I have known a lot of prime ministers. And meeting them socially is a better insight into the people they are than the politicians they present themselves as to the public.
Margaret Thatcher was terrifying, and at No10 parties, even her Cabinet ministers would slink into the furthest corners of the room to keep out of her way.
When she collared you, she would fix you with her laser blue eyes and machine-gun you with questions, then look over your shoulder for someone more interesting to talk to if your answers didn’t come up to scratch.
John Major was not the grey man comedians made him appear. I was once at a private dinner with him when he drank too much and entertained us with a loud rendition of the theme song to the BBC radio series Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh.
Tony Blair and David Cameron could work a room brilliantly and make each person they spoke to feel as if they were the only one in it. And they saved a fresh anecdote for each new group gathering around them. They were masters of the social graces.
When she collared you, she would fix you with her laser blue eyes and machine-gun you with questions, then look over your shoulder for someone more interesting to talk to if your answers didn’t come up to scratch.
John Major was not the grey man comedians made him appear. I was once at a private dinner with him when he drank too much and entertained us with a loud rendition of the theme song to the BBC radio series Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh.
Tony Blair and David Cameron could work a room brilliantly and make each person they spoke to feel as if they were the only one in it. And they saved a fresh anecdote for each new group gathering around them. They were masters of the social graces.
Better to be known as Cautious Keir than Slasher Starmer — but the PM made a serious mistake — Nigel Nelson
Getty Images
Gordon Brown wasn’t, and his guests used to dread being stuck with him because they knew it would mean being trapped for 20 minutes, forced to listen to his latest obsession.
My treat was the intricate workings of a prototype electric car, which the then PM had just been to see, and it had excited him hugely.
“We’ll all be driving one by 2015,” he predicted. Hmmm. How’s that going then? Theresa May was painfully shy, and any social chit-chat was likely to be met with monosyllables. Did you enjoy your holiday, Prime Minister? “Yes.” Where did you go? “Wales”. What was the weather like? “Wet.”
There was one Cabinet minister I knew who had to spend an hour in a car with her and, knowing what an ordeal that was going to be, prepared a lengthy list of conversational topics beforehand to fill the time.
They were exhausted within 10 minutes, and the remaining 50 passed in uncomfortable silence. Boris Johnson was always great fun as you would imagine him to be, and Keir Starmer is a lot funnier in private than his wooden performances in public would have you believe.
He is also naturally cautious and always takes great care over what he says, which is why I was stunned by his “island of strangers” remark because it was so unlike him.
I speculated out loud on GB News that he couldn’t have read his speechwriter’s work beforehand, which the PM has since confirmed.
He won’t make that mistake again. His admission that he wasn’t really paying attention to plans to take money off the disabled because his mind was occupied by foreign matters elsewhere is less forgivable.
The original proposals desperately worried hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people, and the least the PM could have done was give them some proper consideration.
As I said here last week, welfare reform is necessary, but £5billion in cost savings falsely dressed up as reform was not the way to do it.
A proper study has to be done to find out who needs what and to weed out who is getting what they don’t need. Then you can start saving money.
Once the PM began concentrating, we got that review, with the empathetic Disability minister Stephen Timms conducting it.
But the Government almost messed that up by wanting to make the changes before he’d had a chance to report. It was very late in the Commons debate before the penny dropped that was ridiculous.
What should have been obvious to ministers from the start is that it is easier not to give money to those who have never had it than to take it from those who have already got it. The debacle over pensioners’ winter fuel allowance should have taught them that.
That has also been corrected, so existing claimants won’t lose out. Sir Stephen’s task now will be to protect future ones from the cliff edge of poverty.
It cannot be right that a disabled person applying for help on a certain day in November next year will get double the support of another applicant a few hours later.
The changes to this Bill are welcome. Real welfare reform is now possible - even though it must have stung the PM to have 49 of his MPs vote against him only three days before he celebrates a year since his landslide election victory.
But if it makes him tread a little more carefully in future, that will be all to the good..After all, better to be known to posterity as Cautious Keir than Slasher Starmer.
Most Read
