Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘And politics,’ I said, ‘He’s a senator now.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Stephen, grinning.

  WEDNESDAY 26 APRIL 1995

  DNH breakfast (coffee, cold croissants, warm orange juice): Grey Gowrie, Mary Allen, Peter Gummer,487 David Puttnam. I do envy GG’s civilised patrician manner. You can’t fake it and you can’t beat it. P. Gummer is so like J. Gummer it’s disconcerting. Mary Allen, I’m still figuring out. But the news is: we’ve lottery money for film all sewn up.

  We also have lottery money, of course, for the Churchill papers – and, alarmingly, what we naively thought of as a timely triumph is turning out to be a colossal balls-up. The fact is that these are private papers, not state papers, and they’ve been acquired for the nation at a good deal less than the open market price. A fifth of the lottery money is ear-marked for ‘the heritage’ and these papers are indisputably part of our heritage and, in the run-up to the VE day anniversary, we thought ‘saving them for the nation’ would have been greeted with loud hurrahs. Instead, it’s loud raspberries all round. Young Winston is being pilloried as a greedy bastard and the government is being accused of slipping millions into one of its own backbenchers pockets. The horror of it is, we didn’t just walk into this blindly: we ran towards it eyes wide open, arms outstretched. The PM is not amused.

  I took part in the debate on children. Andrew Rowe is a good man, thoughtful, with ideas. Why isn’t he in the government? Too soft, too woolly for the whips? Lunch at the Sony Radio Awards. I sat with Duke Hussey488 and John Birt, old school and new, both doing rather well in the eyes of the government, both seemingly unaware of the depth of despair felt by their ground troops.

  Afternoon at the DNH closeted with Puttnam and Carolyn Lambert.489 The content will be workmanlike, but it’s going to look great. We are engaging a flash design house to design a flash report – each page presented like a giant screen, stills from British films from In Which We Serve to Shallow Grave. I guarantee this will be the first-ever government command paper to feature a spread from Carry On Up the Khyber. (‘What did you do in government, Daddy?’)

  MONDAY 1 MAY 1995

  ‘Tory leadership tries to quell poll panic on back benches’. Sir Marcus is tottering round the watering holes saying ‘Now lads, steady the buffs.’ In fact, it isn’t panic. It’s a mixture of despair and resignation. That nice, mild man from Norwich who has been here for years but whose name nobody knows490 – he’s sitting in the Tea Room staring bleakly into his empty cup. We have seen the future – but we haven’t a clue what to do!

  The manifesto policy panels are a complete waste of time. [Patrick] Cormack, Simon Coombs,491 Basil Feldman,492 they chunter on, the hour passes, but nobody has any fresh ideas to offer – not one.

  Alan Howarth is profoundly unhappy. Stephen and I are taking him to Pasta Prego on Wednesday.

  Norman Blackwell and Howell James493 came to the Marginals Club dinner. Norman gave edited highlights of his ‘five themes for a nation of opportunity’ and was respectfully received. Howell (whom I know from TV-am days) surprised them by not being what you expect a Prime Minister’s political secretary to be: jokey, camp, quirky, shrewd. I think he’s going to be very good news. He’s been talking with Nicholas O’Shaughnessy494 about ways to ‘present’ the PM. N. O’S sees Major as a modern Baldwin – I think Major sees Major as a modern Baldwin. I told Howell Frank Longford’s story about the time in the thirties when Frank was just starting out as a Conservative Party researcher and found himself at a country house party where Baldwin was the guest of honour. The Prime Minister invited the young Longford to join him for a stroll. The conversation didn’t exactly flow, but eventually Longford asked the great man, ‘Tell me, Prime Minister, who would you say has most influenced your political ideas?’

  After an interminable pause, Baldwin replies: ‘Sir Henry Maine.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘That whereas Rousseau argued all human progress was from contract to status, the real movement was from status to contract.’

  Baldwin halted in his tracks. His face darkened. ‘Or was it the other way around?’

  FRIDAY 5 MAY 1995

  ‘The Tory Party is today reeling from a night of unprecedented electoral disaster.’ The local elections have not gone our way. I’m off to the Cenotaph at Blacon Crematorium.

