“Next time you’re at court,” a character in Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies advises, “take your cock out and put it on the table and see what he says to that.” Well that’s certainly one way to get ahead in politics, and it turns out this is common practice when recruiting at Downing Street.
Alastair Whitehead, one of Theresa May’s private secretaries, told a civil service conference that a good test for potential officials is to let a chicken into the room during their interview. “If they run around after the chicken, trying to catch it and flapping about, they’re probably not going to make a great private secretary,” he said. “But if they observe it and say ‘do we have lines to take on the chicken?’ then they might.” Sounds like fowl play to me.
It’s always an education to listen to Jacob Rees-Mogg. The MP for Malformed Gerundive, a beautiful part of the West Country, told the House that he was “looking forward to aestivating” for the next six weeks, a word that until Mogg came along had only been used twice in the Commons; once in 2004 and once in 1842. It means “lazing away the summer”. Like hibernating, only you can remove your waistcoat.
FATAL DISTRACTION
The TLS, in a review of a book on Thatcher and the Middle East, says the PM believed that personalities mattered more than policies in that region. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, repelled her, for instance, not because of what he did but because he didn’t shave properly. “He looks like a terrorist,” Thatcher said.
The Duchess of Cambridge deployed British self-deprecation in Warsaw the other day when students told her how beautiful she was. “It’s just the make-up,” she said. It reminded me of when the Beatles were in the US and Ringo Starr was asked why he always looked sad. “It’s just me face,” he replied.
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LABOURING THE POINT
The Canary, a Corbyn-supporting news website, has slammed the health secretary over hospital staff in Cardiff having to pay to park. “Jeremy Hunt should be ashamed of this despicable attack on NHS staff” read the headline. Jeremy Corbyn also tweeted that this was unfair and pledged to scrap hospital parking fees. The Labour leader then deleted his tweet, perhaps after being told that the health service in Wales was actually run by his own party.
MIXED MESSAGE
There seems to be a lot of confusion in Wales. Susan Elan Jones, Labour MP for Clwyd South, told the Commons in a debate on Monday night that “Her Majesty’s Opposition are totally useless”. As MPs heckled that she had used the wrong word, Jones continued to dig her hole. “I am happy to replace the word ‘useless’ with a number of other adjectives,” she said. It was more than an hour later that she twigged and asked Hansard to record that when she said “opposition” she actually meant “government”.
Some constituencies are posher than others. Andrew Kennedy, the Tory campaign director for West Kent, reports a conversation he heard recently from a local election candidate who was topping and tailing letters to voters. “How do you address a viscount?” the candidate asked. Then, five minutes later: “How do you address an earl?”
