In defence of Quentin Letts

This morning’s Today programme included a hugely entertaining confrontation between the former Basssetlaw MP, Joe Ashton, and the Mail’s Parliamentary sketch writer, Quentin Letts. 

Ashton is a big noise in the Association of Former Members of Parliament, whose summer 2009 newsletter, Order, Order!, contains a thoroughly vitriolic attack on Letts, personally penned by Ashton. 

It became obvious during the Today piece that Ashton harbours a deep personal loathing for Letts, a matter equally obvious from his Order, Order! article: 

Mr Letts thinks he is the cheeky diminutive jester from the Daily Mail, waving his cap and bells. He is not. His insults are sometimes no better than those of a football yobbo hurling spit from the shelter of the terraces.

 Now that’s nasty! 

 Furthermore, continued Ashton, Letts is a repugnant misogynist.  He quoted from his own article with some venom:

 Letts seems to relish and enjoy upsetting women MPs.

 As the House prepared for the Cabinet reshuffle he focused on Jacqui Smith, the then Home Secretary:

 “She popped dynamite down her cleavage, she knew she was doomed” he jeered.

“So she lit the fuse, popped in the cyanide down her cavernous cleavage and blew herself to smithereens. But her roly poly face was creamed with pleasure. You could have stored enough salt in her dimples to serve a couple of boiled eggs.”

The burden of Ashton’s argument was that Letts was an out-and-out bounder, a journalistic Flashman picking unfairly on poor, defenceless MPs such as Smith and the former Speaker, Michael Martin.  The new Parliamentary Standards Committee should be required to step in and put a stop to “the personal denigration and gratuitous abuse of MPs by the press”.  People such as Letts should even, after receiving a warning, be excluded from the House.

Letts, to his credit, took Ashton’s diatribe very much in his stride.  He didn’t feel particularly guilty, he said.  As for his attitude to women, he was highly amused to be lectured by Ashton, who had such an interesting taste in massage parlours.  And if Parliament did chuck him out of the press gallery, he’d simply carry on scribbling from the public gallery.

Ashton’s argument is, frankly, ludicrous.  It can’t be fun to be on the receiving end of one of Letts’s barbs, but, on the other hand, politicians are not exactly shrinking violets themselves.  If an MP hasn’t got a thick skin, or can’t develop one PDQ, then he (or she) has probably chosen the wrong métier.

And anyway, politicians themselves are perfectly capable of launching their own brickbats, today more than ever.

The advent of the internet and blogging means that politicians – and everyone else, for that matter – have unconfined access to a free medium with worldwide reach.  This amounts to a significant rebalancing of the once unassailable power of the Fourth Estate.

A few months ago, a political journalist of my acquaintance told me how much he yearned for a certain female opposition MP.

“That’s really interesting,” I said.  “I’ll write that one up in my blog.”

“But you can’t do that!” he spluttered in horror.

“I don’t see why not,” I replied.  “You’d have had no hesitation writing about me in your blog, if I had said that.”

I never did write it up, of course.

But, one day, I may.