Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  MONDAY 26 APRIL 1993

  A good day. On page 8 of the Evening Standard, Londoner’s Diary: ‘GYLES BRANDRETH – AN APOLOGY.

  Last Thursday I suggested that Gyles Brandreth’s company, Complete Editions Ltd, was facing financial problems. I am happy to report that I was wrong, and in fact the company is trading profitably. I apologise to both Mr Brandreth (pictured) and to Complete Editions director Michèle Brown for any embarrassment I have caused. I would also like to apologise unreservedly for any suggestion that Mr Brandreth is in personal financial difficulty. I had no basis whatsoever for any such suggestion, which I unequivocally retract.’ And the photograph, I have to say, is one of the best I’ve seen. I look positively boyish.

  They’re bastards, they’re vermin, but we got the retraction, we got the space, we got the photograph, we got the costs, we got the damages, we won!

  FRIDAY 7 MAY 1993

  We have lost the Newbury by-election [caused by the death of Judith Chaplin] to the Liberals by a margin of 22,000. It’s devastating. And the local elections are not much better. Up here John Shanklin, Margaret Walker, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, all lost. A lot of local politicians are second-raters (some of the Labour people locally are third-rate), but these three are good: intelligent, sane, experienced – normal.

  A real loss.

  MONDAY 10 MAY 1993

  No. 10 for lunch. There were ten of us in the small panelled dining room on the first floor; a delicious haddock pie (really delicious) and fresh green salad, followed by a splendid chocolate mousse. The PM was remarkably cool, calm and collected under the circumstances. He began by offering us his ‘analysis of why we’re in the doldrums’. He blamed a) the recession and b) the antics over Maastricht. I think there’s more to it than that. My feeling is there’s nothing in any of our policies or present programme that makes anyone feel good – let alone any of our people feel good.

  My suggestion that John Smith’s lamentable performance last Thursday might prove to be the beginning of the end for him prompted to PM to reveal that he has ‘a fingertip feeling’ that John Smith won’t be the leader of the Labour Party come the next general election. ‘It’s just a fingertip thing, a pricking of my thumbs. I’m not sure why, but I just don’t believe John will make it.’

  ‘Who do you think it will be?’

  ‘John Prescott or Bryan Gould.’

  I sat one away from the PM, between the Chief Whip, who said nothing, and Alan Howarth,281 who said a great deal. (Alan is eager for a return to government. Given that he is articulate and able, why do I feel this is unlikely? I imagine the whips think him longwinded, prissy and now rather wet. Perhaps they’re right.) The PM made great play of the fact that he was here to ‘listen’, but I looked at him several times while the others were speaking and his eyes had glazed over. He was somewhere else, probably brooding over William Rees-Mogg’s poisonous, patronising personal attack on him in today’s Times. It’s vile: ‘the most over-promoted politician for a generation – at best suited for the role of Deputy Chief Whip’. The PM referred repeatedly to the coverage he’s getting, ‘the acid rain’ that keeps pouring down on him, the ‘war of attrition they’re waging against me personally’. He asked for our advice and John Horam282 came closest to offering a clear line to take: concentrate on the rhetoric of recovery, talk up our belief in manufacturing, maintain our position as the party of competitiveness; let social policy bed down, no more revolutions; play down Europe except as a means to improving the prospects of UK plc. The others rambled. The PM turned to his acting PPS (James Paice283 who, bless him, has gone all serious and intense-looking since his appointment) just once to ask him to make a note – and that was to remind him to do some TV interviews in the West country … Nigel Forman,284 eyes gently popping, wiry and cerebral, lamented the fact that ‘we don’t seem to have a lot to say. It’s a shame. The think tanks and the policy-making groups of the ’80s seem to have lost their cutting edge.’ ‘Yes,’ said the PM, ‘all their knives are now buried in my back.’

  As we wandered out of Downing Street, up Whitehall, leaving the Chief Whip and the PM’s acting PPS behind us, we came to the conclusion that we were coming away feeling very much as we did when we went in. We like the man, we appreciate his clear head and his courteous manner, we know our victory a year and a month ago is down to him, but we’re in desperate straits now and that’s down to him as well – and he seems to have nothing to offer. Nigel said, ‘He’s drawing in the threads and we want him to be showing us the lead.’

