A Very British Scandal starts as not quite the traditional Sunday evening costume fare on Sunday at 9 p.m. but it was another age, the characters will wear old-fashioned clothes and so it is not far off being somewhere between a Trollope and Midsomer Murders. We will see what Hugh Grant is like as Jeremy but Ben Wishaw as Norman Scott sounds ideal.
Jeremy Thorpe was my favourite politician. Still is, in many ways, for what he stood for, the flair and flamboyance of his style compared to the stuffed shirt of Ted Heath and the wily but clapped-out Harold Wilson. I didn't want to believe it at the time and still somehow don't, however much of a travesty of justice the whole thing was. And, as a dog lover, it only makes things worse.I re-recommend the book to you, by John Preston, as well as the fuller biography by Michael Bloch.
What comes out of it all for me, above all else, is what a fragile thing Jeremy's position was, apparently enjoying the risk of his lifestyle and vaunting ambitions with regard to Princess Margaret while his leadership of a very motley group of twelve Liberal MP's was only based on horse-trading when six of them voted against him and it was no less than Cyril Smith who dealt with the crisis within the party.
And yet, one might still prefer to have the country run by any of Heath, Wilson or Thorpe compared to the parcel of rogues currently in place. Cameron completely screws up our position in Europe and signs off with witty self-regard about having been the future once. Poor Theresa is left as the last candidate to succeed him after all the others backstab each other out of the running but, most poignantly, look at poor Jacob.
Once so debonair that, in my favourite television moment of the last few years, Vicky Coren told him on Have I Got News for You, that she found him 'strangely attractive' - and I could equally strangely see why- all that has now been replaced by the rattiness of someone who thought he had ordered ice-cream and a delicious fruit cocktail but has been served an unappetezing plate of boiled cabbage. Well, no, Jacob. Your friend Nigel said that a 52-48 split wouldn't be final and the debate would go on. At least he got that right. My disappointment only extends as far as not being able to find a price quoted about him being next UKIP leader. I suppose that since he is being aimed at the Derby, the leadership of the Conservative Party, he is unlikely to run in the seller at Fontwell.
But my disappointment does extend further than that.
Every generation seems to find a reason to be 'lost' or 'Generation X' or find itself in a war that claims so many of its most promising people. Except mine. We had it made, with The Beatles, moon landings, Concorde, George Best, liberal education, grants for the few that went to university rather than loans for anybody who fancies three years of attendance resulting in a 2:2 in Creative Writing from what was once a college of further education. We had David Bowie, some of us adored Sylvia Plath - some of us for good reason- we had the belief in progress and things getting better; we had Basil D'Oliveira and most of us got far enough down the line to be comfortable enough to realize that there is nothing you can do with so much privilege.
It might have been due to circumstances beyond our control but I never voted for any party that got into government. If anybody that I voted for achieved office, their responsibility went as far as arranging what day my rubbish was taken away but they do that very well.
But we blew it. It looks to me as if we were prodigal. We took what was offered, were allowed to think ourselves clever, are now sold t-shirts from advertisements in The Observer that say, I might be old but I saw all the best bands (I bought a Jesus & Mary Chain one instead) and are now smug and glib enough to complain about kids. The kids to who we have bequeathed the likes of leaders such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
Scandalous, really.
Saying sorry doesn't seem adequate.