Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I went to the launch of Iain Dale's new mag Total Politics at the top of the Milbank tower. The best encounter went to Nick Herbert. He was approached by an attractive young woman in a red frock. When she learnt he was a Conservative MP she asked if he was “A nice Tory or a nasty one”.
“A nice one, actually”, replied Nick in his modest way.
“Does that mean you are one of the gay ones?” she asked (how come she was at Total Politics?)
Nick gave her an honest answer of course
I tried to embarrass him with my support for David Davis. Then we had a serious discussion about the Lords of which more later (I’ve promised that before).
There was a little blogger’s blather with Sunny and Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes). Paul pretended to recognise Sunny’s greatness then demonstrated his grace and good judgement by telling me that OurKingdom was unreadable rubbish. I told him we knew what we were doing (though I agree the new platform needs tweaking and there is a dearth of pictures at the moment). You have got to mix it, he said, demonstrating how he thinks with his elbows. Had he read Guy's Bring it on Sunshine and its follow up, about his mate from the Sun, Kelvin? That's mixing with style. (Here is a picture of me and handsome Sunny.)
I was reminded to tell Iain Dale that I still don’t agree that he is not an intellectual. He denied it, claiming to be just a practical chap. It’s true that he loves lists more than ideas. And I seem to remember that his last astonishing display of his recent reading did not rate Peter Oborne’s The Triumph of the Political Class as an important book of our time. Nonetheless, Iain thinks about the way things work. He has even lived in Germany the model land for the influence of an intelligentsia.
One measure of a good party is that you are told something you absolutely cannot repeat in print – and this one passed the test! The first issue is fascinating but a bit themeless. The lead is an embarrassing interview with Gordon Brown by the editor Sarah MacKinley. Brown is hardly held to account, but it is confirming. Apparently he said that “people are more energised when they are directly involved… So I would say Citizens Juries are working”. He must be the only person in the country to believe this – and that includes his colleagues in the government. Why has no one told him? The other interview was genuinely original, with Boris Johnson’s Aussie campaign manager Lynton Crosby. It gave a sense of the Mayor’s professionalism. Crosby kept on saying the key was the message: “The most important element in a campaign is message. I always say “message matters most”. He describes how this must be written down and spelt out. I don’t doubt it. But what was the message of the Boris campaign? I think we should have been told from the horse's mouth.
And the prospects for Total Politics? Well, I wrote a piece, well-formed and to length at Iain’s request on Fixed Term Parliaments, admittedly for the dummy. It was not published and I was not paid. This leads me to think it is definitely sustainable.
