Order, Order!

by Wright, Ben;

  When his autobiography was published, Tony Blair confessed to drinking a little more than his government recommended to deal with the pressures of running the country (and perhaps the pressures of living next door to Gordon Brown). ‘If you took the thing everyone always lies about – units per week – I was definitely at the outer limit,’ Blair wrote. ‘Stiff whisky or G&T before dinner, couple of glasses of wine or even half a bottle with it. So not excessively excessive. I had a limit. But I was aware that it had become a prop.’77 And his memoir included this self-help homily: ‘You have to be honest: it’s a drug, there’s no getting away from it. So use it with care, maybe: but never misunderstand its nature and be honest about its relationship with your life.’78 For Blair, and millions of others in Britain, breaking the government’s drinking guidance every night had become an essential private pleasure, a tool to smooth away tension at the end of the day.

  Blair’s rumination on booze totalled only three small paragraphs in his 700-page doorstop, but it prompted much comment and some mockery. His six units a night boast did not impress his former Cabinet colleague Dr John Reid, a once heavy drinking Glaswegian who now does not touch a drop. Dr Reid told GMTV, ‘Where I come from, a gin and tonic, two glasses of wine, you wouldn’t give that to a budgie.’ Alastair Campbell says he never saw Blair the worse for wear from drink: ‘If you’ve gone from having two or three glasses of wine a week, which is what he was having at the start, to half a bottle of wine, you’ll think it’s a problem. He maybe was drinking more than we thought but I don’t think he ever drank to excess.’79 Campbell was at Blair’s side from 1994 until 2003 and quit drinking after an alcoholic career working on Fleet Street. Blair drank most heavily towards the end of his premiership; perhaps he was missing Alastair Campbell.

  In his book, Blair chats through his drinking dilemma. He says he could ‘never work out’ whether alcohol was good for him because it helped him relax, or bad because he could have been working instead. On balance he comes to the conclusion that the benefits of drink-assisted relaxation outweighed the cost to his work. ‘I thought that escaping the pressure and relaxing was a vital part of keeping the job in proportion.’80 If Robert Walpole had been in the market for confessional autobiography he might have said the same.

  Beyond Blair

  Gordon Brown found it much more difficult to keep the job in proportion. He was a workaholic, phobic about holidays and prone to phoning his staff in the middle of the night to issue fresh orders. His Presbyterian conscience drove him to work and kept him away from a daily drink. But he was far from teetotal. As several people who worked closely with him told me, Brown’s tipple was champagne. According to his long-time adviser Damian McBride, ‘If Gordon could drink champagne he would drink champagne. It’s always what he’d keep in the fridge in the Treasury and the flat in Downing Street. It was always his drink of choice. But he was always reluctant for other people to know that. So if he was at an event he would always say “give me a beer”.’81 McBride says that Brown was loyal to Moet & Chandon but never touched a drop until work was out of the way. And when he did drink it was not privately but convivially and in company. For instance, after a Downing Street drinks reception at which he would nurse an un-drunk glass of beer, he would invite close aides up to the flat and then the champagne would come out. But as McBride remembers, Brown was not inclined to savour the drink. ‘He would knock it back. He would never consider two glasses of champagne as a big deal. He was like the cookie monster. Down in one, whoosh!’82

  So was Gordon Brown ever drunk? ‘I did undoubtedly see him tipsy. He would never have been laughing as hysterically as he used to at those Christmas parties if he hadn’t been in drink. They were very entertaining affairs.’

  McBride then proceeds to tell me an astonishing story about the drink-fuelled antics inside Downing Street while Brown was still Chancellor, but desperate for the occupant of Number 10 to clear off. ‘There used to be some scandalous behaviour which did neighbourly relations no good. Downing Street shares a lot of staircases even though you’ve got independent flats. You cross a lot of walls that the Blairs would be on the other side of. And occasionally, in heavy drink after those Christmas parties, people walking down the stairs would hammer on the wall shouting “When are you going to fuck off! When are you going to fuck off!” You’d occasionally get the same thing back from Number 10 people saying, “Oh, have you been drinking again?” It was like a couple that had separated living in the same house occasionally coming together and shouting at each other for ten minutes and then going their separate ways. I never did that by the way …’83

