One of the biggest mysteries in Westminster surrounds the inability of politicians of all parties to apologise. For anything. Most of the rest of us go through life saying sorry on a regular basis. For being late, for not doing something we had said we would, for forgetting. And by and large an apology does the trick. The person we have let down feels heard and all is forgiven.
But politicians would rather die than apologise. Take the winter fuel allowance U-turn. Almost the first thing that the new Labour government did was to cut the payment for almost every pensioner. It was Rachel Reeves’s way of showing the financial markets that she could be trusted to take the tough decisions in the interests of fiscal responsibility. Only it turned out that most people didn’t think the government should be forcing some of the most vulnerable members of society to choose between heating and eating.
Cue the eventual reverse ferret from Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions a few weeks ago.And today we got the details. Any pensioner earning £35K or under would now be entitled to the payment. What had started out as a policy to save the Treasury £1.35bn would now, due to the increasing number of old people claiming pension credit, end up costing the country more than if the system had remained the same.
What we didn’t get was an apology. Instead the government tried to claim its change of plan was driven entirely by an improvement in the economy. A suggestion that just made it look stupid as no one believes it. Saying sorry – “we wanted to means test the allowance to stop millionaires getting it but got the threshold wrong” – would have saved the Treasury all the embarrassment. Most people would have accepted the mistake and moved on. An apology is the first step to restoring trust in politics.
For those of you who enjoy blue-on-blue Tory infighting,How Not to Be a Political Wifewill be this summer’s must read. But having finished the memoir, I can only conclude that Sarah Vine is a very complicated woman.
At times she is ruthlessly self-revealing and at others seemingly hopelessly lacking in self-awareness. Almost as if she had no control over herself and the book she was writing. As a Daily Mail feature writer and columnist, she has plenty of form for writing snarky pieces about other women in the public eye – their weight, their looks, their mental health – but she seems to demand to be made an exception when it comes to herself.
Mostly though there is a rich seam of self-delusion. A feeling of massive entitlement. That it was perfectly normal forMichael Goveand the rest of the Notting Hill set to be running the country. As if they were somehow doing the rest of us a massive favour. As if they were ordained to be the ruling elite with a consequence free life and were outraged when things went wrong.
Sarah moans bitterly about the sacrifices she had to make. The pay cut Michael took to become an MP. The struggle to get by on a joint income of more than £200K. The humiliation of having to live in North Kensington when all her friends lived in a posher part of west London. The unfairness that David Cameron and others had so much more money than them. The cheek of being expected to have a home in the constituency Michael represented. And of not being allowed to put all the furniture on expenses. Sarah is also at pains to point out she is not writing the book to settle scores and that she now gets on better with Gove than she did when they were married.
And yet the book is riddled with score-settling and much of it reads as a passive aggressive attack on her ex-husband. Michael comes across as insecure, needy and vain. She writes of her horror at absentee fathers and then in the next paragraph tells of Gove reading a book while she was in labour. And when they moved house, Gove just lay on the bed doing nothing. If this is Sarah writing with love, I’d hate to see her when she’s angry.
There’s a first time for everything. After decades of supporting Spurs with little to show for it, the club chairman has finally done something with which I agree. He hasfired the manager, Ange Postecoglou. A sacking that seems to have spiralled the club into near civil war. For some fans, Ange can do no wrong. He delivered a first European trophy in over 40 years and for that all previous sins are forgiven.
For others, myself included, none of this could quite make up for the run of dismal form in the Premier League that saw Spurs finish one place above relegation. Never before can I remember walking up Tottenham High Road week in, week out feeling like such a chore.
It is the reaction of the players that has been most telling. They normally take the sacking of a manager in their stride – a normal career hazard – and keep their heads down, ready for the next one. But this time, many of them have gone out of their way to speak up for Ange. Thanking himfor Bilbao, thanking him for standing by them, thanking him for his steadfastness of purpose. Which has left me wondering what the players thought of their league form. Did they think it was OK to look clueless, as if they were not really trying for much of the season? Was losing so many games really part of the plan? Does a trophy really justify everything? I think not. Worryingly, the players disagree. Thenew manager, Thomas Frank, may have his work cut out.
Sometimes I can’t help feeling that being a celebrity must feel like awfully hard work. Take Lily Allen who has declared she ranks all her friends in order of who she likes best. Then – and this is the best part – she gets her assistant to schedule time in her day for her to get in touch with the lucky few who are near the top of the list and for which she may have time. Lucky them.
Perhaps this is also normal in some circles. But even if you’re a bona fide A-lister like David Beckham you still have to work ridiculously hard to stay still. There’s the Netflix documentary in which ordinary people are invited to gawp at you hanging your shirts in a row. Personally I’d like to remain a mess in private.
David is getting a knighthood. Something he’s apparently been covetous of for years. Just think of being the sort of person whose life goal was to become a sir. All those pointless establishment hoops you have to jump through only to find you’re still only there under sufferance. It all just feels a little sad. But maybe in celebworld it marks you out as a somebody. A sign you’ve finally arrived.
My good friend Simon recently passed on something his father-in-law had told him many years ago. That getting old is like being given a prison sentence for a crime you haven’t committed. I now rather know what he was getting at. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a moanathon. As Woody Allen once said, getting old is better than the alternative. And I do know I am a lucky man. I could easily have died several times before I reached the age of 30 and I have a lovely family, good friends and a job I enjoy. It’s just that I feel like I am getting down to the business end of life. The time when things start to get serious.
Take the last 12 months or so. It started with mehaving a heart attack in March last year. I had unbelievable treatment from the hospital staff but it’s left its mark. I feel more vulnerable, more mortal than I did before. It was a memento mori. My knee is also swollen and falling apart and I’m in constant discomfort. I had a knee replacement 13 years ago and it is reaching the end of its shelf life. But I can’t yet be bothered to go back to the surgeon as I can’t face yet another painful operation. And that’s just me.My mum diedin March.My dog diedthe following month. Plus I have also lost three other friends, one Simon and two Barrys. If you’re called Barry and you know me, I suggest you change your name.
Nor does it look like life is going to get easier any time soon. All I can do is try to keep in the moment. Enjoy what I’ve got. Take it a day at a time, as they say in Narcotics Anonymous. Try to keep things as normal as possible until the time they become abnormal. So my tour goes on. My Brighton show at the Komedia on 22 June was sold out, but it has been moved to a bigger venue so tickets are now available once more. I’m also at Buxton Opera House on 23 July. Please do come. We can have a laugh and commiserate. Onwards and upwards.