Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  TUESDAY 8 MARCH 1994

  The PM has had rather a frustrating time with Jimmy Young [on BBC Radio 2]: ‘I shall fight on as leader whatever the outcome of the European elections. I was elected with the largest vote any party or any leader has ever had…’ I have had rather a frustrating morning at the Treasury. I began by sitting in on Alan Howarth’s delegation to see Sir John Cope about tax breaks for charities. I think John had forgotten we were coming. He was genial (as ever) but you felt he hadn’t the least grasp of the detail of the subject and he certainly had no plans to do anything very much about it. Perhaps there is nothing he can do, but come away from a comparable meeting with any number of other ministers – Widdecombe, Hanley, Burt,377 Freeman, Maclean, Norris – and they give the delegation the impression that you have been galvanised by them, that this is an issue of as much burning importance to you as to them, and that, thanks to this very meeting, it’s going to be Action this Day – and, in Ann’s case, invariably it is action this day.

  John, bless him, seemed to think the meeting had gone rather well and together we toddled along to the Chancellor who, when I told him the backroom boys at No. 10 were keen to get the Treasury team ‘out there’ putting our message across, gave me very short shrift. ‘We never stop. I spend half my life lunching for England. You tell ’em.’

  I am forty-six today and weighing in at thirteen stone. I can live with the former, but I should do something about the latter. (I asked Michèle what she’d like for her birthday – ‘You to be the weight you were the day we met.’ If I really loved her I would deliver, wouldn’t I? Well, I do really love her, so what’s stopping me? a) Exercise doesn’t interest me at all and b) when the Committee breaks tonight I shall be in the Smoking Room having a glass or three. Resolution: from tomorrow, no from tonight, no spirits and a salad every lunch.)

  TUESDAY 15 MARCH 1994

  Bad news for the PM. Sir George Gardiner, death’s-head at any feast, has been re-elected chairman of the 92 Group – which now boasts 107 members, all too many of them openly hostile to Major. ‘Our’ man, Sir Anthony Durant, chairman of Q, good-hearted buffer, to the right (sort of) but wouldn’t rock the boat, got nowhere. And I shall get nowhere with the memo I’ve drafted to give to the Chancellor:

  Talking widely – here, outside, with the press, in the city – I get the impression that there is a feeling that, as yet, this Chancellorship has no theme.

  Does it matter? Yes:

  a) Because it isn’t true

  b) Because No. 10 rightly want key departments to develop the substance of the ‘core values’ that underpin the government’s philosophy

  c) Because if our central purpose is not understood we will get no credit for our part in the recovery, and when we respond to events/figures we will appear to be doing so defensively

  What do we do?

  Agree the themes and then set them out fully, repeatedly, persistently over the coming months.

  This won’t happen by chance. There needs to be a proper programme – an agreed plan – of who says what to who and when.

  As well as speeches and interviews, we need to work with the appropriate press and with the business/financial communities. It is not a matter of aimless ‘lunching for England’, but a concerted campaign to get the underlying purpose of the government’s economic strategy understood and consequently to allow the press and business to share in the ownership of that strategy.

  Even though this is the approach the Labour Party takes, even though this is what No. 10 wants, even though Portillo and Tony Nelson certainly agree, and David Ruffley is bouncing about with enthusiasm, I know it’s a waste of time. KC has been in government so long,378 and is so comfortable in government, so easy with the way he handles it himself, he simply can’t see the necessity. If he’s himself, and simply talks good sense, he assumes the message will get across.

  Anyway, it’s worth a try. Oppenheim clearly thinks it’s laughable.

  THURSDAY 17 MARCH 1994

  The twenty-five calls made a day to the Citizen’s Charter Helpline cost £68 each. This unhappy bit of intelligence is not something we want raised at PMQs. One of the roles of A and Q is to ensure that all the questions coming from our side give the PM an opportunity either to shine or to bash the opposition or, preferably, to do both. Unfortunately, our leader doesn’t make it any easier for us to the recruit helpful questioners by the way in which he regularly appears to ‘put down’ those that have been ‘put up’ to ask him planted questions. Some poor sap – Olga [Maitland], Nick Hawkins,379 anyone, me – is given a question, gets up, asks it precisely as drafted and agreed with No. 10, and instead of getting a warm and winning reply, is given a sort of patronising brush-off by the boss who appears to snicker in collusion with the opposition implying ‘Who are these children coming up with these creepy questions?’

