Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  WEDNESDAY 19 OCTOBER 1994

  11.10 p.m.: High drama. I was with John Redwood, thanking him for his oh-so-smooth handling of the Raytheon Jets meeting,428 when [David] Willetts appeared, I thought/hoped to offer me a lift home. But no. ‘Haven’t you heard?’ We hadn’t. (Maddening. What you know and when you know it is everything here: intelligence is power.) He tried to look solemn: ‘A story in tomorrow’s Guardian that could prove profoundly damaging.’ He was quite excited. Perhaps we’re all hooked on disaster? In which case, we may be in for one hell of a high. I’ve just come from the Chamber where Stuart Bell, out of the blue, on a point of order, got up and told the House that The Guardian is accusing Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith of taking £2,000 a time to ask questions on behalf of Harrods. It beggars belief. There’s a buzz in the building that makes me feel people believe it. I am now off to the Smoking Room to see if the first editions are in yet.

  THURSDAY 20 OCTOBER 1994

  It is extraordinary.

  What Mohammed Al-Fayed429 says is this:

  I was approached by Ian Greer who offered to run a campaign. He came to see me at my home and offered his services. He told me he could deliver but I would need to pay. A fee of about £50,000 was mentioned. But then he said he would have to pay the MPs, Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith, who would ask the questions. Mr Greer said: ‘You need to rent an MP just like you need to rent a London taxi.’ I couldn’t believe that in Britain, where Parliament has such a big reputation, you had to pay MPs. I was shattered by it. I asked how much and he said it would be £2,000 a question. Every month we got a bill for parliamentary services and it would vary from £8,000 to £10,000 depending on the number of questions. Then Mr Hamilton rang up and requested to stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris with his wife. I agreed. I am a generous man, but he ran up such a big bill, even coming back for afternoon tea.

  This is truly horrendous. Tim I have known since Oxford. We might have gone into business together. I don’t know him well, he’s a dry stick, difficult to know well, but I like him. He’s got a ramrod back, a City background. This doesn’t make sense. And Neil and Christine are real friends. I can’t believe it – and yet – I almost don’t want to put this in writing – I know they did go to Paris at Fayed’s expense. They revelled in it. They relish these treats. But a Paris freebie is one thing: 2,000 quid a question quite another.

  LATER

  Tim Smith has resigned. Yes, he did have a ‘business relationship’ with Fayed and, yes, he failed to register it. Curtains. Another career bites the dust. But Neil denies it all. Well, not quite all. Yes, he stayed at the Ritz, in Fayed’s ‘private rooms’ and the bill topped £3,000, but he is adamant he accepted no fees, no ‘cash for questions’ of any kind.

  At Questions the PM was as robust as circumstances allowed. He first got to hear the allegations three weeks ago. They were brought to him by an unnamed emissary, but, said the PM, ‘I was not prepared to come to any arrangements with Mr Al-Fayed’. What? We all gasped. Was the gyppo trying to bribe the PM? Skinner called out, ‘How much did he offer?’ The PM repeated his line, plainly implying that the king of the kasbah was attempting to sort out some sort of deal with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – ‘give me citizenship and we’ll say no more about it, Johnnie.’ The PM was doing no deals and put the Cabinet Secretary on the case. As a result of Sir Robin’s discreet enquiries, Tim was forced to put his hands in the air, ‘It’s a fair cop, guv.’ Amazing. The Tea Room buzz is he took thousands, in cash. Neil, on the other hand, stoutly maintains his innocence: he has written to the PM explicitly denying the charges, he has issued a writ against The Guardian, he keeps his job. The Tea Room is not happy: ‘no smoke without fire’, ‘Neil’s a greedy bugger, we all know that’, ‘let him fight his libel action from the backbenches, then come back in glory.’ The last line (from Sir Fergus) is the right one, isn’t it?

  Lunch with Michael Grade in his office at Channel 4. He is Mr Schmooze: if he doesn’t get the rebate from ITV, the beautiful C4 movies are going to be in jeopardy … I don’t think he realises the Secretary of State has probably never seen a Channel 4 movie – in truth, has probably never seen Channel 4! Dinner with Bill Deedes430 in Dining Room C. This is what we want: an evening of claret and anecdote – tales of the Smoking Room from the golden age of Supermac. He sees distinct parallels between now and 1963. And suggests we underestimate Blair at our peril. (I don’t think we do underestimate Blair, but we don’t rate him. Deep down, he’s shallow. On our side, it’s Cook we most respect. The Tea Room line: if he didn’t look like a garden gnome he’d be their leader – no question.)

