Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  Until I am allocated an office (which will be in a week or two apparently) I have to collect my Commons post from the post office off Members’ Lobby. It comes bundled together with string and I can sort it in the Library or back at home or on the train. I’ve just been through yesterday’s bundle – upwards of sixty bits and pieces, a third of which can go straight in the bin. My vulpine whip, David Davis (DD of the SS), has sent me all his numbers. ‘I would be grateful if you could confirm your London number, your principal country number, and any other numbers you have. Please do not divulge my ex-directory number to anyone.’ I also have a copy of Tuesday’s Hansard featuring my name for the very first time. All afternoon we lined up to take the Oath of Allegiance at the Table of the House and then shake the Speaker’s hand. At the front of the queue at 2.30 were the government front bench (Hansard reveals their names in full: Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Kenneth Harry Clarke, Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo, Virginia Hilda Brunette Maxwell Bottomley, Sir Patrick Barnabas Burke Mayhew139 – every name tells a story!), and there I was (‘Gyles Daubeney Brandreth, esquire, City of Chester’) bringing up the rear three hours later. The poor Speaker must have been punch-drunk shaking so many hundred hands all afternoon and, of course, I cocked up my moment of small talk. She said, ‘Welcome to the Commons. It’s nice to meet you,’ and instead of simply saying ‘And it’s nice to meet you too, Madam Speaker’ I grinned at the one-time Tiller Girl and said ‘Do you know, I think we have something in common. We’ve both appeared in pantomime.’ She looked neither amused nor interested. My hope is she wasn’t even listening.

  WEDNESDAY 6 MAY 1992

  The whip is a document as well as a person. The written whip is sent out to each of us each Friday with details of the forthcoming week’s business. I received my first whip yesterday. It is a plain piece of A4 marked ‘SECRET’ and lists what’s happening on each day of the week. The funny bit is that it looks as if it’s typed on an old-fashioned sit-up-and-beg 1905 Remington and you know whether it’s a one, two or three-line whip because the business in question is actually underlined once, twice or three times. One-line business is optional; three-line business compulsory; when it’s two lines you have to be on parade unless you have secured a ‘pair’ and cleared it with the ‘pairing whip’. I have just telephoned Angela Eagle to learn that she does not wish to pair with me. She’s planning to be in the Commons for many years to come so she’s looking for a ‘pair’ who is a little younger than I am and is likely to be in the House after the next election because he’s got a safer seat than mine. The bitch.

  This morning I was in my place (third row back, third seat in) at 11.25 a.m. for the State Opening. The House was packed. Black Rod came and did his stuff: ‘The Queen commands the honourable House to attend Her Majesty immediately in the House of Peers.’ Major and Kinnock led the way and we all trooped from our end of the building to the House of Lords – which I’m told, for some reason, we must never refer to by name. We have to call it ‘another place’ or ‘the other place’ or some such tomfoolery. Anyway, by the time tail-end charlies like me got to ‘the other place’ there was no room to get in so I watched the Queen reading her speech on one of the TV monitors in the Lords’ lobby. At 2.30 we were back in our places for the ‘proposing and seconding of the motion on the Loyal Address’. This is the traditional start to a five-day general debate on all aspects of the government’s proposed programme and it’s deemed a great honour to be one of the opening bats. Kenneth Baker140 kicked off, followed by a bespectacled beanpole who I’d never heard of but who is now ‘destined for great things’141 and was certainly very funny – and cleverly self-deprecatory: ‘I’m told the motion is usually proposed by some genial old codger on the way out and seconded by an oily young man on the make.’ Kinnock was very good at Kenneth Baker’s expense – ‘he has seen the future – and it smirks’ – ‘he is adept at keeping one step ahead of his own debris’ – ‘he moved from being Education Secretary to becoming chairman of his party, proving that the Tory Party is one of the few organisations where a move from education to propaganda is regarded as promotion.’ Dennis Skinner,142 heckling from below the gangway, was somewhat less subtle: ‘He’s the big fat slug on Spitting Image!’

  It was about four when Paddy Ashdown got to his feet – and, as he rose to address the multitude, the whole House emptied. Literally. Labour, Conservative, Unionists, the Welsh, up they got and off they went.

  ‘Is this normal?’ I asked my neighbour.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s an utter bore. Even the Liberals despise him.’