  Today I sought out Seb [Coe] and gave him a soft-ball question on the Missing Persons Helpline. It was topical, it was safe and it was what No. 10 wanted. It was not a success. Seb struggled to get it out, lost his way, stumbled and dried. (The Chamber is a bearpit.) The PM gave him fairly short shrift.

  Last night, in the large ministerial conference room, Douglas Hurd held a pow-wow on QMV and ‘enlargement’.380 He was smooth, emollient, ‘Hurdy’, but there’s going to be trouble, no doubt about it. I reported this to the Chancellor at lunch. He just can’t see it.

  ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’

  ‘Perhaps you should spend some time in the Tea Room,’ I ventured.

  ‘How can I when I’ve got to make all these speeches you keep urging on me?’ He laughed. He’s irresistible. But, increasingly, he’s out of touch. Howard, Portillo, Lilley, they work the Tea Room. Howard told me he eats in the Dining Room at least once a week ‘without fail – you must’. KC simply assumes good sense will win the day. It isn’t necessarily so.

  I’m writing this in the Finance Bill Committee. Alistair Darling381 (not a wholly attractive specimen but needle-sharp) is droning on. When we break I’m going over to Jonathan Aitken’s for another soirée with Richard Nixon. As Bernard Jenkin382 put it, ‘The Great Host and the Great Liar with the great and the good at their feet.’

  TUESDAY 22 MARCH 1994

  At PMQs I asked a question on inward investment – that was the brief. As I got to my feet, the jeering from the other side was extraordinary. Purple-faced Enright with a jabbing finger, yelling ‘Give back the money!’ I ploughed into my question, but the roar grew. Madam Speaker called the House to order and I started again. I got through it and the PM’s reply was fine. It was an unpleasant experience, but one, I suppose, that I’ll have to get used to. Several years ago, in the last parliament, Quentin Davies had some problem with sheep on his farm – a critical report from the farming inspectorate or some such – and, to this day, whenever he gets to his feet in the Chamber there are sustained braying choruses of ‘Baa! Baa!’ from the opposition benches. It is all very silly.

  The serious news is that the PM is standing firm on QMV. And he thinks he can do it without delaying the enlargement process. The nub of the issue is that when we joined the Community the way QMV worked meant that the representatives of about 30 per cent of the Community’s population could be voted down by the remaining 70 per cent. Now the ratio is about 40 per cent: 60 per cent. That’s a trend that’s going to be perpetuated on enlargement. There are ninety votes on the council of ministers. Delors and the Commission are proposing that the blocking minority be extended to twenty-seven. We want it to stick at twenty-three – and, according to the PM, at his rabble-rousing best, ‘We will not be moved by phoney threats to delay enlargement.’ He had our sceptics whooping with delight as he derided John Smith as ‘the man who likes to say yes in Europe – Monsieur Oui, the poodle of Brussels.’ (Yes, it is rather a cringe-making turn of phrase – produced, I imagine, by Jonathan Hill – and one the poor PM may come to regret. But it prompted a roar and, at least for this afternoon, it did the trick. The
problem is, the way Douglas Hurd tells it, without bringing down the whole pack of cards the PM won’t be able to deliver.)

  THURSDAY 24 MARCH 1994

  A bumpy ride for the boss at PMQs. He had to sweet-talk Teddy Taylor on the European Court, shore up the Attorney-General on the muddle over public interest immunity orders, and rebuff John Smith who (frankly) got it spot on when he accused the PM of trying to face two ways simultaneously, appeasing the sceptics one day, reassuring the rest of us the next. We did our yobbish best to barrack Smith, boorishly shouting him down as best we could (with Oppenheim fearlessly to the fore), but he wasn’t thrown. He’s impressive. And the PM was valiant. He was standing firm. Twenty-seven isn’t on. He won’t have it.