  LATER

  Convivial drinks in John MacGregor’s room to mark the successful conclusion of the Railways Bill. We have privatised the railways. ‘Will it work?’ I asked, innocently. John gave his Mr Pickwick’s laugh: ‘It had better.’ Roger [Freeman] looked quite concerned: ‘It most certainly will.’ They are a formidable double-act, the government’s unsung heroes. But curiously all talk of MacGregor going to the Treasury has stopped. I’d have thought he’d be ideal: a safe pair of hands, Dr Cameron’s bedside manner, as sharp a political instinct as you could ask for, but, no, somehow his moment seems to have past. Norman [Lamont] is convinced he’s going to survive, but he won’t. My bet (seeing the way the PM works, sensing his insecurity) is Gillian Shephard as the ‘big surprise’ for Chancellor, David Hunt to Education, Stephen [Dorrell] to Employment. John Patten certainly goes. And what about my friend William Waldegrave who seems rather to have gone to waste/waist? The mind’s still there, but the sparkle’s all gone. Stephen Milligan tells me that John Kerr in Brussels reports that David Heathcoat-Amory is destined to replace Tristan as our Minister for Europe. How come the civil servants know all about it weeks before we do?

  I did a couple of hours bench duty on the Finance Bill, sitting behind John Cope as he struggled with our fuel tax rebels. He was all over the place, but it didn’t matter; if you’re known to be a decent chap, if you make no pretensions to being a Big Beast, the House may jeer, may talk right through you, but everyone knows it doesn’t really matter.

  We survived the vote, but it was too close for comfort: 295 to 285. Technically, since Thursday, we have a majority of just nineteen, but tonight good people (like big-hearted Geoffrey Dickens) abstained and tossers (i.e. Nick Winterton) voted with the opposition. How on earth can we manage three or four more years like this?

  TUESDAY 11 MAY 1993

  The smack of firm government? The broadsheets tell us that the PM has sanctioned a full retreat on Patten’s policy for testing in schools. The radio then tells us the opposite: the PM is four-square behind Patten, the tests proceed. I hear that the No. 10 briefing on the retreat was given last night, but that calls from the Patten camp at 4.00 a.m. (‘Back me or sack me!’) prompted this morning’s revisionary announcement.

  In the event at 3.30 p.m. Patten made his statement: this year’s tests proceed, but for next year both the national curriculum and the tests are to be slimmed down and made more manageable. It’s a half-retreat and he gets away with it, but he’s subdued. The trouble with normally producing bravura despatch box performances, con brio and without notes, is that when you don’t, it shows. He looked wounded and, unfortunately, a little absurd. Somehow his jacket wouldn’t hang properly. Fabricant, sitting next to me, wondered if his back’s gone and he’s wearing a truss and the back of his jacket had got caught up in it.

  WEDNESDAY 12 MAY 1993

  William [Hague] and I spent two hours alone with the beleaguered Chancellor this morning working on his ‘fighting speech’ to the party’s Scottish Conference. He was tired and twitchy, puffing on his cigars, hell-bent on knocking the press. As drafted, the speech sounded bitter and embattled. He had one good joke (about being born in the Shetlands and consequently being the only member of the government who could genuinely look down on a Scottish audience) and I did my best to add a bit more humour, more confidence, a lightness of touch. He wanted to go to town on how the press had misrepresented his ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ remark and eventually we
slimmed his media-bashing diatribe down to a single line: ‘As usual, the press did it their way.’ I also put into the section on unemployment: ‘My job is unimportant. What counts are your jobs.’ He’ll be fiddling with it all the way to Edinburgh. Poor man. I like him. I think he still thinks he can hang on.

