Heaven

DAY 189 WEDNESDAY 23 JANUARY 2002

9.00 am

Mary is on Midweek with Libby Purves.

12.15 pm

I call Mary. She’s off to lunch with Ken Howard RA and other artistic luminaries.

2.00 pm

My visitors today are Michael Portillo and Alan Jones (Australia’s John Humphreys). I must first make my position clear on Michael’s leadership bid. I would have wanted him to follow John Major as leader of the party. I would also have voted for him to follow William Hague, though I would have been torn if Malcolm Rifkind had won back his Edinburgh seat.

It is a robust visit, and it serves to remind me how much I miss the cut and thrust of Westminster, stuck as I am in the coldest and most remote corner of Lincolnshire. Michael tells us about one or two changes he would have made had he been elected leader. We need our own ‘Clause 4’ he suggests, which Tony Blair so brilliantly turned into an important issue, despite it being of no real significance. Michael also feels that the party’s parliamentary candidates should be selected from the centre, taking power away from the constituencies. It also worries him how few women and member of minority groups end up on the Conservative benches. He points out that at the last election, the party only added one new woman to its ranks, at a time when the Labour party have over fifty.

‘Not much of an advertisement for the new, all-inclusive, modern party,’ he adds.

‘But how would you have handled the European issue?’ ask Alan.

Michael is about to reply when that red-hot socialist (local Labour councillor) Officer Hart tells us that our time is up.

Politics is not so overburdened with talent that the Conservatives can survive without Portillo, Rifkind, Hague, Clarke and Redwood, all playing important roles, especially while we’re in opposition.

When the two men left I was buzzing. An hour later I wanted to abscond.

5.00 pm

I call Mary. She has just left the chambers of Julian Malins QC, and is going to dinner with Leo Rothschild.