Former Tory minister Oliver Letwin has been writing a book since getting the sack last year. Hearts and Minds, available in October, will apparently persuade us that “politicians are capable of recognising their mistakes and learning from them”.
Letwin is an expert in this field — few politicians have more experience of blunders. As a shadow treasury minister during the 2001 election, he said Tories would make cuts of £20bn. The official line was £8bn. In 2003 he said he’d rather “beg on the street” than send his children to a London state school. In 2015 he apologised for a memo written after the Broadwater Farm riots in 1985, warning the black community would spend financial aid on the “disco and drug” trade.
So he certainly knows about mistakes, but has he actually learnt anything?
Putting the toke in token disobedience
Labour MP Paul Flynn is calling for cannabis users to descend on parliament for a mass smoke-in. “People should come to the House of Commons and eat or drink their cannabis as a token act of civil disobedience,” says Flynn, who is introducing a bill in October to legalise the drug.
Why stop there, though? By tradition, MPs are allowed to take a free pinch of snuff as they enter the chamber. Wouldn’t prime minister’s questions be more relaxed if the serjeant at arms offered a complimentary supply of Acapulco Gold?
Titbits
Reader Paul Duffield offers this contribution to the Michael Howard appeal, our campaign to find new jokes for the former Tory leader to include in his speeches:
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Three MPs, all keen golfers, arrive in heaven to discover a beautiful course. ‘You’re welcome to play,’ says St Peter, ‘but don’t hit the ducks. They quack and make a terrible noise. If you do hit a duck, you’ll be handcuffed to a very unattractive woman for all eternity.’
Two of the MPs duly hit ducks and are punished, but the third MP is careful, and after three quack-free months St Peter handcuffs him to the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.
‘What did I do to deserve this?’ he wonders. ‘I don’t know about you,’ sighs the woman, ‘but I hit a duck.’
■ How do retired MPs cope with life outside politics? Former Tory minister Edwina Currie recently pretended to be a punk rocker — complete with pink hairdo — on More 4’s The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Growing Old. “I tend to be the person they go to when they can’t get Ann Widdecombe,” she says. Is there any nobler calling?
■ Lord Buckethead, who is the current big thing in silly costume politics, has been taking an interest in the live-action soap opera that is the White House, particularly the short career of spokesman Anthony Scaramucci. “Hard to take Scaramucci seriously,” says his lordship, when he “sounds like a character from Bohemian Rhapsody.” Even harder to take criticism of one’s surname, I imagine, from a man called Buckethead.
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■ Even on holiday, MPs find time to grapple with the big issues of the day. “Do wish people didn’t say ‘constituency MP’ or ‘local MP’,” complains Tory Michael Fabricant. “A complete tortology [sic]. Is there a national MP or non-constituency MP? No!” You have been warned.