Forty years ago, a whisky company, Highland Park, which advertised its Famous Grouse in The Spectator, approached us with a sponsorship offer. It wanted a debating competition to gain attention among ‘opinion-formers’. I had just become the editor, and was interested, but thought that debating was already covered by rivals (e.g. the Observer Mace). How about awards for politicians, I suggested. That might get their attention. Obviously, the thing would work only if it were politically neutral, so the awards must be for parliamentary achievement alone, regardless of party. Highland Park liked this idea of crowding a chunk of what business likes to call ‘UK plc’ into one room. The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards were born and have continued annually except during Covid. The latest were handed out at a dinner in Raffles on Tuesday (see website).
It sounds satirical now, but at that time we had serious concerns that MPs and peers might think it presumptuous of journalists to sit in judgment of what the Prayer Book calls ‘the High Court of Parliament now assembled’. I therefore devised a form of words about how the awards were offered only ‘in affection and respect’: the judges resembled ‘not law lords but theatre critics… happy in the knowledge that they will never have to rise from their seats and perform on the stage’. Our equivalents of Statler and Waldorf in The Muppets were Peter Jenkins of the Sunday Times, Alan Watkins of the Observer, Colin Welch of the Daily Mail – all alas, no longer with us – and James Naughtie and Michael White (both then of the Guardian), still flourishing.
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