The political events that led to this Thursday’s Spectator summer party were so punctual that they gave the event a dreamlike quality. You wondered if they had put it all together. If not the magazine, the new sponsors of the party, Netflix, are not opposed to a bit of melodrama. The net has deep pockets, but are they deep enough to bring down the British government for a bit of a shiver?
We met at the viewer’s offices in St James ’Park to find out. The doors did not open until 6.30pm. At 18.25 there was already a crowd crying out to enter. Partly to get to the Roger Pole, but mostly to gasp. Instead of the usual images of Graham Greene and Joseph Addison, the walls were adorned with portraits of Ralph Fiennes and Regé-Jean Page, Bridgerton’s handsome boy. House of Cards seemed more appropriate, but for some reason there were no photos of Kevin Spacey.
Not everyone had been invited. “I pretended to be someone named Antonio,” said one woman, who was not named Antonia. “I told the people at the door that I had won an Oscar. Would someone who had won an Oscar show up without an invitation? It’s the kind of wit and ingenuity we’ve been looking for in our leaders. Joke journalist Nimrod Kamer burst in to pretend to be Toby Young. He supposed, rightly, that no one would think anyone would want to pretend to be Toby Young.