One For My Baby

You’ll get so lonely
Well maybe its better that way
But it aint you only
You’ve Got something to say

DO ANYTHING YOU WANNA DO”.
. perhaps my favourite lines in all of Rock/Pop and a Libertarian anthem for the bolshy right wing youth I was.( Eddie and the Hot Rods)


People are talking about a new right intelligentsia ( rules me out ), well Michael Gove , and some desperate journo`s, have flung together a paste board job or two. I wonder if anyone else has that, “I was a punk before you were a punk ",feeling , about the Johnny and Jilly come latelys
“Well hi everybody take a look at me I ve got street credibility …” as the popular crooner Georgio Michael once trilled.

I have always been a Conservative . At school I was called” Nuremberg”, implying my trial was imminent . At university ,I was in a minority of one, plus a load of farmers ,and in general I always seem to have been the only righty .
It has been like coming home ,finding I have allies . Ask anyone that has ever known me ,and they will tell you I have changed my views little ,since I was eleven. I said things like, “Well go and live in Russia if you think its so great !“, in a snotty falsetto , and got sneered at , do you know the type ?

Throughout the period in which ,to say you admired Margaret Thatcher, was to invite a drivel of alternative,( to ), comedy , I never denied her. Understanding little about the politics ,it was above all, the transparent insincerity of the left ,that I reacted against .
There was something so obviously right about what she said and I had been waiting to hear it as the country was.What enormous pleasure it gives me now , to read her memoirs , and I thought I would share a flavour of the great woman’s writing . She writes superbly …but of course the arts establishment were out for her by then.


Callaghan loses vote of confidence

"Denis , who was watching from the Opposition box on the floor of the house shouted hooray and was quite properly reproved by one of the sergeants of arms "
Notice the gentle self mocking tone which has been a surprising and endearing treat. Why did we never see how funny she was ?

Know your enemy

“We call then socialist, social democrat, statist or merely Butskellite*

* A political term dating form the 1950s denoting a consensus combining the moderate Conservatism of R A Butler and the moderate Socialism of Hugh Gaitskell

The way it felt

“The final illusion -that state intervention would promote social harmony and solidarity , or , in Tory language “ One Nation “ - collapsed in the Winter of discontent , when the dead went unburied and critically ill patients were turned away from hospitals by pickets, and the prevailing mood was one of snarling envy and motiveless hostility”


The nation state ,,this follows a passage on the resistance to Hitler

“ My view was and is that - that an effective internationalism can only be built by strong nations which are able to call upon the loyalty of their citizens to defend and enforce civilised rules of international conduct. An internationalism that seeks to supersede the nation state , however will founder quickly on the reality that few people are prepared to make genuine sacrifices for it .”

Try arguing with that ! You just wouldn’t and ...

“ We intended to achieve a fundamental change of direction. We stood for a new beginning not more o the same “

Are you listening Cameron ….some would say?


I`ll finish with three personal quotes . The first two show that skill for being subtly ironic with her persona and the third needs no explanation.

On the Queen

“ ..the press could not resist the temptation to suggest disputes between the Place and Downing Street especially in Commonwealth affairs I always found the Queen’s attitude to the work of government absolutely correct”…( well lucky her …)

On the French

“ I recall on one occasion watching President Giscard d Estaing gazing at the two portraits in the dining room . - one of the young Nelson , the other of Wellington. He remarked on the irony. I replied that it was no less ironic that I should have to look at portraits of Napoleon on my visits to Paris. In retrospect I can see that this was not quite a parallel . Napoleon lost.”……..and so he did….

On Denis


“ …being Prime minister is a lonely job . In a sense it ought to be you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What husband . What a friend “

It’s a bit of a meander I know but this is …..“One for my baby “. We all get to do one surely ?