by Rosa Prince
It certainly wasn’t easy. I didn’t like falling out with [my] colleagues. I was sad because I did actually think the party had made a mistake.
The estrangement was short lived, however, and Mr Clegg brought him back to the front bench within a year, meaning he was in prime position to take part in the extraordinary coalition government formed following the indecisive outcome of the 2010 general election.
However, although Mr Heath was still enjoying life as an MP, by 2010 his wife had had enough and he was painfully aware of the impact his job was having on the lives of his two children.
They agreed that he would serve one last term, meaning that the prospect that he once considered almost an impossible fantasy – that he would become a minister – would come true:
Family had been really supportive over the years. I like to think they’re pretty proud.
But I do think there really isn’t much upside for the children of MPs. There are no perks at all from their point of view. They had a reasonable amount of teasing at school. Dad’s away all week, working Fridays and Saturdays. Sundays if you’re lucky is a family day. Plus you can’t go around Sainsbury’s without someone stopping you and telling you their life history, which does get to you.
I don’t think it occurred to me that I would become a minister. That needed a certain particular chain of events to happen, for the chips to fall that way.
When the narrative was of a two-party system, with these oddities of the Liberal Democrats occasionally getting in the way, you couldn’t predict a coalition. It was always a possibility but it was certainly not something one would have put a lot of money on. Having been a local politician who had exercised power, it [was] frustrating. We were always buoyed up by the fact that our influence was increasing, that we were about articulating a point of view that needed to be articulated. Sometimes our being at odds with what the two main parties were saying, I think we were comfortable with that role.
It is remarkable we made the transition to government as easily as we did.
The days following the election, as the leaders of the three main parties circled each other, were ‘tense’.
When the deal was finally done, and the call came from Downing Street, it was not in the circumstances Mr Heath had imagined.
He says:
I genuinely thought there was no reasonable alternative once the offer had been made. The interests of the country actually demanded we go into government and form a coalition. The consequences of not doing so would have been disastrous in the short term.
I am quite convinced that, had we said no, there would have been a minority Conservative government and a second election, at which we would have had no argument. I think we would have been wiped out. I am absolutely convinced it was the only proper thing to have done. That doesn’t make it easy. I had spent my whole life in opposition to Conservatives.
It was by no means certain I would be offered a role. I was hopeful. You always imagine that when you are offered a ministerial post it is going to be in the drawing room, and the phone will ring and a hushed voice will say, ‘Hello, this is No. 10.’ Actually I was at Bath Rugby watching them play Leicester Tigers at Leicester. It was just after the final whistle, Leicester won unfortunately, and there were shouting Leicester fans in the background.
Mr Heath was put into the office of the Leader of the House, serving as deputy to the Conservative Sir George Young.
With a few difficult exceptions – tuition fees, the alternative vote referendum and reform of the House of Lords – Mr Heath found the coalition personally enjoyable and an overall success:
I knew I could work with George Young. We disagreed only twice in two and a half years, and once was over a split infinitive.
Tuition fees were very difficult. I actually didn’t sign the infamous pledge [not to raise tuition fees, which most Lib Dem MPs promised]. I wasn’t sure we could live up to it and I don’t like signing pledges I’m not able to live up to, but I didn’t get any credit for it. It certainly was very difficult for our activists.
[Ministerial life] is never dull. My honest [view] is I thought that the personal relationships in government were much stronger than anyone could reasonably expect between two people of different parties. That did involve a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. George and I were involved in quite a lot of troubleshooting of one sort or another [but] people within government were working well with one another.
The position was slightly soured when we had the AV referendum. Certainly my colleagues felt that the Prime Minister should not have allowed such personal campaigning against Nick. People were not playing fair. There was a loss of faith in the good faith of the coalition.
In 2012, Mr Heath was moved to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, serving in his dream job as Agriculture Minister.
He enjoyed a hectic year, relishing every minute, but to his dismay was sacked thirteen months later.
Returning to the back benches was hard, and cemented the tentative decision he had already taken that he would stand down at the 2015 election:
It certainly didn’t provide a contrary argument. I was very sad to leave. I had promised my wife before I fought the last election that this would be the last one.
She would have been happy if I had stood down at the last election but I didn’t feel I was ready.
I decided to leave about a year or so ago. I thought by now I would be regretting it deeply but the honest answer is I don’t.
Everything that has happened since has persuaded me that I went at the right time.
Fighting time after time in a highly marginal constituency where every time you don’t know what the outcome is going to be is hard work; nursing a constituency like that is constant pressure. Frankly, there are other things you can do. I think it is time to make the break.
I look at some of the people who are standing down at this time and it worries me that Parliament is losing a higher share of people I consider good MPs. I hope we are not driving out the best people and leaving behind those who are not so good.
