Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  There were thirty-four of us in all, eight already in government, the rest lusting to be. I sat between DD of the SS, as happy as a sandboy now he’s a minister, and Roger Evans, whose elevation to office can’t be far off. (He’s round and rather Dickensian, a lawyer, Welsh and sharp, so that something in the Welsh Office is as good as guaranteed. If you are Welsh or Scots and not a total halfwit eventual preferment is a certainty. Rod Richards302 was there. I think he speaks Welsh so his future is doubly assured.) When the PM gave his response he did his best to summon up some energy, but it simply wasn’t there. He fell back on a few clichés and, unfortunately, he was still speaking when half a dozen of us had to make our excuses and leave. I had to be in the Chamber by 2.30 p.m. as mine was the very first question (urging the Secretary of State for National Heritage to give support to Chester Cathedral) so I sort of bobbed backwards out of the state dining room muttering apologies under my breath while the Prime Minister chuntered on. I paced back to the House with Stephen Milligan. It’s a pleasure to be with him. He is enjoying life here so much even the disasters seem to delight him. He’s a loyalist through and through, but he expatiated on the complete failure of the reshuffle with gusto. ‘It’s simply blown up in the PM’s face. Too little too late.’

  TUESDAY 15 JUNE 1993

  It’s 9.30 on Tuesday night. I’m in Committee Room 10 where we are on Day 6 of our weary trudge through the fetid swamp of the 1993 Finance Bill. The crone of Cambridge303 is on her feet droning on about the costs of relocation while poor Michael Portillo, bored out of his elegant skull, is immediately in front of me, head in hands, wishing he was at the Mansion House listening to the new Chancellor of the Exchequer making his debut there. Michael bought white tie and tails for the occasion and then found that Harriet Hopeless304 wouldn’t pair. She’s a cow. (She’s also an inexplicable half-inch away from being wonderfully attractive. In the right light and when she’s facing you – so you don’t notice the incipient widow’s hump – she’s almost gorgeous, but then she opens her mouth and suddenly you realise she’s not that pretty, she’s not that bright and – worst sin of all – she has no sense of humour.)

  LATER

  It’s twenty past midnight and we’re still here. Apparently all-night sittings are part of the macho tradition of the Finance Bill. At 11.30 p.m. we took a half-hour break, agreed between the committee chairman and the whips on each side. We descended to the Smoking Room and I began by buying Michael a drink and ended up buying a bottle of champagne for the gang: MP, Stephen [Dorrell], John Cope, David Amess and my new whip, Michael Brown. He’s delightful, full of Tiggerish bounce, but I’d have thought a surprising choice for the Whips’ Office. He doesn’t seem particularly discreet (or bright) and I imagine he’s gay. (I don’t know, of course. Unless one has actually witnessed the act of darkness taking place, how can one know? The rumours persist about Portillo and Lilley, and about Alan Duncan305 and William Hague, but is there any truth in them? Almost certainly not, but we don’t like to discount them totally because we do enjoy the frisson of possible scandal.) David Amess is another wholly likeable fellow, a complete quainty whose chief delight in life (I am not exaggerating) seems to be to go off with Ann Widdecombe to say prayers.

  MP said that the Chancellor’s Mansion House speech, at least in draft, had been quite ordinary. Stephen told me that David Cameron has been sacked as a special adviser. This is a mistake. He may come from the right, but he has astute political antennae and a fabulous turn of phrase. I suppose Bill Robinson [another of Lamont’s special advisers] will be on the way out too. I’m having a drink with him tomorrow. They were good people, funny and companionable. I’ll be sorry to see them go.

  In Committee we are allowed to write, read correspondence, do paperwork, but books and newspapers are not allowed. I want to read the obituaries of Les Dawson and Bernard Bresslaw. I’ve got the papers with me, but I don’t dare produce them. Old hands photocopy whole books in the Library, and read their novels in committee page by photocopied page.

