Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  He was extraordinary – and he’s ninety. I said, ‘After lunch, would you like to come to Prime Minister’s Questions? I know the Prime Minister is hoping to pay a small tribute to you.’

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ he looked quite alarmed. ‘I think I might find that a little embarrassing. So kind of him. He is so nice. I think I’ll just slip away quietly, if you don’t mind.’ As we were walking him across Central Lobby back to the St Stephen’s entrance, he paused and smiled and fluted gently, ‘This has been great fun. You know, the last time I was here Mr Bonar Law was answering the questions.’

  We waved him into the street and I went into the Chamber and, on cue, as arranged with No. 10, asked the question prompting the PM’s little tribute to Sir John. At 3.30 I followed the PM out and went with him to him room.

  ‘Sir John decided to slip away,’ I said. ‘He didn’t want any fuss.’

  ‘I wanted to give him a cup of tea. And say thank you.’

  ‘He’s amazing.’

  ‘Yes. During one of our recent bouts of bad publicity, he sent Norma some beautiful flowers. That was kind.’

  ‘Yes.’

  His face clouded over. ‘How do you think it’s going?’

  ‘Better,’ I said. What should I have said?

  ‘Do you think so? Have you heard the latest? The Liberals are publishing a document with disloyal quotes from sixty Conservatives – sixty colleagues. Can you believe it?’

  ‘They’re a minority.’

  ‘Are they? Are they?’

  ‘Yes.’ I thought perhaps it was my turn to squeeze his arm. ‘Onward and upward.’

  I left him looking pretty dejected. He’s disappointed in us and too many of us are disappointed in him.

  WEDNESDAY 13 APRIL 1994

  It is 1.32 a.m. and all’s quiet in the Silent Room at the end of the Commons Library – or relatively quiet. Raymond Robertson387 is snoring gently. The other seven are sleeping peacefully. Matthew Carrington388 and Peter Luff are reading, and I am reflecting on the absurdity of it all. In the Chamber they’re grinding slowly through the final stages of the Criminal Justice Bill. With a bit of luck, the last vote will be about an hour from now.

  Bob Cryer has died, killed in a car crash. I’m not sure what to say.

  MONDAY 25 APRIL 1994

  The word is that Douglas Hurd is not going to step down at the reshuffle after all. He is planning to stay on to ‘shore up’ the PM. John Carlisle389 is saying in public what in the Tea Room we already know: if the Euro-elections are a disaster the avalanche could bury Major.

  The only President in the history of the US to be forced to resign in order to avoid impeachment has died. He certainly impressed me. Jonathan has written an affecting tribute in The Times – not whitewashing the dark side, the vindictiveness, the paranoia, the ‘sordid and shameful mess’ of Watergate, but checking off the achievements too – desegregating the Southern schools, ending the Vietnam war, ending the draft, saving Israel from annihilation, detente with the Soviet Union, opening the door to China. He tells a fascinating story of a conversation he had with Nixon about his mother – who never kissed him. ‘My mother,’ said Nixon, ‘could communicate far more than others could with a lot of sloppy talk and even more sloppy kissing and hugging. I can never remember her saying to any of us, “I love you” – she didn’t have to.’ During his wilderness years in the ’60s he said the real reason he continued to want the presidency was to honour his mother’s ideals. She was a Quaker. Last month when we stood on the pavement in Lord North Street and waved him off his last words to Jonathan were, ‘Keep on fighting!’

  We’ve just returned from Raymond and Caroline Seitz’s farewell party at the ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park. Michèle says it’s the best party of its kind she’s ever been to. Certainly, Ray has been the most successful – and popular – US ambassador anybody can remember. He exemplifies ‘discreet charm’. He’s wooed and won the entire British establishment, and they all seemed to be on parade tonight. A. N. Wilson and I shared high church memories: smells and bells at St Stephen’s, Gloucester Road. Peter Ackroyd was fruity and very funny – and quite won me over: he said he’d loved my biography of Dan Leno. Michèle said, ‘You could see he was drunk.’ There was a lovely moment at the end, when we were lining up to take our leave. We were standing in the queue, just behind the Frosts – (David: ‘Gyles, a joy, an absolute joy!’) – and up strode the Heseltines, saw the length of the line, stalked grandly past us and went straight to the front. ‘No line-jumping,’ said Ray with a smile and back the humbled Heseltines came. Democracy in action. Michèle said, ‘That man mustn’t become Prime Minister.’

