Film buffs
, I can reveal what David Cameron said to Tony Blair on their way from the Commons to the Lords.
The arch anti-Monarchist Dennis Skinner had just heckled Black Rod and suggested that Helen Mirren should read the speech. The Tory leader asked the PM if he'd seen "" - in which he's portrayed rather sympathetically.
The answer, by the way, was "No".
Comments
It's sad, isn't it. Dennis Skinner may be about 85, but he still hasn't grown up, and think that parliament is nothing more than a platform for his own childish pranks. Can't we bill him for all the taxpayers' money he has wasted over the years?
I got the impression that Tony Blair really was not interested in talking to David Cameron at all on the walk to the Lords. Where as Cameron could not shut up. Interesting that Ming Campbell and Gordon Brown walked together and seemed to get on well.
Cameron seems in awe of Blair, I thought it was a rather strange thing when he said that the Tories were glad he was going and he had checked the PM was retiring before he applied to become Tory leader.
"It's sad, isn't it. Dennis Skinner may be about 85, but he still hasn't grown up, and think that parliament is nothing more than a platform for his own childish pranks. Can't we bill him for all the taxpayers' money he has wasted over the years?"
The answer, by the way, is no.
Of course Blair has not seen the film 'The Queen'. Because if he admited that he had, he might be expected to opine on how the film portrayed his wife.
All this flack over Dennis Skinner. Do not all the other MPs around act childish in their own way? Dennis can have the tax I have paid in the past - I had the misfortune to watch Blair and Cameron's performances yesterday. Yah boo sucks on ALL their houses!
Good old Dennis, he may appear as a pantomime relic to the modernists but to many, including me, he is the last connection to a by-gone era when feeling, instinct, honesty and saying what you meant and meaning what you say were as important as box-free pizza, green tax and a full head of hair in British politics.
His outburst was rather like discovering a long-forgotten collection of mementos in the garage. The fondness in which you hold them either reflecting a real sense of disenchantment with 21st century 'me too' politics or, in truth, the bitter reality that like all our forefathers we're slipping into the trap of believing 'it was better in my day!'.
Blair should have just said 'yeah, I see her every week.'
Dennis Skinner brings some life to the Commons....I was watching the Queens speech and having heard him in previous years, knew full well he had something lined up. When he leaves the House, Parliament and the country will have lost the last man who 'spoke his mind'.
I always wonder what it would have been like, in todays society, with him further along the front bench, near the despatch box. Politics certainly wouldn't be as boring and as bent as it currently is.