  Apparently the rule is: when Mr Ashdown gets up to speak it’s time for tea.

  Coming away from the Tea Room (where I treated myself to a toasted teacake) and crossing the Members’ Lobby to go back into the Chamber I was stopped by a fellow whose face I recognised but whose name I don’t think I’ve ever known. He said, ‘Sign this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a written question.’

  ‘Who is it for?’

  ‘The Secretary of State for Employment.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Just sign it, would you?’

  I read the question typed on the piece of paper. It was something about the Conciliation and Arbitration Service. ‘But I don’t know anything about this?’

  ‘That’s why you’re the man we need. Just sign – and you’ll get the answer in tomorrow’s Hansard.’

  ‘But I don’t even understand the question.’

  ‘Then the answer doesn’t matter very much, does it? Come on, I need to get it in before six. It’s all right. I’m a PPS at Employment. If we want to get something on the record, we plant the question. That’s the way it works.’

  I signed.

  So I have asked my first question in the mother of parliaments and I have no idea what it means.

  THURSDAY 7 MAY 1992

  Marlene Dietrich has died, aged ninety.

  Michèle came with me to meet Mr Fletcher in the Fees’ Office. He was friendly and helpful and advised that we should register London as our main residence (which it is anyway) because that’ll work to our advantage with the mileage allowance. For travelling between London and the constituency it’s 68.2p per mile if your vehicle is 2301 cc and above, and 43.4p if you are between 1301 and 2300 cc. Our old Mercedes falls into the lower bracket. Mr Fletcher explained that a number of MPs upgrade their cars to take advantage of the higher mileage rate. I don’t think we’ll be doing that. Indeed I don’t think there’s going to be any capital expenditure in the Brandreth household for several years to come. My salary is going to be just £30,854 which is a nightmare. Michèle is not amused. ‘You didn’t think about the money did you? You were so desperate to find yourself a seat you rushed in regardless.’ The only flicker of silver lining is the news that all my train and plane fares to Chester will now be covered (they’ve cost a small fortune this past year) and Michèle gets fifteen paid ‘spouse journeys’ per annum.

  DD of the SS is proposing that I jump in at the deep end and give my maiden speech next week. He’s leant me a little paperback guide to Parliament he did for the BBC when they started televising the proceedings and it’s rather good. He quotes Harold Macmillan on his ‘Maiden’: ‘Except for “going over the top” in war, there is hardly any experience so alarming as this…’

  MONDAY 11 MAY 1992

  Buffet lunch at No. 10. It is infinitely bigger than it appears from the street. There’s a long corridor that leads from the front door straight to the Cabinet room, then you turn right and go up a flight of stairs (photographs of previous incumbents in reverse order as you climb) to a series of intercommunicating reception rooms where we mingled and joshed and rubbed shoulders with our genial Prime Minister and felt how good it was to be Members of Parliament and in government again. ‘You can fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.’ – Abraham Lincoln. ‘You can’t fool all of the
people all of the time, but do it once and it lasts five years!’ Eric Forth, MP, Under Secretary of State, Department of Education.143

  TUESDAY 12 MAY 1992

  Having sat in the Chamber from 2.30, through Health questions, through Prime Minister’s questions, through the opening stages of the education and local government debate (Bryan Gould144 v Michael Howard, nothing special), in a nearly deserted House, at exactly 5.35, I was called to give my Maiden speech. It was fine. I stuck to the formula recommended by DD of the SS: a couple of minutes in praise of your predecessor (‘whatever they were like’), three or four in praise of your constituency, four or five on the issues under discussion – nothing too controversial, keep it under ten minutes. (When Robert Rhodes James145 spoke for twenty-three minutes, Ted Heath said, ‘Congratulations on both your Maiden speeches.’) I opened with a couple of jokes (‘humorous sorties’ is probably more accurate…) and then led into the challenges of doing the right thing as a ‘new boy’ at Westminster: ‘Sitting in the right place is obviously vital. On the day of Madam Speaker’s memorable election, I found myself innocently drawn to the spot immediately behind the Prime Minister – instinctively drawn there, I now realise, by the assumption that it was the correct place for the Member for the City of Chester because that is exactly where my predecessor, Sir Peter Morrison, was wont to sit when he served the Prime Minister’s illustrious predecessor so ably and so loyally.’ (Interestingly, doing my homework for my paragraph about Sir Peter, I came across this in The Times of 24 July 1990: ‘The appointment of Peter Morrison as the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary may well prove to be as important as any of the ministerial jobs announced yesterday.’ Mmm, yes, but perhaps not quite in the way intended.)

