Labour lets the Taylor Swift story rumble on, while KemiKaze, Honest Bob and Spurs just leave you feeling indifferent
Herbie is now 13 years old. Which, depending on how you measure it, makes him somewhere in his 80s in dog years. For his last birthday, friends gave him some treats that claim to improve his joints. Now, I took glucosamine for years in a bid to make my knees marginally less creaky and never noticed any improvement. But whatever ingredients – I’m guessing WD40 laced with amphetamines – they’ve put into these doggy ‘joint care’ chews, they appear to have had a miraculous effect. A while back, I wrote about how Herbie had torn a ligament in his back leg and that the vet had recommended surgery. A number of you wrote in to me to say not to bother with the operation. His leg would heal just as well on its own. We took the advice and – guess what? – you were absolutely right. So thank you for saving Herbie a painful operation and three months of rehab and for saving us £4K. But in the last few weeks, since taking the daily chew, Herbie’s recovery has taken another quantum leap forward. He is now running around with the energy and freedom of movement he showed when he was five years old. We can’t quite believe the change in him. Then maybe he’s just enjoying life as a minor celebrity since his memoir, ghosted by me, came out last week. He and I did have a minor falling out: he accused me of trivialising his contribution to public life – he began his career as a special adviser to Ed Miliband in 2014 and has since gone on to work in No 10 for every prime minister – for comic effect. Anyway, Herbie and I have since made up. So if you want to know what happened to the Pot Plants, what Larry the Cat is really like, who was behind the Kabul pet rescue and what goes on in meetings of Canines Anonymous, do please buy Taking the Lead. It’s the most accurate account of the last 10 years you will ever read.
I seem to be the only person in Westminster who wasn’t offered free tickets to Taylor Swift. Or maybe I was and just deleted the email. Shame, because I could have then been the first person to turn the offer down. Unlike some of the journalists who have been pursuing Keir Starmer. Hard as I try, I am really struggling with the Taylor Swift freebie story. For one thing, I can’t work out why Labour has allowed the story to rumble on for more than a week with a series of feeble replies. Why not just come out with the truth right from the start? Swift had been the target of bomb threats in Vienna and to ensure she was as safe as possible in London the police gave her the blue-light treatment to get to Wembley. Her management handing out free tickets and a 10-minute brush-by is neither here nor there. Those are the kind of perks that are always offered to people in power regardless. The idea that Taylor used the 10 minutes to negotiate a tax break is laughable. That’s what she has accountants for. OK, so it doesn’t look great but it’s not nearly as bad as Boris Johnson getting his holidays in Mustique paid for by someone else. Hell, Boris didn’t even pay for his own wedding and the rightwing media never complained once.
The reality is that freebies are priced into the lives of the rich and powerful. If you want to know how the world really works, just take a look at this week’s investment summit in London. Here, the CEOs of some of the biggest corporations were invited to the Guildhall where they got to hang out with the prime minister, the chancellor and the rest of the cabinet for an entire day. Were given all the time they needed to explain exactly what they required from the government in order to invest in the UK. And at the end of the day, Elton John was summoned from retirement to give a private gig to a few hundred people. All to be filed under oiling the wheels of business. I guess it’s OK for the prime minister to offer freebies. Just not to receive them.
It’s been seven months since I had my heart attack and all seems well. I have been signed off from my cardio rehab with a clean bill of health. My blood pressure and heart rate are perfect. My latest blood test came back with the observation that my cholesterol was in danger of getting too low. I hadn’t realised that was a possibility. But to say I am recovered doesn’t really tell the whole story. My heart attack is always at the back of my mind. It never properly goes away. Every day, I wonder whether I will have another one and if this will be the one that kills me. Knowing the surgeon unblocked a coronary artery and that my other stats are good counts for little. After all, I felt fine before the attack. I now feel vulnerable in a way that I didn’t before the event. My mortality stares me in the face and I am conscious of my own frailty. Every time I go to the gym – three or four times a week – I have a mild form of PTSD as it was where the heart attack happened. But I am also aware that most people have moved on. They were concerned for a while but have their own lives to live. So I largely keep my thoughts to myself and pretend I’m OK. For my benefit as much as for theirs. I wrote a while ago about people having The Year. How someone can look just the same for years and years and then one day you realise they’ve aged 10 years seemingly overnight. Well, I think I might just be on to my second round of The Year. There again, it’s been a tough few months. A friend has suddenly collapsed and died. Another has just been told he has untreatable cancer. Another has also had a heart scare. It feels like we baby boomers are just getting down to the serious bit of living. The knowing how to die.
Whether it’s by misfortune or design – we still don’t know for sure if James Cleverly’s elimination was the result of his supporters getting too cute with their tactical voting – we are down to the last two in the contest to be the next Tory party leader. Now it is all down to the Conservative party members. And the last time they were given the final say they gave us Liz Truss. So, for the next few weeks Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick will be going head-to-head for the hearts and minds of an electorate of about 120,000. The Tory party never releases an exact figure of how many members it has, though it is thought that at any one time there are always tens of thousands who are actually dead and have yet to be removed from the list. Or rather, KemiKaze and Honest Bob won’t be going head-to-head as the party is trying to stop them slagging each other off in public. For Thursday’s so-called debate on GB News – the only one currently scheduled – Kemi and Bob took questions from a hand-picked audience of Tory members one after the other. Just how many people were watching is another matter. Most of the country is entirely indifferent to the contest and no one expects the eventual winner to last more than two years in the job. Honest Bob has been the most active so far, giving the same uninspiring speech to a handful of loyal MPs and journalists. Kemi’s supporters have been trying to keep her away from the media as every time she says something she manages to upset someone, though she did do what was grandly called an “Online Rally” on Wednesday. Once it had started there were just 171 people watching: one of whom was the Guardian’s legendary live-blogger Andy Sparrow and he tuned out after 10 minutes. None of this exercise in futility comes cheap. James Cleverly’s recent declarations of member’s interests show he received half a dozen or so donations of £10K and one of £25K towards his leadership campaign. Freebies yet again. I wonder if the donors feel they got value for money.
Wherever possible, I try to arrange my social life around the Spurs fixture list. But I can’t make Saturday’s derby game against West Ham and I am totally relaxed about it. Almost relieved. I have sold my ticket and can get on with other things. To my surprise, I have come to realise that I have never felt quite so out of love with the team I have supported since I was nine years old as I am now. In the past, there have been the odd dips, but nothing like this. It’s not even the results that have got to me. There have been plenty of times in the past 60 years when the team has been just this flakey. But now I’ve lapsed from anger and frustration into virtual indifference. When Spurs surrendered a two-goal lead at Brighton I really wasn’t that bothered. So what’s changed? Partly, it’s that I’m fed up with being treated as a revenue stream. One that the club could probably do without as I never buy anything from the shop or the food and drink concessions. I feel as if the owners care even less about results than I do. They aren’t interested in winning cups, just turning White Hart Lane into a corporate entertainment venue. A tourist destination. Then there is the feeling of being gaslit. Being told by the manager that we are playing a new and exciting brand of football, when the evidence of my own eyes – a few players excepted – is that we spend long periods passing the ball around the back four before losing possession. “Exciting” is clearly the new word for “not very good”. For me, exciting was winning cups. A late semi-final win against Ajax. I loved the Mauricio Pochettino team. But not this lot. They don’t even love themselves. Don’t worry. I will still renew my season ticket, but God it’s going to be a long seven months.
Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
