Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  TUESDAY 25 MAY 1993

  Day 3 of the Finance Bill Committee. I shall be confined to Room 10 every Tuesday and Thursday till the end of June, but as a PPS I don’t speak, I simply sit behind the minister passing him notes from the civil servants as and when required. It is not taxing and should leave me time enough to think of lines for our beleaguered Prime Minister – from whom I have just received a very civil letter thanking me for my contributions to his speech for the CBI dinner: ‘in future I will try to get you more notice and see the context in advance. I have a speech to the Women’s Conference in around ten days – text unwritten as yet … if anything strikes you!’ It is gratifying to get handwritten notes from the PM, but I am a little alarmed to think of him finding the time – or feeling he has to find the time – to send these billets-doux.

  I have just come from a meeting with Michael Howard. Half a dozen of us gathered in his tiny room on the ministerial corridor to discuss the aftermath of Rio.290 There’s only a small sofa and a couple of chairs, so two of us sit on the floor, arms clasped around our knees. We are all middle-aged men, but you’d think we were schoolboys gathering round the housemaster for hot chocolate and a late-night reading of John Buchan. Michael has hardly launched into his spiel (he knows his stuff, he’s impressive) when the phone goes. It’s No. 10. He’s wanted. Urgently. It can’t wait. He must go. He leaves us and, at once, we all think the same thought. The reshuffle has begun.

  In fact, it hasn’t, but reshuffle fever is definitely in the air. Who’s up, who’s down, who’s in and who’s out? It’s the life-blood of the place. According to Portillo (I’m sitting right behind him as I write: his hair really is impressive at close quarters, a high sheen and not a touch of dandruff), since the Whitsun Recess begins on Friday, the reshuffle will happen on Thursday. That way, if you get the sack you can slink off home to lick your wounds and don’t have to face your apparently sympathetic (secretly gleeful) colleagues for a week or two.

  THURSDAY 27 MAY 1993

  Well, well, Norman [Lamont] has gone and John Patten has survived. David Hunt moves up the Cabinet pecking order (to Employment) which is good; John Gummer ditto (to Environment) which is surprising. Michael Howard is Home Secretary and Ken Clarke Chancellor. The Cabinet newcomer is John Redwood,291 about whom I know nothing.

  Wanting to see the action I skipped the Voluntary Arts Network meeting and went into a deserted House for lunch. On the way in, my first encounter was with Jeremy Hanley who had just emerged from No. 10 and was bubbling with justifiable excitement: Minister of State at Defence. I lunched with Michael Ancram292 and teased him about his reshuffle haircut. He was looking very spruce – and eager. He treated me to a large Bloody Mary on the strength of an intimation that he should not wander too far from his telephone. Before lunch was over the call had come though. He’s going to Northern Ireland to replace Jeremy. He’ll be superb. We were halfway through the meal when Tristan [Gard-Jones] sauntered in and announced – to general astonishment and barely concealed flickers of dismay – that the PM had asked him to stay on – and that he’d agreed. He gave a three beat pause and then said, ‘He asked me to stay on – for a week – to chair a meeting – so I agreed.’ David Heathcoat-Amory replaces Tristan [as Minister for Europe] and DD of the SS replaces Robert Jackson who gets the boot. I like Robert, but he is an oddity. He sits in the Library translating obscure Greek texts into Latin or vice versa. Kenneth Carlisle goes too: I could have told him: too lacklustre. Edward Leigh293 also gets the push: too pushy and too openly disloyal.

  It’s a good day for loyalists: my friend William Hague goes to the DSS and there are jobs for three of the Drinks brigade: John Bowis,294 Derek Conway295 and Michael Brown.296 Who says grovelling doesn’t pay?

  I saw Stephen [Dorrell] at six. Bless him, he’d had an optimistic haircut too. He was disappointed, but sanguine. During the day he’d heard, and I’d heard, rumours that he was going to go to Wales, but if Lamont was the only one to be dropped he knew the newcomer would have to come from the right, so there we go. His time will come. Meanwhile, we have the interesting prospect of ringside seats at the court of King Ken…

  FRIDAY 28 MAY 1993

  I’m sitting in bed in Chester, befuddled and bemused. Bemused because I’ve a feeling that – already – within twenty-four hours – the reshuffle hasn’t worked. Everyone said: Norman must go. Norman goes. But no one seems any the happier – except for Ken Clarke who is pictured on the front page of half the papers, standing on the steps of the Treasury, beaming inanely, beer belly and Garrick Club tie to the fore. I’m befuddled because I’ve spent the evening enjoying the excellent hospitality of the Cheshire Regiment. I was much honoured by being invited to take the salute at Beating Retreat in the Castle Square. If I’d known what was expected I might have declined. I turned up on time, but without a hat.

