My diary said eleven in the morning so I turned up in good time at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster last month, ready to do a turn for a sixth-form conference on politics. For half an hour or so I was to talk to an audience of about 1,000 youths and youthettes about the present government’s performance and the present opposition’s prospects. I like these occasions. I was looking forward to my 30 minutes.
Except that I had got the time wrong. My session was billed for noon, not eleven. The hour now left slack was too short to start anything else. Irritation yielded to curiosity when I realised that Charles Kennedy was on his feet on the conference rostrum, and would be followed by Iain Duncan Smith. It is instructive to be a fly on the wall when adults talk to youngsters or pets. Unwittingly, we reveal much when we think it in our power to spin our listeners any line we like. Why not (I thought) slip in, sit among the sixth-formers, and observe how these two opposition leaders performed for an audience of teenagers?
I tried imagining myself to be a boy again, listening to Mr Kennedy and then Mr Duncan Smith as I might once have listened to their 1960s equivalents. Then, my own political orientation was still unformed. The instant I put myself into this frame of mind I realised that of the least importance to me would have been the particular policies the speaker attached himself to. Important would have been the impression formed of the command with which he led rather than followed his audience, the rigour and integrity of his argument, and his intellectual grip. These were the qualities which drew me to Keith Joseph in the 1970s, awaking my own political sensibilities.
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