Matthew Parris: Everything He Wants

Reading biography, one is normally an outsider looking in on another’s life. But for the first time last week, and much to my surprise, a biography solved a little mystery in my own life. Working my way through the second volume of Charles Moore’s enormous biography of Margaret Thatcher (I was reviewing Everything She Wants for The Times) I stumbled upon his account of my last cup of tea with the then prime minister.

I was taking my leave of the Commons in 1986 to try my hand as a TV presenter. Over tea she fussed and talked incessantly, but right at the end I managed to get in what I had meant to say: that I was gay, many Conservative voters were too, and so were a fair few of my parliamentary colleagues. I suggested that our party needed to change its attitude towards homosexuality. Without comment she put her hand gently on my wrist and said “There, dear, that must have been very hard to say.”

As I left, the third person in the room, her parliamentary private secretary, the late Michael Alison, followed me out. He asked for a list of the MPs I had alluded to. “We might be able to help them,” said the wan and churchy MP, rather spookily. I did not oblige, but wrote about the encounter in my autobiography, Chance Witness. Mr Moore must have seen it there, and later interviewed Mr Alison’s secretary at the time.

Moore adds: “Parris naturally assumed that Alison wanted the information to use against the men later. In fact, Alison told his secretary at the time, he had asked for the names so that he could pray for them.”

The Times.

LOL etc!

Daily Mail: Sorry

Daily Mail.

With the help of the BBC’s Panorama this week, the full evil lunacy of the child abuse and murder conspiracy allegations relating to Dolphin Square, Elm House, Leon Brittan, Ted Heath, Field Marshal Lord Bramall etc is now emerging. There is a long, long way to go, however, before the names are properly cleared and the police have apologised for their disgusting behaviour. There also needs to be a long list drawn up of those in public life and the media who gave credence to these cruel fantasies. The behaviour of Tom Watson MP puts him in the same class as Titus Oates, Noel Pemberton Billing and Senator Joe McCarthy. Many of us tut-tut that Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour party, but it is far more shocking that its deputy leader is Mr Watson.

Charles Moore's Notes, The Spectator.

Post-Leveson score-settling from the Labour-bashing Mail and Moore?

Well duh, but this sorry, shitty episode shows the man is a power-crazed bully.

Oh. And erm Richard Littlejohn also hates the 'Nonce Finder General'...

I thought Orwell once wrote something along the lines of, 'Something is not necessarily false just because it's appeared in the Daily Mail', but I can't find it.

So can you just pretend he said it and nod sagely?

[Edit: And similarly, an accusation isn't necessarily true just because it's made against a public figure you despise].

Margaret Thatcher: Everything She Wants

A must-read! 

But why in the name of Finchley is it named after a Wham! song? *

George Michael hated Thatch.

PS This is Radio 4's Book Of The Week - with Nicholas Farrell giving voice to Thatcher as a kind of high-class drag act - and where wonderfully incongruously Wham! is the intro and the outro music.

* 'I have called this book Everything She Wants - the title of a song by Wham! - because it expresses Mrs Thatcher's appetite for achievement and change and the degree to which she was the commanding personality of her era; but hard as she fought for everything she wanted, this was not always what she got. In the process, may of her loyal but exhausted staff often asked themselves, in the words of the same song; 'Somebody tell me, won't you tell me/Why I work so hard for you?' Introduction page xiii.

Charles Moore: Or Less?

Now that Ireland has voted Yes to same-sex marriage, it will be widely believed that this trend is unstoppable and those who oppose it will end up looking like people who supported the slave trade. It is possible. But in fact history has many examples of admired ideas which look like the future for a bit and then run out of steam — high-rise housing, nationalisation, asbestos, Esperanto, communism. The obsession with gay rights and identity, and especially with homosexual marriage, seems to be characteristic of societies with low birth rates and declining global importance. Rising societies with growing populations see marriage as the key to the future of humanity, so they think it must be between a man and a woman. Only when countries like India, Nigeria or Egypt introduce same-sex marriage will I retract the above.

Charles Moore's Notes, The Spectator.

Luj el ni ankoraŭ teni kandelon por Esperanto kaj komunismo.*

* [Some of us still hold a candle for Esperanto and communism].

Telegraph View: Against Modernity

But modernisers have two great faults. The first is to assume that what is modern is inevitable. Soviet Communism was modern once, and part of its power lay in its claim that it was inevitable. It wasn’t, and now it is dead.

The second is to equate modernity with virtue and so to treat its critics as moral inferiors. In Britain, the saga of same-sex marriage is a classic case. Parts of the Western world are heading in that direction: “therefore” it must be welcomed: “therefore” its opponents are bigots: “therefore” they should be virtually disqualified from public office.

All those “therefores” are wrong. A moderate conservative approach would try to balance the age-old, universal view that marriage is between a man and a woman with tolerance of homosexual relationships. This balance was achieved by civil partnerships, but violated by the way that Mr Cameron casually imposed gay marriage. His approach insulted settled beliefs, and therefore wounded him politically more than people like to state directly. In times of wrenching economic change, social conservatism (not to be confused with social authoritarianism) helps reassure people. Instead, we have had doctrinaire, finger-wagging modernism from a party that calls itself Conservative. And, broadly speaking, the better off and better educated have been lecturing the less fortunate. Again, a reason to edge towards Ukip...

Charles Moore explains the rise of Ukip and where David cameron went wrong in his Daily Telegraph column.

It's been quite some time since Mr Moore has regurgitated his nutso theory that Cameron's support for same-sex marriage has led directly to Ukip's rise, good to see it's lost none of its top comedy value.

PS Guy Black, Executive Director at the Telegraph  Group, entered a civil partnership with Mark Bolland in 2006. If they upgrade to a marriage, one wonders how or if the Telegraph will report it.

