Prime Ministers Questions today and I don’t think I have ever heard the Speaker actually speak for so long!
He seemed to have got himself into a bit of a muddle. The exchanges became very heated and the clerks switched off David Cameron’s microphone. The only thing David wanted was for Tony Blair to endorse his chancellor as the next leader.
Had lunch in the member’s tea room afterwards and sat between to Nicholas Soames and William Hague. Nicholas is not a natural ally – however, he does make one laugh!
We chatted over the speaker's intervention to which Nicholas, deeply buried in sausage and mash lifted his head and said “problem was, like a Pheasant, got himself committed”. Soames is probably the only person left in the Conservative party who would say that! And yet, rarely do you meet an MP so committed to the natural Conservative philosophy of elevation of the people. Maybe it’s because he is related to Churchill, however, he is a man of many sides.
I asked him did he think going to boarding school at the age of seven had damaged him, to which he replied, “Not at all – it would have ******* damaged me if I had stayed at home”.
Priceless. Thank god for personalities.