The Spectator’s Notes | 23 May 2009

By chance, Mr Speaker had invited me to a party on Tuesday evening. I had decided, rude though it would have been, to attend, but to tell him to his face that he should go. But by the time I got there, he had. All emotions went into reverse. The reception was in aid of St Margaret’s, Westminster, the parish church of Parliament, which needs £2 million. Showing none of the chippy defensiveness which has made him so unpopular, Michael Martin gave a charming little talk about how, despite being a Scottish Roman Catholic, he had been made to feel at home at St Margaret’s when he first arrived 30 years ago. Even pre-Vatican II, he said, his mother had always encouraged him to seek out the Glasgow boys’ clubs organised by Protestant churches. It seemed very ecumenical, ‘but later I realised she just didn’t want all five of us in the kitchen’.