Hunt for the Duke hots up … but it looks like costing Lord Drone a pretty Jenny
That Jenny Agutter – what a star! I’m sitting wondering if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with this quest to track down The Duke when the phone rings.
Well, slap my thigh and call me a dingo! It’s Jen. But her first words are chilling.
“You know he’s dead?”
“No, he’s not,” I say. “He’s just written to The Drone.”
“The what?”
“The Daily Drone, the World’s Greatest Online Newspaper. Surely you’ve heard … oh, never mind.”
“Look,” says Jenny, “The Duke died in 1979. Great actor – and I’m in the business. He made Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, True Grit. You know, Rooster Cogburn?”
“Not John Wayne, the other Duke.”
“Which one, Buccleuch, Westminster?”
“No, he’s not an aristocrat – well, in certain circles, perhaps – I’m talking about Chris Djukanovic, former Picture Editor of the Daily Express, known as The Duke.”
“Why do you want to find him?”
“Because he’s missing in action. Or more likely, inaction. Anyway, he doesn’t want to be found. And, as journalists, that’s what we do. We find people who don’t want to be found. May I say, Ronnie Biggs?”
“Who?”
“Ronnie Biggs, Great Train Robber. We – the Express, that is – found him in South America.”
“What’s this got to do with me?” Jenny asks.
“You could help us track down The Duke.”
“Where is he?”
“If I knew that … Sorry, somewhere in Australia. He says.”
“You sound as if you doubt it.”
“Well, it could be that old Fleet Street trick … tell the Chief Sub you’re going to The Bell, then go to The Poppinjay. Worked every time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s any of this got to do with me?”
“It’s just that I was thinking you could join our Great Oz Expedition. We need someone who knows their way around. You made that Nic Roeg film Walkabout in Australia, so I thought you must have picked up a few survival tips while shooting the movie.”
“That was 1971 and – hello! – it wasn’t real. I’m an actor, for goodness’ sake. We pretend.”
“So what about that Aboriginal chap, the one who taught you to find water in the desert? He seemed to know all about survival and hunting and stuff.”
“David Gulpilil. Nice man, brilliant actor. Passed away in 2021. Look, where’s this leading? I was under the impression you had a job for me.”
“Well…”
“Before you go any further, I’m not getting my kit off. Had enough of that in Walkabout.”
“You mean that bit where you swim in the water hole, in the, erm…”
“Exactly. It’s in my contract now. No nudity.”
“But you’re 70. Surely you don’t get asked to…”
“You don’t know movie directors, darling.”
“Anyway, why would you do that? Now you’ve taken Holy Orders, I mean.”
“What?”
“You’re a nun. I’ve seen you on the telly.”
“In Call the Midwife. I play Sister Julienne. I’m afraid it’s more pretending.”
“Oh, I see. Well, will you come with us? You can keep the wimple on.”
“For heaven’s sake! Have you spoken to my agent?”
“That was going to be my next call.”
“How much are you paying?”
“Paying? I don’t think Lord Drone would…”
“You want me to do this for nothing? Just expenses?”
“Expenses? What expenses? The flight wouldn’t cost much, especially in Economy.”
“Economy? To Australia?”
“Or train. We could go part of the way by train. You like trains. You were brilliant in The Railway Children.”
Jenny gives a long sigh. I think she’s coming round.
“Would you at least consider it?”
“Consider it considered,” says Jenny and hangs up the phone.
I’m taking that as a Yes. Good old Jen, I knew we could count on her. As for those two lightweights Fiennes and Crocodile Dundee, not a dickybird. If they reach out, as we’re meant to say now, I’ll be sure to let you know.
*****
No Prime Minister leaves office entirely willingly. Even fewer tour the after-dinner circuit without regrets and a sense of unfinished business.
But most of them settle into the shepherd’s hut to write their memoirs and learn to live with the idea that they were not, as it turns out, universally popular.
Not Sir Tony Blair, though. He was shrewd enough to know that the game was nearly up and passed the job on to Gordon Brown in the certain knowledge that it would end disastrously (but not for him).
He used his contacts book, filled over 10 years in power with the numbers of the rich, the famous and the influential – presidents, prime ministers, financiers and entrepreneurs – to build his own fortune and allow him to keep a hold on the levers of power.
Now he is said to be the man pulling Sir Keir Starmer’s strings as the Labour leader edges his party ever closer to the greedy, arrogant, Left-wing EU elite in Brussels.
Through the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), which drew in revenue of £65 million last year, he now spreads his political philosophy around the globe.