  Echoing his political hero Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron is a whisky drinker, and his Desert Island Discs luxury item was a crate of Isle of Jura single malt. Like Gordon Brown, Cameron’s consumption is modest and he does not drink every evening. But he does enjoy a Sunday afternoon pub lunch, as everyone discovered when he left behind his then eight-year-old daughter Nancy at the Plough Inn near Chequers in 2012. A biography of Cameron published in 2012 described a Prime Minister who had mastered the art of ‘chillaxing’ – a man partial to a game of tennis, a TV box set and a couple of glasses of wine with his Sunday lunch. In fact, the same off-duty pursuits as the rest of us.

  At a Downing Street Christmas drinks reception for journalists in 2013, Cameron sauntered around the room carrying a glass of water. When it was my turn for a two-minute chat, he told me that was all he drank at events like this or before a speech. ‘But it’s a different matter when they’re done,’ he chortled. I asked him whether he was drinking more the longer he was in the job, as many previous Prime Ministers did. Standing next to Cameron was his Director of Communications, who narrowed his eyes in a way that said ‘watch it’. This was clearly a line of questioning that needed to be defused. ‘No, I find sleep and exercise are by far the most important things,’ Cameron replied, breezily tapping away the question.84 He then claimed diplomatic meetings were rather dry these days, but revealed President Obama’s fondness for Grey Goose vodka, the fashionable spirit favoured by Manhattan’s cocktail sippers. In January 2016, pressed by Andrew Marr on the government’s new drinking guidelines, Cameron said, ‘I often have a drink in the evening after a long day.’85

  If his predecessors are any guide, David Cameron might find himself supping a little more as the years in office go by. However, it seems unlikely that any future Prime Minister will match the drinking prowess of Walpole and Pitt, or of Asquith and Churchill, and even more unlikely that they would want to. Prime Ministers have sobered up too.

  CHAPTER 5

  Pubs, Clubs and Parties

  Drink is the metronome of Westminster life. It paces the day like the chimes of Big Ben. ‘A quick half?’ is the question at lunchtime. ‘A pint?’ at the close of play. As the bell’s six heavy tolls resound across Whitehall, the pubs begin to fill. The pavements outside will soon be packed with booze-guzzling smokers. Opening the doors, a visitor is greeted by a gust of beery hot air and cacophonous political chatter. All of Westminster life shoves its way towards the bar: civil servants, journalists, Members of Parliament, special advisers, press officers and political party staff.

  The people change, but the fixtures don’t. The Westminster pub, much like Parliament itself, is suspended in time. Dark mahogany bars, polished brass foot rails, etched mirror glass, beery carpets and real ale on tap. An American tourist’s idea of what an English pub should be like? Perhaps, but no worse for that.

  And it is in these Victorian drinking dens that political gossip is swapped, contacts are made and business is done. It’s where the village meets. Listen in and you will hear civil servants complaining about a difficult minister or a policy they are trying to sign off. You might catch a couple of MPs conspiring over a pint. You will see political journalists truffling for stories and special advisers assisting their search. Politics is pollinated over amber nectar and ice buckets of wine. This chapter looks at political imbibing beyond the Houses o
f Parliament – in pubs, clubs, restaurants, receptions – and at the famously boozy antics of party conferences. It traces the influence of drink from the journey of a wannabe MP buying rounds in a pub to a Prime Minister sipping champagne on his plane.

  Let’s begin with a bar crawl around Westminster, where each pub has a distinctive but shifting political character. The Westminster Arms on Storey’s Gate is crammed full of Conservative Party workers and special advisers. Close to the Treasury and the Tories’ new HQ, it’s a pub that has gone from red to blue. So too the Red Lion on Whitehall, perhaps the most famous Westminster boozer. Opposite Downing Street, the Red Lion is the domain of whichever party is in government. There has been an alcohol-selling watering hole on this site since 1435. Closest to Parliament is the touristy St Stephen’s Tavern. It has its own division bell which rings when there is a vote, but there are few politicians to hear it.