  ‘Where’s your hat?’ gasped Colonel Ropes, red-faced, perspiring with anxiety.

  ‘I haven’t got a hat.’

  ‘Haven’t got a hat? You must have a hat. You can’t take the salute without a hat.’

  ‘I didn’t know one needed a hat. No one said anything about a hat.’

  The Lord Lieutenant came to the rescue. He opened the boot of his limousine. It was stuffed with hats – top hats, bowlers, berets, hats with plumes. Colonel Ropes selected a brown trilby which made me look at best like a bookie, at worst like a spiv. He’s a sweetheart, as anxious and well-meaning as they come, but his briefing was useless. I didn’t understand a word. He said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be driven to the podium. Climb the steps and stand to attention. I’ll be on the ground beside you and I’ll tell what to do and when to do it. The main thing to remember is that when you salute you take the hat off your head with your right hand, put it to your chest, and then put it back on your head again.’

  I was driven onto the parade ground. I climbed the steps and stood there. Alone. Ropes was 6 feet away at least and inaudible. If he’d been my officer at the front I’d never have gone over the top because I wouldn’t have heard any of his orders. Every now and then I could hear the wretched man muttering, but of what he was saying I heard not a word. The massed bands marched to and fro and I doffed and donned my trilby with gay abandon. When the regimental goat came forward and bowed, I glanced towards my Colonel and caught him looking at his knees. I decided to salute the goat on the grounds that it was wearing the regimental colours.

  The ordeal over I vowed never to wear a hat again and retired to the mess and drank a great deal – as you can probably tell.

  THURSDAY 3 JUNE 1993

  A week after the reshuffle and already it seems as bad as ever – if not worse. Indeed, from the PM’s standpoint it is worse. There’s a poll today showing him to be the least popular Prime Minister on record – less loved even than Neville Chamberlain in 1940. The shuffle itself now seems a one-day wonder, its impact already evaporated and colleagues wondering why it didn’t go further. People are even feeling sorry for Norman. He is feeling sorry for himself, understandably: he did the government’s bidding within the ERM and then delivered clever packages in both the Autumn Statement and the Budget, quelling the disquiet from business, raising taxes without damaging prospects for recovery. What more can you ask? More bounce, better PR – attributes Ken Clarke may well bring to the job. Who knows? What we all know is that things don’t look good for the PM. People are openly giving him ‘a year to sort things out’. The general verdict seems to be: if things haven’t improved by next summer, it’s curtains for nice Mr Major. As David Willetts put it on his return from Michael Portillo’s fortieth birthday bash: ‘Let’s go for Ken Clarke – better to have strong leadership you disagree with than no leadership at all.’

  We’re just in from Jeremy Hanley’s farewell bash at the Northern Ireland Office. Drinks, nibbles and a window view of Beating Retreat on Horse Guards Parade – a slightly grander affair than last Friday’s effort in Chester. The Prince of Wales was on the podium (no sign of Colonel Rope
s) but as the massed bands were floodlit and Charles wasn’t, we cannot be certain whether or not the heir to the throne saluted better than I did. (We can guess…) At lunch Michèle sat next to his father and made him laugh a lot. Afterwards I made the rather po-faced gathering laugh a little by saying the Queen hadn’t put a foot wrong in forty years – and nor had Prince Philip. He’d put his foot in it now and again, but that was different … The event was my swansong as NPFA chairman and HRH presented me with a hideous framed caricature that looked nothing like me but seemed to delight everyone else. NPFA Scotland presented me with a gold medallion inscribed to ‘Giles’.

  This keeps it all in perspective.