  MONDAY 28 MARCH 1994

  We had the Lilleys to dinner last night. Joanna [Lumley], bless her, kept the table on a roar and Stevie [Barlow] was funny and delightful. Gail [Lilley] was alternately skittish and daffy; Peter was subdued, weary, washed-out, no doubt wondering why he’d let himself in for an evening of tiresome banter when at home he’s got three red boxes overflowing with unfinished paperwork. And, of course, he’s brooding about the QMV debacle. The PM, having said ‘No surrender’, is now suing for peace. Hurd is going to come back with a compromise and Peter and Portillo and Michael Howard and Redwood will huff and puff, but they’ll be outgunned by Hurd and Heseltine and Clarke. Is it customary to have a Cabinet so fundamentally – and openly – divided? Did Ted and Sir Alec and Macmillan have to put up with all this?

  TUESDAY 29 MARCH 1994

  A horrible afternoon. Last week the PM marched us up to the top of the hill and today he marched us down again – and at PMQs he paid the price. It was the worst it’s ever been. We heard him in stony silence. It was the silence that made it so eerie and uncomfortable.

  I am afraid A and Q failed to deliver. We didn’t have the stomach for it, we lacked the courage. Our man was alone out there and we did nothing to help him. We sat on our hands, we averted our eyes. John Smith asked simply, ‘Does the Prime Minister agree with the Foreign Secretary that the blocking minority in the enlarged community will be twenty-seven?’ The PM flannelled. John Smith repeated the question. The PM flannelled some more. For the third time, Smith repeated the question: ‘The blocking majority will be twenty-seven? Yes or no?’ The PM was quite white, his mouth was dry and his hands shook as he held his folder. The other side jeered and we all sat in complete silence looking at our knees. It was desperate. He was so alone – and I suppose we left him there to swing in the wind because this particular nightmare was of his making, his and his alone.

  Normally, between twenty or thirty, maybe more, stand up on our side looking to be called. Today, nobody. We reached the last question and the Speaker turned to our side of the House and there was no one standing – no one at all. Not one of us ready to put his head above the parapet. She scanned our benches – an eternity seemed to pass (this not an exaggeration) – and then, just as she was going to give the opposition an unprecedented extra question, at the far end of our side of the Chamber, Simon Burns383 slowly got to his feet and asked a question about the road-building programme in his constituency.

  It saved the moment – and from Simon’s point of view it will have made his career. I know now how the system works here. It may seem absurd, but I guarantee that – regardless of his capacity or qualifications – that moment of courage will guarantee Simon a job. I told him so. Well done him. He stood up when it counted, when no one else would.

  From Questions we went straight on to the PM’s formal statement. He did his best to dress it up as a reasonable compromise, but it was hopeless. Smith made mincemeat of him, even Ashdown scored. The whips had orchestrated interventions from the loyalist knights of the shires – Dame Jill,384 Cranley [Onslow], Archie Hamilton, Peter Emery385 – ‘We’ll bring on the big beasts’ is what the Chief Whip will have said – but they made no difference. The PM had promised us a triumph: he brought us a humiliating climb-down. That was all there was to it. Unctuous praise from demented Euro-enthusiasts (Ian Taylor, Hugh Dykes) hardly helped, and probably encouraged Tony Marlow to deliver what he clearly felt was the coup de grâce:

  ‘As my Right Honourable Friend has no authority, credibility or identifiable policy in this area, why does he not stand aside and make way for somebody else who can provide the party and the country with direction and leadership?’

  The Labour benches rocked with excitement. ‘Resign! Resign!’ they brayed. On our side there was an intake of breath, heads were shaken, there were desultory cries of shame – and when the PM came back with a jibe at Marlow’s expense – ‘It might be a useful novelty if, now and again, he was prepared to support the government he was elected to support’ – we managed a bit of a cheer and Skinner punctured the tension with a nice aside: ‘Who’s going to clean up the blood?’

  All in all it was a hateful hour and, as I write this, around six o’clock, in the Finance Bill Committee, the feeling is that the PM may survive the week but, after today, he can’t survive the summer.

  I get the impression that at the Cabinet meeting this morning, Howard led the way urging a rejection of the compromise, with Portillo and Lilley weighing in, and John Redwood returning to the attack a second time. But Hurd had to win, not just because he’s got Heseltine and Clarke with him, but because the second tier – Gummer, Hunt, MacGregor, Waldegrave, Mayhew, Bottomley – are with him too.

