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Peter Oborne’s
Diary
Regular observations of the political scene at home and abroad
Merger and Assignations
A quarter of a century ago, as its newly appointed political correspondent, I attended my first Spectator party. It was like walking into the pages of an Anthony Powell novel: artists, dons, ladies who’d come up from the country, diplomats, dissolute aristocrats, book reviewers, SAS heroes, foreign correspondents, adventurers, Arabists, Scottish lairds, racehouse trainers, dog handlers. The following morning some of our guests were still there to be retrieved from the flowerbeds, poured a bloody mary, and sent away.
Not many MPs made the half-hour taxi journey from the House of Commons to the Spectator offices in Doughty Street. This regime changed when the Barclay brothers bought the Spectator and put Andrew Neil in charge.
The Bloomsbury house was sold and the Spectator moved to an impressive but charmless building near Westminster. Neil disliked me, though probably not as much as I disliked him, so I left.
The Spectator, true to its earliest tradition, had at heart been a journal of manners. Neil hated this. Out went the racehorse trainers, dons, diplomats, and dog handlers. In came the MPs, special advisors, lobbyists, PR men, and ‘think tank’ people.
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