  LATER

  I am sitting in bed with a bottle of Oddbins finest and a plate of Boots long-life chicken Madras curry (it’s actually v. tasty). I have just returned from Ruddigore at the King’s School (the children play the minor parts, the headmaster plays the lead!). My wife (whom I love) is in London, there is nothing on the box, so I am reading O’Shaughnessy’s thoughts on Major and oratory. Howell sent N. O’S the text of the PM’s speech at Central Council and N. O’S makes all the points I’ve tried to make but much more tellingly: the PM aims at too many targets in his speeches, tries to persuade too many disparate groups, says too much. Baldwin’s speeches were very short. He invented the sound bite. He used simple language, a simple message, short sentences, easy vocabulary.

  ‘In this speech the PM recounts many important facts about our record. But the speech is too much of a mere recitation and needs to be enlivened by various literary devices.’ Story-telling, anecdote, the odd joke, ‘the odd reference to popular culture/soap opera etc. since this is the only shared cultural vocabulary we possess.’ More imagery and metaphor – ‘when he does use them the choice is too mundane to be memorable,’ ‘The devices I have discussed are not icing on the cake: they have been the core of all persuasion for several thousand years. Communication is an emotive event and not a reasoned process. Finally, the PM needs to paint a vision – currently he is positioned in popular perception as a fabric maintainer. He needs both a policy and a communications strategy … Painting a bright future is an old political trick but an effective one.’

  He’s also fascinating on what he calls ‘visual rhetoric’. He sent Howell a photo of Blair kneeling to lay a wreath at the spot where a policeman had been murdered. The picture does all the work: Blair’s suit, the way he’s kneeling, the look, the association with a fallen policeman – it delivers everything. ‘A visual strategy is essential but must be orchestrated with great care.’

  If Howell can deliver even some of this it could make a spectacular difference. We might even return to the vexed issue of wunt … the PM thinks it doesn’t matter the way he pronounces a word. The truth is that his positively weird pronunciation of want – nobody says ‘wunt’ – gets in the way of what he’s trying to say. It’s obvious. However, when I said that Simon [Cadell] had volunteered to come in and offer some discreet professional advice … Thank you and goodnight.

  WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 1995

  Geoffrey Dickens has died and I am surprised by how distressed I am. He was a lovely man. At the Marginals Club dinner we raised our glasses to him and there were tears in most eyes. Richard Ryder was the guest: his discretion did him credit, but did not make for a lively evening.

  The talk of the Tea Room is the crass stupidity of Jerry Wiggin.495 ‘Greedy tosser’ seems to be the general verdict. Incredibly, he tabled an amendment to the Gas Bill in Seb’s name without consulting Seb. It’s something to do with supplying gas to mobile homes and Sir Jerry is, of course, a paid adviser to the British Holiday and Home Parks Association. We move from cash-for-questions to cash-for-amendments … There is no word yet from Wiggin on the subject. He is in South Africa on a fact-finding jaunt with the Agriculture Committee. Natch.

  I talked with Jeremy [Hanley] in the corridor behind the Speaker’s chair. He looks punch-drunk. I wanted to discuss Danny [Finkelstein] and the [Director of the Research Department] job at Smith Square, but he couldn’t concentrate. He accepts he’s moving on. He hopes he’ll be offered National Heritage. ‘And if I am, I want you as my junior minister.’ Indeed.

  MONDAY 22 MAY 1995

  Poor Stephen has bombed in Cannes. He has been received by British fil
m-makers with a predictable mixture of derision and contempt and he has not enhanced his reputation as a man of culture and self-confessed born-again cineaste by assuming that the head of the festival jury, one Jeanne Moreau, is a man.

  The PM has sent us all a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter setting out Norman [Blackwell]’s ‘five themes’ and explaining the process of consultation with us and with the grass roots that ‘will release ideas and energy across the party’. In the Tea Room Alistair Burt alone gives an endorsement that sounds sincere, ‘This is just what we need.’ Alan Duncan suppresses giggles. John Sykes splutters into his tea. Soames bangs the table, ‘For God’s sake, men, show some fucking respect.’

