Tuesday When I arrive back from the House, the images of the Queen reading The Master's speech still vivid before my eyes, M is already in my room sipping an interestingly coloured drink and reading the Reformer. He looks up as I enter.
"Ah, sweet Lynton!" he exclaims, in tones made warmer by good Chartreuse. "And what did you think of the day's proceedings?"
I open my mouth to reply, but he gets there first. "There are many rewards of being a successful politician - let alone a political demi-god, as many seem, strangely, to conceive of me (they fail to comprehend my inner humbleness, my simple desire to serve. Helas!). But the greatest by far is to see that of which you dreamed in boyhood, that which you passionately nurtured in youth, which travelled with you from the deepest core of your semi-conscious self to your present exalted state - to see that thing read out by Brenda herself, with that bloody great crown slapped on her head. And to know that it will be done, and that you will do it.
"The word radical is - God knows - overused. Everyone is more radical than everyone else. Paddy is more radical than The Master, that strange little Hague is more radical than Hezza, Alun is more radical than Rhodri, I am more radical than you, and you - given your head - would, of course, be more radical than Dr Jack. We apply it to everything. Our changes to the NHS will, as far as anyone can tell, return it to a pre-Bottomley state of primitive grace, and yet they are radical. The Jenkins Commission would have us make the teeniest changes to the voting system in order to make it just tolerably fair - and that is almost impossibly radical. You should hear The Steward on that one.
"Most of the time, of course, we are actually drawing the sting from radicalism. The art of the possible, Lynton, the art of the possible! And most things are discovered not to be possible. They are too expensive, too disruptive, too unpopular. They will get in the way of other, more important things; they are gestures that the electorate will not appreciate; they are the provinces of a self-indulgent political and academic class; they will put us in deep shit with our allies or jeopardise that vital defence contract; they will cause job losses in the North-east.
"We are practical people. We understand that governing is like making a television programme - the original idea is only the naive starting-point. By the time the audience focus group has been consulted, the lawyer has been through the script, the executives have worked out which of their friends will be unnecessarily offended, the camera operator has discerned which shots cannot be achieved, and the production manager has costed - and discounted - the foreign travel, little may be left of the historic concept.
"So, Lynton, isn't it a total blast, a fucking marvellous, camp, besequinned darling of a thing when - for once - that big, big, big dangerous dream that once you had, all those years ago, looks set to come true. Cromwell didn't achieve it in perpetuity; Gladstone failed to do it; Lloyd George was stymied; Clem and Harold and Jim peered over the fence at it, and retreated. But we, Lynton, we much-criticised trimmers and betrayers, we will do it - we will abolish the hereditary House of Lords! The Blair government of 1997 to 2001 will go down in the history books as the most radical administration since that of the Lord Protector. And you and I - particularly I - have played a big part in that happening.
"Oh Lynton, did you see their faces!"
A tear of joy runs down M's long nose, and plops into his drink.
