproariously at its manifold absurdities.

There is an unbridgeable gulf between, on the one hand, Roy, Tariq and Tom Lehrer and, on the other, a Simon Heffer whose idea of a comedian is Manning or Davidson and a David Cameron who thinks he’s being witty by quoting someone as repellent as Michael Winner in something as low class as a television advertisement and claims that anyone who cannot see such rubbish as meritorious lacks a sense of humour. I can’t imagine finding anything in common (humorous or otherwise) with anyone who would rather reside on the Heffer/Cameron/Manning side.

SMEAR STUDIES

I make no apology for returning to the matter of William Hague and the famous “gay rumours”. Last weekend, I was one of the bloggers to reveal that the unnamed cabinet minister, whose sexuality (according to the lead story in The Daily Telegraph) was being questioned in the blogosphere, was indeed the Foreign Secretary. In the eight days since, the story has developed in quite unforeseen ways.

The present situation first came to light because Hague recently appointed Chris Myers as his third special advisor. A number of observers recognised Myers as someone who had frequently accompanied Hague during the election campaign. On Thursday, The Guardian quoted “a source” in Hague’s constituency of Richmond, Yorkshire, to the effect that “it often seemed as though Myers was there for the ride rather than any other purpose”.

By that time, the notorious political blogger who posts under the name Guido Fawkes had sought through the Freedom of Information Act to discover whether Hague and Myers had ever shared a hotel room while on the campaign trail. I imagine someone must have tipped him off that such was a scent worth pursuing. And on Wednesday, knowing that Fawkes would be running with the information that Hague and Myers did indeed share a room on more than one occasion, Hague decided to attempt to nip the story in the bud. So he released his personal statement.

Reporting it for BBC News on Wednesday evening, political editor Nick Robinson called it the most extraordinary statement by a politician he had ever seen. He didn’t elaborate but perhaps he didn’t need to. Hague’s statement declared that “any suggestion that [Myers’] appointment was due to an improper relationship between us is utterly false, as is any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man. This speculation seems to stem from the fact that whilst campaigning before the election we occasionally shared twin hotel rooms”.

Hague and Myers last year

Well, now, who could be blamed for raising an eyebrow if a 49 year-old multi-millionaire shares a room with a 25 year-old of either the same or the other sex? Who would not imagine that a seasoned politician might think twice before doing such a thing, even if he were so tight-fisted a Yorkshireman that he resented paying Yorkshire hotel rates? Come to that, doesn’t Hague have a home in his constituency? Why would he need to stay at a hotel at all?

Hague’s statement goes on that “Christopher … has now told me that, as a result of the pressure on his family from the malicious allegations, he does not wish to continue in his position”. On Friday, The Northern Echo reported Myers’ family being “besieged” as “journalists kept vigil” even though “it was unclear … if Mr Myers … was inside the detached property”. Presumably the paper had a reporter of its own there, doing a spot of besieging. But of course this “vigil” was as a consequence of Hague’s statement, not a forerunner of it. I can find no evidence of media interest in the Myers family before Hague issued his statement, so it seems most unlikely that Myers resigned to bring “pressure” to a halt, but rather that he stepped down in order to pre-empt it.

Aside from that, which was the result of Hague electing to go public, there seems no reason at all why Myers should resign. He is not perceived to be at fault, even by Hague’s political opponents. If he was really so useful as a special advisor to the Foreign Secretary as that politician seemed to think, despite his singular lack of verifiable credentials to be so, Hague should have kept him. After all, as shadow Foreign Secretary, he flew the boy (first class at MoD expense) with him to Afghanistan, including a two-night stop over on Bahrain, and also took him more than once to Belfast. Myers seems indeed to have been indispensable.

Hague’s statement concludes with considerable detail about his wife Ffion’s history of miscarriages. This is perhaps the most perplexing part of the statement. What does it have to do with anything? Only people of very limited intelligence believe that being married and wanting children, whether or not the wish can be fulfilled, is conclusive evidence of a lack of homosexual instincts or behaviour. Oscar Wilde himself had a wife and children.

