‘You want my vote, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then you’ll sit there while I make a cup of tea.’
‘No, really, I’ve got a lot of ground to cover.’
‘Look, young man. If you want my vote, you’ll sit there and listen to what I’ve got to say.’
At this point Jill [Everett] appeared to rescue me. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got to get Mr Brandreth back on the road.’
‘No you haven’t. He’s come to see me. He’s going to hear what I’ve got to say.’
‘Perhaps Mrs Everett could take notes,’ I suggested, edging towards the door, ‘and I’ll write to you.’
‘She’ll do no such thing.’
Jill now attempted to lead me through the door. The woman grabbed me and pulled me back towards the sofa. I gave in. I had no choice. I was there for three-quarters of an hour agreeing on the importance of home births, the shameful undervaluing of midwives and the priority of preschool play provision. As I left she said, ‘I shall certainly be voting Labour.’
Later, in Boughton, one of our activists reprimanded me for shying away from a particularly ferocious dog. ‘You shoudn’t flinch like that. They can smell fear. You should go towards them and show them the back of your hand.’ She did exactly that and the snarling hound promptly mauled her. We had to rush the poor dear to the hospital and I think she’ll need stitches.
The election here seems a million miles from the one on the box. Out there Mrs T. has apparently ‘lifted the spirits of the shaken Tories’ with a rousing endorsement of her successor and the Prime Minister has impressed the troops with his ‘most positive and forceful speech’ of the campaign. Says Norman Tebbit:113 ‘At last they’ve stopped feeding him bromides in his tea.’
WEDNESDAY 25 MARCH 1992
Michael Heseltine flashed in and flashed out today. We had him for half an hour. We took him to the Meadows for the photocall. He had no idea who I was. We shook hands, we posed for the pictures, I made small talk, but I don’t think he glanced at me once, and while in a lordly way he gladhanded the forty or fifty faithful we’d corralled to greet him he didn’t engage with them for a moment. He was grand but not impressive. But I was very glad to have him all the same. I think I have scored on the local issues – nursery education, saving the Cheshire Regiment, more police on the Chester beat – and, notwithstanding Sir Peter [Morrison]’s contempt (‘This’ll cost you a thousand votes. This could cost you the election’), I think I have been right to be seen to be supporting the Heseltine decision on the Green Belt.114
All the old hands say it’s the national swing that counts. Local issues, what the candidate does, all the door-knocking, they make a difference of a thousand votes at most. Of course, here a thousand votes one way or another could well be what decides it. That’s why we’ve got to keep at it. And we do.
FRIDAY 27 MARCH 1992
Last night we had the Churches Together Any Questions at the Blacon Arts Centre. I survived. I don’t think I gave my own supporters the gungho performance they’d have liked: I was too moderate, but my people will vote for me anyway (won’t they?); I was wanting to appeal to any middle-of-the-road waverers. I did my best to disconcert the other candidates by being effusively chummy towards them. The Liberal and the Green I like. The Labour fellow is fairly loathsome and he thinks he’s going to win.
I’m not wearying yet. I’m not drinking either – and not missing it. The days are very strange though, hour after hour of door-knocking, sudden flurries of excitement when a visiting superstar descends, and then getting home and collapsing in front of Newsnight to discover the election coverage on the box bears no relationship at all to the issues that are coming up on the doorstep. On TV and in the papers they are talking about nothing except ‘the war of Jennifer’s ear’. It hasn’t cropped up once on the street.
TUESDAY 31 MARCH 1992
Mr Major brought his soapbox to Chester this morning and it was a triumph. We only had twenty-four hours advance notice and strict instructions not to tell a soul about it. ‘If we can’t say he’s coming, how’s anyone going to know he’s here?’ was my question to Vanessa. ‘We can alert the troops to the fact that we’re expecting a very important visitor whose name we can’t mention and let them draw their own conclusions.’