  Michèle and I gave the Lord Mayor of Chester and his wife lunch in the Strangers’ Dining Room. They are nice people, traditional Labour but genuinely friendly towards us. I followed Patrick Cormack’s advice and allowed them to see me paying for the meal. ‘If you just sign for it, they think that somehow the taxpayer is picking up the tab.’ Andrew Miller joined us for coffee. He’s so boring it’s unbelievable. What makes it quite funny is that he has no idea: he thinks he’s quite fascinating. (At the Lord Mayor’s dinner in the town hall Michèle sat next to him and followed her usual formula when seated next to middle-aged men at functions: ask them what they do and tell them how wonderful they are. The more tedious Andrew became the more wonderful Michèle told him he was. By the end of the meal, she was virtually asleep and he was in a state of ecstasy.)

  At 3.30 p.m. all the PPSs gathered in the large ministerial conference room for a session with the Chief Whip. He looked a little peaky (as well he might) and his performance was as wan as his appearance. If his plan had been to rally the troops (or even to reassure them) I’m afraid he failed. He protested that he and the PM are ‘very much in touch’; they ‘recognise all the concerns’, but we have got to recognise the special problems that come when you are operating with a majority of nineteen. It came over as routine stuff, predictable and undynamic. The responses from around the table were equally predictable, ranging from ‘Don’t worry, Chief, we’ve been here before, we’ll come though’ to ‘Look here Chief, it’s more serious than you think.’ We went round in circles and emerged, I imagine, just a fraction more despondent than when we went in. It interests me that no one seemed to want to make any practical suggestions about what we might do to improve morale and performance – e.g. find ways of involving the backbenchers more, test out proposed legislation before forging ahead with it, coordinate lines between government departments etc.

  John Birt285 came to address the media group. He looks like Daddy Woodentop, but, as his hour with us wore on, he impressed more and more. There’s clearly more to him than mere management-speak and he seemed to have a firm grasp of the breadth and depth of the challenge he faces. Perhaps we should have him in the government?

  THURSDAY 13 MAY 1993

  It’s fascinating the way the Chamber sometimes can make a difference. When John Patten came to announce his partial retreat on testing, he came away a broken reed. I’ve just witnessed Kenneth Clarke perform an equally spectacular U-turn and emerge a hero. We’re scrapping the system of income-related fines we introduced only a matter of months ago, we’re rethinking the whole of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, we’re reversing great chunks of our own policy under pressure … it should have been a humiliating climb-down. Instead, the way Clarke played it, breezy, bluff, commonsensical, he came out triumphant. Blair286 helped. Blair’s dangerous. He could be one of us: public school, Oxford, decent, amiable, well-groomed, no known convictions, he’s been scoring on law and order. Not today. Today he got it all wrong. And Ken knocked him for six, dismissed him as ‘a tabloid politician’ obsessed with side-issues, incapable of dealing with substance. Our Sumo wrestler flattened Labour’s flyweight. It was a pleasure to watch and fascinating to see how the mood here can change in a matter of minutes. When it was over we set off for the Tea Room with a spring in our strides. We felt good about ourselves again.

  MONDAY 17 MAY 1993

  The PM rallied the troops at the Scottish Conference on Friday. ‘Give up? Give over.’ Not quite in the Churchill league (‘Some chicken! Some neck!’), but not bad for a damp Friday in Carnoustie. Could I do any better? We shall see.

  I got a call just now from No. 10, Alex Allen [Principal Private Secretary] in the PM’s office. ‘The Prime Minister is due to make a big speech to the business community. We’ve done a draft, but the Prime Minister feels it needs a bit of brightening up, a touch of humour, a few jokes, you know the sort of thing. He wondered if you might be able to help.’ I said I’d be delighted to try (of course) but that it isn’t easy conjuring up phrases, lines, jokes in a vacuum. You need to know the context. ‘Yes, of course. But if you can send anything across the Prime Minister would be much obliged.’

  This is a bugger because while it’s nice to be wanted (it’s wonderful to be wanted) my schedule today is a nightmare and I’m going to have to spend the rest of the day juggling the diary while trying to cobble together anecdotes and turns of phrase for the PM – most of which I know will go straight from the fax machine to the shredder.

