The shadow lengthens...

Just appeared on the internet is my review for BBC History magazine of the first volume of  Charles Moore's biography of Margaret Thatcher. It has its virtues, but I'd recommend Jonathan Aitkens in preference.

Thatcher and the BBC

The new issue of BBC History magazine is out today, a fact which I only mention because it includes my review of Charles Moore's biography of Margaret Thatcher. It's a bit late, of course, but that's because the book was published so opportunistically as soon as she drew her last breath - magazines have longer lead-in times and can't respond with such indecent haste.

The review isn't available online, but in broad terms: I didn't concur with the other reviews that I've seen. I don't think it's a definitive account of her life and works up to the Falklands War (where this volume stops). I still rate Hugo Young's One of Us as the best account.

One thing I wanted to mention, but didn't have space in the review is the convention of adding a biographical footnote to everyone when they make their first appearance. This is a tendency that can be bathetically entertaining - I still cherish, for example, the reference in Joe Orton's diaries to Joseph Goebbels, where the editor John Lahr added a note to tell us that the Nazi propaganda minister got a PhD from Heidelberg University.

What irritated me in the Thatcher biography is a variation on the same theme: a scrupulous insistence on recording what school everyone went to. Does it really matter that much? Maybe it does to Charles Moore (Eton; Trinity College, Cambridge), but amongst grown-ups I rather feel that there comes a time to put away childish things and to be defined by something a bit more substantial.

All thro' the House..

It's always slightly worrying when one finds oneself agreeing with Charles Moore, but his article in yesterday's Daily Telegraph does have a point: the NHS really isn't very good, is it?

It's not the worst of the public services - the police clearly have that position sewn up - but, despite all the ritual praise from politicians and broadcasters, for whom it can do no wrong, it's not 'fantastic' at all. Given a choice, I'd rather fall ill in Germany or in France than in England.

Whether the government's reforms will make any difference, I have no idea (nor, indeed, much faith). What I do know is that unquestioningly to defend the status quo means accepting a health service that isn't as good as it should be. It is also an act of political cowardice. And it's the position the Labour Party appears to be adopting.

In this case, it's even more cowardly, of course, because it's obvious that, were there a Labour government, it would itself be busily reforming away. So Ed Miliband keeps quiet about his own opinions, and instead spends his time every week at prime minister's questions delivering a list of professional bodies who don't agree with the government.

Those bodies can speak for themselves, and do frequently. It's not Miliband's job to act simply as the mouthpiece for GPs. It is his job, as leader of the Labour Party, to convince the country that he has some thoughts of his own. Preferably Labour ones.

The benefit of silence is that it allows voters to read into your lack of expressed intention whatever they want. At the moment, this means that Miliband sounds like he's shares the public mood: sentimental loyalty to a system that no other country seems to be rushing to copy. But at some point, he needs to come up with something more substantial.

Doesn't seem very likely, though. It's political opportunism gone mad, I tell you.