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We British: The Poetry of a People

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I spent the first 20 years of my career in newspapers, because I was sure that somebody with my looks would never get to broadcast. I’ve got many vices, but vanity isn’t one of them – I’ve always looked weird, huge ears, not enough hair. When I first became political editor of the BBC I was followed around Waitrose in East Sheen; the man eventually caught up with me and said, “’Ere, ’ere! You look just like that Andrew Marr, you poor bugger.” Watch Tonight with Andrew Marr exclusively on Global Player every Monday to Thursday from 6pm to 7pm Labour have had their own teams flat out in Uxbridge (where Boris Johnson was MP) and Mid Beds – and in Selby and Ainsty, whose Conservative MP Nigel Adams has also stood down. Selby looks almost as safe as any Tory seat could be, and Adams had a 60 per cent share of the vote at the last election. But his seat is being redistributed in a way that helps Labour and it has become one of its less obvious targets: the party will fight very hard here.

Yet this isn’t the time for uncontroversial journalism. We are told not to connect the history of Israeli occupation with the foul terrorism unleashed by Hamas. But without context, without explanation, all we are left with is a chaos of inexplicable human evil from which there is no political exit. I quoted Yeats. Here’s Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939”, written at another ominous moment: “I and the public know/What all schoolchildren learn/Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.” Much of it now resides not above Athens’s most famous war memorial and civic bank but in an echoing, grey chamber in the British Museum. That’s because the Parthenon, after being converted into a mosque under Turkish rule, had been used as a munitions dump and partly blown up in 1687. In 1800, Thomas Bruce, the Earl of Elgin, employed a team of artists to sketch the ruins, and claimed the following year he had instructions from the Turkish authorities to remove them for safekeeping. Eventually Bruce took them to London. It’s not true that this was considered acceptable at the time: among others, Lord Byron protested vociferously at the vandalism and theft. A new executive for the 1922 Committee could change the rules and, if submerged by a sea of new letters, hold a leadership contest almost immediately. “We could do the whole thing in a matter of days,” one anti-Johnson Tory told me.There’s a standard political memoir, isn’t there? It bubbles along as if scripted by a politically savvy AI engine: amusing and affecting anecdotes of the hero’s early life and university successes; feelings of inadequacy on reaching parliament; vivid descriptions of the scramble up the ladder, including quotable digs at rivals and opponents; the strange absence of the scandal for which the author will be mainly remembered; the self-aggrandising account of the author’s many successes in office, this part at wearisome length. It comes after Mr Johnson officially resigned as an MP on Monday afternoon, with the former PM accusing his successor Rishi Sunak of talking 'rubbish' in a row over peerages.

Again, all this might seem obvious and easy for Starmer. He certainly has the ruthlessness necessary to make a move as big as publicly converting to PR. It would be hugely popular in the party and would answer the question about how radical, given the fiscal restraints, he can be. We are in a big hole as a country, we have very, very hard choices to come and frankly if Keir Starmer takes over, he has a bit of a nightmare on his hands." I’ve had an incredibly good decade since my stroke, given at the time my wife was told I might not make it, then that I might need a wheelchair and be unable to communicate. I’ve been largely vertical and communicating for the past 10 years. It’s been pretty good, though I’ve still got deficits: I’m hemiplegic, my left arm really doesn’t work much, my left leg only works a bit, I walk in a sort of jerky way. I can’t do my laces. I can’t cycle. I can’t run. I can’t swim. But I focus on what I can do, which includes painting and drawing, and I try to walk five miles a day. I think he is someone who all his life has expected optimistically - and perhaps in a narcissistic way, that something useful will turn up and mostly, so far, it has done. But not this time," he said.

The standard-model memoir has three purposes: to settle scores, to nudge the dial of the historical verdict, and above all to win a publisher’s advance that is unlikely to be earned out. The resulting book is reviewed everywhere and read nowhere. The British public, who voted the author in, barely features, except as comic extras writing cranky letters and making ignorant observations at by-elections. Rather like that unexpected gesture, this is a pleasant surprise: a genuinely unusual, bold and important book. You can’t say that of many political memoirs. Had Bercow not done this, “there was every prospect that we would have delivered an earlier exit from the EU, maintained better relations with our European partners and, above all, delivered an agreement which would have been more beneficial for Northern Ireland and hence for the future integrity of the UK than the one Boris Johnson signed.” Politicians like Denis Healey and Margaret Thatcher were intellectually self-confident. They knew who they were and what they thought. Given a question designed to cause them a bit of trouble, they were likely to confront it directly and win the argument. Too many politicians these days think getting through 15 minutes on a political show without making a ripple is a success. They’re incredibly risk-averse.

u201c'I'm so bored of Boris Johnson I could scream.\u2019 \n\n@AndrewMarr9 delivers an epic takedown of the 'selfish, narcissistic' ex-PM in the form of poetry...\u201d — LBC (@LBC) Putin is very sharp intellectually, but has a menacing presence. Elton John once asked me to give him a kiss on the cheek and a Donna Summer album. I’d interviewed Elton in Sochi before the opening of the winter Olympics. I didn’t give Putin the album, but I asked him if he had gay friends (he does) and whether he was homophobic. He said he wasn’t, but that he enjoyed Elton’s music very much. The Forward Prizes are invaluable in finding the most essential, exciting voices, highlighting the contemporary poets who are at the top of their game and whose words will travel far and reach many readers.Unsurprisingly, the Lib Dems have been moving fast. Rhiannon Leaman, Ed Davey’s chief of staff, who lives in Leighton Buzzard, and Dave McCobb, director of field campaigns, were on the ground quietly scoping Mid Bedfordshire a good week before Nadine Dorries announced her resignation as an MP. Although Dorries had a 24,000 majority over Labour in 2019, with the Lib Dems in third place, by-elections are different beasts. The Lib Dems have concluded that too few disappointed Tories would defect straight to Labour, but that Mid Bedfordshire is just the kind of “Blue Wall” seat they can take. It is a great mistake to believe that we are an island. If we are on the edge of war, we should never forget that wars tend to upend everything we think we know about politics. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed.

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