Monday V exciting! Now that we’ve decided to do married tax breaks for couples with children under five we’ll need an acronym. So we’re having a competition! I’ve come up with… the Married Couples With Children Under Five Allowance, or McWicufa. Pretty snappy huh! Everyone joining in the fun except for IDS who’s in a
A side effect of last week’s failed putsch is Peter Mandelson resuming his position at the front end of Gordon Brown’s election pantomime horse — pushing Harriet Harman into the rear. This is not good news for the Tories, as Harman would undoubtedly have alienated even more floating voters. I sat between her and Boris Johnson
Monday What a way to start The Year For Change! Am quite overwhelmed by the response to my slogan. Dave’s Big Face may be the most successful political poster campaign of all time. And to think how it started. With me walking into Nigel’s office in tears, practically hysterical. Little did I know when I
I’m going to be a big TV star. Big, big, big. Well, maybe not. As the saying goes in the movie world, every film is a great success until it’s released. My peak-time ITV1 show Michael Winner’s Dining Stars, one hour of me (could anything be better?), is currently much loved by those aware of
Tamzin Lightwater’s New Year resolutions Seal the Deal Goodness knows why, but the polls are still suggesting that a few strange voters are not yet 101 per cent sure they want Dave for PM. This sounds wacky, but we have to take it seriously and do everything we can to address that last tiny bit
There was something about the spectacle of the Queen grimly, and Tony Blair cheerfully, holding hands as they sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at the Millennium Dome at the end of 1999 that could have alerted us that the decade ahead would not be a good one. Who could then have imagined that the United States,
Forty-five Decembers ago this magazine was edited by Iain Macleod MP, later chancellor. Macleod died in July 1970, a month after the Tories took office. His daughter Diana, up in town for the Red Cross’s Christmas fair, shows me a stash of her father’s papers she recently found. They include detailed documents preparing for the
Monday Been agonising over it all weekend but I just don’t think I like the sound of Tammy Waters. I know it’s my best chance to get a safe seat, but Daddy is furious. Says it makes me sound like a country and western singer. Dave is adamant and says it really suits me. Am
Monday Oh dear. Maybe Mr Maude was right. Maybe we are heading for… no, I won’t say it. I refuse to say the HP words. A few rogue polls, that’s all it is. Dave says this would never have happened if we had got his No Complacency message out properly. We are now under orders
To Edinburgh, that most gracious and civilised of cities, for what promises to be a less than altogether agreeable experience. I have to confess that, when BBC1’s Question Time rang to ask whether I might be available to take part in last week’s show from that city, the words ‘hole’ and ‘head’ sprang to mind.
Monday I can’t quite believe what we had a strategy meeting about this morning. My hands are trembling as I type… What if climate change doesn’t exist? It’s too awful to contemplate. But we are being asked to consider: what if the earth is not getting warmer? What if the world is not sleepwalking to
The man who invented the breathalyser more than 50 years ago was called Robert Borkenstein, a former policeman who had risen from the ranks to become head of the Department of Forensic Studies at Indiana University. He was very proud of his achievement. ‘If we can make life better simply by controlling alcohol, that’s a
Monday Exciting trip to Norfolk for the ‘de-selection’. After a gruelling train journey east, Poppy and I tucked into a delicious spread in a heavenly tea shop with the biggest scones ever. Everything was so cheap! We bought two of everything in all the shops, and got some great deals on Haggarts Tweed. We then
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
Not long ago, I astounded the men sitting next to me at a dinner party (yes, dinner parties still take place here and there) by saying that I thought Gordon Brown was handsome, and indeed had sex appeal. The men exclaimed that I had gone off my rocker. But the women within earshot immediately chipped
Monday V difficult to know how to respond to this one. Sometimes, something is so sad that it is better to just let it go. We had a big brainstorming session on Sunday with policy people, image consultants, focus group teams. In the end, it was decided that Dave should go for it after all.
Many hands tore at the Berlin Wall. To a large extent it collapsed from its own weight, but we should acknowledge the shove given by European democrats, Pope John Paul II, the dissidents in the Soviet Union, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr and George Kennan, who defined the policies that contained communism without blowing up the
Monday It wasn’t easy for Dave to come out and say it but he was really brave. Personally, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. We never said we were definitely going to have a referendum. Just that we definitely wanted to. There are a lot of things we definitely want to do.
Monday Some v awkward people are deliberately misunderstanding what Dave said about women- only shortlists. We feel we must remind these people that troublemaking is fundamentally unConservative and that any further attempts to disrupt Compassionate Cameronian principles of compliance with the party line and non-resistance to the stated policy of the leadership will be met
On tour one develops air-conditioning paranoia. (I’ve just returned from a two-month Pet Shop Boys’ tour of North and South America, from Montreal to Lima.) You approach your latest hotel room with dread. How noisy is the air-conditioning? Can you turn it off? Is your room on the top floor directly under the main air-conditioning