Inside Out

A comment yesterday quoted Alan Clark on Michael Heseltine: "At least he makes the effort, and all the noovs think that he is the real thing." A particularly cheeky email asked if that had actually been said about me.

Of the many other messages received today on a certain (as I shall set out, unremarkable) subject, my personal favourites have repeated last night's comment calling me "old money's favourite lefty" - or, in some cases, changed that to "the Old Right's favourite lefty" - and said that, since I fulfilled that role with such distinction as a student, it was no surprise that I was still doing it on a larger canvass, as well as on the same old one. You are too, too kind.

I must say that I have laughed uproariously at persistent attempts to post comments suggesting that Durham is controlled by, or at the very least that anyone who matters there reads or will even suffer in the room, a purely unofficial and student-run publication which, to be fair, never used to be anything like as bad as apparently it is now. No, sweeties, such is not the case at all. Your total failure to land any sort of blow on me should have taught you that. "Just ignore it," said everyone. And I really do mean everyone who is anyone.

As for the claim from several people that they had assumed for years, in some cases for as long as they had known me, that I was an MI6 agent because of my views combined with my links to Durham, because the latter allegedly (though not that I have ever noticed) included "cultivating protégés" among undergraduates, because I was "too posh for MI5" (a matter of opinion, to say the least), and because I was so scornful of that other agency and of its silly television programme, well, what can I say? For the record, I have never been a member of either MI5 or MI6.

However, to be honest, I had assumed that a certain sort of contact from time to time was normal, at least for anyone who was at all politically active. If you have not been given cause to assume this, then you should get more. Assuming that the places worth getting into would admit you. What does it say about you that, clearly, they would not, and do not? In my student days, every Durham college and every Durham department had a recruiter for MI6. If you are a contemporary of mine and did not know that, then, again, what does that say about you? If I have ever thought about the matter at all, then I have assumed that that was still the case. But all that I can claim is always to have moved in the circles in which that sort of thing was common knowledge. Are there others?

That there is a coincidence between my views on a number of issues and those which are said to hold sway in MI6, I cannot deny, nor would I wish to. My political priorities certainly do include national sovereignty, the Union, economic patriotism, classical education, a realistic foreign policy, a strong defence capability used only for the most sparing and strictly defensive purposes, the Commonwealth, the constitutional and other ties among the Realms and Territories having the British monarch as Head of State or other such constitutional links, the status of the English language and the rights of its speakers both throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere, the rights of British-descended communities throughout the world, the longstanding and significant British ties to the Arab world, support for the Slavs in general and for Russia in particular as the gatekeepers of Biblical-Classical civilisation, a natural affinity with Confucian culture, a profound suspicion of an American influence and action characteristically defined against them, and an active desire for a different American approach.

And while in my case those concerns are Old Labour, I freely and gladly concede that they are just as easily Old Tory. Just as I admire Eisenhower's ending of the Korean War, his even-handed approach to Israel and the Palestinians, his non-intervention in Indo-China, his denunciation of the military-industrial complex, Nixon's pursuit of détente with China, the ending of the Vietnam War by him and by Ford, Reagan's withdrawal from Lebanon in 1983, his initiation of nuclear arms reduction in Europe, Republican opposition to the global trigger-happiness of the Clinton Administration, and George W Bush's removal of American troops from Saudi Arabia after 9/11, so I admire even more, and identify as integral to my own tradition, the Old Right opposition first to Thatcherism and then to Maastricht.

I admire, and identify as integral to my own tradition, the economically populist and pro-manufacturing, morally and socially conservative, staunchly Unionist and pro-military, strongly church-based Toryism of the Wintertons. I admire, and identify as integral to my own tradition, the unyielding constitutionalist and civil libertarian Toryism of Richard Shepherd. I admire, and identify as integral to my own tradition, the Keynesian, pro-Commonwealth, anti-neoconservative Toryism of Sir Peter Tapsell. I admire, and identify as integral to my own tradition, the conservationist, agrarian, anti-nuclear Toryism of Sir Richard Body. I admire, and identify as integral to my own tradition, the grave reservations about, and indeed outright hostility towards, nuclear weapons expressed by such distinguished Tories as Anthony Head, Peter Thorneycroft, Nigel Birch, Aubrey Jones, George Jellicoe and, above all, Enoch Powell.

Those of like mind know where I am, and have done so for many years. I would require the going rate for any job done - article-writing, or whatever. But I would ask no questions, so long as I could tell no lies. And I am busily engaged in setting up a think tank, any assistance towards which would be more than gratefully received on the same understanding.