  Ulrika431 has had her baby: 9 lbs. 11 oz. Michèle: ‘Poor girl.’

  SATURDAY 22 OCTOBER 1994

  I have just left a ‘chin-up’ message on Neil’s answering machine, but he’s an idiot. He emerged from a school he was visiting in his constituency yesterday brandishing a biscuit that one of the children had baked and given him. ‘Shall I declare it?’ he inquired of the photographers at the gate. He just can’t resist it. The inevitable has happened: the picture of Neil and his biscuit (a grinning Christine in the background) adorns the front pages. The PM will not be amused.

  Alex Carlile432 (smug bugger, nasty piece of work) is successfully making matters worse. The trip to Paris now appears to have cost £4,000 plus. Carlile wants an investigation by the Committee on Members’ Interests. Neil will have to step down. That seems self-evident to all – except apparently to Neil and Christine. Yesterday I went to Boothferry for David Davis and Morecambe and Lunesdale for Mark Lennox-Boyd: the activists were all of a mind – Hamilton must go. Mark gave me two rather distinguished-looking bottles of claret. Nice man.

  MONDAY 24 OCTOBER 1994

  Arts & Heritage Advisory Committee: wind and waffle (wind courtesy of Patrick Cormack who I’m afraid does seem somewhat puffed up without cause). Positive European Group: more wind and waffle (I don’t think I’m going to go any more meetings. There really isn’t any point). Douglas Hurd at the FCO: what a class act! How does he manage it? Jocelyn Stevens433 at English Heritage: seems a bit of a self-indulgent, self-regarding piss-artist to me (and certainly not Stephen’s type), but what do I know? Apparently he’s unassailable. The same cannot be said for Neil who is clinging on by his fingernails. He has upset all and sundry (and most critically the PM) by protesting that if the PM could stay in office and pursue a libel action against the publications that suggested he had had an affair with his caterer, Neil should be afforded the same opportunity.

  TUESDAY 25 OCTOBER 1994

  Neil has gone, protesting his innocence. The PM is setting up a ‘committee on standards in public life’ to be chaired by a judge, Lord Nolan. There’s a lot of huffing and puffing in the Tea Room. An outside body scrutinising our behaviour? We don’t like it.

  THURSDAY 27 OCTOBER 1994

  Jonathan [Aitken] has been magnificent. The Guardian splashed their story about his weekend in Paris (the bloody Ritz again!), Gordon Brown picked it up at Treasury Questions and Jonathan knocked him for six – the Cabinet Secretary has investigated and fully accepts Jonathan’s version of events: he paid his own bill in full. Can we now have an end to this ‘hysterical atmosphere of sleaze journalism’?

  He did well.

  SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 1994

  It’s 7.00 a.m. and I don’t want to get out of bed. But I have to. In fifty-five minutes from now I’m on parade at the Moat House for one of my ‘business breakfasts’ – taking the temperature of local business opinion so that I can relay it to the Chancellor. We had a good night last night. Tim Rice434 came for the inaugural gathering of the Friday Supper Club. He was a delight. He has a relaxed approach to life I envy. I suppose the money helps.

  The Aitken saga is rumbling on, but Jonathan is in the clear. Mrs Aitken paid the bill at the time, but didn’t pay quite enough. When Jonathan discovered the underpayment, he paid the balance – albeit four months later. His Association is standing by him. His chairman,
Major John Thomas (there’s a name to reckon with) is offering Jonathan ‘unconditional support’: ‘As we all know, his integrity and his moral and Christian standards are above reproach.’

  SUNDAY 30 NOVEMBER 1994

  Hosanna! Now it can be told. In their attempt to secure a copy of Jonathan’s bill from the Paris Ritz The Guardian used House of Commons notepaper to forge a fax, ostensibly from him but actually from Peter Preston and his crew. Preston is blathering that it’s ‘all a bit of a red herring’, but the truth is it shows the criminal lengths to which they’ll go in their desperation to discredit us. It’s rather reassuring to find they are as verminous as we always thought they were.

  TUESDAY 1 NOVEMBER 1994

  It is nearly four in the morning and we are still here, struggling through the last, dire stages of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Bill (God save the mark!). The way we conduct our business is quite farcical. There are half a dozen clowns in the Chamber and the rest of us – hundreds of us! – are scattered about the palace, propped up in corners, curled up on sofas, slumped in armchairs. The old guard and the whips seem to feel there’s some sort of machismo merit in all this. Cobblers. It’s simply silly.