The result of Hague’s personal statement was to make the rumours a perfectly legitimate subject for the mainstream media. From this point on, the fact that Hague’s sexuality had been queried was out in the open and could not be packed away again. The story was no longer confined to blogs. Because of this, many at Westminster (not least in the wiser reaches of the Tory Party) have questioned Hague’s judgment. Those sceptics know that many will believe that smoke must mean fire. Hague will always be thought by some to be at least bisexual if not someone engaged in a lavender marriage.

While old-school Tories like Norman Tebbit and John Redwood publicly shook their heads in dismay and David Cameron, still on holiday/paternity leave, issued an unquestioning but oddly bloodless message of support, the Richmond Tories piled in to bolster their MP. Such warmth wouldn’t be hard to find, for Hague has the largest majority of any constituency member in Britain, which tells you quite how Tory is that part of Yorkshire. The chairman of the Richmond Conservative Association, Christopher Bourne-Arton, told The World at One that he fervently hoped those bloggers would return to the “slime-pool” from which they had arisen. He evidently was so pleased with this piece of withering scorn that he delivered himself of it again on the television news that evening.

All that being said, Hague is badly wounded. His record is already tainted by misplaced enthusiasm for such unreliable allies as milords Archer and Ashcroft. So soon after the David Laws embarrassment, he has allowed it to become widely suspected that le vice anglais is alive and well and thriving in the Con-Dem coalition. And of course the very fact that Hague takes the matter so seriously and that people talk glibly of “smears” and “slime-pools” tells you just how homophobic public discourse still is in 21st century Britain.

It’s not as if such tales are anything new. Two married ministers under Thatcher and Major were regularly rumoured to be really gay. Michael Portillo eventually declared that he had been gay as a young man, though advising that those days were now over. Peter Lilley was more apt to treat the tales with lofty disdain. I remember somebody in an Any Questions? audience raising with Lilley the matter of his sexuality and moderator Jonathan Dimbleby promptly and severely shutting down any opportunity for further comment – he seemed far more exercised about it than Lilley himself.

Around that time, a fellow journalist told me that she had heard William Hague remark: “I don’t understood all the fuss about Peter Lilley. He had my cherry long ago”. I do not disinter that detail to make more trouble for Hague. Indeed, I give it no credit: even Hague would not be so naïve as to make such a remark in the hearing of a journalist. But it says something about how Hague was viewed on Fleet Street, even at that young age.

Peter Lilley, fresh as cherry blossom

Not that the mainstream media have been so very gleeful in pouring supposed mud over Hague’s shiny head. Julian Glover, The Guardian’s young-looking specialist in gay Torydom, wrote a typically confused piece on Thursday under the title ‘The Dark Side of Gay Liberation’. Among his arguments was that “gay and lesbian politicians, and those suspected of being in this group, are now quite routinely expected to make a declaration of their sexuality, as straight ones, by and large, do not … No one rings up ministers to ask if they are secretly attracted to women”. Leave aside that, in Glover’s world, all ministers would seem to be male. What he forgets, though, is that heterosexual politicians make statements of their heterosexuality all the time. It is after all only a week ago that every front page carried carefully posed photographs of David Cameron with his new baby. MPs who are married with children – which means nearly all of them – pretty much without exception and from time immemorial have featured photographs of this reassuringly “normal” family life in their election literature. The underlying meaning of this tradition is not hard to fathom, nor does it require stating explicitly.

