The other drinking establishments of the area do not have quite the same legacy, but can still make for a good night out. There is the Westminster Arms behind Parliament Square, where people go when they’re bored of the Red Lion, and there’s the plush Blue Boar by St James’s Park Tube, which is mostly populated by those on the Conservative end of things. Then there is the Old Star, the Speaker, St Stephen’s Tavern, the Marquis of Granby, Walkers of Whitehall, the Two Chairmen, the Barley Mow and a handful of others, where you will find an ever-changing combination of Westminster people, alongside whichever civil servants happen to have their department close by.
Each clan will tend to have their own territory, but there is no point in trying to definitely match the group with the boozer as it changes with the times. The Westminster Arms was Tory for a while before it became UKIP, then UKIP largely disappeared and the Tories didn’t resurface afterwards; it was the Treasury patch for a generation until it wasn’t, or is it again? Et cetera.
What is more interesting is the fact that some pubs will be marked as political and others simply will not – the Lord Moon of the Mall is just by Trafalgar Square but no one seemingly ever goes there; The Feathers, on the other side of Parliament, is also not a pub where interesting drinks are ever held, for no apparent reason. Knowledge of the left-behind pubs can be useful: sometimes people do need to have conversations away from prying eyes and want a pint to go with it. In some cases, there is nothing better than to hide in plain sight: when they were chiefs of staff to Theresa May, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill made the Clarence their HQ. Though it is on Whitehall and a five-minute walk from Parliament, their meetings were undiscovered and uninterrupted.
Others have more creative solutions. Brexiteers Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan chose to plot at the Tate Britain a bit further along the Thames – according to Arron Banks’ The Brexit Club, they chose the venue because they thought that journalists would not be seen in such ‘cultured surroundings’.*
According to Order, Order!, one such hack was so adamant that he would not be seen with Labour spinner Damian McBride that he insisted they met at a Stringfellows, though the pair looked so uninterested in the women dancing that they were asked to leave the premises. Another way to go about it is to think creatively, like Conservative MP Greg Hands:
‘If we wanted to go and have some secret discussion, the best place to go would be the Chelsea Arts Club. There’s no MPs with the exception of me – I’m an honorary member. You’ve got to be a real artist to be a member of the Chelsea Arts Club, and they don’t accept you unless you’re a real artist, but there is one honorary member: the MP for Chelsea. I know I can go to the Chelsea Arts Club, because I will never meet another MP there.’
If you happen not to be the MP for Chelsea – and there is no shame in that – Hands also suggests the McDonald’s on Whitehall as a good place for a quiet chat.
Should you want to eat something a tad healthier, there are a number of other options. Want to have lunch with someone and be seen by absolutely everyone else? Quirinale is probably your best bet: an Italian restaurant as big as a shoe box, it is usually at least half-full of politicos talking and listening in on the other tables. The Cinnamon Club, a posh Indian round the corner, is similar, and so are Shepherd’s, Roux and Osteria Dell’Angolo. Kennington Tandoori just south of the river is also a solid bet, though usually for dinner.
If you would rather have a more private meal, you are still relatively spoilt for choice, as there are a number of decent restaurants close to SW1A, but there is no point in listing them here, as this is a book about politics and gossip, not the Yellow Pages.
WHAT THIS ALL MEANS
On top of the day-to-day socialising, life in Westminster involves a number of set pieces; social events that mark different parts of the yearly calendar. There are a number of summer parties in June and July (good luck getting into The Spectator’s), Christmas parties in November and December, and plenty of book launches, award ceremonies, nondescript cocktail receptions, ad nauseam.
