Drumlanrig: Brownie points as Ed leaves them laughing

Published on 15/07/2012 00:00

ED MILIBAND’S star continues to rise and he is beginning to convince Westminster journalists that he is not simply a policy wonk.

He also has a sense of humour. At an end-of-term lunch, the Labour leader was quizzed about how he got on with Gordon Brown.

He joked that the subject had been mentioned during his recent meeting with the Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. “It was me and Aung San Suu Kyi in a room,” Miliband said. “Years under a brutal dictatorship, oppressed day and night, and she said to me: ‘That’s enough about your time with Gordon’.”

Angus is comfortable wearing his old genes

Angus Robertson, the SNP politician leading the independence campaign, is a keen student of genealogy. Perhaps that is not surprising given that he is half Scottish, half German, was born in Wimbledon and brought up in Edinburgh.

He has discovered that his great-great-great-great grandfather, John Robertson, was in the 10th Inverness militia, which defended the coast during the Napoleonic wars.

Around the same time a relative on his mother’s side was marching across Spain with Napoleon.

Foulkes and Thurso – all the precedent’s men

Even though he is a Labour peer, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock would appear to have become quite chummy with the landed gentry. In the Lords recently, there was a discussion on peers leaving the House to stand for election in the Commons.

Foulkes interjected to say there was a precedent: “My good friend Viscount Thurso, who is still a hereditary peer, is now the member of parliament for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. I think he owns most of it as well.”

Banks taking a leaf from history books?

Drumlanrig is grateful to friends at Scottish Field for pointing out that a scoundrel called Mr Salmond was among those arrested and found guilty of a banking fraud.

No relation to the current First Minister, we are sure, but the aforesaid Mr Robert Salmond was a director of the of the City of Glasgow Bank, which went spectacularly bust in 1873, according to newspapers of the day.

Apparently, the bank had made substantial loans to investors on inadequate security and then had falsified accounts for years to cover up the shortfall. The directors were accused of embarking upon a “reckless adventure wholly at variance with every maxim of prudent banking”. Not much has changed in the banking world, it would appear.