The Guardian re-runs such pieces as Glover’s on its website under the banner ‘Comment is Free’ and invites readers to respond in a thread. I posted a comment on Thursday afternoon, the burden of which will be familiar to those who have read the previous posting on this blog. I recast it like this:

“Well of course we all accept that Hague isn't gay because Brutus is an honourable man and it's unparliamentary to accuse a chap of being economical with the actualité. But can we agree that William has been cavalier with the appearance. Out of Oxford, his best pal was a certain Alan Duncan. They both signed up as Shell Oil trainees and they shared two successive homes, the second of which Duncan bought with his business gains and charged William a monthly rent of a case of champagne. That house was convenient for the Commons in – oh, mother – Gayfere Street.

It was Duncan who persuaded Hague to run for Tory leader after John Major stood down, Duncan who managed his campaign, Duncan who was appointed his parliamentary political secretary (an unprecedented, never repeated title) and who was briefly his media advisor until his advice proved crap. It was only after Hague was succeeded as leader by Iain Duncan Smith that Alan Duncan came out, fully ten years after entering the house. Why? Because had he come out while Hague was leader, awkward questions would have been asked about a man who only married at 36 when about to lead the party.

So, sure Hague is undoubtedly and securely straight. But he's certainly spent a lot of time in the company of people who may make him look a bit gay”.

Very much to my surprise, I noted next day that this comment had been removed from the thread by the moderator. Appending to it a note arguing that there was nothing offensive or libellous in the comment, I posted it again. Again it was removed. I then posted this:

“My comment on this matter has twice been removed by the moderator. I have carefully read the so-called community standards and my comment is in breach of none of them. It is grammatical, articulate, pertinent, witty and not repetitious (as far as I am aware) of any other comment in this thread. It is not abusive, homophobic, gratuitously or otherwise offensive. It does not accuse Mr Hague of being gay, untruthful, unfaithful to his wife, incompetent at his job or anything other than – or worse than – being heedless of appearances.

If it may be thought libellous, then let me point out that the facts to which I allude in the posting are contained in an article by Paul Routledge in The Independent of September 21st 1997. This may be read at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/comment-williams-clumsy-friendprofile-alan-duncan-1240267.html

No action for libel was evidently taken against that newspaper at the time it was first published or since it was placed on the internet. As a consequence, no Guardian lawyer has grounds for ordering my comment to be removed.

I bitterly resent being censored by the moderator of this thread. There seems to be no mechanism whereby his (it cannot surely be a 'her') Stalinist decisions may be either expounded or appealed. The only recourse the diligent poster has is to attempt to repeat the imagined outrage. I shall shortly post my original comment for a third time. If it and/or this present comment is/are removed, I shall be taking up the matter with the Press Council and the Scott Trust.

Comment is free? Ha”.

A little later, I posted the original comment again. Both postings were fairly swiftly expunged. I was staggered. I then posted this short note:

“Who is the moderator, to whom is he answerable and how may one address him openly?

What can there possibly be in this posting to attract removal?”

and, as far as I am aware (life is too short to keep checking), it remains on the thread. I took up the matter with the Press Complaints Commission but am not sanguine about a result because their website requires one to file the complained-of article and my complaint concerns the censorship of my own article. I am not sure that the PCC has a mechanism to satisfy me. I thought about writing separately to the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger (whom, a long time ago when he briefly became a television critic, I described in print as “another know-all who knows fuck-all about television”), and to Dame Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust (which oversees Guardian Media Group matters), but then I decided I couldn’t be bothered.



The Hagues with Alan Duncan: other than a cartoon of himself, this is the only image that appears on his profile page on his own website

I did write to the letters editor of The Guardian this letter intended for publication:

“Dear Sir,

Someone uniquely well placed to shed light on the William Hague question is Alan Duncan. He befriended Hague at Oxford and both men became Shell Oil trainees. They shared two successive homes, the second of which Duncan bought with his business gains and charged Hague a monthly rent of a case of champagne. That house was convenient for the Commons in – ahem – Gayfere Street.

It was Duncan who persuaded Hague to run for Tory leader after John Major stood down, Duncan who managed his campaign, Duncan who was appointed his parliamentary political secretary (an unprecedented, never repeated title) and who was briefly his media advisor until his advice proved unreliable. It was only after Hague was replaced as leader that Duncan came out, fully ten years after entering the house. Why? Because had he come out while Hague was leader, awkward questions would have been asked about a man who only married at 36 when about to lead the party.