  LATER

  I sent over two pages of lines, quips, asides. There was some quite funny stuff about the Chancellor which they binned at once. I said that making jokes about an issue shows you are relaxed about it. Clearly No. 10 is not relaxed about the Chancellor. There were a couple of lines I think they liked and one story that seemed bland enough to fit the bill:

  Nobody likes paying taxes. When I first went to the Treasury I was shown a letter from someone who had just arrived in Britain from the Commonwealth and set up business. He had written to his Inspector of Taxes, ‘I am unable to complete the tax form you have sent me. Moreover, I am not interested in the income service. Could you please cancel out my name in your books as this system has upset my mind and I do not know who registered me as one of your customers.’

  I have just left a very convivial group in the Smoking Room: David Lightbown, a gentle giant, Sydney Chapman (who reminds me of Arthur Howard, Leslie Howard’s brother who played Jimmy Edwards’ sidekick in Whacko!), John Taylor,287 former whip now the Lord Chancellor’s man in the Commons, and Jeremy Hanley. We have been having rather a lot to drink and rather liking it! High politics was not on our agenda. John Taylor asked if we’d heard about the American university where, in the interests of political correctness, they are alternating seminars with ovulars. David banged his glass on the table, ‘Sod political correctness!’ Jeremy said that if we were to be politically correct we shouldn’t call Sydney Chapman ‘Chapman’ we should call him Sydney Personperson. (It seemed very funny twenty minutes ago.) John Taylor then got the hiccups and I began telling the group how excellent Kenneth Carlisle288 had been this afternoon when I took my deputation to see him about the A51 and the bypass. Carlisle said virtually nothing at the meeting, but listened with real concern and impressed the local councillors considerably. Jeremy said what a decent chap Kenneth Carlisle is: suddenly the whips fell ominously silent. I imagine Mr Carlisle is not long for the ministerial corridor … poor man, he probably has no idea.

  THURSDAY 20 MAY 1993

  The end of the Maastricht road is nigh. The Danes have voted ‘yes’ in their second referendum and the PM has called for unity. Fat chance. We have the Third Reading tonight and I have just spent a very jolly hour closeted with the Chancellor working on his speech. He was in high spirits. ‘We end the Maastricht debate tonight,’ he chortled, ‘and I shall have the last word. It’s as it should be.’ We trimmed the draft drastically and added a number of robust touches: ‘We put Britain first. Always have. Always will.’

  Norman seemed pleased with our endeavours. ‘I think we’ve got the balance right, don’t you?’ Mischievous grin. ‘At least it isn’t too Hurdy.’ Much chuckling over Norman’s exchange with the Foreign Secretary:

  ‘What should I say in my speech, Douglas?’

  ‘I think you have your own distinctive line, Norman.’

  We toyed with the idea of a section mocking Gordon Brown for fumbling his way round Europe declaring ‘Je regrette beaucoup!’ As I left, Norman walked me to the door half-singing half-laughing, ‘Non, non de non. Je ne regrette rien. C’etait seulement les chansons du bain.’

  LATER

  Norman did well. He battled through the mayhem and came ou
t on top. Gordon Brown had plenty of bark, but no bite. The Labour Party abstained so, inevitably, we won the vote, but it was a hollow victory. At least fifty of our side either voted against or abstained. It’s taken almost a year to secure this Third Reading, hundreds of hours of debate, dozens of futile divisions, endless late nights, and, beyond these walls, no one seems to have much of an idea of what any of it’s about! In the Smoking Room the champagne is flowing. The Bill now goes to the Lords, but at least for the time being we’re shot of it. Hooray!

  I said to DD of the SS, ‘I’m not sure that we should be celebrating yet. The headlines aren’t going to say “Maastricht Bill Achieved”, they’re going to trumpet “Tories’ Biggest Ever Revolt”.’

  ‘I think not,’ he said, with a sly grin.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not? Because the Queen Mother has just been rushed to hospital. Haven’t you heard? It’s touch and go. We’re not sure if she’ll last the night… ‘Wolfish leer followed by conspiratorial chuckle. ‘Yes, the arm of the Whips’ Office has a lengthy reach.’289