  TUESDAY 3 MAY 1994

  Douglas Hurd has been offering us ‘a few home truths’. The 200 or so MPs The Times claims would support moves to loosen links with Brussels are ‘out of touch with reality’, according to the Foreign Secretary. Unfortunately their number appears to include the Chief Secretary to the Treasury who – without consulting either KC or the PM – has unilaterally ruled out the single currency claiming it will lead ‘inevitably’ to a united Europe which ‘people don’t want’. Gillian Shephard has helped keep the pot boiling nicely by offering a school-marmish rebuke to ‘the contenders’. It certainly is extraordinary that members of the Cabinet seem to be openly jockeying for pole position.

  David Evans390 is adding to the general sense of degringolade by demanding a clearout of the Cabinet. He wants at least six of them sacked – with Fowler, Patten, Gummer and Waldegrave heading the list. (I think Fowler’s wanting out anyway and Patten should have gone last time round. We’re not overstocked with talent and experience so I imagine Gummer will stay and I’ve now changed my mind about Waldegrave’s prospects. Watching the PM’s body language when he’s with William, I am certain that so long as JM is PM Waldegrave will be in the Cabinet.) Amazingly, the Evans outburst is the front page splash. Of course, we know Evans is simply a music-hall turn who likes to play the loutish loud-mouthed Essex man for a laugh. The press know it too, but that’s not the way they’re writing it up. Evans is a member of the 1922 executive, ‘an influential senior figure in the party’. In truth, he’s a tosspot. In the papers he’s a ‘Top Tory’.

  John Smith had fun with all this at PMQs, but given his impossible wicket the PM didn’t do too badly. He wasn’t cowed. He hit back: ‘Unlike the right hon. gentleman, at least I am not faced with senior ministers emigrating to New Zealand.’391 Energy, attack, humour – deploy all three at once and both sides of the House give you credit.

  After PMQs the Chamber emptied and we proceeded to the second reading of our new Education Bill – with only dedicated education nuts (Jim Pawsey,392 Harry Greenway,393 Rhodes Boyson394 etc.) and professional toadies (Brandreth, step forward) in attendance. As far as I can see this is a completely unnecessary piece of legislation – a perfect example of ‘I tinker therefore I am.’ No doubt teacher training can and should be improved, but this Bill isn’t going to make any real difference on the ground. And bashing the student unions is harking back to an agenda that was looking pretty tired ten years ago, isn’t it? (My friend Graham Riddick thinks not. He thinks there’s still mileage in it. I’m sure he’s wrong and I sense there’s increasingly a problem for Conservatives of his ilk: what are they going to do when we’ve slain all the dragons?)

  In the Chamber, of course, I cheered on the government. In the Tea Room I raised one or two reservations with the Secretary of State [John Patten], who was looking more than ever like an oddly corsetted Regency fop. Tea cup in one hand, pinkie extended, other hand held close to chest, palm outwards, waving my concerns away, he closed his eyes, ‘Not to worry, my dear. Not to worry. Trust me, trust me.’

  Word in the lobby is that No. 10 is briefing that the PM has rapped Portillo over the knuckles. A decision on the single European currency is a long way down the road…

  THURSDAY 5 MAY 1994

  We had a 9.00 a.m. meeting at the Treasury to discuss how the gove
rnment can take more credit for the recovery. Stephen kicked off by identifying the problems: a) the absence of a feel-good factor, b) the extent to which any sense of recovery is believed to be despite the government not because of it! Tessa Keswick was least forthcoming. Culpin was the star – amusing, eccentric, spot-on. It was a good hour, less rambly than many and we at least emerged with some specific proposals – which Sarah Hogg should like, which Christopher Meyer will welcome, and which the Chancellor will certainly ignore!

  We’re on the 11.35 train to Chester, steeling ourselves for a long afternoon and evening touring the committee rooms and polling stations.

