Breaking the Code

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Breaking the Code Page 58

by Gyles Brandreth


  Ludicrous fun and games on the Finance Bill. Because David Hunt was entertaining the President of the Law Society to lunch today and Angela Knight, Economic Secretary, wants to be away on Thursday afternoon, I suggested to my opposite number – a perfectly amiable shop steward from Coventry636 – that he might like to offer a couple of pairs. He declined. I then suggested that tonight, to make progress, we might need to keep the committee going till 10.00 p.m. – knowing full well he wants to be away from 7.00 p.m. He said he’d think about it and, a few moments later, flexed his muscles by pulling all but one of his side out of the committee room so that, suddenly, the committee became inquorate. We need at least thirteen in the room at all times and half a dozen of ours were out in the corridor having coffee, on the telephone, dictating correspondence, gossiping, going to the loo etc. Fearful that the chairman would suspend the committee, I got up on a point of order and began to blather: ‘Sir James, I can’t believe that we are inquorate given the eloquence of the Honourable Member who has the floor. It is simply that colleagues have gone to fetch others to come and hear his eloquence, to marvel at the power of his presentation, to take note of his unique way with words …’ by which time we’d got two or three of our chaps back and the committee resumed.

  It was a narrow escape. Happily James Hill is a benevolent chairman: a splendid old combustion engine, good-humoured and good-hearted. Had his alternate, Gwyneth Dunwoody637 (Hattie Jacques with attitude) been in the chair, we would have had at least a twenty-minute suspension and I’d have ended up with egg on my face. This charade over, the Labour whip and I then agreed that we would pull stumps today at seven (which he wanted) if we could also agree to reach Clause 30 by lunchtime on Thursday (which I wanted). So I didn’t manage to release Hunt early for his lunch, but at least Knight is sorted for Thursday. It’s just a silly game.

  The high-jinks continued during the afternoon when we were interrupted three times by votes on the floor of the House – after one of which Peter Butler, the Chancellor’s PPS, failed to return. With a vote in the committee now imminent I got assorted members of the team to filibuster while frantically I telephoned and paged all and sundry – the Deputy Chief Whip, the Tea Room, Butler’s office, Central Lobby. I thought he might have been closeted with the Chancellor – but his line was engaged so I had to get the switchboard to break in on his call to discover if Butler was in with him. He wasn’t. Mouth dry, heart pounding, I paced the committee corridor until, all of a sudden, I sighted him: nonchalantly sauntering towards me, as cool and complacent as Mr Toad on his way to order a new motor. He hadn’t appreciated a vote was in the air. So sorry. Poop-poop.

  WEDNESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 1997

  Walking to Downing Street I bump into the BBC’s John Sergeant.

  ‘If you wait too long,’ he beams, ‘the public will get fed up.’

  ‘Isn’t it you lot who’ll get fed up? And what about the Lazarus factor? Aren’t we all hanging on for our man to work his miracle?’

  John giggles: ‘Not any more. Unless you leap ten points in the polls it’s all over.’

  Clearly, this morning the PM feels it’s far from all over. He’s very perky, hopping from one foot to the other, hands deep in pockets, flashing his engaging grin.

  ‘Have you seen it? Have you seen it?’ he asks, nodding towards a copy of the Daily Express lying open on the coffee table.

  An NBC reporter, one Daphne Barak, has been to interview Tony Blair and her verdict is damning: ‘Never have I come across anybody quite as frightened, quite as uncertain, quite as eager to please.’

  The PM already seems to have some of Ms Barak’s phrases by heart: ‘“Nervous, boring, empty, at a loss” – that’s more like it, isn’t it?’ He goes off to greet the Children of Achievement looking positively jaunty.

  Leaving No. 10 I paused for a moment in front of the wonderful picture of Ellen Terry and allowed myself a self-conscious, wistful moment. 20 March looks more likely now. The PM doesn’t want us to go to the country because we’ve lost a confidence vote – and after Wirral South there’s a danger of that. Charles Lewington has just called to get me to call Tim Rice to activate our Celebs for Major programme, ‘just in case we do go for 20 March’. In the Tea Room at lunch Michael Bates is adamant: ‘On 20 March I will lose my seat. On 1 May I can win.’ Ian Lang is looking very spruce in what he describes as his ‘election haircut’. If we were a plc rather than a party Ian would certainly be our next leader.