Blair went from Westminster politics to be a well-paid adviser to the US bank J P Morgan, and the insurance company Zurich; then acted as a consultant for such unsavoury clients as the Saudi oil sheikhs.
Now his institute employs 800, according to The Guardian, including the former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who quit to join him recently and said: “I believe that I can serve those voters [in Finland] well and maybe even better in the new assignment.”
Blair takes no salary from the TBI, which is bankrolled by entrepreneur Larry Ellison, who co-founded tech giant Oracle and in 2021 gave the institute $33.8 million (£27.2 million).
The former MP for Sedgefield is now an eminence grise, using the TBI to spread his Centre-Left ideas on everything from governance to emerging technology, such as Artificial Intelligence.
Last week he was revealed as the behind-the-scenes fixer who set up Keir Starmer’s chummy meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. Starmer called the meeting a very political discussion and has said that he wants to get a “much better deal for the UK.”
Observers have taken this to mean that he wants to get closer to Europe. He won’t stand a chance of renegotiating our Brexit deal but there is another possibility. He might get us to rejoin.
France and Germany – who else? – have come up with a plan for expanding the EU with different grades of membership. It is said to have been hatched with Britain in mind. Rejoining as an associate member could allow Starmer to skirt the need for a new referendum.
Last week Sky News discovered Starmer rewriting Labour policy on the hoof as he addressed a conference of Centre-Left leaders in Canada, saying that the party did not want to diverge from EU laws or standards. “There’s a lot more common ground than you might think,” he added.
By Friday, he was denying that he had any plans to reverse Brexit or join the customs union. But, as he will discover, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
On top of that, the King and Queen visited France and – quelle surprise! – were treated to the full Macron charm offensive. Gossip – and it’s no more than that – has it that the late Queen did not care for the EU, while Charles is all for it.
That could make him what the Russians call “a useful idiot”. And Blair knows one of them when he sees it.
I’m no political correspondent but I can see a stitch-up coming over the horizon. Blair already has a lot to answer for. Nudging us back into the EU with his willing dupes Starmer and His Majesty would be the worst folly of them all.
I’ve never felt more powerless as a citizen. We’re being funnelled into a political sheep-dip to emerge disinfected after our bolt for freedom – and reborn as blameless Europeans.
I hate elites. Political ones, most of all.
*****
I’m glad firearms officers are handing in their weapons in protest at the murder charge levelled against one of their own.
The move has jolted Home Secretary Suella Braverman into promising to protect our armed police from court proceedings.
Soldiers were initially on standby to take the place of firearms police after an officer shot and killed unarmed construction worker Chris Kaba, 24, in South London a year ago.
But the troops were stood down yesterday after Scotland Yard said they had enough armed policemen to tackle any terrorist threat.
Some rebel officers had resumed their duties – their point made – and armed response teams had been drawn from other forces.
Lord (Ken) Macdonald, KC, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, said: “The police cannot have a veto over charging decisions made by prosecutors. If the police refuse to carry out their duties because an officer is charged – and the Home Secretary supports them – then we have no functional rule of law.”
He’s right. But the question is: Why was the officer charged with murder, the worst of crimes? Do prosecutors really think he was a cold-blooded killer as he pulled the trigger?
Or have they abdicated responsibility and tossed the decision into the lap of a jury? Are they perhaps trying to avoid the riots that have followed other cases like the shooting of Kaba, who was black?
We do not yet know the crucial details of this case. They will emerge later in court. The trial is scheduled for September next year. This means the officer concerned will have spent two years under suspicion, with all the implications that holds for his family life and mental health.
Police officers cannot be above the law. Most know that. But they have the right to believe that they will not be routinely charged with murder each time they make a deadly, split-second decision to carry out their duty and fire their weapon at a suspect.
Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has written to Braverman, saying: “It is right that [cases such as that of Chris Kaba] are properly investigated in a way which improves confidence. I do not believe the current situation delivers this.”
He’s right, too.
*****
“The Lord … culls only the good guys,” the sub-editor in God’s waiting room writes on the Drone’s Letters Page. I could only agree as I recalled the delightful people and brilliant journalists whose deaths have been reported in these pages.
But then I thought, hold on, I’m still here, apparently in rude health. Does that make me one of the “horrible, unspeakable irks who made lives a misery for their fellow DX workers”?
I might be an arsehole – I worked on the Backbench after all, and it sometimes goes with the territory – but I resent the implication that I’m one of the undead.
Anyway, out with it, long-retired sub-editor – who are you, you old curmudgeon?
26 September 2023
