From “The Andrew Marr Show”, recorded 25th January 2015 and broadcast live on Channel Six
ANDREW MARR: And now we come to the review of today’s newspapers, for which I am joined by Observer deputy editor Polly Toynbee and the Conservative Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury and sometime Daily Telegraph columnist, Matthew Parris.
POLLY TOYNBEE/MATTHEW PARRIS: Hello/Thank you for having us.
A.M.: And what stories leap out at you today?
P.T.: There’s no real defining story this week, the Prime Minister hasn’t done anything that even the most fevered imaginations could twist into a ‘gaffe’, and I emphasise the inverted commas.
M.P. (laughs): Even if the Prime Minister is not on his usual form, there is plenty to keep us entertained regardless.
P.T. <death glare>: It seems to me that my…colleague’s ideological stablemates across the Atlantic are providing enough entertainment themselves. Kasich is threatening to veto the Congress’ attempt to recognise climate change as a thing that exists. Again.
M.P.: I really don’t think I need be held responsible for what the American President thinks.
P.T.: That’s not the impression I got when your leader invited him to speak at your last party conference by television. Even if he did turn you down.
M.P.: The special relationship…
P.T.: Is a bit, well, ‘special’, isn’t it?
A.M. (reluctantly interrupting with finger to ear): Ah, moving on. One thing I was amused by is that the Sun is carrying a treatment of the so-called Curse of Maggie. Matthew Parris, you were there, just what really happened?
M.P. (laughs): Oh, that old chestnut again? Surely nobody believes in that? I mean the Prime Minister…
A.M.:
Technically has not broken the curse.
M.P.: No, he’s inflicted us with the curse of himself instead.
P.T. <death glare>: The real Curse of Maggie is the devastation her policies wrought on the working people of this country—
A.M. (hastily): But just what
is the Curse of Maggie?
M.P.: You want me to describe it for all the youngsters out there who don’t remember?
P.T. (under breath): Though they’ve been surrounded by the damage of her policies all their lives…
A.M.: Yes.
M.P.: Oh well—the story goes that when Mrs Thatcher was forced out in ’89, the last guest she entertained in Number Ten before she left was not anyone from the Party, but the Haitian Ambassador.
(Laughs) I think some chap writing in the
Independent the last time the whole business came up did some digging and proved that there wasn’t even an Ambassador from Haiti appointed to UK at the time.
A.M.: So why Haiti then?
M.P.: I think he said the story hadn’t even been reported until the millennium…what? Well, Haiti because of the voodoo connection. The silly idea is that Mrs Thatcher wanted revenge for her removal and had the Ambassador put a voodoo curse on Number Ten Downing Street, that none of her successors would be able to serve a full parliamentary term as Prime Minister.
P.T.: Appallingly racist.
M.P.: It is a bit beyond the pale, I have to admit. But it came from the mind of some conspiracy theorist years after the event.
A.M.: So that’s the Curse of Maggie. And it’s in the papers again.
M.P.: It seems to be every time there’s an election or a PM trips over. The whole thing doesn’t make sense anyway.
(pause) If I was making it up I’d have gone with the Japanese Ambassador.
A.M.:
(pause) …Why?
M.P. (laughs): Well, isn’t it obvious—
they’re the short ones, not the Haitians!
A.M.: Err…
*
Matthew Parris always insisted he had been making a joke about how Japanese Prime Ministers traditionally were in office for only short terms, as has increasingly become the case in the UK since the end of the Thatcher premiership. However he was accused of making a racist comment and was forced to resign after resisting media pressure for three days. The scandal came at the beginning of, and may have been the catalyst for, the decline in Conservative poll ratings that would see an incumbent Labour government actually gain seats for the first time since 1974.
.