Just as you think the present lot have passed their sell-by date and it’s time to give “Dave” a chance

Above: last week’s Sunday Telegraph (not edited by Patience Wheatcroft - she had left some weeks previously). I tend to buy the Telegraph at weekends (together with the weekend Financial Times). The Telegraph (both Saturday and Sunday editions) has lots of small interesting articles, so you can dip in and out while half-watching television (you don’t so much read the Sunday Telegraph as absorb it dozing in an armchair and finishing the last of the lunchtime wine).

Over lunch we (my brother and I) listened to Any Questions on Radio 4. Today it featured government minister Barbara Follet (in the environment question she admitted to owning a gas-guzzling car), environmental advisor Jonathan Porritt (sounding slightly exasperated, whatever the topic), and Opposition spokesman David Willets (nerdy, but brave enough to attack the School Run).

The final panellist was Patience Wheatcroft, former editor of the Sunday Telegraph. The inclusion of Patience Wheatcroft was interesting as her departure from the newspaper some weeks ago caused minor consternation in the agency (Terry, our Managing Director, looking particularly fed up). She came across as very sensible, seamlessly combining facts with opinions and criticisms, so that although you knew she must be a Tory it was a passive, wise, logical Conservative viewpoint.

Unlike say Francis Maude on Question Time (looking like an embalmed corpse and so hedging his replies that you didn’t think he believed in anything). Or Michael Portillo on Andrew Neil’s late night politics show where he gives a cosy open-neck-shirt arm-round-Diane-Abbott I’m-Mr-Nice-Guy performance that leaves you dazed by his chutzpah. Michael Portillo in the 1990s was the political equivalent of a carrion crow, a man so arrogant he had a leadership headquarters (with dozens of telephone lines) on permanent stand-by waiting for the long drawn out demise of John Major.

His continued survival in the media is inexplicable. More than anyone else (more than David Mellor, more than Michael Heseltine, more even than trusty-sword-of-truth Jonathan Aitken) Michael Portillo personified the 1990s Nasty Party - arrogant political careerists manipulating everyone and everything to benefit themselves. Just as you think the present lot have passed their sell-by date and it’s time to give “Dave” a chance, Michael Portillo pops up and you think: hang on a minute.

More on Patience Wheatcroft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience_Wheatcroft