‘Let’s hope your finger is never on the nuclear button,” Alex Salmond said genially to the home secretary as he stepped up to collect his Politician of the Year certificate at the Spectator parliamentary awards lunch at the Savoy. In return, Theresa May rewarded the former leader of the SNP with one of her 100-yard death stares. Her own introductory speech had not been the triumph she had hoped for.
The home secretary had instructed one of her special advisers to prepare a slideshow of Emily Thornberry’s Islington constituency with the intention of adding her own witty commentary to photographs of expensive houses. Christmas must be a laugh-a-minute affair chez May. If there’s one thing guaranteed to make a poor joke worse, it’s a major technology fail. She pressed the clicker to bring up the first photo. Nothing. She pressed again. Nothing. She gave it one more try and up flashed the name of Sir Robert Rogers, the former clerk to the house of Commons, whose award for Parliamentarian of the Year was supposed to be the surprise denouement of the occasion.
Her face now locked in a rictus, she pressed on the clicker again and again. Still nothing. Then she gave up and moved on to the tail end of her speech. But no one could accuse her of lacking persistence. No one was going to accuse her of deliberately burying damaging reports. She was determined to prove that any delays within the Home Office were entirely the result of her own incompetence. In desperation, she gave the clicker one last press. Result. Up flashed a picture of a mansion. There were a few polite laughs. It hadn’t really been worth the wait.
Having made more gags on his way to the stage than the home secretary had made in her whole speech, Salmond briefly threatened to sprinkle some unexpected good cheer. He brought out a flag of St George handkerchief, blew his nose on it and said “Respect” and vowed to wave it along with saltire the next time Andy Murray won Wimbledon. But then it all went downhill, as if he had realised that turning up at the Savoy to accept a Spectator award might not play particularly well north of the border, and he became progressively less gracious. Though he never quite reached the depths of Lord Adonis, who accepted Peer of the Year on behalf of Charlie Falconer, whose diet has now made him totally invisible. “Charlie’s Islington house is even bigger than Boris’s,” he said, before muttering something about the Caymans. With friends like these …
There was no Apology of the Year award for Maria Miller, which was fair enough as she hadn’t made one, but there was an Insurgent of the Year award for Douglas Carswell, who appeared oblivious to the Mike Read Ukip Calypso. But then he’s oblivious to many things. “I want you to think of Ukip as Gladstone.com,” he said. The only way of knowing that wasn’t a joke was because Carswell doesn’t have sense of humour. Mark Reckless could only look on enviously, though these lunches do have their upsides for him: in the Commons dining room, he is Johnny No Mates and was last seen eating a burger on his own while struggling to open a ketchup sachet. “So much for the master race,” a waitress observed.
Sir Robert Rogers won Parliamentarian of the Year. But then you, like the rest of us, knew that already.
