A lunch invitation in the Easter holidays brought good food, good conversation – and a personal revelation.
It came when the chatter turned to politics and my fellow guests – Oxbridge types with rounded vowels – treated us to their uninvited opinions: people are bound to come to their senses, I was told. They’ll wake up, grow up and, by the time a general election comes along, they’ll vote Conservative.
Not one of those lunch companions will ever struggle to pay a bill or wonder if they have enough cash to buy desperately needed school shoes. Yet they ridiculed the rise of Reform
UK as the work of the unintelligent in the same way people used to dismiss those of us who voted for Brexit.
My fellow diners were talking rubbish – but that was no great shock. The surprise was discovering that I no longer cared.
The truth is I’ve spent decades living under the illusion that people who speak with refined accents and exude confidence are more intelligent than I.
Ridiculous, I know. I once thought that people with degrees must be smarter, too. Remember, I hardly knew what a university was until long after I’d left my secondary modern school on a council estate.
Things like this had never bothered me in younger days, growing up and then working as a nurse, in Liverpool.
A local NHS hospital is a true leveller and we treated everyone exactly the same. Besides, the city is home to some of the smartest, wittiest and most creative people on the planet and we all spoke in the same accent. Things changed when I moved down South.
Despite having launched and sold a very successful business, my sense of social handicap grew stronger.
Becoming an MP for the Conservative Party compounded that insecurity. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people speaking in a faux code made up of jokes and off-the-peg remarks intended to impress those already in the club.
It was all so stupid. I count successful, powerful and honourable people as friends, and you don’t hear a fake word among them. Quite the opposite: they’re proud of their humble beginnings.
Yet, when it came to my well-spoken colleagues and companions in Westminster, I was completely intimidated. Perhaps that was the point.
I knew very well that the arrogant things they said were often plain wrong. But, delivered with authority and extraordinary confidence, their points landed well. As time moved on, my imposter syndrome seeped into every fibre of my being.
How did I know they were Oxbridge graduates? A bit like vegans, they’re quick to let you know.
The first time my frustration boiled over was the day I called David Cameron and George Osborne a pair of ‘arrogant posh boys who don’t know the price of milk.’
It was a comment which was described as ‘hitting the pulse’ of the nation and forced me into hiding for days.
As it happens, I really like both men. George makes me laugh. He’s a decent man even if we often disagree, and David is probably one of the sweetest people you could wish to meet. It’s a tribute to the man that he has never held the comment against me.
But, together, they became a lightning rod for the years I’d tolerated being looked down upon – despite the fact that I’d achieved far more than some others, sans silver spoon.
The people I’m talking about were frequently boorish or obtuse. Some have played a leading role in the destruction of the Conservative party they now truly believe will sweep Reform aside. They are deluded.
Yet that sense of inferiority still niggled away until that lunch when I found myself spoken at, reprimanded and patronised, just as I had been throughout my time as an MP.
This time, however, something was very different. The scales fell from my eyes as I thought for the very first time: ‘I am smarter than all of you. You belong to a narrow and privileged club which could not be further removed from how people will vote.
‘But who on earth cares what you think or say?’ With a sense of relief, I certainly don’t.
Why Meghan just can’t let go of Netflix Nicole
When I look at the new photograph of Meghan clinging on to Nicole Avant – wife of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos – as if she were a life belt on a stormy sea, I can only see the words ‘get this woman off me’ emanating silently from Nicole’s eyes and rigid smile.
Remember the heady days of 2020 when Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, signed a contract with the streaming giant for a reported $100 million?
It’s all rather different now. The recent show With Love, Meghan, was dropped after two series, and the duchess and Netflix have ended their partnership over her As Ever lifestyle brand. On top of this, Nicole – a former US ambassador to the Bahamas – has ‘unfollowed’ Instagram accounts for Meghan and ‘As Ever’. Ouch.
Yet, as a former ambassador, Nicole gets diplomacy better than most and is doubtless happy to play her part.
Perhaps those staged photographs were for the benefit of her husband and the greater good of Netflix. After all, the last thing Netflix needs is a public row with former contributors or to highlight the failure of past deals. Well done, Nicole! A true professional, you took one for the team!
On a visit to a garden centre with my four-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, I begged her for a quick break.
‘I’m dying for a cup of tea,’ I said to her. She looked up at me and asked in a panic, ‘Are you actually, really dying though?’
Anne is still the strongest link!
I’m reading a memoir by Anne Robinson, formerly host of the long-running game show, the Weakest Link.
The honesty, the rawness, the lack of victimhood make it one of the best I have ever read.
Among many other things, I learnt that her mother owned and ran a chicken stall on the corner of the old St John’s market in Liverpool, where my family and later my mother-in-law bought poultry on a Saturday afternoon.
I recently had the pleasure of supper at Anne’s home, where she, even at the age of 81, is a dazzling hostess.
Anyone thinking that age always mellows is, in her case, very much mistaken. I can report that Anne’s wit, razor-sharp repartee and quick retorts are as fast, furious and funny as they ever were