  I’m shattered because I was here by seven this morning, up in the turret, guarding my place in the Ten Minute Rule Bill queue. At the Equity reception in the Jubilee Room I was telling Denis Norden306 about it and he simply didn’t believe me. He simply couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t believe that I had had to sit alone in a windowless room for nearly three hours simply waiting to knock on a door and present a piece of paper to a clerk in the hope of securing an opportunity to address the House of Commons in a fortnight’s time on a proposed piece of legislation that will never materialise … He said, ‘Is this democracy?’ We moved from democracy to civilisation and he said that, for him, Radio 4 epitomises true civilisation – not just the plays and the documentaries, but the oddities: ‘the sound of people squelching up the Andes…’

  EVEN LATER

  It is five in the morning. Dawn is breaking across the Thames. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has laid his head in his arm to sleep. Harriet Hopeless is sitting immediately opposite me, slumbering gently. (I can say I have slept with Harriet Harman, and I shall.) Looking around it seems most of the committee is dozing fitfully. This is democracy in action. Would that Dennis could see us now!

  This is a daft way to carry on.

  THURSDAY 17 JUNE 1993

  Tony Marlow is telling anyone who’ll listen that John Major has outlived his usefulness and should now do the decent thing and go. Mrs T. has emerged from the undergrowth to endorse her successor. She’ll stand by her man. When I suggest at prayers that they’re both barking in their different ways, the Chancellor leans back in his chair so he’s out of Portillo’s eye-line and pulls a very funny face, implying he fully agrees with my analysis but had it occurred to me that possibly the Chief Secretary mightn’t.

  Thursday prayers is now a leisurely lunchtime gathering in the Chancellor’s room at the Treasury. A generous spread of sandwiches, some take-away Indian bibs and bobs, and a bottle or three of wine. (We have Treasury Questions today, so Portillo, Cope, Dorrell and Nelson stick to orange juice and water. The Chancellor is more relaxed.) It’s a jolly occasion, easy, informal and pleasantly gossipy. No officials, just the new special advisers (a rather serious-looking lady and a tousled-top boy, I’ve got neither their names nor the measure of them yet),307 the ministers and the PPSs. The Clarke and Lamont styles could hardly be more different. The manner of their PPSs could hardly be more different either. William Hague was quiet, conscientious, courteous and attentive, ever at his master’s beck and call. Phillip Oppenheim308 is extraordinary. He turns up late, leans nonchalantly across his boss to collect his glass and his plate of sandwiches and then lounges at the end of the table leafing through the Financial Times. He’s self-assured, self-absorbed, self-indulgent and apparently fearless. He’s charming. I rather like him. I imagine he’s clever too, so he can afford to be lazy. He’s seen at once that I’m the eager-beaver naive new boy and he’s going to leave all the work to me.

  TUESDAY 22 JUNE 1993

  Michael Heseltine has had a heart attack in Venice. The pictures of him being carted off to hospital, his spindly legs exposed to the world, were certainly an invasion of his privacy. Interestingly, the Tea Room reaction has been one of shock rather than sympathy, concern for the government’s dwindling majority rather than concern for Michael’s health. People here admire him, respect him. They don’t appear to love – or even like – him very much.

  By uncanny coincidence, Heseltine’s henchman, Colonel Mates, the man who led Heseltine’s campaign to oust Thatcher in 1990, is also swinging in the wind. He’s hanging on (just) but he’s doomed. It turns out that even after Nadir had jumped bail, Colonel Bonehead let one of Nadir’s PR people lend him a car for his wife to use! Can you believe it? It turns out too that the party accepted at least £440,000 from Nadir, so now we’re all tarred with the same brush. Naturally, and quite skilfully (Margaret Beckett309 is ugly but effective), the Labour Party is milking it for all its worth. They’re going to use their o
pposition Day debate this afternoon to rake up every disreputable ne’er-do-well who has contributed to our cause in recent years – and there seem to be dozens of them – and all we can throw back at them is Robert Maxwell.

  LATER

  Committee Room 10: I trust we’re not going for another all-nighter. I was here at 7.30 a.m. because the BBC came to film me for the Bookmark programme on Trollope. They turned up at 8.00 and I took them off to the deserted Chamber where they set up their lights and the camera and I did my stuff. We were in the middle of the third or fourth take when a posse of doorkeepers burst in: ‘Stop! You can’t film in here. No one has filmed inside the Chamber of the House of Commons – ever!’ Well, I thought, they have now.

  I tried to persuade Portillo to take part in the programme, but he wouldn’t. ‘Trollope is the PM’s territory. I wouldn’t presume.’

