Book review: After You, Prime Minister

Published on Friday 30 October 2009 18:22

After You, Prime Minister by James Douglas-Hamilton Stacey International, 250pp, £14.95

FOR those intimately involved in Scottish politics there is no man so well liked as the Baron Selkirk of Douglas, more commonly known as Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, or simply Lord James.

Scottish Tories like an aristocrat as a memory of distant times when they ruled Scotland from their estates with the support of the aspirational Protestant middle class – and as a page at Her Majesty's coronation and second son of the 14th Duke of Hamilton, they don't come much more blue-blooded than Lord James.

His opponents, meanwhile, lose any prejudices to such a charming man whose sense of fair play and honour disarms even the most revolutionary of critics.

Lord James's memoir transports one to a different time when the world seems a softer, kinder place, even though we know it was not. The harshness of life is tempered – even more recent political upheavals appear to have a smooth transition that would not be apparent to those whose lives were changed irrevocably.

Take Lord James and boxing. His father was Scottish middleweight champion and a respected figure in the sport and introduced him to the pugilist's art on the sands of North Berwick. Developing his skills, first at Eton and then at Oxford, where he gained a blue, the young Lord James was obviously a better boxer than he lets on. If one studies the photographs one can see his opponents were all larger and more muscular so his technique must have helped him win – but don't expect Lord James to be so brash as to admit that. Typically he writes of the skill of his opponents rather than himself, such is the engaging modesty of the man.

Peter Jones, The Scotsman's former political editor, told me how he once met Lord James as some MPs prepared for a rowing competition. Jones noticed that while other MPs had smart trainers, James had scruffy white plimsols with horrible brown stains on them. When asked by Jones what the ugly marks were, he was told quite unassumingly: "Oh, that's the blood of my opponents."

Anyone who has come across Lord James, be they civil servants, journalists, fellow politicians or friends, has similar stories or experiences. There is the famous time when he shared a female ministerial chauffeur with Michael Forsyth: when James was in the car he would get out instantly the vehicle stopped so he could open the door for his driver. The anecdote is mentioned, but sadly in a typically coy manner.

So many other stories I've heard are absent, such as the apocryphal episode when the police stopped him on the M8 for slowing the traffic down by driving too slowly. It was his wife, Lady Susan's car, and when he was asked for the registration he got out of the car and read it from the number plate. Allegedly he was the minister responsible for roads at the time. Lord James's version would have made interesting reading.

The man is no Bertie Wooster-like fool. Politicians may be derided today, but Lord James would be a role model to recover their reputation, not least when he resigned an earldom to keep John Major's majority. If there is a fundamental problem with the book it is that Lord James is far too modest a man to tell the story of his own life. One cannot be anything but impressed by his achievements in politics, sport and literature, all of which are accomplishments on merit rather than because he was born into privilege. And yet his modesty does not allow him to reveal his inner emotions or what really makes him tick. Like the very good boxer he was, James does not let his guard down for us to see enough of him.

This is a book worth having if only to take you to a way of life that most people might not believe exists in modern Scotland. There remains, however, the need for a book about Lord James that tells more of the apocryphal stories and shows more of the sharper, more personal side to his life than his own self-restraint allows him to reveal.