  In the papers Elizabeth Taylor has had a stroke and Melinda Messenger (‘Page 3 Girl for the Thrillennium’) is alleged to have implants. In the Lords we have had a series of defeats on the Firearms Bill. No doubt we shall have severe problems if we attempt to reverse what their lordships have done.

  In the Commons we’re in for a tight vote tonight. Winston is in Paris where his mother638 is dying. (Someone describes her as a remarkable lady who got where she did admiring rich and powerful men’s ceilings.) We’re bringing in our sick and keeping our fingers crossed. Ted said, shoulders heaving, mischievous grin, ‘You’ve got it completely wrong. It’s Liberal business today and there are no votes tomorrow. Keep us here and you’ll have a majority of 153.’

  I said, ‘As a former Chief Whip, wouldn’t your policy be “Better safe than sorry”?’

  ‘No,’ he harrumphed and padded softly away.

  LATER

  I’ve just emerged from the Cabinet committee on science and technology. The Deputy Prime Minister took the chair. ‘It is now 3.30 p.m.,’ he began. ‘When Sir Maurice Bowra was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and chaired meetings of convocation, they started as the clock began to strike twelve. It was always Sir Maurice’s aim to conclude the entire meeting, minutes, apologies, any other business and all, before the final stroke of twelve. I propose to conduct today’s proceedings upon similar lines. I have read the papers prepared for us and they seem to me to be entirely satisfactory. Unless colleagues have something material to contribute, I suggest we accept the proposals—’

  ‘— keeping within current spending limits,’ chirruped the Chief Secretary.

  ‘— and consider the results at our next meeting.’

  From the far end of the table a hapless civil servant was heard to bleat, ‘Can we publish the reports?’ ‘After we’ve considered the results – at our next meeting. This concludes the present meeting. Thank you.’

  The clock on the TV monitor changed to 3.31 as we gathered our papers and, murmuring complacently ‘Now this is the way to do business’, made for the door. Poor Ian Taylor, our Science Minister, sat in his place, crestfallen, like a deflated balloon. He had a twenty-minute presentation all rehearsed and ready. Nobody in the room had wanted to hear what he had to say anyway. Now nobody was going to.

  On the way out, I gave Roger Freeman the cash I owed him for the Heath dinner and, taking my £10 note, he told me that the cricket match depicted on the back of it is a scene from Pickwick Papers set in Dingly Dell – and Dingly Dell now forms part of Roger’s back garden. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer told Cabinet not to get their knickers in a twist about the design of the new Euro because nobody in their right mind ever looks at their money, the PM piped up, ‘There’s a cricket match on the back of the £10 note.’

  ‘The PM’, said Roger, ‘has a wonderful eye for detail.’

  THURSDAY 6 FEBRUARY 1997

  As I write this, Dawn Primarolo639 is grinding her way through the iniquities of the Insurance Premium Tax while the two Old Labour lags sitting immediately behind her – ruddy, sweaty, beer-bellied, one has a face that looks exactly like a fat old man’s bottom with a moustache clipped to it – gaze intently at her rear end. Angela Knight has just drawn this phenomenon to my attention: ‘Their instincts are entirely healthy – her backside is so much more appealing than her mind.’

  We’ve had a fair bit of banter in this vein on the committee to date – and not merely as whispered asides. Discussing the economic advantages of motor cycles Phillip Oppenheim
told us, ‘There is a saying about people with big cars: BCSD. I don’t know whether that also applies to motorbikes, but I can assure the committee I only have a small car.’ Much ribald chuckling ensued. His jest at Michael Fabricant’s expense was less flavoursome. Recalling how the Hon Member for Mid-Staffs had ridden a Yamaha to Gallipoli, Phillip said, ‘He informed me he had a sore backside at the end of the journey. I sincerely hope it was as a result of riding the bike and not any other action.’

  I sat talking with the Deputy Prime Minister in his room at the Commons last night. I was in a low leather armchair: he was behind his desk, on a high-backed throne, as if presiding over a banquet in the guise of a medieval king played by Errol Flynn. He is very like an ancient matinee idol in an MGM movie: the performance is stagey and the colour isn’t quite true, but there’s still something rather compelling about it.

