On Wednesday afternoon I wondered if my eyes and ears had deceived me. I had watched Prime Minister’s Question Time and thought that Ed Miliband had trounced David Cameron. On both immigration and the TV debates Cameron didn’t seem to have any answers and for once Ed Miliband piled home his advantage. So that’s what I tweeted. But many lobby journos thought the opposite. James Chapman of the Mail and Jim Pickard of the FT both felt that Cameron had played a bad hand well. They were in the press gallery but I watched it on TV. But they were not alone. I’ve always marvelled at how different people can watch the same event and draw completely different conclusions.
*
It’s not often an MP threatens to resign his seat in the middle of a live radio interview, but that’s what Col Bob Stewart did when I interviewed him on Wednesday afternoon. He’s very angry at defence cuts and had told leading Generals it would make a huge impact if they resigned their positions in protest. I put it to him that it was politicians, not Generals, who make defence policy and as a member of the Defence Select Committee, maybe it would be better if he took the lead and led by example. Much to my surprise he took up the cudgels and said that not only might he resign from the committee but he was thinking of resigning his seat too. But not now. Of course the last MP to resign his seat on a point of principle won it back, and David Davis will believe till his dying day that he did the right thing. But he ruined his prospects of holding top political office in the process. Will Bob Stewart carry out his threat? I doubt it, but it is indicative of how strongly many Conservative MPs feel about defence spending at the moment.
*
I’ve always thought that Gus O’Donnell was a bit of a dick. This week he’s proved it. He’s made an outspoken attack on politicians, calling them out of touch and much more besides. He attacks them for having chauffeur driven cars, saying they don’t “get” public services. Someone remind me how the former Head of the Civil Service, Sir Gus O’Donnell, got to work every day? Yes, that’s right. In a chauffeur driven car. Effing hypocrite.
*
I went out for dinner on Wednesday night with two members of the South African band Mango Groove. They’re over here to do a concert at the Hammersmith Apollo tomorrow night. I decided to take them to Joe Allen’s in Covent Garden. We placed our orders and I asked the waiter for some bread to tide us over until the main food arrived. A few minutes later he came back and rather shame-facedly told us that they had run out of bread. At 8.30 in the evening! Perhaps he should have let us eat cake instead.
*