Margaret Thatcher: Gay Icon (Cont.)

Last week, The Daily Telegraph sponsored the Way with Words Literary Festival at Dartington. I took part in a debate about the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. On the whole, I avoid such debates. Now that the first volume of my biography of Lady Thatcher has appeared, I find it more interesting to talk about her as a figure in history rather than to take sides. In the week between her funeral and her death, the nation argued itself silly about whether she had saved or destroyed Britain. Her dignified, moving funeral stilled the shrillness of the debate.

But I was pleased to be at this one. There was a panel of three — the former Labour MP Chris Mullin, the author Damian Barr and I. Mullin is an amusing and clever writer, but it was Barr’s work, Maggie and Me, that interested me for this occasion...

Much of Damian’s difference from his surroundings lies in the fact that he is gay. Indeed, though he tells it so admirably deadpan that you could almost miss it, his sexuality is a major reason why his mother’s repulsive boyfriend, Logan, smashes his teeth in.

Some of his interest in Mrs Thatcher may lie in the fact that, with that big hair, immaculate clothes, patent leather shoes and so on, she is a gay icon...

Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph.
Oh FFS - not again!
I'm pleased that the Thatcher-corpse-rimming homophobic Tory shitbag, Moore, has finally found a gay man he likes.
But just cause some gayer says he likes someone doesn't make them a "gay icon".
Ernst Rohm adored Hitler - does that make Adolf the German Judy Garland?
And young Mr Barr might like to ponder how that queer fixation on a homophobic far right political leader worked out.
Just a thought.

PS LGBTory still like claiming Thatcher was good to the gays cause she voted to decriminalise homosexuality - they always forget to mention so did another leading Tory MP, Enoch Powell.
I guess Enoch must be a gay icon, too.

Marriage: The Dog Lovers' Party

Looking forward, as one always must, I wonder if the law will eventually be changed to allow one to marry one’s dog. Until now, this would have been considered disgusting, since marriage has been a law revolving around sexual behaviour, and sexual acts with animals are still, I believe, illegal. But, as this column has pointed out, the unintended consequence of the same-sex marriage legislation has been to take sex out of marriage law. Civil servants, unable to define same-sex consummation, omitted it. So marriage, from now on, can mean no more than the legally registered decision of two people to live together while not being married to anyone else. The justification for this is ‘equality’, buttressed by the idea that love must carry all before it.

People often love their dogs very much and want to spend their life with them. So why should they not, chastely, marry them? It will be objected that animals are not people and are therefore incapable of informed consent, but this is an example of what the animal-rights gurus call speciesism. Besides, anyone who lives with dogs knows that most of them do not suffer from commitment-phobia or incline to desertion, substance-abuse or reckless spending. They make excellent life-partners. No doubt some old bigots will claim that marriage is a uniquely human institution, but it won’t take long to find enlightened vicars who believe that human and canine dignity is in a very real sense enhanced by recognising inter-species unions. Soon celebrities, tired of human relationships, will hold dinky solemnisations with their chihuahuas, and eager Conservative modernisers will tweet their approval. Anyone who suggests that the whole thing is barking mad will be in breach of Public Equality Duty and denied a career in the public services.

Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, authorised Thatcher biographer, and anti-gay marriage obsessive, writing in his Spectator column.
A new career as a Swiftian political satirist surely awaits the thinking-man's Richard Littlejohn.

• The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill returns to the House of Lords on Monday 8th July for its doubtless fun-packed Report Stage.
Obviously, any homophobic Lords will be swayed by this hilariously shit new Instagram "campaign" by Gay Star News.

PS ^^^ Election poster for Auberon Waugh standing for the Dog Lovers' Party in the 1979 general election to make a satirical point about former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe - albeit one that was actually funny.
Waugh, a Tory anarchist, was once sacked by The Spectator for making a joke, co/incidentally.
Happens to the best of us.

Asylum Ruling: Dial-a-Cliché

Fagburn was a little surprised how few columnists have taken up the gauntlet of the "Kylie and cocktails" ruling from the Supreme Court this week.
In the Telegraph there was Charles Moore's; 'Is Attending Kylie Concerts a Fundamental Human Right?'
Though this appears to be an eye-catching headline given by a sub, as it's not a question he addresses in the article.
A thoroughly modern old fogey, Moore applauds the fact that same-sexing is no longer illegal in the UK; "Anyone who believes in freedom and opposes the state control of private life should rejoice."
Or should have been rejoicing over 40 years ago, Charles.
It's relatively reasonable stuff for him, but then halfway through the bilious cliches - Or is it his whisky? Probably both... - kick in; "But now they've gone too far! Fucking in the streets! No it's not bloody 'normal'! And if you say you think all these perverted pansies should be flogged to with an inch of their lives they call you a 'homeopath'!!!"
Those aren't Mr Moore's exact words, but you get the general idea.
Philip Hensher in The Independent used the "All queens love Kylie" cliche as a hook to map out a broader set of modern gay male stereotypes; the Disco Bunny, the Muscle Mary, The A-Gay, the Old Hand, the Hoxton Bitch, the Country Member, and the Grand Old Gay.
It was surprisingly accurate, funny and neatly drawn, and Hensher acknowledges that we are legion and the number of ways of being gay are many, if not infinite.
"Nevertheless, one thing that gay men like to do is to be recognised by another, and to develop a little sense of belonging. Subject to peer pressure, a gay man will have a tendency to join a number of social groups, often more apparent from the outside to an observer."
Might Fagburn be so bold as to suggest one more gay stereotype, Mr Hensher?
The slightly haughty but ever so cultured old queen.