Generous Denis
Sir: Denis MacShane is too generous. In his Diary (11 October) he surmised that I might be the author of John Major’s ‘Back to Basics’ slogan. But I am afraid I can take no credit for a campaign conceived by others before I came to Number 10. Still, ‘back to basics’ is a useful little phrase, which I confess to deploying at the Intelligence Squared debate against the motion proposing Georgian and Ukrainian membership of Nato. It may even have played a modest part in Team Skidelsky’s crushing defeat of Team MacShane. As your correspondent put it, ‘rarely has the room been so dramatically swayed by the arguments on the night’. Christopher Meyer
London SW3
Sir: I enjoyed Denis MacShane’s Diary — except for the totally unjustified criticism of how ‘British Tory MPs’ voted at the end of the Council of Europe debate on the war between Russia and Georgia. The key vote as far as criticism of Russia was concerned was on Amendment 45. The Russians hated it and with the help of the leader of Denis’s Socialist Group it was defeated. Every British Tory vote was in favour (much to the annoyance of the Russians).
Denis also forgot to mention that just three of the ten Labour MPs entitled to vote did so (two with us and one with the Russians). Although Denis is a substitute member, the rules allowed him to vote in the place of one of seven missing Labour MPs. Can it be that the choucroute and Alsace wine he writes about took priority over joining me and my Conservative colleagues in voting against the ‘Kremlin line’?
David Wilshire MP (Spelthorne)
Leader, UK Conservative Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Previous page
