Nelson's Column: How Ted Heath in hotpants has become a model for Theresa May

It was the most bizarre sight of my political career.

I was sitting by a grand piano in Ted Heath’s Salisbury living room surrounded by pictures of boats.

In waddles the former prime minister, then 73, wearing a shirt unbuttoned to the navel and a pair of skimpy hotpants.

Well, you could have knocked me down with a morning cloud.

I grant it was a hot summer day.

But the width of his girth and the tightness of his shorts made him look none too comfortable.

Despite the unusual attire we spent a jolly few hours rubbishing his successor Margaret Thatcher.

The Commons joke in those days was that Ted only stuck around as an MP for the satisfaction of witnessing Thatcher’s downfall which he did.

Now I wonder for the future of Theresa May.

Not that she might appear in her Maidenhead living room in hotpants, but that she’s also staying on just to watch Boris Johnson flounder, falter and fail.

He’s likely to implode quicker than Thatcher so Mrs May might not have long to wait.

It would explain why she’s decided to stand again at the next election.

And she kicked off her campaign to undermine the new PM last week by picking holes in his woolly jumper of a Queen’s Speech even though she backed him on Brexit .

Mrs May said Johnson’s “oratory and arresting phrases” were not enough.

He was doing nothing to improve mental health care or jail killer drivers for longer, two of her pet projects.

She dismissed the proposal for a points-based immigration system as unworkable, just as she dismissed it in 2010 when she became Home Secretary.

And as for Johnson’s plan to lock up more foreign offenders in already overcrowded prisons…cripes, as he might say…total piffle.

Better to get rid of them instead reasoned Mrs May.

That means negotiating new prisoner transfers with the EU after Brexit.

Of the seven PMs who have passed through Parliament since I’ve been there Mrs May was the worst – aside from the present one.

But I always admired her commitment, and her sense of duty and public service.

She tried to do the right thing, and only got it wrong because she wasn’t very good.

Johnson doesn’t even try .

And as Mrs Thatcher discovered, to have a former PM backseat driving from the backbenches is always uncomfortable for the current one because they’ve been there, done that, know how it works.

But when Boris Johnson becomes an ex-PM I can’t see him in hotpants.

I imagine his only interest in these reckless garments is when there’s a woman he fancies inside them.

Next Speaker by Hoyle appointment

There will soon be a new Commons Speaker and I hope it will be Labour’s Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

Although in the Speaker’s Chair, of course, he’s not Labour, Tory or anything remotely party political.

I’ve known Lindsay for 22 years, nine of those as John Bercow’s deputy. In person he’s friendly and fun. In public firm but fair, and held in affection and respect by all sides.

His closest rival is Tory Eleanor Laing whose pitch is to restore faith in Parliament but says a Speaker’s powers are limited.

Not true. Within Westminster’s precincts the Speaker’s powers are absolute.

I learned that when previous Speaker Betty Boothroyd exiled me from Parliament for six weeks without a hearing or right of appeal because she objected to something I wrote.

I still smart at that injustice but it’s right to have that power. After all, the Speaker may need to chuck out the PM.

And I look forward to Lindsay doing so.

End the Brexit blood-letting

I don’t know how long it will take the country to heal its Brexit wounds but I’m sure Parliament will take longer.

For fanatical Leave and Remain MPs Brexit is a religion, with disputes as fiery as between Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation.

At least there’s no Henry VIII or daughter Bloody Mary around to consign anyone to the flames.

But moderate MPs are so fed up with the nastiness they’re quitting in droves – Boris Johnson’s bro Jo, Winston Churchill’s grandson Nick Soames, and Labour’s Gloria De Piero and Steve Pound to name four.

I was with one veteran MP who was almost in tears as he told me how he’d decided to stand down because of the Brexit blood letting ripping apart his party.

On the plus side it means there will be a new generation of MPs.

Let’s hope they’ll be more reasonable than the last.

Shhh…you know what

As Brexit Secretary, David Davis talked optimistically of a Canada Plus free trade deal with the EU.

Now we’re looking at Canada Minus.

Or as MPs call it, Canada Dry.

That was a frosty walk Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn took to the House of Lords for Monday’s Queen’s Speech.

Barely a word between them.

My snout in earshot heard Boris plead with Jezza to perform for the cameras: “Let’s just chat about something.”

“No,” snapped Jeremy over his shoulder.

Waspi women on the buses

As a young firebrand Harriet Harman could be waspish. Nowadays she champions WASPI.

Women Against State Pension Inequality speak up for the 3.8 million 1950s-born women who didn’t get their pensions at 60 as they expected.

Harriet has now put her name to a Commons motion demanding they have concessionary bus passes.

Legal routes of redress are now closed to Waspis, so free Routemaster rides are the least they deserve.