  WEDNESDAY 24 MAY 1995

  The House adjourned after we had listened to the tributes to Harold Wilson.496 The best stories – and the most touching speeches – came from Tony Benn and Gerald Kaufman. Gerald told a story from the time when he was a junior minister at the department of the Environment in charge of the government car service – ‘possibly the most powerful position in any government apart from that of Prime Minister.’ Gerald received a minute from Wilson – a rare thing for a junior minister to receive a minute from a Prime Minister – instructing him to write to all former Prime Ministers still living offering them a car and a chauffeur. ‘I realised then that Harold had definitely decided to retire. He liked to plan ahead.’

  Gerald said that Wilson wrote all his own speeches, dictating them, striding up and down smoking his pipe, correcting them later in green ink. And yes, his love of HP Sauce was genuine.

  Benn: ‘Like all Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson worried about plots. I asked him once, when the plots were thickening, “Harold what shall we do if you are knocked down by a bus?” Harold said, “Find out who was driving the bus.”’

  Benn is a wonderful speaker. He even managed to work in some New Labour baiting: ‘Harold believed in close links with the unions. “Every bird needs a left wing and a right wing and it can’t fly with its right wing alone.”’

  Wilson had been gaga for years. To have been so brilliant, so razor sharp, and to become aware of your failing powers must be terrible. When I first met him, fifteen years ago, he seemed fine. I sat next to him and at the beginning of the meal he was due to say grace. I watched him take out his pen and begin writing something on the back of his name-place card. I leant over to see what he was doing. He was writing out the grace. He smiled sadly, ‘Lest we forget.’

  TUESDAY 6 JUNE 1995

  I have spent the evening engaged in the Waldegrave counter-offensive. I watched the PM and William together. The PM was ashen-faced. I have never seen him look so pale and drawn. Poor William was shaking.

  The essence of it is this: William was at the FCO as a junior minister from August 1988. There were existing guidelines on the exporting of arms to Iraq and elsewhere. The guidelines were applied with flexibility on a case by case basis. Last night the BBC leaked chunks from a draft of the wretched Scott Arms-to-Iraq enquiry report which appear to suggest that Scott is going to find William guilty of misleading the House – telling the House the policy on the guidelines hadn’t been changed when it had been. William has produced a piece of paper asserting his innocence and we’ve been scurrying around giving it to all and sundry. We have tried to reach every colleague in the building – and William is ready to go through it all line by line for those who still have doubts.

  Labour has scented blood. Prescott attempted to go for the jugular at PMQs. The headlines all suggest William’s a goner – but, here, most of our people quite like him and even those who can’t abide an egg-head and a wet know this one’s fundamentally as honest as the day is long. As he says in his note, he wouldn’t ‘consciously mislead Parliament for no personal or political gain’. (When I read that I wondered if he had crafted it quite carefully. For a political gain, might one deceive Parliament?) ‘There is no plausible reason why my officials should have encouraged or permitted me to mislead Parliament. I did not.’

  The Smoking Room view is that William may hang on awhile, but come the reshuffle he’ll discreetly dropped. I think not. Having observed the body language between them today, there’s an alliance there that’s out of the ordinary. As long as John Major is PM, William will be in his government.

  At 3.30 p.m. our film report came and went. It does look stunning and Stephen launched it well – but nobody was listening. The Chamber was four-fifths empty and around the watering holes the talk is entirely of the Scotts – Sir Richard Scott and his leaky report and poor Nicholas Scott (no relation) – breathalysed, arrested, released on bail and now destined to be dropped by the sour-faced old sobersides of Kensington & Chelsea. (Apparently Nick had a minor collision with a parked car and the parked car was shunted forward and unfortunately trapped a small Swiss child in a baby buggy. It seems Nick did not linger at the scene of the accident, and his female companion declined to exchange names and addresses, allegedly declaring, ‘What are you worried about? The child’s not dead – he’s not even English.’ Nick did not appear in the division lobby just now. Said Seb, ‘He’s probably drowning his sorrows. At Mothercare.’)

