RED SOCKS AND MEYER CULPA

STRAIGHT-TALKING, HIP-SHOOTING JOHN PRESCOTT, formerly of this parish, once described Sir Christopher Meyer, our former Ambassador to the United States of America, as a “red-socked fop”. This was perhaps, as was thought at the time, due to the fact that Prescott did not understand that a gentleman should wear red socks when wearing brown shoes with blue trousers, or perhaps even brown trousers, although the possibility of a gentleman wearing brown trousers other than when wearing a brown suit – in itself difficult to contemplate other than when on a visit to the Third World or making a speech at Cambridge University – may not have occurred to the then Deputy Prime Minister.

PRESCOTT’S POINT WAS THAT MEYER was a less than acceptable chap. As seen by gung-ho, punch-first-and-eat-your-pie-later Prescott, anyone who knew the rules of etiquette was a fop. This meant, in Prescott’s tatty little world, expanded as it was to a large group of politicians who saw “duffing people over”, as Prescott himself put it after “sorting out” a protester in North Wales, as acceptable, that aristocrats were “shit-bags”.

CHRISTOPHER MEYER HAS NOW BEEN CALLED UPON, as former Ambassador to Washington during the Thatcher/Clinton/Bush/Blair years, to be forthcoming as to his knowledge of events during the dark days when “the burning Blair” and “the mighty Bush” held forth in their desires to rid the world of someone – anyone – just to get their names into the record books.

AND NOW WE KNOW WHY DULLARDS LIKE PRESCOTT were against Meyer. As he has come forth with all the beans against the boy Blair, clearing the boy Bush of most of the blame, as the policy had been set out, he tells us, by the adulterer Clinton. The whole war business – “kicking the shit out of Iraq”, as Meyer described it on national TV on Tuesday – had been planned “yonks” ago. (“Yonks” is mine, but I just thought I would bring a little lumpen-speak into this text. Because, after all, the whole lot of these people are bastards, whether they wear red socks or not. And, fops or not, they do in fact deserve a little duffing over.)