I shan't be walking down any dark alleys in the next few days. It seems I have upset Norman Tebbit. In my Telegraph column a couple of weeks ago I warned Tories that they should be disciplined during their conference. During the article I wrote this...
A speech by Sir Bufton Tufton (the politician formerly known as Michael Ancram) hinting at the need for a different course will make front-page headlines in the Mirror. Be warned. It will happen...Every politician has a ''naughty brain", the one that craves attention. (Norman Tebbit, are you listening?) It's so much easier to say what you think and hang the consequences.
Michael Ancram thought it hugely funny, but not, I'm afraid, Lord T. He had, you may remember, given an interview to the Times on the eve of the conference in which he was not very complimentary David Cameron and rather too complimentary about Gordon Brown.
Anyway, I got a letter this morning which was, well, very Norman-esque. It started...
I realise that in a desire to be noticed, little known columnists write silly
things to attract attention to themselves, but your remarks about me last week
were really rather too silly...
Ouch. He continues...
You may be unaware that any craving I might have had to be taken notive of has
been more than satiated over my three or four decades of public life. Indeed, I
sometimes find that being noticed can be a bit of a bore these days...
Well that's me banged to rights. I should make clear that I adore Norman Tebbit. He's an icon to those of us who learned our politics in the 1980s. Had things been different he could well have succeeded Margaret Thatcher in 1990. The point I was making, was that interventions like Norman's can be highly damaging and that if in 1987, when he was Party chairman, Ian Gilmour had done something similar, Norman would righty have strung him up from the nearest lamppost.
I was sitting next to Lord T at a dinner a couple of years ago and the speaker was droning on about the Conservative Party needing to attract more celebrities like Jonny Wilkinsonto support it. Norman leaned over and whispered in my ear... "yes, at least he knows how to kick balls." Quite.