  Slightly further away are two more pubs, the Speaker and the Two Chairmen, useful meeting spots for a quieter pint. The Marquis of Granby on Romney Street was dominated by Tory drinkers when the party’s headquarters was around the corner. For fifty years Conservative Central Office was at 32 Smith Square, where a victorious Margaret Thatcher waved from the windows. The building now houses the unlikely pairing of the European Commission and UKIP, which is why the Marquis of Granby is now the favourite drinking spot of Nigel Farage and the UKIP press team. It is also popular with civil servants, Labour drinkers and broadcast journalists from their offices on Millbank.

  Pubs and pint-pulling for the cameras are important elements of the political scenery. Although drink is no longer used by candidates to bribe voters and elections have ceased to be carnivals of drunken excess, beer (never wine) drinking is a symbol. Want to prove you’re a politician with a popular touch? Head to a pub and pull a pint. Few electioneering stunts are meant to say ‘I’m a down to earth Brit who shares the hearty pleasures of my voters’ more clearly than a posed photograph of the candidate drawing some ale from a barrel. The regular staff find themselves elbowed aside by people who have never stepped behind a bar before, grabbing the pump of a local brew and squirting the frothy beer into a glass. The usually unsellable pint is then triumphantly held aloft for the local press to take a snap. From prospective Prime Ministers to long-forgotten parliamentary candidates, the pub has always been commandeered by political wannabes eager to bridge the gulf between themselves and the electorate.

  Yet this is very odd. No cameras follow our campaigning politician as they grab some dinner at Tesco on their way home from work. Or juggling the chaos of the morning breakfast melee or school run (though both Ed Miliband and David Cameron contrived kitchen scenes of dubious veracity). You can demonstrate your worth as a potential MP simply by showing how well you can fill a pint glass with beer. Even in an era of micro-targeted constituency propaganda, online adverts and ruthlessly focused attention on the small number of voters who swing an election, a photo opportunity in a pub is a constant of British election campaigning. The pub remains a political symbol of unpretentious good sense, particularly at a time when few words in the lexicon are as toxic as ‘politician’.

  And where did Jeremy Corbyn go first after trouncing his rivals? The Sanctuary pub in Westminster, where Labour’s teetotal new leader roused his comrades and baffled visiting tourists by holding up a Tony Benn tea towel and joining in a rendition of ‘The Red Flag’. Labour’s first leader and most revered figure, Keir Hardie (like Corbyn a bearded non-drinker), may have approved, though not of the venue.

  Drinking for Britain

  There is one politician who is seen in pubs more than any other. With his fag-rattle laugh and pinstriped suits, Nigel Farage is a throwback to a time when politicians didn’t all look and sound the same. The ebullient UKIP leader and MEP is rarely photographed without a pint of beer in his hand and he has never hidden his love of a drink, describing himself as ‘a boozer not an alcoholic’. Farage is frequently to be found holding court in the Marquis of Granby in Westminster, around the corner from UKIP’s headquarters.

  Nigel Farage is one of the best political salesmen in the business, perhaps the only one who passes with ease that hoary old political question: which politician would you most like to have a pint with? He’s the sort of ‘hail fellow well met’ raconteur who looks like he’d be entertaining down the pub. And he is. For Nigel Farage, a pint or five of frothy British ale is a pillar of his appeal, a sign that he doesn’t take himself too seriously and that he shares the vices of voters. In recent years I have had the occasional pint with him in Westminster, Brussels and Strasbourg, the three places he habitually mocks and complains about. But when I talk to Farage about his drinking one morning in September 2015 it’s outside a Westminster coffee shop, clouds of his cigarette smoke curling into the autumn air. The pubs aren’t open yet, but he’ll be in one again soon.

  ‘I adore the pub,’ he says. ‘I think every pub’s a parliament. We discuss the England football manager, the council, the left-wing local vicar. I’ve also been in pub conversations and through persuasion turned 180 degrees from the position I started an argument in. So I like that element of pubs. The other thing I love about the pub is the sheer classlessness of it. Every walk of life is there.’