In the event, our coded signal and the beat of the tom-tom brought out our supporters in their hundreds and we gathered, as instructed, in the pedestrianised part of Eastgate Street at eleven. Equipped with a loud-hailer I stood on a bench in the drizzle and addressed the multitude. This is as close as I get to Agincourt. I don’t think anyone was really listening, but it was fun. Old-fashioned street politics. The rain got worse, but the crowd was good-humoured throughout. There was excitement, a sense of occasion in the air. As the minutes passed and word went round the city centre, more and more people thronged the square. The police reckoned there were 2,000 at least by the time the battle bus arrived. The door opened, we all roared, and the Prime Minister with a grin and a wave plunged into the throng. It was amazing. The crush was incredible. I managed to get right by him and stuck to him like a limpet as we moved through the heaving, cheering mass. We were surrounded by police, TV crews, cameramen, and at the Prime Minister’s right-hand throughout was Norman Fowler.
As we pushed forward, with supporters and shoppers and gawpers pressing towards us, leaning out to touch the Major anorak, reaching out to shake the great man’s hand, Norman Fowler kept up a running commentary, ‘The soapbox is just to the right, John. Look towards the balcony now, see the camera, now wave. And now to the left, there’s some girls at the window, another wave. That’s it, good, good. It’s going well. Nearly there.’ Major then clambered on to the soapbox and made a proper speech – ten minutes and more – all straightforward stuff, no great rhetoric, but somehow phenomenal. Here was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on a soapbox in the rain telling 2,000 of the people of Chester what he wanted to do for his country. It worked a treat. There was some jokey heckling which he handled nicely. We could have done with more.
Stump speech over, he climbed off the box and struggled back through the crush to the bus. We climbed aboard and off we went, round the bend and down to Nicholas Street where our admirable ladies had prepared a sandwich lunch for the prime ministerial party. Making small talk with him wasn’t easy. Once we were inside the Association Hall his jauntiness dissipated. He seemed preoccupied – which is hardly surprising.
‘How do you think it’s going?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘It’s difficult to tell.’
‘The soapbox is working,’ said Norman Fowler, still bouncy. ‘We’ve spent a fortune – a fortune – on the set for the talking-to-John-Major rallies, but it’s the soapbox that’s stealing the show.’
‘It’s a game,’ said Mr Major. ‘I did a press briefing last week under a banner that said “The best team in a troubled world” and the photographers managed to catch a picture of me during the one moment when I wasn’t smiling under the one word “troubled”. You can’t win.’
Norma was lovely: normal, friendly, chatty with the troops. She thrilled me: ‘I first met you, Gyles,’ she said, ‘at Heffer’s in Cambridge. You were doing a signing session and I queued up to buy one of your books for the children.’ I kissed her, which I fear some of the activists thought rather forward. I’m afraid she might have thought so too.
LATER
Fuck. I cannot believe what has happened. This morning when I was having a high old time in the city centre with the John and Norma cavalcade I should have been at Queen’s Park High School addressing the sixth form. I don’t know how the cock-up happened. The school had booked me weeks ago, before the election was called, and somehow we didn’t transfer the engagement from my regular diary to the election schedule. I cannot believe it. I was due at the school at 10.30 a.m. I was to talk and take questions till 12 and then stay for lunch. Apparently the entire sixth form was sitting in the school hall waitin
g, waiting, waiting – and now the fact that I failed to show and didn’t even let them know I wasn’t coming will have gone round the entire school and back to every one of something like a thousand plus families. It is so bloody annoying. I went round to the school in the afternoon and I’ve got a list of all the sixth-formers and I am writing to each of them personally – but the damage is done. And if it gets to the local press, they will have such fun with it, the bastards.
WEDNESDAY 1 APRIL 1992
Today’s poll gives Labour a seven point lead. They’re on 42, we’re on 35, the Lib Dems 19. I’m scuppered. I have just been watching Mr Kinnock amid flashing lights and fireworks giving a triumphalist oration at a rally in Sheffield. He is so awful, and in ten days he’ll be Prime Minister.