Civil-partnered and with his own sexuality beyond doubt, Alan Duncan's assurance of William Hague's truthfulness in declaring as ‘utterly false ... any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man’ would clearly assist his position enormously.

Yours faithfully”

It wasn’t published. As a regular contributor to the paper’s correspondence columns, I have an email relationship with the letters editor, Nigel Willmott, so I sent him a personal note:

“Dear Nigel,

Is there some agreement between the government and the media generally and/or The Guardian specifically that the Hague history contained in my email of 12.33 pm yesterday – highly pertinent and accurate though it was – will not be aired? I think we should be told.

Oh, and I'm not letting this rest.

Yours sincerely”

Willmott replied thus:

“Hi Stephen

I can't speak for the whole of the Guardian ... on the Letters page we have (that is, I as editor enforce) a guideline that we do not get involved in gossip and speculation about people's private lives. We are old-fashioned enough to believe there is such a thing.

I am not a great fan of William Hague as a politician, but I fail to see what his sexuality has do with his public role - except as in that this innuendo is affecting his ability to do that job. I think the invasion of public figures' private life for its own sake demeans our public culture.

I don't know or care whether he is gay - but if so, whether he chooses to make his sexuality public or not is up to him (or perhaps him and his wife).

There may be issues that stem from the affair - perhaps his judgment and the process for appointing his adviser, or in making his statement – that may be fair for debate on our page at some stage. But we will remain uninterested in speculation about his private life per se.

None of our guidelines is written in stone and we accept as the affair goes on (if it does) areas of his private life may become legitimate areas for debate as they become a public issue, but for the moment, I am not interested in your letter, which as far as I can tell is interested only in establishing his sexuality.

Otherwise, we will continue to look forward to receiving your usually excellent letters.

bst Nigel”

My response to that – the proper one, I think – was to write him a better letter, in the light of a collation of views published in the feature section, G2, under the heading ‘Does it matter who William Hague shares a hotel room with?’:

Dear Sir,

It matters (G2 cover story September 3) because, as party leader, William Hague vehemently opposed the repeal of the cruel and oppressive Section 28, introduced by the previous Tory government to outlaw an even-handed attitude to sexuality by teachers and others answerable to local authorities. Hague even sacked one of his frontbenchers, specifically for voicing support for Labour's decision to repeal the clause.

At that time, Hague's closest political ally was Alan Duncan. Indeed, the pair shared two successive homes, so Duncan was clearly also Hague's closest personal friend. It doesn't signify whether such friendship was platonic or not and, speaking for myself, I would not care to know. It does signify that Hague was so ideologically blinkered that he could overlook his good friend's self-declared homosexuality and punish that of everyone else. I leave to others their opinions as to how far this might suggest that Hague is conflicted about sexuality.

Yours faithfully

Willmott replied:

“Hi Stephen

thanx ... this is maybe something we could go with ...

bst Nigel”

I make no remark on a man who, from his photograph, looks to be not significantly younger than me using the modes of the texting generation. At any rate, my letter did not appear and I sent him a brief note:

“Nigel –

Ach, you're such a tease ...

Regards”

On Any Questions? this weekend, who should fetch up but the aforementioned Alan Duncan. Would he speak as unguardedly as he usually does? Would he hell! Holiday relief moderator Martha Kearney very properly introduced Duncan as one who had befriended Hague at Oxford and who had been the first sitting Tory MP to come out. In answer to the opening question about a “brilliant” politician being undermined by rumour, Duncan said: “First of all, you’re quite right to use the adjective ‘brilliant’. We’re dealing with a very special politician here and I think the way he has been pilloried this week has been contemptible. I think that, based on rumour, innuendo with no foundation in fact, bloggers and the press have got completely out of control. I know William, I know Ffion and I don’t like the way they have been treated. I think the way he has behaved and the way Ffion has behaved have been admirable – composed, calm, dignified – and I think it’s wrong for British politics that a couple like this should have been subjected to what they’ve been subjected this week”.