  MONDAY 7 JUNE 1993

  At 6.30 p.m. I made my way to Downing Street. I am not blasé. It is very thrilling to walk up Whitehall in the early evening sunshine, to smile at the policemen who swing open the gates for you, to stroll to the door of No. 10 and have it opened before you’ve even knocked. It is thrilling and extraordinary to be me walking alone along the corridor that leads from the front door straight to the Cabinet room.

  What is alarming is to get there, to turn left at the end of the corridor and walk into the small study that is the office of the Prime Minister’s political and parliamentary secretaries and suddenly think, ‘Oh dear, is this it?’ The room is impressive enough (the customary panelling and leather), it’s the people. There’s nothing wrong with them – they’re decent, loyal, determined. It’s just that they don’t seem special. They seem ordinary and I think I want to feel that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is surrounded by people who are exceptional. It reminds me of the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy, awed and trembling, goes to see the Mighty Oz, all-knowing, all-powerful, and her little dog pulls back the curtain to reveal the great wizard for what he is: a sweet old bumbler pushing buttons and pulling levers to very little effect.

  Graham Bright is Tweedledum. I’m not sure what to make of Jonathan Hill.297 He’s personable, intelligent, articulate, but extraordinarily laid back under the circumstances, and so young.

  We were meeting to discuss Wednesday night’s big speech – a debate on the economy with John Smith opening. I said I thought Friday’s rallying call at the Women’s Conference had worked well. I liked ‘I’m fit, I’m well, I’m here, and I’m staying.’

  ‘A bit defensive?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘On Wednesday we’ve got to come out fighting and end up on top.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Jonathan is working up a draft. I said I’d fax through some ideas. I left feeling that these well-intentioned, reasonable, responsible, relatively inexperienced guys recognise there’s a problem, want to do something about it but aren’t quite sure what.

  In the Whips’ Office they seem to have a firmer grip on what needs to be done. I arrived for Drinks (now, for some reason, rechristened A and under the command of Bob Hughes) to be asked, ‘What do you know about Gordon Brown?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Is he gay? We need to nail the bugger. If there’s dirt to dish this is the week to dish it.’

  After several minutes of fairly disgusting banter the mood of the meeting was that Gordon ought to be gay, could indeed be gay and should in fact be gay, but maddeningly we have no evidence of any kind to suggest that he is gay!

  I suggested too that, given the Michael Mates298 affair, this was perhaps not the ideal week for highlighting buggery in high places. Colonel Mates, of course, is as straight as they come (ramrod back, black bushy eyebrows, slightly preposterous military bearing), but the watch he presented to Asil Nadir bore the unfortunate inscription, ‘Don’t let the buggers get you down’. (The whips view on Mates seems to be that he may be an idiot, but he isn’t a crook. He interceded on Nadir’s behalf because he took a sympathetic interest in his case. One of Nadir’s advisers was one of his constituents. The Serious Fraud Office confiscated Nadir’s own watch in one of their raids. Mates replaced it as an act of friendship and solidarity. He had no idea Nadir was going to jump bail of £3.5 million a few days later…)

  TUESDAY 8 JUNE 1993

  This is Michèle’s and my twentieth wedding anniversary. I love my wife very much and the only thing I don’t like about being an MP is that I’m always here – and she isn’t. We had a celebratory lunch on Sunday with Simon [Cadell] and Veronica Hodges,299 but the Finance Bill Committee has kiboshed the dinner I’d planned for tonight. Heigh ho. I’m not sure what the answer is.

  Life could be worse. I could be Michael Mates. He looked pretty strained last night. The Tea Room view this afternoon is that we can’t afford another fuck-up, so, fair or not, he ought to go now. The SFO are investigating Nadir for fraud amounting to tens of millions. You can’t have ministers of the crown appearing to side with a crook. At Questions the PM took a more generous line: ‘It was a misjudgement, but it is not a hanging offence.’ Tony Marlow’s verdict: ‘The Prime Minister just can’t get anything right, can he?’

  WEDNESDAY 9 JUNE 1993

  This morning, our first prayers with the new Chancellor. It is going to be very different. And rather fun. This afternoon, the old Chancellor had some fun of his own. At 3.30 p.m., to a packed house, he made his resignation statement. It was fairly devastating stuff. ‘Since the war only two Conservative Chancellors have succeeded in bringing inflation down to below 2 per cent. Both of them were sacked … I am delighted to hear from the Prime Minister that policy will not alter … I now wish to say one thing to him: there is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions. The government listens too much to the pollsters and the party managers … There is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power.’

