The Lady’s Not For Spurning (BBC4, Monday) was ostensibly about Margaret Thatcher and the baleful influence she had on the Conservative party after 1990. It was actually about Michael Portillo’s long quest for redemption. This has been going on since May 1997, when he lost his seat. As he pointed out in this documentary, which he scripted and presented, ‘Were you up for Portillo?’ became a national catchphrase. It was, as he said with grim relish, later voted by viewers the third favourite TV moment of the century. What most people said was, ‘Did you see the look on Portillo’s face?’ Seeing it again, I thought the look was rather dignified. When he originally won the seat, at a by-election 13 years earlier, the look on his face really was rather unpleasant — smug, self-satisfied, a little sinister.
Most politicians are largely unnoticed and forgotten when they go. A handful become national treasures, such as Denis Healey. Others are generally detested, like Portillo. But few, like him, are afforded seemingly endless television time to beg forgiveness and be shriven by the cleansing light of cathode rays. (And get paid handsomely for it, too.) So we have had Portillo the hospital porter, Portillo the single mum, and a month ago Portillo the humanitarian seeking a painless way of putting people to death.
We trotted through the often now familiar memories. There was the way Thatcher offered John Major support in public while doing all she could to undermine him in private. (A television reporter I know told me that she had said to him, with evident glee, ‘and I hear the ratings for Prime Minister’s Question Time are much lower now’.)
But we didn’t go for long without Portillo taking the whip and chastising himself again.
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