FRIDAY 3 APRIL 1992
The front page of the Chester Standard is given over to just the right kind of coverage of the Major visit. Couldn’t be better. Inside, however, there’s a letter that could hardly be worse. It’s from ‘the committee’ of Radio Lion, the in-house radio at the Countess of Chester Hospital, and accuses me of exploiting the hospital and the radio station for political ends. I was invited to be interviewed by them (true), and without forewarning them turned up for the interview with a photographer in tow (also true). I’ve since used the photo in both the local papers and in my election literature – and they want ‘a public apology’ from me for having exploited this non-political voluntary organisation in this way! I hate the letter, because it’s so prominent, because the tone of it is so nasty, but, mostly, of course, because it contains more than a grain of truth. I did exploit them. To get these wretched pictures into the papers I’m exploiting people all the time. It’s inevitable – and I suppose it’s inevitable too that sometimes it backfires. (I’m a bit more cautious about taking advantage of the elderly since I was pictured presenting a birthday cake to a virtually gaga centenarian on what turned out to be the morning of the day she died!) There is a decent letter as well. It is from Terry Bennett. ‘Full marks to Gyles Brandreth. He talks a lot of sense.’ It’s a good letter. I know because I wrote it! Our opponents fill the correspondence columns of the local rags with their tiresome tirades and we need to answer back. Our troops aren’t good at getting round to letter-writing (‘The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity’) so I have taken to drafting one or two letters a week for them to copy, sign and send.
The Social Security Secretary Tony Newton115 was our VIP yesterday and since nobody seemed to have heard of him Vanessa decided that we’d take him to a nursing home. It was the kind of visit Michèle hates. The poor inmates are all siting in armchairs ranged round the walls gazing blankly into the middle distance while the television in the corner blares away from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave. We troop round, shaking the palsied hands, booming our names, grinning inanely at uncomprehending faces. Mr Newton, who smokes as much as Sir Peter and the Duke of Westminster, didn’t look as if he was enjoying himself. Other than making little jokes about how nobody knows who he is, he had no small talk. He was obviously exhausted. He said he was weary of the campaign and feels it hasn’t gone particularly well. The press turned up to photograph us, so I suppose the visit was worthwhile. Let us hope the old dears we were pictured with survive till polling day. (Vanessa has been brilliant with the nursing home vote. The trick she says is to get the matron on your side. She’s the one who fills out the postal and the proxy votes … Vanessa’s also got me going to see the nuns in Curzon Park: ‘You only need to nobble the Mother Superior. If she votes for us, they all will. It’s called the rule of obedience.’)
The Business Club Any Questions was fine. I hit my stride and Robinson was rattled and all at sea. If last night’s audience were my electorate, I’d win. They aren’t, of course, and I have no idea what the outcome will be. We’ve been canvassing on the doorstep and by phone and I’m told we’ve covered about 80 per cent of the constituency, but when I ask Vanessa for the figures she says getting them out of the computer is a nightmare but ‘it’s looking good’ – which suggests to me that it’s looking very bad indeed. What the hell. Que sera sera. Paddy Ashdown116 seems to know what to expect. He’s demanding four posts in a coalition Cabinet.
TUESDAY 7 APRIL 1992
Peter Lilley117 came and went. Old Uncle Charisma he ain’t, but he was decent and intelligent and businesslike and the (fairly small) crowd we’d gathered for him at the Association Hall liked what he had to offer. The moment he’d gone we went back to Blacon and the worst of the high-rise blocks. They are squalid and soulless, the public parts filthy, the walls covered with mindless graffiti. The Right to Buy has made no impact here. When doors were opened almost every flat looked equally unloved, unkempt – and then you’d find one belonging to an elderly person who opened the door a crack and then opened it wide and you could see how house-proud they were and sense how they must hate having to live where they do with the neighbours they have to endure. Grim places, grim lives. And if and when I become a Member of Parliament, will I be able to make any impact at all on that?
Mr Major has just been on the box setting out ten Tory truths for a golden future. He believes he ‘understands what makes the heart of Britain beat’ and the way he says it you believe him. He’s no Churchill, but when it comes to simply tugging at the heart strings he’s hard to beat. We’ve also been parading our celebrity circus: Labour have come up with Simply Red, Nigel Kennedy and Steve Cram; we’re fielding Ruth Madoc, Lynsey de Paul, Elaine Paige. Not bad. (We seem to be keeping Russell Grant and Bob Monkouse under wraps. Perhaps Chris Patten has locked them in the Central Office cellar, along with Norman Lamont, John Gummer, Peter Brooke, William Waldegrave and all our other missing ministers. I imagine the thinking is ‘out of sight, out of mind’.)
