Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  558 The Brandreth cat.

  559 He was now Minister of State for Europe.

  560 James Arbuthnot, MP for Wanstead & Woodford 1987–97, Hampshire North East since 1987; he was now Minister of State for Defence Procurement; he had been in the Whips’ Office 1990–92; Conservative opposition Chief Whip 1997–2001.

  561 MP for Gloucester 1987–97; PPS to John Gummer; further advancement was not to be his.

  562 1951–2009; MP for Newcastle Central 1983–7, Beckenham 1992–7; PPS to Peter Lilley; further advancement was not to be his either.

  563 Political Editor of the BBC 1992–2000.

  564 The only British Prime Minister to be assassinated, Perceval (1762–1812) was shot as he entered the lobby of the Commons by a bankrupt Liverpool broker, John Bellingham, who was subsequently hanged for the murder.

  565 GB got to know him in the early ’80s when, with Julian Slade, he was writing a play based on the life and work of A. A. Milne.

  566 James Clappison, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of the Environment 1995–97; MP for Hertsmere since 1992.

  567 Chester City councillors.

  568 MP for Milton Keynes South West 1992–7, formerly a Westminster city councillor. The Auditor’s final report, while clearing him of misconduct, concluded that he had been aware of the ‘party electoral reasons’ behind the council’s housing policy.

  569 Labour MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington since 1987.

  570 Labour MP for South Ayrshire 1979–83, Carrick Cumnock & Doon Valley 1983–2005; later Baron Foulkes of Cumnock.

  571 Labour MP for Cardiff North 1966–70, Merthyr Tydfil 1972–83, Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney 1983–2001; later Baron Rowlands.

  572 Nirj Deva, MP for Brentford & Isleworth 1992–7.

  573 The inter-governmental conference on the future of the European Union scheduled for 1997.

  574 Cheshire county councillor and generous supporter of the Chester Conservative Association.

  575 Fourteen years later, in 2010, Nigel Evans acknowledged that he was gay. In 2014 he was found not guilty of series of sex offences involving young men.

  576 Sir Wyn Roberts, MP for Conway 1970–83, for Conwy 1983–1997, Welsh Office minister 1979–94, was actually sixty-five; later Baron Roberts of Conwy, he died in 2013, aged eighty-three.

  577 Minister of State at the Ministry of Agriculture.

  578 MP for Chislehurst 1974–97.

  579 MP for Bodmin 1970–74, 1974–83, Cornwall South East 1983–97.

  580 Nicholas Winterton was knighted eventually, in 2002. He retired as an MP in 2010, following criticism of expenses claims described by David Cameron as ‘indefensible’. Alastair Goodlad was appointed KCMG in 1997 in John Major’s resignation honours. In 2005, following five years as British High Commissioner to Australia, he became Baron Goodlad of Lincoln.

  581 Liberal MP for North Devon 1959–70; Leader of the Liberal Party 1967–76.

  582 In 1960 President Charles de Gaulle of France paid a state visit to Britain, during which he addressed Members of Parliament in Westminster Hall and visited the French Lycée in South Kensington. GB was a pupil at the Lycée and one of those lined up for presentation to the President. When de Gaulle passed down the line, he patted or shook hands with every child but one – GB.

  583 1950–2007; PUSS at Environment 1994–5, Minister of State 1995–7; MP for Herts West 1983–97.

  584 1929–2012; 13th Earl Ferrers; on the Conservative front bench in the House of Lords from 1962; Deputy Leader of the Lords 1979–83, 1988–97; Minister of State at Environment 1995–7.

  585 Sir Paul Beresford, PUSS at Environment 1994–7; MP for Croydon Central 1992–7, Mole Valley since 1997.

  586 PPS to the Ministers of State at Environment; MP for Southport 1992–97.

  587 A Statutory Instrument is a piece of secondary legislation that introduces schemes, schedules, rules usually related to, but too detailed or time-specific to be part of, primary legislation. SIs are considered and voted on upstairs in Committee, not on the floor of the House.

  588 David Davis became a Privy Counsellor in 1997.

  589 He had been Energy Minister since 1992; MP for Enfield North 1979–97.

  590 It wasn’t.

  591 MP for Surrey East 1992–2010.

  592 The week before the Labour Party had sent Glenda Jackson to Benidorm to canvas for support among British voters living and holidaying on the Costa del Sol.