  FRIDAY 6 MAY 1994

  ‘A night of catastrophe for the Tories.’ Lib Dems have been trouncing us everywhere. Rotherham has a new MP, swept in on a landslide. He’s calling himself Denis MacShane395 … Can this be the Denis Matijasek I knew at Oxford? It will be rather amusing to see him again.

  M has gone back to London, leaving me to spend the day visiting the Cheshire Fire Brigade, the West Cheshire College and the Chester Mobility Centre – all done on automatic pilot. At Michèle’s insistence, I now have a helper in attendance at every surgery – not in the room, but within shouting distance.

  I’m just in from Upton High School and a gala gathering of girl guides – yes, hundreds of teenage girls in uniform – and I realise, while I have many weaknesses, the wrong kind of interest in seventeen-year-olds is not among them.

  SUNDAY 8 MAY 1994

  Here we go again. Poor Michael Brown has been outed by the News of the World. They are bastards. And he is a fool. He took a young man on a Caribbean holiday. There’s some dispute as to the boy’s age, but he’s certainly under twenty-one – and the eighteen-plus legislation doesn’t come onto the statute book before the autumn. He’s leaving the government. Under the circumstances (everybody realises he’s gay, don’t they?) I’m not sure how he got in. He will be very sad because he loved being a whip, relished it. When he took me to sit on the Chief Whip’s table he said to me, ‘This is the happiest dinner of my life. We shall have champagne and I shall pay. When you sit on this table, the senior whip present always pays for the wine. I never thought I could be sitting here like this.’ And now it’s over.

  You’ve got to pity the poor PM too. As Michèle says, ‘That’s Back to Basics gone to buggery.’ (My wife is very funny. When Lord Caithness stepped down, M looked at a picture of him in the paper and said, ‘Well, you can’t say “Chin up!” to him, can you?’)

  THURSDAY 12 MAY 1994

  Ascension Day. We were in Committee Room 10, just getting into our second session on the Education Bill, it wasn’t long after ten-thirty. There was a sudden subdued flurry of people slipping into the room – someone went up and whispered to the chairman, a Labour whip passed a note along their front bench. The chairman got to his feet, ‘Order. I am afraid there has been some terrible news. John Smith has died. I believe we would want to adjourn the committee.’ There was silence. We were stunned: there was a sense of profound shock. The poor Labour people looked so bewildered: they all had tears in their eyes. We went out into the corridor: there was a complete hush. The word spread round the whole Palace in minutes, moments. The people who sit at the tables outside the committee rooms dictating to their secretaries were packing up their papers. People really did not know what to say, where to go, what to do. The Labour people stood around in twos and threes, the women hugged one another, and I noticed that every time one of our people passed one of theirs we instinctively touched a shoulder or an arm and said ‘I’m so sorry’, and I felt we meant it.

  The Tea Room was packed the rest of the morning. At their end they sat and stood, shaking their heads, some crying openly. At ours we were subdued, but once we had got the details – a heart attack this morning, around breakfast time; he’d seemed fine last night at some fund-raising dinner; Margaret Beckett will be their acting leader; there’ll be tributes in the Chamber this afternoon – immediately we agreed on two things: this could save Major and it’s all over for Michael Heseltine.

  The PM opened the tributes and pitched it perfectly: it was simple, sincere, colloquial not oratorical – what he does best. There were nice Major touches: ‘We would share a drink – sometimes tea, sometimes not tea…’ You recognised the man he was talking about. I can’t imagine anyone on our side who could have done it better. Margaret Beckett followed. I thought she was brilliant – moving and very brave. She was sitting next to the poor man at dinner only eighteen hours ago. She kept her tears at bay with a Herculean effort. Kinnock was good, passionate, strong; Ashdown just missed it, too wordy, too much about himself; I wasn’t sure about Kaufman either. The best in a way was Tony Benn – there was old-fashioned eloquence and two messages put across in under a minute: ‘Inside John Smith burned the flame of anger against injustice, and the flame of hope that we can build a better world … He was a man who always said the same wherever he was. For that reason, he was trusted.’

  LATER

  I think I’m going to have a heart attack. No joke. When the tributes finished, around 4.15, the House adjourned and I went over to 7 Millbank to take advantage of the unexpected ‘window’ to have a catch-up session with Jenny. There was a message waiting. Would I call Maz Mahmood on ‘a personal matter’. Because I’d known him at TV-am I called. I was cheery, ‘Hi, how are things?’