I will miss it, no doubt whatsoever. It has been a very big part of my life.
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David Heath: CV
Born and raised in Somerset; attended Oxford University; became a qualified optician and the youngest leader of a county council.
1992: Unsuccessfully fights Somerset & Frome
1997: Elected MP for Somerset & Frome; appointed foreign affairs spokesman
1999: Becomes agriculture spokesman
2001: Becomes work and pensions spokesman
2003: Becomes home affairs spokesman
2005: Becomes spokesman for the office of Leader of the House
2007: Becomes justice spokesman
2008: Sacked from front bench after voting in favour of referendum on Lisbon Treaty
2009: Returns to front bench in office of Leader of the House
2010: Becomes deputy Leader of the House
2012: Becomes Agriculture Minister
2013: Sacked as minister; returns to back benches; announces he will not stand at the 2015 general election
David Heath is married to Caroline and has two children.
SIR RICHARD OTTAWAY
Sir Richard Ottaway, sixty-nine, was Conservative MP for Nottingham North (1983–87) and Croydon South (1992–2015).
‘My bad luck is when I might have hoped for ministerial experience we went into thirteen years of opposition.’
***
How did you end up in Parliament?
I was a partner of a firm of lawyers in the City and at the 1983 election I thought I’d like to be a candidate somewhere, so I just started ticking boxes. I was lucky enough to get selected in Nottingham North, which was a fairly safe Labour seat.
Of course it was Margaret Thatcher’s great landslide victory, it was the high-water mark of modern Conservatism even to this day.
We had two re-counts. It was a long night. And to my absolute astonishment and
I think to my opponent’s astonishment and the public’s astonishment I found myself elected the MP for Nottingham North.
How did you feel on first becoming an MP?
I looked around and I saw Maurice Macmillan, who was the son of [former Prime Minister] Harold Macmillan, I saw [former Prime Minister] Ted Heath sitting there, and these were names who I’d looked at with awe in the past and to find that I was sitting there in the same benches as them was frankly rather nerve-wracking.
A few weeks later I stumbled through my maiden speech, which still reads quite well to this day, and got into it. It took me a couple of years to get fully settled here.
Best of times?
For the last decade I’ve been on the Intelligence and Security Committee, looking at the security services, getting an understanding most people don’t have of how they work and what they’re doing. Immediately after it was formed we had the 7/7 bombings here in London.
And then that led me into the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which has been the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my parliamentary life.
Worst of times?
I imagine everyone says the expenses saga. There was nothing improper about my expenses but the whole attack on the political system was wearing.
Fortunately the strength of the demands of Parliament kept us all going. You knew you had to get up and ask questions, answer constituency questions, lobby on this and that, no matter [if] your heart was in your socks at the time you were doing it.
Why are you leaving?
I’m older than I behave. I’m going to be seventy in a couple of months’ time. And I just don’t want to go from Parliament to an armchair.
Will you feel a pang on 7 May – and what are you going to do next?
I will miss the politics and the buzz and not being a part of it. I’ve got a holiday home on the Isle of Wight and a yacht and I hope to spend a lot of my summer down there.
Perfect world is a couple of charities, couple of consultancies, and a four-day weekend. And I think one has got it lined up.
One of the charities is helping Ben Ainslie with his bid for 2017 Americas’ Cup, [the others are involved with] development issues and family planning in developing countries.
What are your thoughts for future MPs?
Perseverance pays. You need to have enormously thick skin. Never ask a question unless you know the answer. Very dangerous to start asking questions if you don’t know what the outcome is going to be.
***
Sir Richard Ottaway: the full story
Sir Richard had just got out of the Royal Navy and was training to become a solicitor when his interest in politics was piqued during a chance encounter on a boat off the coast of the Isle of Wight.
Throughout his life his ‘passion’ has been yachting. ‘I found myself once, back in the early ’70s, sitting on the windward rail of a yacht in the Solent next to a couple of MPs,’ he says.
Both MPs, Winston Churchill, grandson of the wartime Prime Minister, and Sir John Hannam, the Conservative MP for Exeter, became close friends, and he volunteered to help Sir John out at the 1974 general election. ‘That was really my first introduction into the life,’ he says. ‘And the moment I got into it, the bug got me.’
There was never much of a question that he would be a Conservative:
I came out of the Royal Navy in the 1970s and in the 1960s the Labour Party looked pretty left-wing to me. They still had quite strong contacts to the Communist world. And I just felt they weren’t my environment. I just didn’t relate to them.
The more I looked at the Conservative Party and their support for enterprise and the creation of wealth, I realised that’s where my heart lay.
