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PORTILLO

by Kevin Carey

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KEVIN CAREY questions the value of a retrospective 'outing'.

Scarcely had I saved my file concerning the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of Conspiratoria when The Times of London dropped a bombshell. Mr. Michael Portillo, once Her Majesty's Secretary for Defence whose ejection from Parliament was, for many, the quintessence of Conservative humiliation at the last General Election, says that in his youth he: "Had homosexual experiences". Our Ambassador, you may recall, was secretly photographed cavorting - an inescapable clichÈ, I fear - with a naked model on a beach in Unguentia; and he reflected that, quite apart from the boost these pictures gave to his ego and libido, all in all he preferred to have his private rather than his professional conduct scrutinised and investigated by the Daily Gloss. Unlike the Ambassador whose joy on beholding the snaps was more than somewhat tempered on discovering how much the model had been paid by the Gloss, Mr. Portillo volunteered an account of his private conduct to which we were not entitled. His stated motive was to put the record straight, no doubt in anticipation of further moral ambushes on the path to the leadership of the Conservative Party suddenly laid open by the death of Mr. Alan Clarke, a Member of Parliament with a safe seat and an unsafe reputation.

Portillo's sexuality has for many years been the subject of rumours uttered in political stage whispers. He characterises these as "vicious" not so much because they are untrue but because of the gay element. Yet, if all the Portillo rumours were laid end to end this would not amount to anything illegal but the questioning is still unceasing. My guess is that Portillo, a very clever man indeed, calculated that he needed some personality surgery: His hard-edged far right image needed a large helping of humanity; his monumental self-assurance needed to be tempered with just a little weakness; and his vaulting ambition would be helped by a dash of victimhood. For to be gay is to be cool but also a victim. Keen observers of such matters will have noted Mrs. Rodham Clinton hurling a mantle of much the same weave at her errant husband, nicely embellished with an unhappy childhood logo.

All this having been said - and I do wish I could find a handy alternative to that opening subordinate clause - concern with the sexuality of politicians is diverting enough but it is nothing more than a silly game. No misplaced Presidential penis will lead to the impeachment of a competent tenant and, Al Gore Jr please note, no amount of restraint in the gratification department will turn an average guy into a good President. Even lying about sex is acceptable because almost all of us have done it and understand why it is necessary for our own protection, that of those we love and have responsibility for, and for the protection of our privacy and secrecy.

My next guess is that Portillo's dashing little gamble will fail for much the same reason that George Bush Jr's account of his encounters with illegal narcotics will fail. When people see a loose end they want to pull it. When did he start? When did he finish? How long ago is long ago? Had Bush simply placed his drug taking alongside his boozing and womanising and had he admitted, as most of us must, that extreme tendencies of every sort moderate with age, we would have recognised him as one of us; had Clinton inhaled we would have been less disrespectful; and it is Portillo's misfortune, given rumours in the past, that the incompleteness of his story will be a torment.

He might, ironically, have been better off with a more rounded account, which happens to coincide with what most people believe, than with his rather untidy, incomplete version which he claims to be the truth. He put his personal sexuality into the public forum and, being a clever man, he should have known what this would mean. I am sorry for what he said and think he soon will be, too, but to require all of us to leave it there is beyond human and particularly beyond journalistic self restraint. Paradoxically, too, in claiming victimhood he is also denouncing homosexuality by being so proud of freeing himself of it and he is also saying that to be gay is to choose. So my second guess is that this will unravel.

The late Mr. Clarke is said to have been of great value to Parliament on account of his somewhat intemperate language which went very well with his philandering. What matters about him is that he thought himself superior to black people, the poor and women and didn't scruple to say so. These nasty traits were forgiven in a bout of obituary sentimentality and sedulousness on the grounds that his authorship somehow compensated for them; but not even history on a par with Michelet or Carlyle weighs a feather in comparison with a single sin against charity and most of Clarke's history, notably that of the Second World War, is elegant waffle.

If we are to escape similar treatment for Portillo on the basis that he fell into doubtful ways from which he has now escaped into incandescent uxoriousness, it is about time we asked some serious questions about his politics.

Being leader of the Conservative Party is no great shakes compared with being President of the United States but the same principles of interrogation apply; we want to know what our politicians will do on our behalf not what they do, within the law, on their own.

Perhaps equally to the point, we need to know where a politician gets his pennies rather than where he plants his penis.

Political funding is as intractable as it is interesting and even when it is not interesting to the public it is certainly in the public interest. You probably did not notice our wily friend the High Commissioner of Plotsova in brief but earnest conversation with the Duke of Lucre who does something non executive for the SocietÈ Liberale (the English component of the Franglais acronym is rarely uttered). Too busy, no doubt, looking in rapt fascination at our old friend the Ambassador Plenipotentiary, flushed with champagne, making an apparently improper proposal to Jock Physikalis, the hunky Junior AttachÈ from the Marsupials, celebrated for his coarse wit and refined wardrobe.

Kevin Carey can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

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