Well folks, now that the votes are in it seems only fair to deliver my obituary to an old and dear friend.
David Heathcoat-Amory, the son of a Brigadier you were the latest in a long line of Baronets, and you were brother of the man who would go on to become the Daily Mail’s leading political columnist. I expect you would have made your great-grandfather and his grandfather before him proud, seeing as your family treated the role of MP as something of a hereditary title. In a way, you supported the wrong party – your successor Tessa is a liberal, as was your great-grandfather.
Educated, like many of your family, in Eton and Oxford your contemporaries were enlightening, respectable figures such as John Edwards, referred to once as “the Pol Pot of privatisation” when he worked in Thatcher’s policy unit, and Edwina Curry whose numerous claims to fame include such nuggets as “good Christian people don’t get AIDs”, that OAPs unable to afford heating should wrap up warm, and most famously that all British eggs contained salmonella, after which she resigned. I like to imagine your formative political years were as much informed by conversations with them as they were with games of Monopoly and Scrabble in the Balliol common room with Gyles Brandeth.
David, your political career began as it ended – ignominiously, after you failed to take the London seat of Brent in the election that went down in history as the year in which the rest of the country turned Tory, sweeping Thatcher to power in a storm. I imagine you sitting in Brent nursing a mug of tea after your defeat, and I almost feel sorry for you. But then I remember myself.
Not to be deterred, you moved to Wells, where you held the seat with less than 5% of the vote. Of course, you had no other ties to the place before you moved there to be elected. In the 27 years that you spent as MP for my constituency, you career could not have been described as dull. You were against gay rights. You in favour of a stricter asylum system. You wanted to replace Trident. You were strongly in favour of the Iraq war. And of course, not wanting to do your uncle Derick’s friends any disservice, your strong and persistent opposition to reform of the House of Lords saw you accused of “failing our democracy” by “standing in the way of a reforming Parliament”.
The papers really have not been kind to you over the years. It’s all a bit shit really. Literally, in your case – the Telegraph singled you out after you bought 550 bags of it with taxpayer’s money, to spread on your garden. Far to busy writing Early Day Motions on the plight of British fine art, you even paid some poor sod £605.25 to do it for you. You really should have told me – I’d have done it for you for half that price. I know a thing or two about organic gardening as well, saving you the £50 you spent one year on moss killer and herbicide. Still, I know how much you like your garden – in just two years you nearly spent £5,000 of our money on it, after all. In fact, we’ve spent so much money on your garden, I really think it should be nationalised.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory, what will become of your garden now that you are no longer our MP? Will you go back to work at the British Technology Group – or perhaps as an advisor to Raython, or another of Price-Waterhouse’s clients you worked for before you entered politics? Or, unable to get a job in this dismal economy, will you retire with your wife Linda amongst the dahlias and apple trees of your second home or perhaps you will retire to your third home in Perthshire? And what will become of your dahlias now that you can no longer claim their planting and after-care as expenses? Well, Mr. Heathcoat-Amory, one thing is clear: while the future of the country may still be at stake, yours, thankfully, is over.
David, I’d like to share with you if I may my diary entry for our first meeting. I’m sure you remember it – it was in Westminster, in 2006.
“Then we rejoined the rest of the group and met our local MP, Mr. David Heathcoat Amory.
DHC: Right, well now you’ve all got to look round Westminster, is there anything particularly you’d like to ask me, perhaps about voting? I know you can’t vote now, but you’ll be able to in the future you know.
“Yes”, I said. My friends (and one of the the tutors) knew this was coming. “Over the past two years since I was able to vote, I’ve written your office five letters. Since then I’ve received nothing from your office except a birthday card on my 18th, encouraging me to vote for you. Can you understand why I might be reluctant to do so?”
I swear the man took a huge step back, and his face went bright red.
DHC: AH, yes, well that shouldn’t have happened. We do employ a fulltime member of staff to answer letters you know, so I’m sure that was a one-off: if you write to me again, you can be sure I’ll answer.
Me: It’s not just me, you know. Nick here has written to you twice, and even my tutor has written to you once. And we’ve received nothing.
DHC: Oh, err, what did you write about?
Me: I wrote about civil liberties, ID Cards, European Intellectual Property Law, top-up fees, and the 90-day imprisonment bill.
DHC: Oh, well, err that shouldn’t have happened. (Hurriedly.) Any other questions?
My tutor, taking pity on the man, commented on how large and imposing Westminster seemed and asked if he had ever gotten lost in the Palace or confused with procedures. DHC went off on a long tangent about young MPs who have never had a life outside party headquarters, coming in and “thinking they know everything”. Ben whispered “*Cough* David Cameron *Cough*”: It was too much, I couldn’t help myself. With only the slightest intonation on the word “do”, I asked:
Me: So, what *do* you think of David Cameron?
Beside me, Ben stifled laughter and Mr. David Heathcoat-Amoy’s face went bright-red and his eyes resumed the familiar ‘dear in the headlights’ appearance.
DHC: Oh, yes, well he’s certainly young and he is taking the party on some new roads which we’ve never been on before. It remains to be seen whether he’ll be a success, but I quite like the man and the direction he’s taking the party.
I didn’t want to be the only annoying one on the trip and was quite relieved when Ben asked, “But don’t you think what you said just now, about MPs being young and inexperienced and having had no life outside the party headquarters, could just as easily be applied to David Cameron?”
DHC: Well some people have said that, but on the other hand it can be quite good to have fresh blood and him working in the party headquarters allays fears along the electorate that he’s not a real conservative.
Me: You said you like the direction he’s taking your party on at the moment, but what do you think about the fact that he wrote Michael Howard’s manifesto for the 2005 General Election, a candidate who campaigned mainly on right-wing issues; and now, Cameron’s “reinvention” of the Conservative Party has placed it left-of-labour, and most campaign issues are in direct opposition to the very manifesto *he wrote* for Howard. What do you think about this?
It was lame, and he knew it: “Well, err, people do change their minds you know”.
Me: Not in six months they don’t.
*The class snickered.*
DHC: Well… err… he wasn’t on his own. He was part of a committee.
I let his words speak for themselves and let some other people ask questions for a bit. They talked about MP’s salary, and I asked him if he thought it right that they are one of the few people in the country who can vote themselves a raise, and the loans scandal. Then we went our separate ways. Afterward, Laura chastised me for being “too harsh” on him. I shrugged, and asked her what she expected.
Farewell, David Heathcoat-Amory, farewell.
Daniel Fisher studies Philosophy at St. Andrews, is an all round top geezer, and you can contact him here.
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