To celebrate 25 years of The Spectator/Threadneedle Parliamentarian Awards, we invite you to nominate the best MP of the past quarter-century
The question hangs in the air: what makes a great parliamentarian? And the answer echoes back: many things. A great parliamentarian may be a swashbuckling orator whose rhetoric never fails to draw blood. He or she may be an energetic campaigner, striving on their constituents’ behalf for a new hospital or school. He may be a crumpled backbencher who upholds the tenets and conventions of their party. He may be a thinker, a gambler, a rebel or a ham. A gilded few might claim with some justification, ‘I am all of the above.’
It is 25 years since The Spectator first began to recognise these qualities — outside the confines of its own pages, that is — with the annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. The inaugural winner of our main prize, the Parliamentarian of the Year award itself, was David Owen. Since then, the roll call of victors has grown to include John Smith, Nigel Lawson, Robin Cook, William Hague, John Major, Tony Blair and even, we must admit, Gordon Brown. The choices made by our judging panel of Westminster cognoscenti may not please all of the people, all of the time — but they are a reliable catalogue of the dominant players in modern British politics.
Even that abridged list of names captures some of the defining parliamentary episodes of the past quarter-century. Lawson’s sweeping and assured budget in 1988 — which drastically cut the top rate of tax for high-income earners, and promptly earned more cash for the Exchequer. Tony Blair pecking at John Major, ‘Weak! Weak! Weak!’ Robin Cook’s resignation over the Iraq war, accompanied by a speech that reverberated both inside and outside the walls of the House.
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