The sound of knives being sharpened can only mean one thing ? it's political memoir season
? Ah, the season of mellow fruitfulness draws on, nights close in, and that strange scraping sound we can hear is the knives of the political memoir season being sharpened. First off the presses this year is Alistair Darling, with yet more grisly details about his dysfunctional former boss. What a nest of vipers it must have been and lo, here's the obscure and largely forgotten figure of Shriti Vadera, who was awarded a peerage by Gordon Brown in order that she could become, briefly, a junior minister. She is someone who, according to Darling, was "only happy when there was blood on the floor, preferably that of her colleagues". That may well be true: not a woman to suffer even bright fools gladly, Treasury folk recall her stock of Commons champagne, dispensed to assuage those who had felt the rough edge of her tongue. Interesting to think of champagne as a universal emollient for hurt feelings, but then she did come from a City background, and has returned to it with consultancy roles in Dubai and Singapore to add to several directorships. Champagne probably does not go amiss there, either.
? Axes being ground, too, in the Church of England ? when are they not? ? with vicarage gossip about who might succeed the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, should a bus be unforgiving enough to run him down or he himself decide to retire to become an anchorite clinging to a small rock off the coast of Wales. Word is that John Sentamu, the archbishop of York ? who has been severely ill with appendicitis this summer ? would be ambitious for the job, a thought to make many bishops blanch, since they rate his abilities rather lower than he does himself. And it is said that Richard Chartres, bishop of London and third in line of seniority, might back Sentamu if only to make sure he is not appointed, and Chartres himself would then gain the primacy. Positively Trollopean and surely wrong-headed, except that it is being circulated by some senior clergy. Such febrility is anyway surely unnecessary, as Rowan still has another nine years before he need retire and both Sentamu and Chartres are older than he is. If he were to go he would be, in Harold Wilson's felicitous phrase on being succeeded by Jim Callaghan, making way for an older man.
? Flap, flap, over the Channel from Brussels comes the latest scare story: the EU wants to spend ?2m researching homeopathic medicines for animals. Staggering, outrageous, an insult to taxpayers, say the British Tories. "To waste millions on highly questionable new-age remedies for cows and sheep is sheer madness," says MEP Richard Ashworth. It is quite a lot, though scarcely a dent in the ?50bn common agricultural policy. The British Veterinary Association says it would quite like the investment, and the Soil Association is keen, though as Ashworth probably knows, the chances of the item passing through all the hoops it needs to are pretty remote.
? The amusingly named Kunt and the Gang, a comedy duo based in Basildon, where the inhabitants probably need something to laugh at, have had to apologise for going round Edinburgh during the festival sticking penis-shaped cutouts advertising their show in suggestive positions on posters of other artistes. They were apparently warned of legal action, and an even more direct assault by another comic who threatened physical violence. "I sincerely apologise if one of my cocks got up anyone's nose," said Mr Kunt, flaccidly. Probably best to stick to the decent obscurity of the comedy circuits in Tiverton and Baldock, where they are next due to perform.
? Fourteen years to the day since Princess Diana's death and the Daily Express's royal correspondent can find only 30 pilgrims paying their respects outside Kensington Palace. Perhaps it is time for even his paper to move on: after all, its former editor Peter Hill once declared that "the weather is the new Diana" as far as stories are concerned, so surely there'll be a storm along in a bit to splash on.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/31/stephen-bates-diary-alistair-darling
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