  ‘I’m at the News of the World now.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  He didn’t laugh. He said, ‘We’ve had a tip-off that The People are going to run a story about you on Sunday.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A story of a sexual nature.’

  My heart was thumping. I said, ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing.’

  ‘We wondered if you’d like to talk to us first, put your side of the story.’

  My mouth was dry. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘It’s about the girl who came to see you, the girl from the massage parlour, the girl from Pinkies.’

  I think the number I called him on must have been his mobile: 0860-109876. He asked if he could call me back ‘on a better line’ – I presume so he could tape our conversation. I told him the line was quite good enough and that, yes, a woman had visited my surgery and that I’d reported the incident immediately to the police. I told him that I simply didn’t believe any newspaper would run a story about me ‘visiting a massage parlour’ because I had never done so – in Chester or anywhere else. I said, ‘This is a non-story that shouldn’t be dignified with comment of any kind. No one will run with it, Maz, because there’s nothing to run with.’ He then said that he’d heard that The People have ‘three signed affidavits from women who saw you at Pinkies.’

  I told him that I didn’t believe anyone could or would run with it, expressed my sadness that he was using his talents in this ghastly way (‘I’ve got a mortgage’ he said), thanked him for calling and rang off.

  I rang Tim House at Allen & Overy. His view was that it’s a ‘fishing expedition’: ‘they haven’t caught anything because there’s nothing to catch’. I then went straight over to the House. The place was deserted. I went to the Upper Whips’ Office and found Tim Wood and Irvine Patnick.396 I told them the story. (That’s one thing I have learnt: if there’s trouble brewing, never keep it under your hat, tell the whips.) They asked me to give them a written narrative of the whole incident – which I’ve now done and taken to them. It’s 8.00 p.m. I’m going home. I’m drained.

  SUNDAY 15 MAY 1994

  Last night I got back from Chester around 8.00, having spent the afternoon wandering round the Festival of Transport gladhanding and chitchatting mindlessly while all the time my stomach was churning and inside my head I kept thinking, ‘Will they dredge up something? What will they run? God, how I hate all this.’

  The moment I got in Michèle said:

  I’ve made a decision. We’re not going to put up with this. Fuck them. We have nothing to hide. I have led a totally blameless l
ife. I have done nothing wrong, illegal, illicit, questionable, ever. EVER! I am not going to let these bastards ruin my life. We’re going to have a new policy. If anyone calls with any allegation of any kind, we’re simply going to say, ‘Publish whatever you want – and fuck off’.

  Needless to say, I do not feature in either The People or the News of the World – where my place is taken by poor Nick Scott397 under the headline: ‘Lying MP and the disabled bisexual’! To achieve this ludicrous headline they’ve conflated two stories: Nick, the 56-year-old minister, ‘lying’ to the House over the Disability Bill, and Nick, the young lothario, ‘cuddling and kissing’ a ‘bisexual disabled woman’/judge’s daughter on occasions unspecified but around about a quarter of a century ago! Nick shares the front page with a royal exclusive: ‘Lusty Linley made me go wild in bed … Six-foot blonde Laura Horton shared nights of passion with Viscount David Linley. “David’s a truly wonderful lover with a terrific body – and such an erotic kisser”. Full story: page 30.’

  Week in, week out, these tawdry papers trample over the lives of the famous, the not-so-famous and the ever-so-slightly well-known. It’s horrendous. Footballers, actors, politicians, we’re all game. If this is the price of life in the public eye, it shouldn’t have to be. I told M – which I hadn’t told her before – that sometime last year the Mail on Sunday called. They spoke to one of the children, wouldn’t leave a message; it was ‘a personal matter and very urgent’, would I call back? I did – ‘We’re sorry to trouble you, but there’s a story going round that you’ve got an illegitimate child. Do you deny it?’ I do, I do, but why should I have to? Why should I have to pay for legal advice when I’ve done nothing wrong? Why should Michèle dread answering the phone in case it’s another poxy ‘investigative journalist’ with fresh tittle-tattle to relay? Why should we let ourselves become the victims of the gutter press?