It seems that there is one fashion rule which no man dare flout. Get your socks wrong and humiliation beckons. Interviewed last week after his resignation from the leadership of the Liberal Democrats, Ming Campbell raged against the triviality of the modern media. An obsession with the ephemeral, the marginal and the superficial had meant that the press ignored the many worthwhile ideas being generated by the Lib Dem high command. Searching for an example of the media’s intergalactic lack of gravity, Sir Ming railed that people even “write articles about the kind of socks I wear”.

And he was clearly so wounded by this lèse majesté, that he felt he had no option but to quit the Westminster fray. I don’t know about you but I’m pushed to imagine that any man would want to flee our capital city, shun his colleagues and go into a depression just because someone wrote critically about their hosiery choices. Jean-Paul Gaultier, possibly. Or Frasier’s brother Niles. But I can’t think of many others. Then again, I don’t often get to mix socially with Lib Dems.

If I did, however, I would probably point out that Ming's socks were one of the best things about him. They might be, like most things associated with the Lib Dems, very woolly. But, unlike most of Ming’s ideas, his socks always struck me as both up to the job and very sensible. I suspect if more attention had been focused on his hosiery and, for that matter, the rest of his wardrobe, Ming’s reputation for sober good judgment might have been higher.

After all, Ming’s ideas in other areas seemed to place him in the company of people like Noam Chomsky and Harold Pinter. He regarded the invasion of Iraq as a “criminal act”, the logical consequence of which thinking would, presumably, mean the restoration of that country to its rightful owners before things turned nasty, that nice Mr Hussein and his family. And he also argued recently that the major blockage to peace in the Middle East was Jewish control of American politics. It’s a view, certainly. But one that doesn’t, at least to me, explain why Hamas is conducting a war against Fatah, Hezbollah is undermining the Lebanese Government, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran has let jihadi fighters into Iraq while, from Somalia to Pakistan, insurgencies flare and consume thousands. How to handle the conflict within the Islamic world between extremist Islamists and those following a more moderate path would seem to be the central challenge for foreign policy thinking when addressing the problems of the Middle East. But grappling with that requires facing down lazy conventional left-liberal thinking. No wonder it’s easier to just blame the socks.

And since Ming has raised the topic, breaching the taboo and thus allowing us all to enter the vital debate, can I balance my lack of respect for what Ming is supposed to be good at, all that foreign policy stuff, with a proper explanation of why I yield to no one in my admiration for his sock choices?

First, and crucially, Ming knew what so many men appear, in their egoism, to have forgot. Length matters. There are few sights so disconcerting in modern life as the flash of bare, usually pallid and sporadically hairy, calf whenever a man sits down on any platform and his trousers, in consequence, ride up. Compared with the builder’s bottom, which is perhaps the next most shocking example of involuntary male body exposure, the nude calf doesn’t even have the buttock cleavage’s earthy charm. It is, at once, both intrusive and wallyish, presumptuous and inadequate, like a French kiss administered by Syd Little.

The only way to preempt such an offence against good taste for any man in public life is to wear socks so long that, as the trousers ride up, only wool is visible. Ming knew that instinctively. As a proper Lib Dem he would not compromise on this matter of principle just to go with the fashionable herd. The length was, for him, not a matter for negotiation.

And neither was the material. Wool was the only acceptable fabric for any sock worn with a business shoe. It has become increasingly difficult to find decent woollen socks in any of our major department stores. Certainly of the right length. Instead, everywhere one turns, the tyranny of cotton rules. Or, worse still, cotton holds sway supported by an alliance of artificial fibres bound together in forced coalition.

For anyone who’s grown up with their feet swathed in wool, nothing else provides either the comfort, robustness, durability or breathability. It’s a vindication, as any Liberal would instantly recognise, of the virtues of organic production.

Given the virtues of wool, what can account for the advance of cotton across the counters of our department stores? I can only presume that it is an adjustment to rising temperatures, which has led retailers to imagine that we’d like to clothe our feet in the sort of items long favoured by Mediterranean men. If it is indeed the case that warmer weather has led to the decline of the woollen sock in our stores, I can easily understand why Sir Ming got so steamed up about climate change.

So full marks to Ming on length and fabric. And respect is due also on one other count. The colour. Not for Ming the faux-aristo dandyism of bright red or yellow socks. Nor the, if anything, greater horror of patterns, symbols, hoops or any attempt at “wit”. A wittily patterned sock is like a delicately perfumed AK47, a misunderstanding of what makes the item effective. Utility is all. And that means as close to charcoal grey as possible. For both.

If only Ming had kept his perspective. He should have recognised that his socks, in their traditional, tried and tested, classic durability embodied certain forgotten virtues. Much like the classical liberalism of Gladstone and Mill, now you come to mention it, which his party has foolishly forsaken in its haste to be modishly at home in the world The Guardian has made.

Everybody looks up to Yentob

Every age needs its Curzons – its figures of towering grandeur and plutocratic stateliness, who compel in the rest of us hushed deference. The dukes of Newcastle fulfilled that role in the first era of Whig supremacy, those of Bedford subsequently took on that mantle. In High Victorian times the earls of Derby fulfilled a similar role and, of course, at the dawn of the last century, few could match the viceregal Curzons for sheer haughty magnificence.

So who plays that role now? Well, Alan Yentob, of course.

Like his ducal and viceregal predecessors, he has an army to do his bidding. Servants may labour to produce monuments of aesthetic distinction, whether it’s a stately home or a documentary on an obscure pop star, but its all for our hero’s greater glory.

And, like his noble forebears, Alan Yentob enjoys his magnificent privileges for life, immune to the political or budgetary pressures which afflict the lesser orders.

Some duller souls may object to the way in which public money is devoted to maintaining the Yentob family and their historic estate in Notting Hill in such splendour, but, as Shakespeare said, in King Lear, reason not the need. Now that Lord Irvine of Lairg is in retirement, where else can one find that invincible self-confidence which once made our aristocracy grate (sic).

Dumble outed

So Dumbledore is gay? And that’s a surprise? Can you think of a classical fictional figure from that particular escapist genre who isn’t as camp as Christmas? Mr Tumnus the faun? Mole and Ratty? Captain Hook?

As the song almost ran . . . “The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking hand in hand. ‘If only, said the Walrus, the law would understand . . .’ ”

— Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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