Duncan guys Hague in a House of Lords entertainment, February 2009: don't, whatever you do, imagine that this is camp

This had my lower jaw sagging. How has his pal been “pilloried”, pray? Who has treated Mrs Hague in any way other than at a very long arm’s length and without spin of any kind? What is the history of Hague lodging with the gay Duncan if it is not a foundation in fact?

After a depressingly conventional discussion among the rest of the panel, Kearney put it to Duncan that “one paper even suggested that the rumours date back to the time you shared a flat with him”, to which Duncan replied: “I don’t think that’s true at all but here you go, you’re off again and I don’t like the nature of your question. You’re starting once again just the kind of tittle-tattle which has been the foundation of this and is unjustified”. Kearney should never have let him get away with this, should have raised the Section 28 issue that I alluded to in my letter, but the mood of the whole panel was against her.

I sent an email to Any Answers?: “Alan Duncan was William Hague's closest political ally before and during the latter's leadership of the Tory Party. Indeed, as Martha Kearney pointed out, the pair shared a house (indeed, two successive homes), so Duncan was clearly also Hague's closest personal friend. It doesn't signify whether such friendship was platonic or not and, speaking for myself, I do not care to know. It does signify that Hague was so ideologically blinkered that he could overlook his good friend's self-declared homosexuality and punish that of everyone else by, as leader, vehemently opposing the repeal of the cruel and oppressive Section 28, introduced by the previous Tory government to outlaw an even-handed attitude to sexuality by teachers and others answerable to local authorities. Hague even sacked one of his frontbenchers, specifically for voicing support for Labour's decision to repeal the clause.

I leave to others their opinions as to how far this might suggest that Hague is conflicted about sexuality. But in the political sense I have indicated – and only in this sense – whether or not Hague has had relationships with men is important.

Yours faithfully”.

I didn’t expect my email to be read but the selection of phone callers chosen – no emails – infuriated me. I wrote again, before the end of the broadcast: “What is the point of Any Answers? if all the callers you choose make the same point and the moderator doesn't deal with it? Your callers repeated and repeated the argument that two people of the same sex ought to be able to room together to save money without raising suspicion of an ‘improper’ relationship or, as one caller preposterously put it, ‘being criminalised’.

But how many of these callers who volunteered that they had shared with ‘a friend’ are multi-millionaires? And how many of them shared with someone young enough to be their child? And how many of them would presume nothing ‘improper’ if a 49 year-old man shared a room with a 25 year-old woman? Would they say ‘oh, I expect they were saving money’?

Yours faithfully”. Both emails received automated replies.

The Telegraph columnist Mary Riddell, also on the Any Questions? panel, reckoned that, once the issue escaped the blogosphere, the BBC and The Guardian “were the most vociferous or covered it most extensively”. I thought this was pretty rich, given that it was The Telegraph that first aired the matter last Saturday and this Saturday was still running with it (we only see the paper that day because it then has much the best of all colour magazines). Yesterday, the paper’s chief keeper of the Thatcherite flame, Simon Heffer, weighed in against the hapless Hague. The man I call Siphon Effluent vouchsafed that “the statement about Mrs Hague’s miscarriages was a abominable abuse of her in the interests of his political career” and “[Hague] raises questions, by his conduct, of whether he has the credibility to stay in office”. Effluent is no supporter of the Cameron project and, since the former Thatcher protégé Hague threw in his lot with what Effluent would deem the wets, he could not be expected to extend to Hague any benefit of any doubts.



