The Boyhood of Raleigh the then Conservative leader William Hague as a small boy (this was common in satire at the time, as Hague had first attained national fame as a teenager in the 1970s), while two old sailors – former Foreign Secretary David Owen and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey – gestured inland and away from a ship labelled "Euro". The two elder statesmen described themselves as pro-European but opposed to British membership of the Single Currency. The picture has also appeared in recent explorations of postcolonialism, most notably Salman Rushdie's novel "Midnight's Children", in which the narrator Saleem Sinai partly
Knighthood of Salman Rushdie of this a further "fatwa" should be placed on the life of Mr Rushdie". Officials at the Cabinet Office denied charges that the honours vetting committees had failed to consider the wider implications knighting Rushdie. One Labour MP speaking to reporters off the record noted that a week before Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister the award "reinforces the impression that nobody's in control. Anybody with any common sense would have blocked this." Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis stated "Whatever you think of the work of Salman Rushdie, freedom of speech is a fundamental freedom in this country. What is