  I’m going through the post. It never ends. I have had an amusing letter from Norman [Lamont]. When he was sacked I sent a note of commiseration, but somehow it got snarled up in the system. I saw him at the end of last week and he said, ‘Are you ignoring me?’ I said ‘No, of course not.’ He said, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be seen talking to me. Consorting with the enemy … If you want to get on you need to watch the company you keep. The eyes and the ears of the whips are everywhere…’

  Anyway, my note eventually reached him:

  It has arrived! And I was glad not to miss it!

  ‘Oh you forgive my little jokes on thee

  And I’ll forgive thy great big joke on me.’

  FRIDAY 25 JUNE 1993

  Michael Mates has gone and not before time. I’m on my way to Chester where my weekend promises visits to three schools, two factories, the Volunteer Stroke Service, the Muir Housing Association, the Lache Carnival, and the cub scouts at Pulford, plus four hours of surgery and a ‘working breakfast’ with the Association officers. How come this is how I spend my weekends when the President of the Board of Trade manages to spend his enjoying the Venetian high life? While I’m flogging the streets of Chester he’s quaffing and sluicing in the Cipriani. Still, we must count our blessings. At least I’ve not had a heart attack. (Richard Ottaway310 says the heart attack was serious, but not dangerous and ‘Michael will bounce back’. Even so, the Tea Room view is that this finally puts paid to his leadership prospects.)

  TUESDAY 29 JUNE 1993

  9.00 a.m.: With the Home Secretary [Michael Howard] to discuss funding for the fire service. He’s needle sharp, briefed to the eyeballs, tough as they come, but there’s an almost imperceptible twinkle there too.

  11.00 a.m.: With Roger Freeman and the delegation from Chester City Transport. He sweet-talks them to perfection. Even I fall for his schmooze. At PMQs I put my question (on the Manchester bid for the Olympics) as agreed, and the PM gives a full and fulsome answer as planned. Even though it’s all set up I marvel at how nervous I still feel when I ask a question. I can address an audience of 2,000 after dinner without a note and without a worry. Stand up in the Chamber, with 600 baying colleagues all around, and getting through an anodyne five lines suddenly becomes a stomach-churning ordeal. But my moment of anxiety (which you would not have noticed had you been watching) was as nothing compared with what was to follow.

  As I sat down, Michael Mates got up. ‘Madam Speaker, This is the third and I trust final resignation statement the House will hear during this session. I did not want to make it. I did not want to resign…’ He got off to a predictable start, telling us how much he’d loved his time in Northern Ireland, how grateful he had been to the PM for his support, how he had never sought to plead Asil Nadir’s innocence or establish it – then, suddenly, the genial ramble took a more sinister turn as Mates launched himself on what appeared to be a detailed, highly damaging full-scale attack on the Serious Fraud Office. Madam Speaker intervened, warning him off matters that might be sub judice. Mates persisted, accusing the SFO of shady dealings, of underhand operations, of putting ‘quite improper pressure’ on the trial judge, Mr Justice Tucker. The clerk kept swivelling round in his seat urging the Speaker to get Mates to stop. She tried and tried and tried again. She must have interrupted him eight, nine times. She was angry, she was flustered and she was confused. I don’t think she was listening to what he had to say. She was just determined to stop him. But he wouldn’t be stopped. On he went. It was agony. I didn’t follow everything he was saying – I don’t think anyone did – but we got the gist of it: the SFO had been up to no good and someone, somewhere along the line, was intent on perverting the course of justice. It was a truly bizarre, uncomfortable half-hour.

  THURSDAY 15 JULY 1993

  It’s four o’clock. In the Chamber it’s the Welsh Language Bill. At Buckingham Palace there’s a garden party. I am bidden to both, but I am going to neither. I’ve decided instead to spend a couple of hours here in the Silent Room in the Library, catching up. This is my favourite place. When I am no longer an MP being in this room is what I’ll miss.

  I hardly ever go to my office. It’s bright, fresh, modern, equipped with comfy armchair and TV, but what’s the point of being a member of the House of Commons if you’re going to have to base yourself halfway down Millbank? I like to be here and I’ve got the secretarial set-up sorted now. Jenny [Noll] and Di [Sabin]311 come over to see me here: we sit at a table in the Cromwell Lobby and do the correspondence there.