By 1983, Sir Richard was involved enough to consider running for Parliament himself, and joined the candidates list. He anticipated he would take the usual path of fighting a no-hoper for his initial electoral outing, saying: ‘I would have been quite happy to have fought Michael Foot [the then Labour Party leader] in Wales if it came to it.’ But he instead found himself selected for Nottingham North.
He engrossed himself in an election battle, which proved far tighter than anyone could have realised – and along the way had experiences that shaped his political consciousness for the rest of his career:
I actually loved Nottingham. They were a lovely people. And it’s where my compassionate Conservatism was born. Because if you’re working on the housing estates of the Midlands, helping people in quite deprived areas, you get a real understanding of how millions of people live in this country – which is where I really became a one-nation Tory.
I knew that I was in with a shout. I was ready to take the credit for a good result but a narrow loss [but] I had the biggest swing in the country. I had a 10.5 per cent swing. I found myself elected with a majority of 362 votes.
Both Sir Richard and his wife were delighted at the prospect of him becoming an MP, but the tiny margin of victory was a brake on any temptation to become overexcited:
My wife was with me the whole way through. We had only been married a year. She loved it. She was a very successful executive in her own right, running a successful advertising agency, so we were absolutely flat out; classic Thatcher’s children.
I knew it was a marginal seat and I was never going to build a long-term political career there. So I wanted to keep my outside interests alive.
In those days there were never any votes before about five in the afternoon, so I was working in the City in the morning, coming up here at lunchtime and dealing with the constituency stuff and parliamentary life.
Sir Richard was able to take his first step on the ministerial ladder early, thanks to social connections – he had got to know Tim Renton, a Foreign Office Minister, through friends of friends and became his PPS. ‘It was great,’ he says. ‘Geoffrey Howe was the Foreign Secretary. Britain, as it is now, was a world leader and I was on the first rung of the ladder in keeping the ship of state afloat.’
As the 1987 election approached, Sir Richard was conscious that his time in Parliament might be brief, but decided to stick with Nottingham North rather than seek a safer seat: ‘Having won the seat I thought I ought to defend it, tempting though it was, especially since the neighbouring seat became free. I thought [switching] would be rather poor form. I gave it my best shot.’ The loss, when it came, was no surprise. Although he had a safe cushion at his legal firm, there was no question that Sir Richard saw his future in politics rather than the law. He immediately began looking around for another seat:
I had no hesitation whatsoever. I had the bug. I missed it. Actually, my career was going pretty well in the legal profession, but I knew I wanted to come back. But I knew it had to be a safe seat.
And the party didn’t let me down. After I did lose in ’87 I let it be known quite early that I’d like to come back in ’92 and the party in all honesty was very supportive, kept me involved, encouraged me to go for seats.
To get selected for Croydon South was beyond my wildest dream. Very different from Nottingham, but that legacy of helping deprived people in the Midlands has stayed with me throughout, actually.
Fighting a safe Conservative seat was far less exciting than Nottingham North had been. Instead, the thrill was watching John Major defy the odds to be re-elected as Prime Minister:
It was a new seat, new people, new campaign, but there was a feeling of inevitability about it. I had a majority of over 20,000 in that election, I sort of always knew I was going to win so there was less drama about the night.
After my vote was declared, instead of going to bed I got into my car with my wife and went up to Smith Square to join in the celebrations there.
As someone who had been around the block before, Sir Richard was welcomed back into the fold with open arms:
Immediately, the weekend after the election, Michael [now Lord] Heseltine asked me to be his PPS. I’d got to know him during the ’83–’87 parliament when he was Defence Secretary and we h
ad established quite a dialogue.
In ’92 he went to the DTI [Department for Trade and Industry] and that’s when I joined him. He became Deputy Prime Minister in 1995 and I was with him all the way through.
Working with him was a tremendous experience because I threw a lot into it, I got quite close to him, I wasn’t a detached PPS. I learnt an awful lot from him in all honesty.
One [of his highs in Parliament] is the learning curve I had with Michael, an absolutely top-flight politician at the peak of his powers. Working with him was an invigorating experience.
Having served under Lord Heseltine for some years, Sir Richard might have hoped to become a minister in his own right. It was not to be, as the party was dumped out of power at the 1997 election. Although he went to serve on the shadow front bench and even the shadow Cabinet, ministerial office always evaded him:
My bad luck is when I might have hoped for ministerial experience we went into thirteen years of opposition. Just life. Politics is a rough old game and you hope to take it on the chin. I threw myself in as an opposition spokesman.
The first job I had I was party spokesman for London when we were setting up the Greater London Authority.
In a way, standing at the despatch box as an opposition spokesman is even more exciting because you don’t have a dozen civil servants behind you. You’ve got a couple of researchers and you’re on your own.