Sixteen years ago, not long after I began working as an editorial assistant at the LRB, my bosses gave me a top-secret assignment. My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to find out if there were any talented newish Labour MPs who might write political pieces for the paper. (The whole idea of finding an MP who can write, and who might have anything interesting to say, and who might be willing to say it - let's just agree to call this a period detail.) My research involved taking the number 14 bus all the way back to Parson's Green and asking my flatmate, who worked for Hansard, to find out who was spoken of among her colleagues as the Coming Man. She reported back a day or so later.

'Tony Blair.'

'Never heard of him.'

'He's a used Johnnie,' she added - this being the name by which former members of St John's College, Oxford, refer to themselves. We knew that because both of us were also, to use the posh term, Johnians.

LRB 10 July 2003 | PDF Download