  This is the PM’s fifty-first birthday. For a moment, just before he went into the Chamber, I came face to face with him behind the Speaker’s chair. I smiled weakly and muttered ‘Good luck’. He squeezed my arm.

  WEDNESDAY 30 MARCH 1994

  Tomorrow we’re off to Framlingham, to Simon and Beckie for Easter. I’m just in from supper with Stephen D. We went to his favourite Italian, Pasta Prego in Beauchamp Place. We had the same food and came to the same and fairly obvious conclusion: it’s looking pretty dire for the PM.

  ‘How did he get to become leader?’

  ‘Nobody knew who he was. Thatcher thought he was “one of us”. We thought he was one of us.’

  ‘Which he is?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  That’s the crux of the matter. No one’s quite sure. Major’s a natural charmer, a past-master at listening to what you have to say, absorbing it and then playing it back to you. Clearly Stephen feels he should never have got beyond the rank of Chief Secretary, but he did and he has and now, three and a half years down the road, his number is up. Sir Peter Tapsell’s verdict is gaining sway: ‘Nice chap, just not up to snuff.’

  Who next? It’s too soon for Portillo. It’s too soon for Stephen. Heseltine’s pitching it just right: wooing the right with his plans to sell-off the Post Office (while letting us know that it’s Douglas Hurd and Tony Newton who are urging caution), soft-pedalling on his Euro-enthusiasm, looking fit again, looking like a grown-up. Ken Clarke remains my candidate, but he’s missing the moment – and, oddly, for such an instinctive political animal, he doesn’t seem to realise.

  TUESDAY 12 APRIL 1994

  I invited John Gielgud to lunch to celebrate his ninetieth birthday. There was just the four of us: Sir John, Michèle, me and Glenda [Jackson]. (Glenda was Michèle’s idea – and inspired. She looks so sour, but she was sweet and gossipy and exactly right for the occasion.) He arrived in Central Lobby at one, on the dot, twinkling and cherubic, amazingly upright and steady.

  ‘It’s a great honour that you should join us, Sir John,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I’m delighted to have been asked. All my real friends are dead, you know.’

  The stories just poured out of him. ‘Marlene [Dietrich] invited me to hear her new record. We were in New York. We all went and gathered round the gramophone, and when we were settled the record was put on. It was simply an audience applauding her! We sat through the entire first side and then we listened to the other side: more of the same!’

  He asked after Simon and said he remembered his gra
ndmother, Jean Cadell, ‘so well. She was a fine actress: she did what she did so well. She played Prism with me in New York, when Margaret moved up to play Lady Bracknell instead of Edith.’386

  ‘Why didn’t Dame Edith play the part in America?’

  She was introduced to a blind devotee of the theatre who heard her speak and said to her, ‘You are much too beautiful to play Lady Bracknell’, and that was that. Edith was very much concerned about her beauty, you know. Margaret agreed to move up from Miss Prism to play Lady Bracknell on condition she could model her performance entirely on Edith’s. It was typically modest of her. [Pause. Sip of wine. Twinkle.] Of course, Margaret’s Lady Bracknell was very much the Lady Mayoress to Edith’s Queen Mary.

  That prompted Queen Mary stories:

  Queen Mary herself enjoyed the theatre. King George enjoyed his play-going at the back of the box, chatting about racing with Sir Edward Elgar. They went to a matinee of Hamlet at the Haymarket and the Queen enquired at what time the performance was due to end. ‘You see, the King always has to have his tea punctually, and he is so anxious not to miss the girl with straws in her hair.’

  The conversational cast list included Orson Welles, Micheál MacLiammoir (was it MacLiammoir or Orson who kept a flashlight up his sleeve so he could illuminate his face on the darkened stage?), Sir Ralph (‘dear Ralph’), Mrs Pat, Kenneth Branagh (‘so clever and so delightful’), Peter Brook (‘so very clever – but oh dear…’), Binkie, Donald Wolfit (‘He hated me, hated me. The feeling was entirely mutual’).