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What's in a handshake? If you're a politician, everything: four squeezy fingers and a thumb can spell the difference between triumph and disaster.
Look at the reception following Friday's memorial service for the Iraq dead.
Tony Blair extended his hand to Peter Brierley, the father of one of the soldiers killed in Iraq, and Mr Brierley responded: “I'm not shaking your hand — you've got blood on it.” Talk about an awkward moment.
Getting your hand shaken can be just as disastrous as not.
There can't be an MP in the country who doesn't sporadically wake up in a muck sweat having dreamed they're in front of a bank of cameras and Robert Mugabe is hoving into view with outstretched paw.
Both these touch on the same thing. We're reaching a point — thanks to the dumb monotony of the standard political photo-opportunity — where a handshake is regarded as an implicit statement of being on the same team.
You can therefore, it's implied, be contaminated by touching an enemy.
But the handshake doesn't say “we're pals”. It simply says, more or less, “we share a common landscape of civilised discourse”. That's why Mr Brierley's snub was so shocking.
And it's why claims made by Mr Blair's wife last week — that during her husband's time in office Ian Paisley snubbed her because of her religion — also bear getting to the bottom of.
“From beginning to end Ian Paisley never shook my hand,” Mrs Blair told the Cheltenham Literature Festival. “His wife would but Ian Paisley wouldn't because I was Catholic.”
That sounds batty. Certainly, if Mrs Blair said he never shook her hand then I suppose he never shook her hand. But she makes a big jump in assuming why.
One can't see even so notoriously plain-spoken a politician as Mr Paisley actually announcing: “I'm sorry, I can't shake your hand because you're a Papist.” What with, y'know, the peace process and all.
Plus, as his spokesman has been quick to point out, the former First Minister found faith no obstacle to hugs and handshakes with Bertie Ahern and Martin McGuinness, among others.
Yet Mrs Blair states with utter confidence that Mr Paisley wouldn't touch her because of her religion.
It almost seems, well... bigoted, doesn't it?
Taxing, I know, but a requirement nonetheless
At the weekend it emerged that Alexander Heath, one of the directors of a Right-wing pressure group called The Taxpayers' Alliance, is not, in fact, a British taxpayer.
Yes. I know. You'd think, wouldn't you? Being clever chaps and all. The clue's in your own name, you bonk-eyed pinheads.
The Taxpayers' Alliance is as snug as bugs, of course, with the Tories — whose leaders were last week shuddering with creepy delight at having their bid to run Britain given a fillip by Bono, an Irish national who moved U2's publishing company to the Netherlands to avoid tax.
These same Tories, meanwhile, have had nearly a decade to establish whether or not Lord Ashcroft pays UK taxes — a precondition of British politics being any of your damn business —yet still don't seem quite to have got the answer nailed down.
In 2000, as a condition of his getting his peerage, Lord Ashcroft promised to move back to the UK and pay income tax here. Eight years on, he declines to say whether he has honoured that promise.
As well as being deputy chairman of the party and one of its biggest donors, Lord Ashcroft has substantial stakes in the websites ConservativeHome and PoliticsHome.
He has funded the party, he helps run the party, and he owns the main forums in which members of the party speak to eachother.
Yet asked on Newsnight about Lord Ashcroft's tax status, shadow chancellor George Osborne equivocated pathetically.
This isn't something we should let slide. No representation without taxation, to adapt the slogan.
No party can claim the moral right to allocate public money while having as its chief backer someone who avoids UK taxes.
The Conservatives won't deserve anyone's vote until its deputy chairman has reassured the public he is domiciled here and paying his taxes like everyone else.
Inexplicable factors in the modern divide
SO. The X Factor. What did Dannii say to Danyl? Is SiCo still in touch with SuBo? And is Kandy Rain heading for a fall?
Britain divides in two: those who care about the answers and those who don't understand the questions.
When CP Snow delivered his lecture on “The Two Cultures” all those years ago, he saw the main threat to the future of Western civilisation as being the divide between the sciences and the humanities.
Can't help feeling we've moved on a bit from there.
• One story of the moment has the potential to be even more important than the results of The X Factor.
It is that of the Old Testament scholar Ellen van Wolde, who claims to have established that the first sentence of the Bible has been mistranslated.
God didn't “create” the heaven and the earth after all: He simply “separated” them. One thinks of a hollandaise going wrong. Heigh ho. Back to the drawing board, theologians!
Reader views (3)
Sorry Mr Leith, -I can't let this one go without comment. -Although I'm no apologist for Cherie Blair, I see no reason to doubt her statement re 'Reverend Doctor' Paisley. I'm old enough to remember this man's fire and brimstone anti-papist rants on television, when he was just a protestant minister, by way of a mail-order Divinity degree from some obscure American university. -His regular appearances at that time were in some sort of connection with the Orange Order and demands to be allowed to march through Catholic enclaves. His hatred of The Pope and all things 'papist' was palpable. -I have no doubt at all that since his 'metamorphosis' into an alleged serious politician he has learned to hide his true character when needs be, with public gladhanding and bonhomie to his erstwhile 'enemies' -But I don't doubt for a moment his festering hatred for a woman he sees responsible for exerting 'Papist' influence on the Prime minister of the time! I'm sure there were no cameras around, so he could afford to 'drop the veil' with nobody but Ms Blair aware of the insult.
- Huggy, Cumbernauld Scotland, 24/11/2009 16:34
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Knowing Rev Paisley to be rather old-fashioned in his views, perhaps he doesn't hold with shaking hands with *women*? Surely he'd have to, um, kiss her hand or bow or something instead?
- Alison, London, 12/10/2009 17:38
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Got it in one regarding Cherie Blair. Paisley was not only a hardened Unionist leader but he was also a constituency MP. In his largely rural area, he was notorious for helping ALL his constituents regardless of whether they were Catholic or Protestant...think Mrs Blair has most likely taken a massive leap, as you correctly point out.
- Paddy, London, 12/10/2009 15:58
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