  The point is: it’s over, I’ve done it, it wasn’t too bad. My only real mistake was to speak from notes. It’s permissible (especially with a ‘Maiden’) but a speech without notes earns brownie points. Later on I heard a couple of other new boys on our side (Liam Fox146 and Jonathan Evans).147 Their speeches were no better than mine, less elegant, less carefully crafted in fact, but both spoke without notes and I noted the whip on the front bench nodding with approval. Well done them.

  At six, I set off to find the Prime Minister’s room ‘behind the Speaker’s chair’. You go left, then right, then down a little corridor, through a pokey ante-room and there you are in a very handsome panelled spacious room, dominated by a large polished oak table, with a little sitting area with sofas and armchairs to the side. There we had a little gathering, not to meet the PM, but to meet his PPS – and a greater contrast between the amiable roly-poly man-of-the-people Graham Bright and the patrician Sir Peter Morrison would be hard to imagine. The one common feature is a certain embonpoint, but Graham is altogether smaller and easier and more comfortable. He’s Tigger and Bunter and Just William rolled into one: eager, bouncy, friendly, loyal, fiercely loyal, and he told us that if ever we needed to relay a message to the PM he’s our man. I liked him at once, but he did strike me as very ordinary. If these are the eyes and ears of the Prime Minister – if this is the man who must whisper the truth to our great leader in the dark watches of the night – is he really up to it? (This is what I think, but, of course, don’t say to anyone – except Michèle, who points out that Graham is the man who brought ‘Sweet ‘n’ Low’ sweetener to the UK and has made a fortune – ‘which is more than can be said of some of us.’)

  WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 1992

  My Maiden speech looks fine in print. My pigeon-hole contains a one-word note from Cranley Onslow:148 ‘Excellent!’ I am rather gratified, until some cynic in the Tea Room points out that Cranley (funny old stick) is standing for the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee and needs my vote. The Chief Whip149 has got my vote, but he’s sent a note too: ‘Many congratulations on your Maiden Speech which I have just read in Hansard.’ Of course, he’s sent precisely the same letter to everybody, but it’s nicer to get it than not to get it, however cynical one is.

  LATER

  I’ve just returned from drinks with Virginia Bottomley in the Secretary of State’s office in Whitehall. Florence Nightingale on the wall, Virginia, shoeless, curled up by the fireplace. She really is very beautiful, which may be why she seems to irritate so many people.

  I’m sitting in the Library. It’s a wonderful series of rooms looking out onto the Thames. I’m all alone in the last room, the ‘silent’ room. You can’t ‘bag’ a space here, but this has become my regular perch. I still don’t have an office, but I do have a cubby-hole where I can keep papers and really I’m quite happy camping here. The office I’m likely to get is across the road, above the Underground station, and pretty dingy. I’m waiting now for the ten o’clock vote. It’s a bizarre ritual. The bells ring and we then have six minutes in which to get into the appropriate lobby before they lock the doors. We then amble through the lobby at a leisurely pace (it’s more a long corridor than a lobby really) and come out at the other end, passing two clerks sitting on high stools recording our names, and bowing our heads as we make our way through the doors. The whole process takes about twenty minutes. Then we head for home. I take a taxi. It’s costing me about £15 a time.

  THURSDAY 14 MAY 1992

  Late this morning DD of the SS found me and handed me a slip of paper, a little strip, no more than two inches deep and four inches wide.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a question for the PM,’ he smirked. ‘You’re asking it. This afternoon.’

  ‘But I haven’t got a question down for the PM,’ I protested.

  ‘Stand up and you’ll be called.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know. Trust me. Just learn the question. You’ve got to have it off by heart, no reading, no glancing at notes. Just wait for the Speaker to say your name then spit out the question. We’ve put a joke in it for you.’

  ‘I … I…’

  ‘Good man.’ And he was gone. And my happy lunch with Michèle in the Strangers’ Dining Room (our first lunch in the Strangers’ Dining Room) was ruined as over the sliced avocado and prawns I repeated and repeated and repeated DD’s wretched question. And it was wretched. The joke – a deliberate slip of the tongue – was as weak as they come.

