Nobody has been reborn in quite the way Polly Portaloo has.
He was one of the most right-wing, and therefore nasty, members of Major's government. His electoral defeat was the iconic moment of the 1997 election. When he was defeated for Tory leader race there was much sniggering. I sniggered for different reasons - the Tory Party rejecting him, as it then rejected Kenneth Clarke, and choosing Iain Duncan Smith, was good news for Labour.
He was never straightforward, of course. His father was a leftist professor exiled from Spain because of his opposition to Franco. Private sources tell me his mother was a volunteer with Amnesty International during the 90s, and everyone used to be amazed that this nice, humanitarian woman was his mother. He and Diane Abbott were in a theatre group together as teenagers; she said he was known as a dangerous Lefty.
Now he is the brightest and the best of the Conservative party, and, thus, stands down at the next election. He has an insight, lacking in much of the Tory party, into the issues that affect people who ought to be Tory voters - late youth/early middle-age professionals, urban or dormitory-town-domiciled, who really don't care about the sexual preferences or lifestyle choices of others, and who see Europe as the future, although they are sceptical about the bureaucratic and economic practicalities.
It was rumoured he was going to join the Labour Party. I'd be very surprised. Remove my partisan hat for a moment and I become an observer and student of politics. The Conservative Party needs him, like it has needed Keneth Clarke. The Conservatives' disarray is shown by its rejection of him, for being 'exotic'.
So instead, he is carving a career as Arts pundit. and, I have to say, a jolly good one. In this piece, and yesterday on the Proms TV broadcast, he said he doesn't read music, and doesn't believe he has a good ear. However, he speaks with intelligence and a genuine, if moderated, passion about the music he loves.
He grabs the headline by welcoming the dumbing-down and marketing of music, but soon launches a cogent argument that says 'so what', in the end great music speaks for itself. Moderated passion and intelligence.
It's immaterial whether or not he remains an MP. Kensington and Chelsea will always be Tory, as the sun will always rise in the East. But I find his writings on music and theatre to be just right for me.