  The other disadvantage of 7 Millbank is getting from there to here for unexpected votes. There’s six minutes from the moment the division bell goes to the moment they slam the doors and unless you move sharpish you’re cutting it fine. Last night I cut it fine anyway. I was at the Blue Ball to conduct the auction (they think I love doing it – I hate it) and we had to dash back for the vote at ten, setting off from the top of Park Lane at about three minutes to the hour. William Waldegrave gave me a lift, which was good of him, except that he was completely laid back, indifferent as to whether we did or didn’t make it in time, while I was having a minor heart attack. He was being very amiable and gossipy (such a pity I wasn’t his PPS, poor John Patten is clearly having a complete breakdown etc.) but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think was ‘We’re going to miss the vote!’ In the event, of course, we made it with a couple of minutes to spare.

  It turns out John Patten is now in hospital – ‘viral gastroenteritis’. As we all know, the PM should have fired him when he had the chance – or, as Stephen says, ‘possibly not have appointed him in the first place’. The PM had another rough ride at PMQs. John Smith skewered him fairly comprehensively on Maastricht and the Social Chapter. Norman [Lamont] teased him beautifully with a question congratulating the new Chancellor on ‘the rapid success of his policies’. Instead of a gracious and good-humoured response, the PM was curt – giving the impression that Norman had got to him. He looked pretty ashen again. His nerves must be as raw as they come. We’re in for another nightmare week.

  MONDAY 19 JULY 1993

  At 12.15, encouraged by Toby Jessel,312 who is so eccentric I’d have thought him unelectable, I clambered aboard a coach in Speaker’s Yard for the ten-minute ride to Victoria. Along with eighty or so fellow parliamentarians of all parties I was on my way to a rather swish Indian restaurant for the annual Indo-British Parliamentary Lunch. Why on earth did I go? The food was splendid, but what was the point? The speeches were inaudible and the room was too crowded. I suppose I went because I was badgered by Toby (whom I like: his loopiness is engaging) and because I have this sentimental feeling about India. But there really wasn’t any value to it and it confirmed me in my view that, as a rule, freebies are to be avoided.

  I spent the afternoon with the Financial Secretary receiving ‘Budget representations’ from backbenchers. It’s both a relief and a disappointment to find that most of them have as little grip on the detail of the mechanics of managing the economy as I do. There are people who do know their stuff (John Townend,313 Nigel Forman, Quentin Davies),314 but most turn up for the meeting wholly unprepared, with n
othing thought through, and simply mouth whatever banalities are uppermost in their minds. ‘We must do more for manufacturing,’ barks Winterton, but precisely what and how (and with what consequential effects) is not addressed.

  At A and Q the message is clear: this is the week we back our beleaguered leader to the hilt. Whatever he says, whatever he does, we’re here to roar our approval. At Questions we must all get to our feet ready to ask a question even if we know none of us will be called. If only a few get up it makes the PM look isolated. Graham Bright says, ‘It makes a real difference to John. He needs to hear people cheering behind him. If John Smith gets a bigger cheer when he comes into the Chamber than John does, he notices. It throws him.’

  It is 1.00 a.m. We have just finished a string of votes on the Education Bill. The hapless Education Secretary was not with us, but on Thursday he’ll be dragged in from his sickbed. When not voting I’ve been in the Smoking Room, drinking steadily (yes, and fairly heavily) with Lightbown and Chapman. They are both delightful: one is a hippopotamus, the other a bedraggled secretary bird. Lightbown’s loyalty is fierce and consequently both impressive and rather moving. Chapman has a real sweetness: he is gentle and funny and frequently tells you the same story twice in the same evening and then realises and apologises most charmingly. His chief task in the Whips’ Office seems to be to write the daily ‘message’ to Her Majesty. He takes this very seriously. Every day, without fail, he writes to the Queen – I think in longhand – a two- or three-page report of our proceedings and it is driven over to the Palace or flown to Balmoral so that the monarch has ‘a proper flavour of what’s happening here.’ Whenever I make a little joke in the Chamber, Sydney comes up afterwards and says, ‘I’ve told the Queen that story of yours. I think she’ll like it.’