  The entire day has had a weird Alice in Wonderland feel to it. We want to conduct the enquiry into ‘cash for questions’ in private, simply publishing the report at the end. Labour says the hearings should be held in public. Tony Benn (the Mad Hatter) is defying the Speaker (The Cook? the Duchess?), taking his little tape recorder into the sessions and producing his own minutes for distribution to the press. Tony Newton (the White Rabbit) is scurrying hither and yon trying to keep everybody happy and falling between all the stools. It’s a shambles. And there’s real trouble ahead. We’re backtracking on Post Office privatisation. It is exactly 4.00 a.m. and the division bell is going.

  MONDAY 7 NOVEMBER 1994

  David Martin435 has stepped down as Douglas Hurd’s PPS. Incredibly, this is front page news: ‘Top Tory aide quits over PO sell-off failure’. No doubt, David is disgruntled that we’ve neither the bottle nor the majority to do as we might like, but the truth is he’s also miffed that he’s been bag-carrying for Douglas for four long years without a whiff of preferment. We all want to climb the greasy pole and when, time and again, we’re overlooked we don’t like it.

  We’re just in from a jolly dinner with the Lamonts. Norman is enjoying making mischief. Major is weak-kneed, lily-livered, pusillanimous. The case for privatising the Post Office is overwhelming: it’s absurd that the government is being held to ransom by a rag, tag and bobtail of nonentities. He’s also anticipating a Eurosceptic revolt on the forthcoming Bill to increase our EU contributions. ‘Surely the government isn’t going to be held to ransom by a rag, tag and bobtail of sceptics, is it?’ I ask. ‘This is different,’ says Norman. ‘These are men of principle!’

  I like him. He has a happy piggy face and raffish charm and he likes a laugh – hence the presence at the table of Woodrow Wyatt who was in typically impish form. ‘Gadfly in bowtie with bad breath’ was M’s verdict. (The bad breath is due to the cigars. There is a lot of bad breath at the Palace of Westminster. This is because some of us are there from breakfast till midnight, don’t brush our teeth during the day and drink too much coffee and too much alcohol. Michèle has equipped me with breath fresheners and suggests I also take a change of shirt when a late-night sitting is anticipated. There is quite a civilised ‘gentleman’s club’ style washroom in the basement, with fresh linen etc. supplied at the taxpayers’ expense, so there’s really no excuse.)

  WEDNESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 1994

  Chaos. We are dancing the rumba on the foredeck of the Titanic. In the hope of bringing the rebels into line the entire Cabinet has agreed to resign en masse if Monday’s vote on the European Finance Bill is lost. The Chancellor tells me ‘It’s a fuss about nothing – £75 million this year rising to around £250 million in five years’ time. The party’s got to pull itself together.’ The party seems to prefer to pull itself apart. Gill436 and co. are standing firm. My friend Patrick Nicholls (bravest of the A team) has tonight been obliged to resign as party vice-chairman having told his constituents that he doesn’t like the EU because it’s dominated by two profoundly unpleasant countries, one of which embroiled us in two world wars and the other of which boasts about its resistance fighters when in truth it is a nation of collaborators!

  In the Tea Room Edward Leigh is telling us that Major hasn’t lost his way because it’s apparent he never had a way and we really do need to come up with some sort of vision and a few policies to go with it. In the Smoking Room Ted [Heath] is harrumphing that it’s high time the whips got to grips with the right-wing riff-raff and that we got ourselves a party chairman who knows what he’s doing. ‘Maples437 is a simpleton.’

  ‘He’s deputy chairman.’

  ‘And an absolute simpleton. How could he have been appointed? These days if you put something on paper sooner or later it’ll be leaked. Any fool knows that. It was different in my day. In my government nobody leaked. I wouldn’t have it.’

  MONDAY 28 NOVEMBER 1994

  We survived. Thanks to the Ulster Unionists, fairly comfortably. Ken gave a robust speech, the PM sitting glumly at his side. When it came to the vote, eight of our people rebelled and apparently they are to lose the whip, in which case Sir Richard Body (who voted with us) will give up the whip as well by way of protest. Body is seriously strange. He’s the one whose very name conjures up the sound of the flapping of white coats.