  We talked about our revised Euro stance: ‘Our sceptics are real monkeys, aren’t they? But we’ve given the monkeys something they can fall in behind, haven’t we? Of course, some of the monkeys will never be satisfied. They’re real monkeys, the lot of them!’ When he moved on admiringly to the tearful lion in our campaign poster it suddenly occurred to me that maybe he takes the Tarzan thing seriously and all his metaphors are drawn from the jungle…

  He wasn’t amused to hear that colleagues would like us to accept the Lords’ reverses on the Firearms Bill. He was taken with the idea of highlighting the elimination of Third World debt as an international millennium project. He accepts all the arguments for playing it long on the election date, but understands the PM’s fear of losing a No Confidence motion after a defeat in Wirral South. ‘I remain convinced that, when it comes to it, it’s the pound in your pocket that determines the way you vote. Always has done, always will.’

  In the Members’ Dining Room seven of us played the ‘Who-would-you-like-to-have-lead-your-platoon-into-the-jungle?’ game. Hezza didn’t feature. ‘Too old.’ Major? ‘Too soft.’ Clarke? ‘Too fat.’ The consensus was that Michael Howard might well survive but his men mightn’t; that George Young would be good for morale (‘and at least he’s tall so they’d shoot him first’); but that our front-runners were Roger Freeman and Tom King.

  When it came to the vote, we were right and Ted was wrong. Officially Labour was on a one-line whip. In the event, all but twelve of them turned up.

  LATER

  Lunch at the Treasury these days is like an informal family picnic. While the Chancellor – nonchalantly lighting his cigar with EU matches – flicks through the Express – enjoying Mandelson’s response to yesterday’s hatchet job on Blair – others chat to one another, pick over the sandwiches, pour out more wine. You’d never think a general election was only a matter of weeks away … Ken says he’s discussed dates with the boss and knows he hasn’t made up his mind yet. Phillip Oppenheim says: ‘The Conservative Party is united on only two issues. We all loathe Edwina and we all want the election on 1 May.’ Plenty of chuckles. I mention the idea of highlighting our targets on Third World debt as a potential international millennium project. General guffaws. ‘We might get votes in Uganda, but not many here.’ Around the table there’s genial banter, much mocking of Central Office, but no sense of urgency – or impending doom.

  Later I meet up with Howell James and tell him I sense that only the PM and the DPM are still wholly committed to victory. Howell has an attractive, infectious laugh. He blinks behind his owlish giglamps: ‘Don’t we just know it, my dear!’ I tell him that everyone wants to go on 1 May and not before and try a line I believe to be true: ‘If the PM goes on 20 March against the better judgement of the party and we lose, they’ll blame him personally.’

  ‘They’ll blame him anyway,’ says Howell. ‘They always do.’

  SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY 1997

  Spend a couple of hours on the campaign trail in Wirral South where our candidate is impressive and the local troops quite buoyant. They were pleased to see me because the expected ‘star’ for the day – J. Gummer – failed to show. He has gone to Kenya for the weekend. Critical international environmental business, no doubt.

  On the cold and windy streets of Heswall we thrust our faces and our leaflets into the paths of shoppers scurrying by. The reception we get is predictable: some greet you quite cheerfully (‘You’ll be all right with me’); some shake your hand but refuse to catch your eye; only one or two manifest open hostility. Most, needless to say, come from outside the constituency.

  At my surgery yesterday a man came to see me about a contested planning application and said, leaning meaningfully across my desk, ‘I’d rather give £5,000 to the Conservative Party than see this go the wrong way.’ For an awful moment I thought he was going to wink, touch the side of his nose and mutter, ‘Nudge, nudge, know what I mean?’ Thinking it might be a set-up and wondering where he was hiding his tape recorder I said, rather loudly, enunciating every word, ‘No donations are required here. As your Member of Parliament it is my duty as well my privilege to investigate every case that its brought to me with due care and attention.’ The poor man looked utterly bemused.

  MONDAY 10 FEBRUARY 1997

  Is this the moment to be considering modifications to the quarantine regulations for pets? Chris Patten thinks it is. Our Kent colleagues beg to differ. And Norman Tebbit is of the opinion that we should allow in quadrupeds from Hong Kong, but impose strict restrictions on bipeds … This has to be one for the long grass, doesn’t it?