  WEDNESDAY 7 JUNE 1995

  This is very funny. ‘Sir David Puttnam dismisses package as “one shoe of a pair to keep us hopping along”.’ That’s the headline. If you read all the papers you get the distinct impression that the man leading the attack on the report is not Chris Smith, not Gerald Kaufman, but the saintly Sir D. Puttnam – who, did they but know it, has been closeted with me and Stephen and Carolyn these past two months writing the frigging report! Of course we haven’t gone as far as he would have liked, but he knows the tax breaks are not in our gift, he knows Stephen’s working on the Treasury, he can see we have produced £84 million plus … He could have been a mite more generous. Heigh-ho.

  MONDAY 12 JUNE 1995

  Mrs T. is rocking the boat. The Baroness has been on the radio, telling us how much she admires Mr Blair, how she’s ‘absolutely against’ the single currency, how she’s glad Major is going more sceptic, how what we really need is more Thatcherism – ‘we must get back to Conservative policies’. The Tea Room is fairly deserted because the whips seem to have organised a week of ‘light business’ and fairly early nights. Willetts tells me this is calculated: they don’t want the lads sitting around the watering holes grumbling and plotting.

  Michael Grade came to plead his cause. He is a smooth and attractive operator – and he is Channel 4 in the way that Branson is Virgin and Mrs T. was the government. (That’s something Major hasn’t achieved: what is the ‘brand’ of the present government? Nobody quite knows.) I like Grade. Our small talk is always the same: our shared birthday.497 Stephen likes him too, but he’s not going to get the rebate. Nor, it seems, is he going to get the consolation knighthood. Jocelyn Stevens is ahead in the queue.

  The arts policy meeting went nowhere – slowly. And after the vote Richard Spring came up to Stephen’s little room to tell his tale. The room is so small you feel you’re in a cabin on a cross-Channel ferry. There’s just a tiny sofa and a couple of upright chairs. I brought some wine from the Smoking Room. We sat in the gloom, looking at our knees, while Richard took us through the embarrassing details of how he had been set up by the trollop and the News of the World. ‘It was just what my father would have called “a bit of horse-play”, bit of rough ’n’ tumble.’ Stephen looked particularly uncomfortable. I don’t think his father went in for quite that kind of horse-play. Richard was perfectly reasonable: he said he wasn’t looking for sympathy, but his career has been ruined and his seat is in doubt because his privacy was invaded – he was bugged in his own home indulging in a perfectly legal and ‘perfectly harmless’ bit of horse-play. When he went, Stephen was surprisingly unsympathetic. ‘The man’s an ass.’

  TUESDAY 13 JUNE 1995

  I have just come from a convivial drink with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. While we were downing the Rioja, it seems the PM has been being harangued by a unruly mob of
right-wingers. This isn’t an exaggeration. The PM agreed to meet up with members of the Fresh Start group. Fifty or sixty of them turned up and instead of listening to the PM they started barracking him. He stuck to his line that we’ve got an opt-out so there’s no need to rule the single currency in or out at this stage, but they wouldn’t have it. It seems it was a ghastly one-sided shouting match.

  Ken’s view is that the PM shouldn’t have let himself in for it. It’s humiliating and demeaning – it undermines his authority – and ‘the more you concede to these mad xenophobes’ the more they’ll want. ‘He’s got to make it clear where he stands.’ That’s the problem: he’s flirted with these people to keep them sweet and now he won’t deliver they’re turning ugly. And none of them is very pretty at the best of times.

  LATER

  I have just seen the PM. He looks quite ghastly, poor man. He’s going to Canada for the G7 summit. And while he’s away the plotting will start in earnest. We all know what mad Marlow and his ilk want, but even the Bill Walkers are now saying ‘We’ve got to get this leadership issue sorted’. Sir Marcus, at his bibulous best, thinks it can all be fixed – ‘Eee lad, he’s got to get a grip’ – and a fresh agenda, a bit more sceptical on Europe, toughen up on law and order, cut taxes and public spending, ‘Bingo!’ But it won’t happen – because Heseltine and Clarke won’t wear it. And it’s not that simple. Sir Marcus: ‘You can shave a billion off social security, easy like.’ Peter Lilley: ‘That means taking £1,000 each from the million least well-off people in the country. Is that really what we want to do?’