  Hero of the hour: Lord James Douglas Hamilton. On Thursday night he succeeded to the Earldom of Selkirk. The Serjeant At Arms came to drag him from the Chamber. This morning James did the decent thing and renounced the title so that he would be able to vote with us tonight. Soames: ‘Lord James is a perfect gentleman. Gill is a perfect cunt.’

  Technically we are now a minority government and the feeling in the Tea Room is that we are in terminal decline.

  TUESDAY 29 NOVEMBER 1994

  The Budget’s been and gone. Ken was upbeat, ‘a Budget for jobs’, but the House dozed. I often find I’ve sat through a whole debate and not absorbed a thing. (The other day Sir Peter Emery was fast asleep on the front bench below the gangway. He had propped himself in Ted’s corner seat. Ted arrived, Peter slumbered on. Ted prodded him; Peter stirred and then settled back again. Ted stood glowering at the sleeping figure. From across the way Skinner barked, ‘Wake up, Ted’s here.’ Sir Peter roused himself and shifted along the bench to make way for the Father of the House.)

  George Walden’s438 line is good: ‘The Budget was better than exciting. It was sensible.’ The excitement will come next Tuesday. Will we have a new set of rebels on VAT on fuel? The word from the PM is that this time it won’t be a matter of confidence, but I’d have thought a defeat pretty catastrophic. When did a Chancellor last have a major plank of his Budget voted down?

  SUNDAY 4 DECEMBER

  A bizarre few days. The press has been very little interested in the Budget. For them the story of the week has been Michael Portillo’s party on Friday night.

  Michael’s over-eager agent had the bright idea of marking our young hero’s first decade at Westminster with a gigantic bash at Alexandra Palace – a thousand guests, fireworks, the Band of the Grenadier Guards, a This Is Your Life tribute, Margaret Thatcher, Norman Tebbit – the works. When word of this got out, the mockers in the media scented blood and set to work. Though the damage was done, Michael decided he’d better backtrack. Gradually he scaled the whole thing down – no video portrait; no military band, just a string quartet; no Margaret, no Tebbit, just me.

  We turned up at Alexandra Palace at seven to find the place surrounded by police, Criminal Justice Act protestors, and an assortment of television crews and youthful radio reporters who ran alongside us as we marched in. ‘What sort of evening are you expecting, Mr Brandreth?’ ‘A good one.’ ‘Why is Mr Portillo holding this party?’ ‘To thank his constituents for ten years of support
and hard work.’ ‘Is it true that you used to do this sort of thing for Robert Maxwell?’ ‘No, but I know a lot of Socialists who did.’

  Inside we were ushered to the VIP reception where a desperately over-anxious chairman’s wife talked at us to such an extent that, literally, she backed us from one end of the room to the other. Harvey Thomas [Portillo’s agent] had produced a forty-eight point battle plan for the entire evening (‘1700 Michael Portillo’s dinner jacket to be delivered to Palm Court Office: Roger Vince to organise’) and at 1945 on the dot he lined us up for our walk from the reception onto the stage, with Michèle, poor girl, leading the way. So ruined had the occasion been by the pre-publicity, so subdued was the mood, the poor punters (about 600 of them in the event) didn’t know whether or not to applaud. When they came, my speech was a non-event and Michael’s as safe and non-triumphalist as he could make it. The hall was like an aircraft hangar, the acoustics a nightmare, the sound system a disaster, the lighting nil, and the atmosphere at best flat, at worst apprehensive. I could tell from the way his voice was wobbling and his leg was shaking that Michael hated every second of it and when he finished the applause was as restrained as the speech. Poor fellow, he didn’t even get a standing ovation at his tenth birthday party!

  There were hacks disguised as punters at every other table and a couple of them, masquerading as enthusiastic constituents wanting souvenir snapshots, came onto the stage to get their close-ups. It was all very silly and rather unpleasant. We slipped away as soon as we could. As we emerged, arc lights came on and a girl ran alongside us calling out, ‘Channel 4, A Week in Politics, what was the party like?’ I blathered on about how it had been a great constituency party for a great constituency MP until we reached the end of the cordoned off pathway when it appeared that our exit was blocked. For a ghastly moment, it looked as if we were either going to have to retrace our steps or attempt to climb over the barricade – still on camera whichever course of action we took. In the event, Michèle found tiny gap and we slipped through and away. It was 11.30-ish and in the car park a couple of coaches were disgorging extra Criminal Justice Act protestors.