Damian Thompson; Andrew Sullivan

Elsewhere, the paper’s blogger Damian Thompson revealed himself to have been a contemporary of Hague’s at Oxford. On his blog, he reports that everyone at Oxford noted Hague’s lack of interest in having a girlfriend. In his newspaper article, he notes that the enormously articulate Andrew Sullivan, long resident in the States and recently an eloquent supporter of President Obama (though still fundamentally a Republican), was once a protégé of Hague’s. Sullivan is famously, noisily gay.

So it remains plangent that Hague can insist that “any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man” is false and make that vicious and unforgiveable stand he took over Section 28 and yet have his personal life interthreaded with queens. Let’s face it, he is never going to be free of this.

OVERPARTED?

On the cover of the new issue of Private Eye, Herman Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton are embracing each other under the headline “European Union: It’s the Kiss of Death!” His speech bubble says “ I love EU …”, hers “… and I love EU too!” and along the bottom runs the legend “On Other Pages: Who are EU two?”

It’s a long way from the magazine’s best effort, combining a Sun-type gor-blimey pun with a very conventional take on the news. The press – in Britain, at least – have united in scoffing at the European Union’s appointments to the new posts created under the Lisbon treaty. The consensus is that these two new officers of the union are at best lightweights and unknown quantities.

I find this at best presumptuous, insulting and more informative about the nature of the consensus than about the individuals in question. If political commentators in London have not heard of Cathy Ashton – and an Express leader headline managed to call her Margaret Ashton – that merely shows how little notice the British press takes of European politics generally.



The new EU stars

But of course most of them have heard of her. Belittling her name recognition is just an affectation, all part of the anti-Labour stance now widely embraced in what used to be called Fleet Street. If for no better reason, they know her as the wife of Peter Kellner, long one of their own and in recent years the frontman for the psephological organisation YouGov. But on her own terms, Ashton was Labour leader in the Lords before going to Brussels to succeed Peter Mandelson as Commissioner for Trade, a role in which she evidently impressed. She is amply qualified for her new job.

Much more press fuss has been made about the supposed obscurity of Ashton than about the supposed obscurity of Van Rompuy and paradoxically that is of course because he really is an unknown to the British press, being merely the prime minister of a nearby country. What could be duller for a British newspaper than to concern itself with the politics of Belgium? Indeed, the anti-Europe bias in the press is as evident as the anti-Labour bias. The egregious columnist of The Daily Telegraph, Simon Heffer, considers himself a card for referring to the new Chairman of the European Council as “Mr Rumpy Pumpy”. Do you see what he did there? Eh? Do you see? My long-time name for the columnist is Syphon Effluent. It’s a damned sight more pertinent than Mr Rumpy Pumpy.

The narrative here is really too obvious for the commentators to bother expounding. Van Rompuy and Ashton got the jobs because of a stitch-up between the wicked Germans and the slimy French who needed patsies whom they could boss around so that they would be able to arrogate all the power to themselves. This Ruritanian vision of Europe is made plausible by the absence of any substantial on-going coverage of Europe.

Let’s try to make some sense of it. There is certainly history here. When the presidency of the European Commission fell vacant five years ago, France and Germany wanted the then Belgian premier, Guy Verhofstadt, to have the post. But Verhofstadt’s strong criticism of the invasion of Iraq and his opposition to any mention of god in the European Constitution predictably alienated Tony Blair and his Catholic-and-invasion ally, José Maria Aznar of Spain. After protracted negotiations, a compromise candidate was found, one whose name meant little in Fleet Street: José Manuel Barroso. No doubt Barroso’s name is still obscure to most voters and even to some journalists (who, I bet, need to check his spelling when they have call to use it) but the former prime minister of Portugal’s first term was generally considered a success among those who count – pro-European politicians – and he easily won re-election.