  While the main political parties spend vast sums of money on focus groups, Nigel Farage uses his local pubs in Kent as laboratories to test and shape his party’s policies. There in Battle of Britain England, the party’s brand of political nostalgia – for a Britain before the European Union, Polish immigrants and political correctness – is an easy sell. ‘Have I sound-tested ideas in pubs? You bet your life I have! What makes me laugh is the cynical press corps think some brand image consultant behind me has decided that if I’m seen in the pub with a beer it’s a man of the people image that fits in with UKIP and the demographic it’s reaching, and this has all been carefully scripted. Cobblers! None of it’s been carefully scripted. It’s what I do!’

  I ask him why the drinking seems to have become such an important plank of his appeal. ‘The reason it works is because in a politically correct age where all this stuff is frowned upon I think people see it as two fingers up to the establishment and political correctness. And I think that’s why it works and yet I’m not doing it for that reason. And it puts some people off. I might not be doing as well with the Methodist vote as we’d like. The upside is that wherever I go people are falling over themselves to buy me drinks,’ he laughs.

  When the latest official drinking guidelines were issued in early 2016, with reduced recommended limits, Farage was on hand to call for ‘a mass protest against this form of nannying and we should all come out at lunch and have a glass of something’.

  Nigel Farage’s drinking is not a political affectation. He’s been boozing heavily for years. ‘On a personal level I’ve always drunk too much. There’s no secret about that. I get up at five and work like stink, have a pint at lunchtime and generally have a drink with the team after work. Of the people I drank with in the City in the early days quite a few are dead; quite a lot drink mineral water now because they went over the edge – and I’ve seen that problem in my own family – but there are some of us who are lucky. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I can take it or I can leave it.’

  You don’t feel dependent on it?

  ‘No. But it’s like an incentive. It’s like the reward. Is that dependency? Maybe psychologically it is.’

  Do you drink more under pressure?

  ‘No. I’ve never drunk a lot under pressure or when I’ve been down. I tend to be a celebratory drinker. My associations with it are positive – maybe that’s why I’ve been spared.’

  Farage firmly denies he’s a functioning alcoholic. But I ask him, does he feel under pressure to keep up the consumption to maintain the image?

  ‘No, I can do what I like can’t I? There are certain pubs I have to avoid now because there’s always a photographer around. I’m actually slightly cautious not to be seen to do it too muc
h.’

  Why?

  ‘Because there’s a slight reputational risk. I don’t want to be thought of as a George Brown or a Charlie Kennedy. The public image as it is at the moment is fine. There’s never been an implication in any cartoon that I’m a drunk – which I’m not. And that would be a disaster.’

  Someone as ubiquitous on television as Nigel Farage might be wary of putting away pints all day, but he tells me he has firm rules about his drinking. First, he says, he never drinks in the office. Second, he will not do a broadcast interview if he’s drunk more than five pints of beer. ‘That’s on the edge. That’s the upper end. If I’m doing Question Time I’ll have a couple of drinks before that. Enoch Powell told me he always had a glass of wine to loosen up before going on television,’ he says, remembering a chat they had once at a public meeting, shortly before the controversial Conservative politician died. It was on an episode of Question Time in December 2014 that the comedian Russell Brand dismissed his fellow panellist as a ‘pound shop Enoch Powell’, but Farage’s brand of politics won UKIP almost four million votes in the following year’s general election.

  It’s almost midday and Farage has a PFL in the diary. ‘It’s well known that I like a PFL – a proper fucking lunch!’ he chortles. A Land Rover Discovery waits to whisk Farage off, two bodyguards by his side. ‘I do think about my drinking sometimes,’ he says. ‘But this is the life I’ve got. It’s fun, it’s different.’ And with that he stubs out his final fag and hops in the car.1

  Spinning with Bottles

  Gordon Brown’s former press chief, Damian McBride, described Westminster as the ‘binge-drinking capital of Britain’. His memoir of life at the Treasury and then Number 10 is a queasy catalogue of lunchtime boozing, evenings in the pub and night-time karaoke: ‘Lunch – booze; afternoon reception – booze; meeting a journalist – booze; 5 p.m. – traditional post-work booze even though it wasn’t post-work; late night in the office or the House of Commons – booze; and always a nightcap or two at home.’2 McBride said it took a huge toll on his health, but nobody ever took him aside and told him to stop. Building relationships with journalists, planting stories and sharing intelligence was his job. And like others before and since, McBride found that was easiest done with drink.