Diary: Why defence, not education, is the best place for Michael Fallon

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/16/hugh-muir-diary-fallon-meccano

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• Heady days for Michael Fallon with the rightwinger resurfacing as defence secretary. And there were good reasons to give him defence in preference to education. Fallon was an education minister from 1990 to 1992, when he apparently held weird and wonderful views as to how we might win the oft-mentioned “global race”. Trainee teachers, for example, could bypass education college – all they needed was a couple of weeks’ training on keeping discipline in the classroom. And how to combat the shortage of science teachers? Surely there were plenty of retired engineers mucking about with Meccano in garden sheds who might take the odd lesson. All very cutting edge. But perhaps Nicky Morgan, who did get the education job, may better steady the ship.

• Against the backdrop of PM Dave’s enemy-galvanising reshuffle, Boris Johnson reviews the political landscape and offers his advice. His conclusion: one person can make the difference. For the mayor of London has been so fully engaged running the capital that he has been able simultaneously to produce a new biography of Sir Winston Churchill. “The point of The Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the difference,” he says in a puff piece in The Bookseller. Everyone is very excited by Boris’s new masterwork. “He portrays a man of multiple contradictions, contagious bravery, breath-taking eloquence, matchless strategising and deep humanity.” There’s stuff about Churchill too, apparently.

• To parliament, where ministers push through their latest snooping powers at a speed to make Usain Bolt seem slovenly. It’s necessary, and we have crossparty support, said Theresa May. Why, we even have the backing of the home affairs select committee, she said. But only up to a point. Up jumped Labour’s David Winnick. “That was, of course, on a majority vote,” he said. “And I was reminded that in the last parliament the home affairs committee endorsed 42 days’ pre-charge detention, which obviously I voted against. My right honourable friend Keith Vaz was the chair at the time and, if I may say so, he is a very good chap indeed, but he knows where the wind blows.” Whenever it does, he writes a press release for the Leicester Mercury.

• Reassuring to know that Lady Black of Crossharbour, alias journalist Barbara Amiel, is adapting well to less affluent times. “I drive two gas-guzzling cars,” she writes in the Canadian magazine Maclean’s. “One is a small Nissan that I can easily park filled with my ‘stuff’, and one is a huge Toyota Minivan for my dogs filled with their ‘stuff’. I’ve never cared much about brands of cars, don’t give a fig whether mine is Japanese, Korean or German – less keen on anything Swedish for some obscure reason to do with the sort of drivers Swedish cars seem to attract.” Yes, she has never cared about car brands: she was insouciance itself in the chauffeured 1958 classic Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith that she and fallen Telegraph owner Conrad Black took to society gatherings in his years of pomp. The car ended up on an auction block in 2009, poor Conrad in US federal prison. A Nissan may bring better luck.

• You find him here, you find him there – as he remodels the BBC, Lord Hall pops up on podiums everywhere. The other day it was City University in London, where he was quizzed by Prof Suzanne Franks on his doings at the BBC. Contrary to our item this week, the questions were definitely not agreed in advance. Still he has many and varied ways of getting his message out, including “official tweeters” who follow close behind when he ventures into the public-speaking arena. Throw in a minstrel and the retinue would be complete.

• Finally, for proof that there is life after the BBC, take Clarence Mitchell. Once the BBC’s man to rely on in a royal or foreign crisis, he has been head of media monitoring at the Cabinet Office, and the agonised PR face of Madeleine McCann’s parents. Of late he has become Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion, where he has been pronouncing on public lavatory provision. For causes great and small, he’s the man.

Twitter: @hugh_muir