Michael Heseltine has done the lot, other than being Prime Minister and being fired. That is until today when he has finally been appointed Prime Minister. No, scrap that. Hezza has been fired, for the first time in his career, aged 83.
The decision comes after Heseltine – Hezza – spoke and voted against the government in the debate in the Lords on stopping Brexit. Incidentally, if stopping Brexit is not the purpose of the amendments being put down by Peers then why are most of the people involved in this initiative people who say they want to stop Brexit, that is after they have mumbled something vague about accepting the result?
Anyway, Hezza, the man with the best hair in politics, had been helping out the current government, doing work behind the scenes on areas in which he has great expertise such as regeneration. In the 1980s and 1990s the regeneration of Docklands in London and the transformation of Liverpool were begun when he took the initiative.
Now, it is all over, it seems. A government whip did what furious Eurosceptics have wanted to do for the 26 years since he led the removal of Margaret Thatcher. Hezza the fanatical Europhile, who was wrong about the euro and still would like the UK to join, has been told that he is out.
He told Sky News:
“I have been working for the Government now for six years. It has been a privilege. Of course I’m very sad and sorry to see it go – but in the end you have to be true to yourself and I knew I had to make that speech today in the House of Lords. None of us can see what governments we’re going to be dealing with in Europe. We can’t see what the circumstances are going to be, we can’t see what the deal is going to be. All people like me in the House of Lords are saying is that the ultimate sovereignty of this country lies in Parliament. That’s what the Brexit people have been saying along: ‘We’ve got to have sovereignty back’.”
This will get the government a lot of stick, mainly from people who have never before felt moved to defend Lord Heseltine but who will now see him as a convenient martyr figure. It may look a little mean too on the part of the Prime Minister, who after all did vote Remain just like Michael Heseltine. But that was then, and this is now.
