Skipper

I've been impressed by the writing of Lucy Mangan, the razor sharp hackette who writes for the Guardian. Her Saturday diary piece today on the Conservative's summer party is wonderfully and wittily bitchy. The picture of Nicolas 'Fatty' Soames is hilarious(Couldn't trace it so I've had to poach another one I fear) and makes one wonder why the Tories vilify and taunt the girth of Prezza when they have such a bumper sized politico bulging in their own ranks. She mentions the parading 'phalanx of models' competing in the swim-suit fashion show, one of whom had only been in London for a month since leaving the Ukraine.

'Once upon a time,' she writes, 'the Tory party used to invite East European politicians to sit on the rostrum near Mrs Thatcher and celebrate the fall of communism. Now they invite Tatiana to come and get their tits out for the lads at the market rate. Welcome to western capitalism and the opportunities it offers to be ogled by Fatty Soames!.

This reminds me of one of my favourite sayings by that grand old Tory, Harold Macmillan. Once during the 80s -reflecting only approximately on the origins of the likes of Lawson, Brittan and Rifkind- he complained that 'Once upon a time most of the Conservative Cabinet used to originate Eton but now they come from Estonia.' And, unlike David Cameron, Macmillan did not have to have his witticisms conceived and written for him.