Not a bad way to start the political week, picking up the Threadneedle/Spectator Award for parliamentary survivor of the year. I don’t win many awards, of any variety. The last one I recall was six years ago when I was transport secretary. Some motoring magazine named me ‘Most Boring Politician in Britain’. (Two years in a row.) There was no prize, unlike at the Spectator awards where at least I picked up a rather beautiful etched black fruit bowl to console me. It is sure to remind me in my dotage of the turbulent and trying, but always rewarding, times at the Treasury.
My wife pretends to be impressed. i am still in her good books for remembering our 23rd wedding anniversary — she phoned my diary secretary to thank her for remembering to remind me. As a rare treat, we go for a celebration curry, just the two of us. Over the last year, curries have mostly involved the entire treasury team in overnight crisis mode, and we have had one or two memorable nights punctuated by a mass order of tandoori chicken delivered to the office, and I sometimes wonder if it would be possible to draw a correlation between economic convulsions and the order book of the Treasury’s favourite curry house. And who, apart from bankers, will ever want to forget the ‘balti bail-out’ of last October?
The next day brings what in London is classified as ‘driving rain’ — but would count as a passing shower in the isle of Lewis. I just wish I could get back up there, to take the boat out of the water before the storms get too bad. When the tempest passes, the trees in the garden of 11 Downing Street are left bereft of leaves.
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