Et tu, Brute
Sir: Dear me: poor Simon Heifer is a thin- skinned fellow. Perhaps he should pay less attention to what the press says about him. One teasing comment from me, and he devotes half his column to a pompous, pon- derous and inaccurate rejoinder (Politics, 17 October). So as not to strain your read- ers' patience, I shall only deal with three of the points he makes. The first concerns anonymous quotes from politicians. Of course all political journalists use them, but in comparing my efforts to his, Mr Heifer is paying me a wholly undeserved tribute. I cited an unnamed Treasury official: from the con- text. I doubt if any Press Gallery hack would have needed more than three guess- es to identify him. But no one can identify Mr Heffer's sources, and he deploys them with such vir- tuosity. Every time he wants to round off an attack on the Government, lo and behold, there is a senior minister with exactly the quote he needs.
No, it is ridiculously generous of Mr Hef- fer to place my puny efforts on a par with his own. It must be modesty that makes the dear boy so uneasy when anyone compli- ments him on his performance. Second, there is the Prime Minister's atti- tude to the ERM. Referring to my com- ment that 'though John Major and Norman Lamont regularly reaffirmed their support for the ERM, they shared many of the sceptics' anxieties', Mr Heifer writes that I was 'speaking with the intimate knowledge usually only a wife or valet can possess'. Hardly. Any journalist who trawled the usual fishing grounds around Westminster ought to have been aware of the anxieties, and, as we know how extensive Mr Heffer's contacts are, the matter can hardly have eluded him. One word of advice: in future, he should not be too busy scribbling down anonymous quotes to listen to what minis- ters are actually saying. Third, Mr Heifer warns Mr Major against ignoring 'what his friends — like Mr Anderson — tell us are his instincts of [sic] keeping out of the ERM'. That grossly oversimplifies both the Prime Minister's position and anything I have written on the subject. So I would like to issue a challenge to Mr Heifer.
Why doesn't he write a piece describing Mr Major's attitude to the ERM in all its complexity? In doing so, he should avoid snideness, sneering, references to inconse- quential persons such as myself — and above all, he should economise on the anonymous quotes. If he can bring all that off — why, he might be less sensitive next time he is subjected to my flattery. Bruce Anderson
Sunday Express, Ludgate House,
245 Blackfriars Road,
London SE1
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