  Virginia stops me on the stairs leading up to the Cabinet ministers’ corridor. She perches on the third step, knees tucked under her chin. She is wearing trousers – a fashion unknown when I arrived, but successfully pioneered by Margaret Beckett. (Virginia, of course, looks good in trousers. This cannot be said of one and all – e.g. I have just passed Mo Mowlam in a day-glo boiler suit.) Virginia reports that the PM is to host another reception at No. 10 for the arts community and Sproatie has seen the plans and gone berserk. I’m not surprised, first, because the event is to be called ‘Cool Britannia’ (Ye gods, can you believe it?) and, second, because the guest list reads like a Luvvies for Labour Who’s Who. The TV section features Harry Enfield, Martin Clunes, Neil Morissey, Angus Deayton, Richard Wilson, Stephen Fry and someone billed as ‘Andy Coulson, Sun journalist.’ I agree to try to find some additional names to help leaven the list. Clearly the Department of National Heritage (along with the rest of Whitehall) is readying itself for the new administration. Wouldn’t it be glorious if we managed to win after all!

  TUESDAY 11 FEBRUARY 1997

  The press have had fun with Stephen’s gaffe on devolution. Interviewed by The Scotsman, Stephen said he couldn’t envisage a future Conservative government leaving a Labour-created Scottish Parliament ‘unchanged’. Fair enough – except that canny wee Michael Forsyth’s line is that devolution is an omelette that canny be unscrambled and that’s why it canny be risked. Stephen was wrong. Forsyth is right. And all the papers are having a field day: leaders, cartoons, headlines, ‘Dorrell drops a clanger.’ Over breakfast we agree: if the press decide to make Stephen the government’s new ‘gaffe-man’ he’s in trouble. Danny counsels against going on the offensive: ‘The press are never wrong. They never admit mistakes. They never see anybody else’s joke. They never lose.’

  LATER

  The PM’s third ‘presidential’ press conference is thrown off-message. Of course. The theme was to be education, but the focus was Stephen and devolution. The PM was asked, twice, who had responsibility for this area of policy and, twice, he replied ‘The Scottish and Welsh Secretaries’. No. 10’s background briefing later gave the line that Stephen had been asked to campaign on the constitution last summer, but that had simply been a short-term arrangement. Not true, of course. Stephen was, until today, and with the full authority of No. 10 and Central Office, very much a key spokesman on matters constitutional – and was planning something on proportional representation for later this week – but No. 10 and Central Office are now sending out the sign
al: Dorrell rebuked – Dorrell loses campaign role – Dorrell demoted. Stephen asked Hezza what he should do. ‘Nothing. This is part and parcel of being one of the big boys.’

  LATER STILL

  The PM has Stephen in for a whisky. This is pure Major! At the press conference, in the briefing, at PMQs, the boss dumps his man; privately, he immediately rebuilds the fence and offers the consoling, reassuring hand of friendship. He’s quite an operator.

  During the afternoon I managed to get lost in the House of Lords. Turning an unexpected corner, who should I encounter but George Bridges from No. 10 scurrying along like the White Rabbit. We exchanged pleasantries and off he scampered. I turned another corner and found myself face to face with Howell James, clearly on his way to the same tea party. Odd, I thought. What is the PM’s political secretariat doing pacing the red-carpeted corridors of their Lordships’ House? Then it dawned on me. The PM is setting up his own command centre – and Lord Cranborne is commander-in-chief. Does the party chairman know?

  WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 1997

  The Chancellor was on the Today programme this morning and utterly brilliant. This afternoon he was prowling round looking for a ‘pair’ so he could go to the England/Italy match. Labour, by several accounts, is prowling around looking for an old boy ready to accept a peerage so that they can gerrymander a safe seat for Alan Howarth.

  Last night I had dinner with Michael Fabricant. This came about because during the Finance Bill committee he passed me a copy of a letter he had just sent to the PM’s PPS: ‘Although Prime Minister’s Questions went well for the Prime Minister today, I do believe that this was an opportunity wasted. For the first time in ages we dominated the Order Paper with questions 2 to 5 inclusive from Conservative members. Yet did we use this opportunity to express a common theme as the Labour Party has done so successfully in the past?’ In fact, we do try to orchestrate PMQs. At 8.30 every Tuesday and Thursday morning Seb and Peter Ainsworth meet up with George Bridges at No. 10 to work out what we want. They then do their best to persuade colleagues to ask what’s wanted. Unhappily not all of our colleagues are persuadable.

 

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