Two Conservative MPs have been knighted today.
Sir Nicholas Soames, who as Churchill's grandson is a scion of one, and through it probably of all, of the greatest of the Whig dynasties.
And Sir Bill Cash, who is a descendant and biographer of John Bright.
It says a lot about the Conservative Party that one has Whig and the other has Radical antecedents.
Although both are pretty sound these days, there are no prizes for guessing which one has been as consistent as Michael Foot, Tony Benn and the decidedly non-Whiggish Enoch Powell were on the European federalist project.
(Through his other, Recusant ancestors, Sir Bill is one of many Catholics who must not have got the memo believed in certain feverish circles to exist, in which the EU is set out as a Popish plot. No one seems to have told everyone from him and Sir Edward Leigh to Jon Cruddas and Ronnie Campbell, via departed souls from Sir John Biggs-Davison to Bob Parry, via the heavy vote against the whole thing in largely Catholic areas in 1975, and via the heavy Labour vote in those areas in 1983.)
Nor, although Sir Nicholas is often deeply sound on the Middle East, are there any prizes for guessing which voted in favour of war in Syria and which abstained.
A Deputy Speaker, one of very few people to have been a Minister on every day of the Blair and Brown Governments, becomes Dame Dawn Primarolo. It cannot be far off 20 years since I heard "Red Dawn", once Tony Benn's Constituency Secretary in Bristol, address the Durham Miners' Gala. This is all as it should be.
(Through his other, Recusant ancestors, Sir Bill is one of many Catholics who must not have got the memo believed in certain feverish circles to exist, in which the EU is set out as a Popish plot. No one seems to have told everyone from him and Sir Edward Leigh to Jon Cruddas and Ronnie Campbell, via departed souls from Sir John Biggs-Davison to Bob Parry, via the heavy vote against the whole thing in largely Catholic areas in 1975, and via the heavy Labour vote in those areas in 1983.)
Nor, although Sir Nicholas is often deeply sound on the Middle East, are there any prizes for guessing which voted in favour of war in Syria and which abstained.
A Deputy Speaker, one of very few people to have been a Minister on every day of the Blair and Brown Governments, becomes Dame Dawn Primarolo. It cannot be far off 20 years since I heard "Red Dawn", once Tony Benn's Constituency Secretary in Bristol, address the Durham Miners' Gala. This is all as it should be.
Soames is an aristocratic Arabist of the kind you have surrounded yourself with for nearly 20 years at the most Camel Corps university in the world. They have protected you through thick and thin. I wonder why?
ReplyDeleteYou should do more of this and less of journo-wars. They are beneath you.
ReplyDelete