Blair’s opposition to Verhofstadt, almost as much as his role in the Iraq war, ensured that any aspiration he might have entertained to be EC chairman would be futile. Serve him right. David Miliband’s attempt to talk up Blair’s chances by describing him as one who would “stop the traffic” in Beijing was never seriously a consideration. The office itself opens the necessary doors if not the jams. Van Rompuy and Ashton can get anyone they wish to consult to the phone in minutes and to a meeting at short notice. Just because the Sunday Express doesn’t know who they are, it doesn’t mean that Washington, Beijing, New Delhi, Jerusalem, Pretoria and all other homes of key players did not bone up within minutes of the appointments being confirmed.

And there’s another bone of contention artificially worried by the dogs of Fleet Street and beyond. Oh gosh, these people weren’t elected, goes up the cry. Quick, what are they paid? Who, if anyone, are they answerable to? Lots of powerful people have not submitted themselves to any electorate. Billionaire newspaper proprietors who live in tax exile, just for starters. The British prime minister for another, and several of his ministers (notably Peter, Lord Mandelson). But don’t let’s get too carried away about that. Two of the last four Tory prime ministers arrived in Downing Street without benefit of a popular vote. John Major made himself more legitimate by winning an election in 1992 – as against the odds as Labour will do if they win next year. But Sir Alec Douglas-Home was a hereditary peer when the Tory suits decided he should succeed Harold Macmillan (who also was never elected) as PM in 1963 and he had to renounce his earldom and fight a by-election in order to join the Commons before he could take up office. Surely it couldn’t happen now.

In the States, everyone down to city dog-catcher gets to be on the ballot paper when voting time comes round, but the government in Washington is made up wholly of appointees, many of whom have never sought elective office. The argument that people should all be elected only really starts to be pregnant in a comprehensively informed electorate. Ours is far from being even moderately informed. It’s clear, after two mayors of London, that only someone known by his or her first name has any chance of being elected to the position. That seems to make Camilla, Esther, Stelios, Kylie, Ant, Dec and Brucie the front-runners to succeed Boris.

Head teachers, chiefs of police, magistrates, chiefs of staff, chief executives of strategic health authorities and any number of other key wielders of power are appointees rather than elected tribunes. The primary advantage of appointing someone to a position of power is that the considerations that inform the appointment centre on suitability, skill, contacts, quickness of study and ability to manage a team. These are not qualities that the electorate looks for, let alone is competent to judge. Being good on the telly may weigh with a lot of voters but what it tends to put into office is George W Bush.

The supposed desire for figures stepping onto the world stage to be already “household names” is in any case rarely heeded. My mother, a reasonably well-informed woman, died in summer 1988 and I have often reflected how strange it is that the man who became British prime minister only 16 months later was someone of whom she probably had not heard and certainly would not have recognised from a photograph.

In The Guardian recently, that prize ass Mark Lawson wrote a supposedly comical piece set five years hence in which the American president was Sarah Palin and the British prime minister Boris Johnson. Were I a betting man, I would wager that he’s completely wrong. After all, he might have bet on Gordon Brown five years ago but he wouldn’t have anticipated President Obama. Who did, back then? After his famous speech at the 2004 Democrats’ convention, people certainly said “one day that man will be president”. Not many would have thought he would be the next one. Fame in politics is a fast-moving phenomenon. Can you hazard who, at the outset of 1990, was the hot favourite to succeed Thatcher? Not John Major, obviously. I’ll tell you at the foot of the posting.

The electoral process generates much more chance and unpredictability than any other system (which is why I keep saying that the triumphant election of the Tories next May cannot be seen as a foregone conclusion). Appointment is designed to control events, smooth the way for successful government and head off unpredictability. Those who sat down to dinner and thrashed out the deal that led to the appointments of Van Rompuy and Ashton knew their candidates and believed them able to carry out their duties to the European Commission’s advantage. Whatever horse-trading went on, it is hardly in the interests of President Sarkozy or Chancellor Merkel to saddle themselves with team leaders who are not up the job. Let’s just be grown-up about this.

Oh and the anointed successor expected to become Tory leader after the dreaded Margaret was none other than Kenneth Baker. Oh yes.