THURSDAY 9 APRIL 1992
A depressing start to polling day. The headline in the Standard, delivered free of charge through every door in Chester this general election morning, reads ‘Brandreth fires back at missed meetings charge’. They’ve got the wretched missed meeting at Queen’s Park High School and they’ve topped that up with the line that I’ve ‘shirked’ public meetings and ‘even forced the abandonment of one live radio debate’. In fact I did five meetings with the other candidates (every one a nightmare and of no value – people’s prejudices are simply confirmed – which is no doubt why Peter M. very sensibly only ever agreed to do one) and I deliberately turned down the local radio debate because, thanks to the Representation of the People Act,118 if I didn’t show I knew it couldn’t happen and I thought ‘why give air time to my opponents? What’s in it for me?’ Still, it doesn’t look good and it’ll dishearten the troops.
LATER
Michèle and I voted first thing, up on St Mary’s Hill, in the nursery school I saved (my one achievement to date!) and then spent the day in John Shanklin’s119 little car criss-crossing the constituency without pause, visiting every one of our twenty-four committee rooms and as many polling stations as we could manage. John is lovely, intelligent, undemanding, easy to be with and ‘all I ask is strawberry tea on the terrace when you’re elected’.
Everywhere we went we did our best to be jolly, but it’s clear it’s going to be a close-run thing. The Labour people are certainly more ruthless when it comes to getting out the vote: they turn up at the old folks homes and shovel the old dears into charabancs. They are bolder and, I suspect, more systematic. Our teams were mostly optimistic, the kindly branch chairmen nodding sagely and saying ‘It’s holding up quite nicely.’ (How do they know? I don’t think our canvassing has been that scientific!) John Cliffe may have been nearer the mark. Hangdog face, fag cupped in the palm of his hand (he was in the merchant marine and rolls as if he’s still on deck), he shook his head mournfully, ‘They’re not coming out for you. It’s a damned disgrace. They don’t deserve you. You’re too good for them. It’s a crying shame.’
David Parry-Jones (from the Chronicle) has sent a nice note saying
I’ve fought a brilliant campaign and that the combination of that and the fact that I’m not Sir Peter will give me a majority of 8,000. We shall see.
It’s just gone ten. We’re watching the box and it don’t look good. Ask not for whom the exit poll tolls, it tolls for thee…
FRIDAY 10 APRIL 1992
I am now the Member of Parliament for the City of Chester.
Soon after ten last night we put on clean clothes and brave faces and trudged up the hill to the Town Hall. The entrance and the press room were full of happy Labour activists – buzzy, busy, running from computer to calculator filling in the latest data, the scent of victory already in their nostrils. At the best of times, a Labour activist is not a pretty sight. Good-looking people seem to eschew mainstream politics. (Tom Barker, our young Green candidate is the exception to the rule. He is fresh-faced, fair, pretty – all of which I’d have said to him, except now I don’t say that sort of thing. Michèle has even coached me out of the habit of calling everyone ‘darling’. It was when I called the Bishop ‘darling’ that she put her foot down. ‘Enough is enough.’ ‘Yes, darling.’) Labour activists on heat, ready for the kill, beards bristling, red faces glistening, the women either appallingly overweight or peculiarly scraggy (not one with a normal figure), hunting as a pack – it wasn’t nice to see. They knew they had won and they couldn’t contain themselves. We knew we’d lost and all I really felt was tired.
Inside the main hall, the atmosphere was much more subdued. I had never been to a count before. I couldn’t believe how primitive it all is. The ballot boxes are emptied, the papers are sorted and bundled into bunches of fifty and held together with clothes-pegs – yes, plastic and wooden clothes-pegs. They are then carefully placed in lines on long trestle tables and as the night wears on you can see who’s line is the longest. For most of the night, Labour’s line was longer than mine by far, but gradually I could see I was catching up, and by two in the morning, when word was coming in from around the country that perhaps we hadn’t lost after all, I could see that in Chester too we were neck and neck.
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