  593 Venice Midnight, published in September 1998.

  594 The card is the list of MPs for which each whip is responsible. A ‘card operation’ means speaking to each one of those MPs.

  595 The Advertising Standards Authority had criticised a poster from M & C Saatchi depicting Tony Blair with ‘demon eyes’. At the beginning of September a new poster was launched featuring the eyes on their own, lurking inside an open purse, with the slogan: ‘New Labour, New Taxes’.

  596 Sir Nicholas Bonsor, MP for Nantwich 1979–83, Upminster 1983–97; Minister of State at the Foreign Office.

  597 Scriptwriter and producer of The Rory Bremner Show.

  598 Saethryd, GB’s elder daughter, was at Manchester University.

  599 Humphrey Carpenter had published a biography of the former Archbishop of Canterbury containing indiscreet remarks about the royal family, among others. Lord Runcie said, ‘I have done my best to die before this book is published.’

  600 Cabinet Secretary 1988–98.

  601 As a rule whips change departmental responsibilities each year. At the reshuffle GB was moved from the Department of the Environment to two other departments: Health and Transport.

  602 It wasn’t. It turned out to be an elaborate hoax.

  603 The remaining business of the 1995–6 session. The new session would begin with the State Opening on 23 October.

  604 Rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster Abbey, and Chaplain to the Speaker since 1987.

  605 Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride married in 1997.

  606 John Boyd-Carpenter, 1908–98; Baron Boyd-Carpenter from 1972; MP for Kingston-upon-Thames 1945–72; father of Sarah Hogg, later Baroness Hogg, married to Douglas Hogg, son of Lord Hailsham.

  607 MP for Fareham 1979–2001; Minister of State at the Home Office 1992–4.

  608 Labour MP for Vauxhall since 1989.

  609 Director of Communications at Conservative Central Office.

  610 The meeting of EU Economic and Finance Ministers scheduled for early December.

  611 John Whittingdale, MP for Colchester South & Maldon 1992–7, Maldon & Chelsmford East since 1997; Political Secretary to Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister 1988–90.

  612 Minister of State at Transport 1994–7.

  613 4th Viscount Goschen PUSS at Transport 1994–7.

  614 In the event, it was sixty-three. The rebels wanted improved compensation for those affected by the proposed legislation banning handguns. Sir Jerry Wiggin, one of the leaders of the revolt, said, ‘I am deeply ashamed of my government.’

  615 Constitutionally, the Treasury is governed by a Board of seven Lords Commissioners. The First Lord is the Prime Minister, the Second Lord is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the remaining five are government whips.

  616 The Chief Whip’s assistant secretary, a civil servant, not a political appointee.

  CHAPTER VIII

  1997

  WEDNESDAY 1 JANUARY 1997

  Where will it all end?

  When will it all end?

  That’s easier. 20 March, 10 April, 1 May are the obvious election dates. And I’m going for 10 April, a) because it won’t be quite the last gasp, and b) because we can then avoid the humiliation of the Wirral South by-election. At Barry [Porter]’s funeral the activists were confident of victory, but even with a majority of 8,000 I’d have thought there’s no hope. There’s certainly no hope for me in Chester. I have mixed feelings about it. Michèle has none.

  We’re snowed in here [in Suffolk, staying wi
th Simon Cadell’s widow, Beckie, and their two sons] so we can’t go back to London as planned. We’re sitting by the fire drinking Simon’s special peach and champagne cocktail instead. I’m reading Richard E. Grant’s film diaries (my Christmas present from M – ‘fucking fantastic – yeeeesssss!’ Never mind the language, feel the verve) and the new novel by Michael Dobbs (cosy and quite comforting: Dobbs does for Westminster skulduggery what Agatha Christie did for the country house murder). Beckie’s done just the right lunch to go with the weather (roast chicken, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, glorious gravy, mellowing Burgundy), we’ve watched Babe on video with the boys (it’s odd and sentimental, but eventually it works) and we’ve pondered the mysteries of the New Year’s Honours. If an OBE for Joan Collins, why a CBE for Ned Sherrin? Are these the fruits of feasting with panthers? Still no knighthood for Donald Sinden. Virginia is on side, Murdo is on side, the PM is supportive. I took it up with him again before Christmas.

  I said, ‘When everyone thinks it’s right and richly deserved and wants it to happen and it doesn’t, it’s so frustrating.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I’ve been trying to get a knighthood for Alec Bedser. It isn’t easy.’ But it can be done. Today Bedser has his K and the PM has a happy start to his year.

