Commentator Dan Hodges with Julie Redmond and Gio Spinella

HIS mother was once the scourge of the Tories in these parts, the perennial election winner who was still lashing out at Margaret Thatcher when the House of Commons met to share tributes.

But all was forgiven – sort of – on Tuesday night when the late Glenda Jackson’s son, Mail on Sunday columnist Dan Hodges, was the guest of honour in her old Hampstead and Highgate constituency… for the Conservatives.

He was the after dinner speaker at the local association’s annual Blue Rosette Christmas party, a fund-raiser held at Bradley’s in Winchester Road, Swiss Cottage, and could not help remind them of all the times Ms Jackson had come out on top against them. The nearest the Tories ever got to unseating her was a 42-vote defeat in 2010. Her extraodinary career saw her win two Oscars as an actor before spending more than two decades as a Labour MP and then returning to the stage and screen in what might have been her retirement.

Dan Hodges and the late Glenda Jackson after his mother’s general election success in 2010

Mr Hodges, who said he “was a card-carrying member of the Tony Blair fan club”, described himself as belonging to a “different tribe” to the Conservatives he was addressing. He quipped he had been “nervous because speaking to Hampstead and Highgate Conservatives, I was conscious I was speaking to an audience that might be a little bit left-wing for me.”

Mr Hodges, who sat at the top table alongside the leader of the Camden Tories Gio Spinella and Camden and Barnet London Assembly candidate Julie Redmond, said he had some observations to make “on the off-chance” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fails to “transform his political fortunes, transform the polls, turn the political narrative around and secure a triumphant victory at the next election.”

He said: “As somebody who was on the left, I have some experience of what it’s like to see my political party lose power. And what can often happen is… a party can lose its self-confidence, and it will lose its way. “I don’t know what the result of the next election is going to be, but I think I can probably guess… at some point soon, I think you as a party are going to be tested…People will come to you who are false prophets… and they are going to ask you to hand them the leadership of your party and your country.

“When they do that, my plea to you would be: remember this. You are the heirs of Thatcher, you are the heirs of Macmillan, you are the heirs of Churchill… you are not the heirs of people – however engaging, however amusing – who choose to spend their time in an Australian jungle chewing an animal’s penis.”

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage is currently a contestant on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, which is filmed in Australia.

Mr Hodges recalled the months leading up to Labour’s landslide election victory under Mr Blair in 1997, adding: “I wouldn’t say there was a sense of relief that you were going to lose power, but I think there was the sense that you’d had a good run and you needed to recharge.”

He said it was different today: “I am concerned… that a dangerous narrative is starting to develop… it’s a narrative that your last 14 years in power, it’s just been wasted, it’s just been squandered.

“Obviously, you’ve made mistakes – all governments make mistakes – but when you do lose power and the inquest begins, I hope you can conduct that inquest through a prism of pride, and not solely through… a prism of rancour and division and anger.”

Mr Hodges recalled the first time he visited Hampstead in 1991, when his mother was selected as a candidate, joking: “She took me on as her researcher – I like to say I was a ‘nepo baby’ before it was fashionable.”

He said he’d been asked “what would your mother say if she knew you were speaking at Hampstead and Highgate Conservatives?’”

He told the room: “What she would actually have said is that she is very proud of me, and that I am very proud to have been there this evening.”