  I sat behind the poor PM. He didn’t flinch. For twenty minutes he hardly moved. Others turned to look towards Norman; the PM, with studied neutrality, gazed steadfastly ahead. Norman’s statement left our side numb, shell-shocked, silent, and the opposition benches cock-a-hoop. John Smith could hardly have asked for a sweeter curtain-raiser. He took full advantage of it. And when he got to his peroration – ‘the stark reality of a discredited government presided over by a discredited Prime Minister’ – how they roared. We cheered our man, of course, but our hearts weren’t entirely in it and while the PM did valiantly, in truth he survived, he didn’t triumph.

  THURSDAY 10 JUNE 1993

  At around midnight, just after the second vote, Stephen [Dorrell] found me in the Smoking Room. He was in state of high excitement. ‘The PM wants me to draft his speech for Friday – the Welsh Conference. We need to get the government back on track. Shall we go to my room?’

  I was ready for bed. I was ready for bed partly because I’d had several glasses of wine and partly because I have a wife to go to bed with. Stephen, I imagine, had had several glasses of orange juice and his wife is at home in Worcester. He had no incentives for bed. We set off for his tiny room and I perched on the edge of an armchair while he began bashing out a speech. Soon after one I threw in the towel and left him to it.

  He has just faxed me the material he is sending round to No. 10. The covering note is good:

  Graham –

  I would strongly urge him to concentrate this weekend on a measured statement of what we are about. Ignore the alarums and excursions. The most damaging line is that the government doesn’t know its own mind. If we can begin to answer that – by showing clearly that we do – much of the rest will lose its sting. If we are distracted into answering the latest barbs, the damaging charge will go unanswered. Furthermore this line plays to our strengths. It is not true that the government doesn’t know its own mind. What is true is that we haven’t succeeded in articulating it. Please press this line on him as hard as you can.

  The advice is sound, but the speech (six pages, single spacing) will go the way of most of my contributions. It’s solid stuff – sound money, the role of government, managing the public finances, improving public services, jobs
, education, nationhood – it is indeed what we’re about – but it won’t set the valleys alight, it won’t do the trick.

  LATER

  I don’t see how the poor PM can take much more of this. He’s battered from dawn till dusk. PMQs were chaos. Some Labour chap got in with a very funny opening dig suggesting that the government was beginning to look like the seaside hotel that’s just collapsed and crumbled down the cliff face, and John Smith followed up with a triple whammy exploiting Norman’s barbs from yesterday. The PM did his best, but he played straight into Smith’s hand:

  PM: As one of my predecessors might have said, we’ve had a little local difficulty. We shall get over it. I am going on with the work in hand.

  Smith: Doesn’t the Prime Minister understand that when he announced business as usual this morning he caused apprehension throughout the land?

  The only good moment in the Chamber came later when Archie Hamilton gave a little gem of a four-minute resignation statement.300 It was wry, funny and self-deprecatory; the antithesis of what Norman gave us yesterday. Archie told us he was looking forward ‘to spending more time with – pause – my constituents.’

  Word has just reached us from No. 10. Stephen’s speech has been gratefully received and will form a substantial part of the PM’s Welsh oration. Well, yes, perhaps this is a weekend for being dull-but-worthy. Let’s get back to basics.

  MONDAY 14 JUNE 1993

  The full complement of Q gathered at No. 10 for a splendid lunch in the state dining room. A drained and rather blotchy-looking PM presided. The gathering was arranged a while ago to celebrate our achievements. Tony Durrant, as chairman, made a little speech, rather sweet and bumbly, reminding the PM that we’re his secret weapon – good men (plus one woman, Angela Knight)301 ready to go over the top at a moment’s notice. He said it as if he believed it – and, in truth, there is a value in what we do. We meet once a week and a little bit of bonding is no bad thing; we can be briefed on what to say; we can be relied on to ask whatever questions the whips provide; those of us with the requisite courage/foolhardiness/ambition turn up in the Chamber and do our best to bate the opposition. No doubt it could be much more effective, but it’s better than nothing.