  THURSDAY 2 JANUARY 1997

  Or does he? The lead headline in today’s Telegraph: ‘Dorrell urges Europe rethink’. The PM will not be amused. I call Stephen. He’s delighted. Of course. For him to succeed we need support from the centre and the centre-right, and the centre today is Eurosceptic. This isn’t mere positioning. Stephen’s view on the EU has changed markedly over the last three years, but the message has only filtered out fitfully. I speak to Tim [Rycroft] who says: ‘Well, we agreed before Christmas the time for subtlety was over.’

  Back to London. We shared a taxi to Ipswich with a garrulous lady who was on her way to a funeral in York and talked non-stop in the manner of Hyacinth Bucket scripted by Alan Bennett. The icy roads were a nightmare too.

  As we got in the phone was ringing. Little Michael Jack,617 eager-beaver Financial Secretary, was on the line. ‘You know today’s the day we publish the Finance Bill. I’m supposed to be on the media spreading the good news on the economy and what happens? I’m pulled from every programme and the whole thing is hijacked by the Secretary of State for Health banging on about Europe. It is so bloody frustrating.’ He is right to be angry. I call Stephen and give him Michael’s number.

  FRIDAY 3 JANUARY 1997

  Stephen calls. The Prime Minister has been on the line, ‘seriously dischuffed’. The poor PM has his New Year ‘relaunch’ all set up – Frost on Sunday, ad campaign on Monday, press conference on Tuesday – and what is today’s helpful headline? ‘Dorrell sparks Tory feud over leadership’. The PM wants to know what Stephen proposes to do about it. The PM favours a statement from Stephen via PA asserting that Stephen and the government are as one. Stephen prefers a single briefing of one Sunday lobby correspondent along the lines of ‘this isn’t about the single currency – it’s about ambitious change within the EU – it’s in line with the government’s own White Paper – I’ve said all this in public before (true) – I didn’t time it as a New Year bombshell (also true: Stephen gave the interview early in December) – this isn’t about the leadership of the Tory party (ho-ho), it’s about the clear difference between us and Labour (and it is that too).’

  The PM also wants to know why Stephen hadn’t cleared his pronouncements on the future of the European Union with the Foreign Secretary. ‘Er … er…’ Stephen had at least got clearance from Tony Newton to do yesterday’s round of radio and TV interviews. (Tony is chairing EDCP618 in the absence of the Deputy Prime Minister who is in East Africa bird-watching. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is being ‘kept in close touch’, is in Mexico, also bird-watching.) Unless health is the subject under discussion, the PM does not want or expect to hear Stephen on the airwaves for the foreseeable future.

  SUNDAY 5 JANUARY 1997

  Today’s headline beggars belief: ‘TORY MP: MY LOVE FOR GAY TEENAGER’. You can only pity the poor PM! He turns up for his New Year Frost interview, armed with his Dorrell answers, ready to lay into Labour, happy to assert that ours is the party of the Family, and what does he find? The News of the World – and every other paper – packed with choice extracts from Jerry Hayes’ passionate notes to an eighteen-year-old ‘Young Conservative and Commons researcher’: ‘I’ve just been crying my eyes out. I can’t help it. I love you with every fibre of my body.’ Yup, it does make you want to weep.

  Despite this, the PM does rather well. He usually does. Before Christmas Howell told me that he favoured ‘a presidential campaign, distancing the boss from the rest of the rabble’ and this, clearly, is what we’re going to get. Of course, it won’t work – both because EMU is a real issue that isn’t going to go away and because the public made up their mind about a year ago and nothing we can do will persuade them to change it now.

  Not a bad press for Stephen. Gerald Scarfe’s cartoon has him as a vulture perched on the end of the PM’s sick-bed.

  Last night we had Noel [Davis], Harry [Audley], Joanna [Lumley] and Stevie [Barlow] for supper in the kitchen. Noel was frighteningly wheezy, but as funny as ever. He offered an old Ralph Richardson story he claims he hadn’t heard until recently. Sir Ralph, on stage, mid-scene, suddenly staggers towards the footlights. The rest of the cast is alarmed. The audience holds its breath. ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ asks Sir Ralph. A voice from the rear of the stalls calls out. Richardson peers out towards the voice and says, ‘Terrible play this, eh doctor?’

