That Tony Blur chap must wait for another portrait to remind him of who he once was. Wealthy donors at a thinly attended gathering of Labour’s 1,000 Club at the Dover Street Arts Club in London failed to raise the required £25,000. The cunning plan was for the artist David Newens to “generously” hand over the painting once the cash was safely deposited in party coffers. Big Gordie popped in to slap a few backs, as did Ed Balls and Peter Hain, but cheques remained unwritten as the donors refused to part with their money. The one-time party general secretary Tom Sawyer, host for the evening, was left to mutter embarrassedly about how it would all somehow be sorted out in the future. So a portrait of what’s-his-name is gathering dust – presumably in an attic, to slow his hair loss – until arms are twisted to raise the funds.
The Libido Democrat, Lembit Öpik (below), was endearingly stunned by his promotion, if that is the correct term, to his party’s business brief, charged with keeping tabs on laugh-a-minute John Hutton. The cheeky boy confided to a friend the only thing he’d ever run was a sweetie shop, and that went bust. The thinking in Westminster is that wobbly Ming the Merciless obtained Öpik’s loyalty in case the pensioner leader’s critics should turn nasty. The deeper thinking in Westminster is that Öpik’s support is as useful as Harry Potter without his wand – as thirsty Charlie Kennedy and frisky Mark Oaten can attest.
Fresh evidence of a loss of modernising nerve by Druggie Dave. You may recall last November’s kerfuffle when the Cameronista Greg Clark embraced the pink politics of the Guardianista Polly Toynbee, simultaneously showing two fingers to Winston Churchill. Talk back then was of inviting Pink Polly to address the blue-rinse brigade on the evils of poverty at this October’s Tory shindig. She was to be the great symbol of how Cameron had changed the Conservatives. But the invitation never arrived. So it’s Toynbee out, Churchill back in.
After the invitation that never was, the by-election stunt that never was. Labour’s stunt machine considered dressing an activist in the Edwardian tailcoat and wing collar of the Bullingdon Club to dog Druggie Dave in Ealing Southall. A party worker rang a gentleman’s outfitter in Oxford, posing as a prospective member of the Buller. On being informed the full rig cost £3,000, he inquired how much it would cost to rent for a couple of weeks. “Sir,” sniffed the tailor, “you are an impostor. A real gentleman would never ask such a question.”
Then comes the MP who never was. Druggie Dave’s playboy Tony Lit has legged it to New York to escape the Ealing fallout. Meanwhile his businessman papa, Avtar Lit, who wrote the £4,800 cheque to pay for a happy snappy snap with a certain Tony Blur, wears the worried look of a haunted man.
Druggie Dave’s Etonocracy isn’t quite the exclusive gang it’s made out to be. Slick Ed Vaizey was overheard boasting that he turned down a place at the toffs’ school to go to that well-known proletarian establishment, St Paul’s.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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