Five go adventuring again

Yes, they're back....but presumably without the lashings of ginger beer, farmers' wives who rustle up a whole picnic in five seconds' flat without expecting payment, scary black faces staring in at the window, and horrible smelly gipsies who haven't had a bath for weeks.

Haselhurst is our top choice too

Many aeons ago before the world's financial system went into near-meltdown we were all busy obsessing about whether Michael Martin would carry on as Speaker and who his successor might be, which puts the nature of the political news cycle in perspective somewhat.

Nevertheless, I was sufficiently engaged by this fascinating political conundrum to carry out a poll, the results of which can be viewed HERE.

Before launching this poll I noted that Sir Alan Haselhurst had topped a similar poll on Iain Dale's Diary and said it would be interesting if my own poll produced the same result, given this blog's different readership.

Although my sample is much smaller than Iain's, the results as can be seen below are indeed remarkably similar, with Sir Alan topping my poll with almost exactly the same percentage as he achieved on Iain's - surely an indication of the respect in which he is held across the political spectrum.

For the record, I voted for Ken Clarke. With no disrespect to Sir Alan, I think the reputation of Parliament is now suffiently damaged it needs a big figure in every sense to help restore it to its former standing.

Iain's poll

Sir Alan Haselhurst 22.6%
Sir George Young 18.8%
Sir Menzies Campbell 12%
Frank Field 11.3%
Vince Cable 9.5%
Kenneth Clarke 9%
Alan Beith 4.1%
Michael Ancram 3.5%
Sir Patrick Cormack 3.4%
John Bercow 2.5%
Sylvia Heal 2.2%
Sir Michael Lord 1.1%

My poll

Sir Alan Haselhurst 22%
Sir Menzies Campbell 17%
Kenneth Clarke 16%
Sir George Young 15%
Margaret Beckett 8%
Sylvia Heal 6%
Alan Beith 5%
Michael Ancram 3%
Sir Patrick Cormack 1%
None of these 6%

Belper's most famous export?

Actually this was nails, hence the name of the local football club (Belper Nailers) and the occasional use of "nailheads" as a term of abuse for the natives. But in terms of recent political history, the town where I now live is perhaps best known for being the constituency of George Brown, legendary piss artist and Labour Deputy Leader of the 1960s, who dramatically resigned from the job of Foreign Secretary (allegedly while drunk) forty years ago this week.

I always thought it was Tony Crosland who said that "George Brown drunk was a better man than Harold Wilson sober" but apparently this phrase was actually first penned by William Rees Mogg in a Times editorial. What Crosland said, a propos of the 1963 leadership contest between the two men, was that the party faced "a choice between a crook and a drunk."

For my part, I have always regarded Brown as a much-maligned chap. The oft-repeated story about him going up to the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima while under the influence and asking him for a dance is almost certainly an invention, for instance.

Possibly the most fair-minded assessment I have read on Brown's career appears on a Derbyshire wiki project with which I am currently involved called You and Yesterday. You can read it HERE.