  As my chestnut-I’d-only-just-picked-up I offered Bernard Shaw being set the poser: ‘You are in the National Gallery and it catches fire. Which one painting would you try to save?’ GBS: ‘The one nearest the door.’ This prompted Joanna to give us her story of a private dinner at the V&A at which, before dinner is served, the distinguished guests are invited to examine some of the museum’s choicest treasures – exquisite boxes of ivory, silver and gold, designs by William Morris, sketches by Leonardo, the Thomas-a-Becket reliquary. At table, Joanna finds herself seated next to John Paul Getty Jr and asks him, ‘If the lights had gone out when we’d been looking at all those fabulous treasures, what would you have been tempted to slip into your pocket?’

  ‘I’d take the da Vinci notebooks,’ says Getty.

  ‘Why?’ asks Jo.

  ‘Oh,’ says Getty, ‘I could buy the rest.’

  WEDNESDAY 8 JANUARY 1997

  Went to the Caprice last night with Ros and Mart [Jarvis] and so missed The Great Debate on the monarchy – clearly a collector’s item of a fiasco. Poor Trevor!619 Until last night he belonged to that select band who Can Do No Wrong. Robin Day is huffing and puffing with due pomposity: ‘The programme consisted of two hours of ignorance, distortion, prejudice, half-truths, crude assertion, bad temper and cheap personal abuse.’ The old fart makes it sound quite watchable.

  Talk to Danny who reports that the PM did well at his first presidential press conference – except that he didn’t say any of the things they’d briefed him to say so that the press are writing it up as a bit of a non-event. Happily, today Kevin Keegan has resigned from Newcastle and Richard Branson is lifting off in his balloon so Blair’s New Year launch is nicely sidelined. Harold Elletson calls. Tony Benn has written to the PM to enquire if it’s true that

  Harold is in the pay of MI6 and, if it is, isn’t that ‘an office of profit under the Crown’ incompatible with his membership of the House? It can’t be true – can it? ‘TORY MP IS A SPY’ – that’s all we need!

  Talking of all we need, speak to Christine and Neil [Hamilton]. They seem brighter, but still in limbo, waiting, hoping, praying that Gordon Downey [the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards] will produce a report that lifts the clouds. ‘Our life has been ruined, utterly ruined. Until Neil is exonerated we can’t start living again.’

  THURSDAY 9 JANUARY 1997 />
  Jolly lunch with Laurie Mansfield, who is off to Hollywood tomorrow. Laurie (who is a Major fan and whose agency represents Jim Davidson, Paul Merton, Julian Clary, Hale & Pace etc.) advises strongly against the PM appearing on showbiz-type shows. ‘It takes an entertainer to be entertaining on an entertainment programme.’ Blair at the Brits or with Des O’Connor was embarrassing – also Blair was tempted (one would be) into elaborating an incident in his childhood to turn it into a full-blown anecdote (‘How I became an airline stowaway’) only to find it blowing up in his face when his dad emerged from the woodwork to tell us he has no recollection of any of it…

  Mihir Bose620 points out that this is an established British political tradition. F. E. Smith’s father went on several holidays to Egypt and F. E. claimed to have travelled with him, regaling audiences with tales of how he sailed through the Med, stayed at Shepherd’s Hotel in Cairo, even rode a primitive bicycle from the city to the pyramids – to the wonderment of the Egyptians. However, when John Campbell came to write F. E.’s biography he thoroughly investigated these favourite stories in the F. E. repertoire and found them to be complete fiction. F. E. never left Birkenhead as a boy.

  SATURDAY 11 JANUARY 1997

  To Chester for the enthronisation (sic) of the new bishop – a contemporary from Oxford. Never mind the police looking younger: when the bishops start to be contemporaries…621 The ninety-minute service was an odd hotchpotch of familiar and unfamiliar ritual, ancient tradition, ecumenical moments and evangelical flourishes. There was the one customary embarrassment we all dread: making the sign of the peace – assorted Lord Lieutenants, High Sheriffs, Mayors, aldermen, military personnel and the lone MP (the only one without uniform or vestments) turning awkwardly to one another, shaking hands with as few people as possible, resolutely refusing to catch anybody’s eye. All the processing is splendid – but absurd. The most moving moment came when the new bishop’s wife and three of their children led the prayers and did it with wonderful certainty and simplicity. The bishop ended his sermon with a prayer from Dag Hammarskjold: ‘For what has been: thanks. For what is to come: yes!’