On Tuesday night I went to the Margaret Thatcher Centre dinner at the Guildhall, along with 400 others. What a fabulous venue. I had never been there before. It was quite an occasion and raised a huge amount of money to go towards funding the activities of the Centre. All the tables were named after a Thatcher Cabinet Minister. I requested ours was named after my favourite, Cecil Parkinson. Ah, what might have been. Had he not had to resign in 1983 I reckon he would have been in prime position to succeed Mrs T, but alas it wasn’t to be. Had he become Foreign Secretary in 1983, I suspect many of the events later on in the decade which led to her downfall would not have happened. A nice counterfactual for someone to write.

Tony Abbott, the former Australian Prime Minister, was the guest speaker and he certainly delivered a hard hitting speech, which has been widely reported in the press. His main point concerned immigration and in some ways he out-Faraged Nigel Farage with his rhetoric and approach. He urged EU countries to copy the Australian approach and turn immigrant boats around. Easy to say, but the Med is not the Indian Ocean.

I was on the naughty table, which included Andrew Mitchell, Suzanne Evans and Heidi Allen. I’m not sure whether Stephen Parkinson, who’s just left Theresa May’s employ to campaign for the EU Leave campaign qualifies as ‘naughty’ or not. Seeing as he runs the Conservative History Group he’s probably the very definition of sensible’. Most of the time.

The Margaret Thatcher Centre is the idea of CWF head Donal Blaney. It’s a perfect example of someone making a real difference. Donal has been a leading figure in Conservative activism ever since his YC days and is the brainchild behind the Young Britons Foundation. His idea is to effectively fundraise enough money to build an actual physical Margaret Thatcher Centre as well as run courses to spread the gospel of Thatcherism both in this country and around the world. He’s put together an impressive array of supporters and there is a deep commitment to making this happen. I wish him every success with the project. Donal is one of those people who, as Richard Nixon might say, “makes a difference”. And in the end, isn’t that what we’d all like to do? Look back on our lives and think that in some way we made a difference?
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So a date has finally been set for the publication of the Chilcot Report. It’s been so long in coming that unfortunately everyone has forgotten the evidence that was given back in 2009. The report will be more than 2 million words long, which means if one wants to read the whole thing, it will take more than 120 hours at average reading speed. That’s longer than Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher!
In a way it won’t make much difference what Chilcot’s conclusions are. Those who believe Blair to be a war criminal won’t be satisfied with anything less than a recommendation for an indictment at The Hague, and those who think Blair can do no wrong won’t accept any criticism of him anyhow. So we’ll more than likely be back to square one.
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An invitation to a media reception at Number Ten arrives in my Inbox. Ah, so I haven’t been blacklisted following the publication of CALL ME DAVE. Sadly it’s timed from 5-7pm, exactly the time I am on the radio. Obviously a deliberate snub .
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I wonder why it is taking the Daily Mail so long to appoint a new political editor to succeed James Chapman, who left in the summer to take over as George Osborne’s Director of Communications. It’s one of the plum jobs in political journalism, but also one of the most challenging. Surely there can’t be any lack of people interested in it, so why the delay?