Excuse the lightness of blogging. However, Ffion and I have been quite busy, playing the piano and practising our madrigals. However, I would like to alert you to this thoughtful piece by my former shadow Chancellor, Michael Portillo ( I was Blair to his Brown, in case any of you had forgotten! ) in which young rubber lips one tells us:

"I am now so long in the tooth that I don't often feel like I've been taken for a sucker".

He's discussing the Prime Minister, of course, and his unfortunate inability to find Weapons of Mass Destruction. I well remember, sitting around the shadow cabinet, Miss Widdecombe nodding quietly to my right ( and that's not something I can say of many people! ) while Michael launched into another little paeon of praise to his hero. Michael would be praising Mr. Blair effusively, explaining how we ought to join the Euro tomorrow, raise taxes, let homosexual priests adopt children, and, as the final clincher, make heroin freely available on the NHS for pensioners, in order to do all the things that would show us to be caring, sharing and compassionate. Fume would be coming out of Anne's ears, while I, I must confess, would find myself daydreaming about either playing the piano with Ffion or, more probably, hitting Sebastian Coe in the solar plexus.
It's nice to know that Michael has matured. Maybe there is a future for him in politics, after all. Maybe even a seat at cabinet. Albeit, only as the tea-boy. As for myself, I can forsee no circumstances in which I could return. Unless we do even worse at the next election that we did last time! No, seriously, I'm very happy, listening to jazz, drinking 18 pints a night, and joining Ffion in accapella versions of "Don't Go Breaking My Heart".

Save the Pound!
- posted by Peter @ 6/08/2003 11:44:00 AM