  Lunch ruined, I sat through forty-five minutes of Home Office questions, my stomach churning, and then, at 3.15, we got to Prime Minister’s questions. I stood up – along with a hundred others. I thought ‘I’m not going to be called after all. Please God, I’m not going to be called. Please God.’ Mr Kinnock asked his questions, Mr Ashdown asked his, then suddenly I heard the Speaker say ‘Mr Gyles Brandreth’, she was pointing at me and I was on. ‘Did my Right Honourable Friend happen to see the punch-up in the Italian Parliament yesterday, when it was attempting to elect a new President? Does he see that as an example of the benefits of proportional representation or merely a dress rehearsal for the election of a new loser – er, so sorry – I mean a new Leader of the Labour Party.’ God, it was so cheap, so contrived, so graceless, but the whip gave it to me and I spoke it as scripted, word for word.

  FRIDAY 15 MAY 1992

  Matthew Parris is spot-on – and not alone. His verdict on my performance yesterday: ‘Chester: nul points.’

  I have come in to the Commons to take part in the Road Safety debate. I wanted to wipe away the memory of yesterday’s humiliation. I was pleased with my speech just now. It wasn’t overprepared; I knew what I was talking about (more or less) and I made a couple of points that I believe in and that even have some relevance to my constituency! What’s more I have discovered that whatever you say on the floor of the House, you can ‘tidy it up’ before it’s printed in Hansard. After you’ve spoken you make your way up a narrow flight of stairs behind the Speaker’s chair to the Hansard editors’ room. There, twenty minutes or so after your speech has been delivered, they’ll show you a typed copy of what you’ve said. They’ve already touched up the English here and there and corrected any obvious error
s and, so long as you don’t alter the sense and substance of your contribution, you are permitted judicious fine-tuning.

  In the election for the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee I voted for Marcus Fox,150 pronounced Fux by some colleagues – but with affection. He’s dapper, rather delightful, a touch too much of the professional Yorkshire man maybe, and not, I imagine, weighed down by too many ‘views’, but he’s got a twinkle and he’s approachable and he won. Cranley Onslow has done it for nine years and looks old and frail and disappointed.

  MONDAY 18 MAY 1992

  The Tea Room talk is of Thatcher’s speech in The Hague. We need to watch out: the Germans are coming and the EC is ‘scurrying to build a megastate’. It seems somewhat over-alarmist to me, but Bill Cash151 and co. evidently agree with every word. ‘The lady across the water,’ sighed Nick Budgen.152 ‘We miss her so!’

  At 6.00 p.m. I had an assignment with DD of the SS. I was to meet him in Member’s Lobby. We were both on time (people are pretty meticulous about time-keeping here). He didn’t say anything, just gave me a conspiratorial nod implying ‘Follow me’ and led me into one of the division lobbies where we sat in the far corner, at one of the writing tables, and he whispered to me, ‘You’re doing well. Keep it up. I’m trying to get you onto a little group we have – good men who can be trusted. We meet in secret, usually on a Monday evening, and look at ways we can undermine the opposition. It’s called the Q Committee – named after submarines used in the First World War. Don’t mention it to anyone. I’ll keep you posted.’ It’s a very odd place this. Sebastian [Coe] and I thought it was about time we braved the Members’ Dining Room, so in we went, à deux, at about eight and, of course, it was full. You can’t book. Our lot eat at one end of the room, the Labour people at the other – and the Liberals wait at table. (My little joke: the Lib Dems have a table to themselves, as do the Ulster Unionists.) Anyway, the only table at our end that was free was a table for four right in the corner. We made for it, sat down and waited. As we sat, we sensed a roomful of eyes flick towards us, but thought ‘Let’s not get paranoid here’. We sat, we waited. We looked expectantly towards the waiters wandering past. None caught our eye. We waited and we sat. Eventually, a colleague from an adjacent table leant over and hissed, ‘I take it you are waiting for the Chief Whip?’ Oh God! We had sat at the table reserved exclusively for the Chief Whip. No one ever – ever – sits at this table except by his express invitation. Now they tell us … Pale-faced we got up and searched the room for another perch: all eyes were on us: it was a Bateman cartoon: The New Boys who took the Chief Whip’s table.