For the Westminster people who moved to London for the first time to pursue a political career, this has good and bad sides. On the one hand, they will have enough of a social life to make the capital feel a bit homely, and they will be able to meet like-minded people with relative ease. On the other, it does mean that they will often not bother making friends outside the bubble, so their London won’t stretch very far beyond SW1. For those already living in London, the consequences are mostly problematic, as they are faced with two less-than-ideal choices: let yourself get swallowed up whole by the bubble and slowly but surely lose touch with your old friends, or fiercely defend your non-political social life and live with the constant fear of missing out, both personally and professionally.*
In any case, it is tremendously easy to find yourself alienated by life outside this small bubble that has become your home. If you work too hard for too many hours and all your friends and contacts can be found in a 15-minute walk radius of your office, it is hard to remember that there is still another world beyond politics. Much like people who were born and bred in a village can find it hard to envisage life in the big bad world outside their own universe, those who spend too much time in what is basically a square mile can forget that life still exists around it.
This is partly how rumours come to occupy such an important place in people’s minds: if Westminster becomes not only your place of work but also the place where you meet your friends and partners, the slightest bit of information can take on unwarranted significance.
There is also the slight issue of politics attracting a specific type of individual. It is a world where the pay isn’t great, the day-to-day life is intense, there is often little job security, people can be deeply unpleasant to one another and most of the public hates you: it really is not for everyone. As Bim Afolami (bluntly) put it: ‘In case it’s not obvious, MPs are not normal people.’ Luckily for them, neither is anyone else around here.
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* Or, as another MP bluntly put it: ‘Once the doors are locked, even the Prime Minister can’t do anything about it. You can take them by the shoulder or by the throat. They can’t get away.’
* This was of course written before Umunna and Soubry decided to jump ship together, but at least now we can guess what the meeting must have been about.
* Renamed ‘the Woolsack’ in 2018, which this book refuses to recognise as no one calls it that anyway.
* One bartender was once asked to turn the music down as punters couldn’t hear each other and firmly replied that the music wasn’t for them but so the staff didn’t have to listen to the rubbish people talk in Sports. Fair enough.
* Asked to recall their most embarrassing evening there, a number of aides got in touch but one story really outshone the others: ‘I got so drunk in Sports one night I decided I needed some fresh air and went up to the roof, thinking it would be peaceful and I could clear my head. When I got up there I threw up over the side and it nearly hit a Lord, who thankfully did not see me.’
* It is true that they were never spotted there, though one could argue that it is mostly because journalists have better things to do on weekdays than go have a stroll in a museum.
* It has been said that some people have managed to find a healthy balance between the two: if this is you, do feel free to get in touch with the author to share your wisdom.
PART 3
PERSONALITIES
‘People think Westminster is like House of Cards but it’s actually more like Mean Girls – so many people come in expecting to be Francis Urquhart but they’re just Regina George. There’s a lot of Regina Georges in Parliament.’
– Anonymous Conservative MP
THE SOCIAL NETWORK(S)
Information travels fast in Westminster, but not always in the most obvious ways. Stories which some have heard a thousand times will be completely unknown to others, and depending on who heard them first, some anecdotes will make their way
from one corner of the bubble to the other in days while others will sink without a trace.
This is due to the complex and nebulous nature of networks around Parliament, from friendships to working relationships and everything in between. Attempts were made to map out such networks and they failed: as a matter of a fact, a shameful number of napkins were harmed in the making of this book. Still, let’s take a stab at it and see where it gets us – pay attention, it’s about to get confusing.
Let’s start with MPs. You’re … well, let’s call you Andrew Smith, and say you’re the Labour MP for North West Southamptonshire, backbencher but been around since the 2015 election. Who do you know? Your first circle is your intake; the other Labour MPs who got elected in 2015 – it’s all a bit like school.
In the words of one Labour MP who was elected in 2010, ‘It very much operates in intake groups. Intake groups seem to be very influential in whom people speak to and whom they mix with.’ Whether through WhatsApp groups or frequent dinners, MPs will always tend to be close to the people who arrived at the same time as them, as there is camaraderie to be found when you’ve all had to figure out a tremendous amount of things in a tremendously short amount of time together.
You might not all get along, and you certainly won’t all agree on policies, but there will be an element of trust in there. ‘So my 2017 intake, there are lots of things known to us that actually nobody else knows, because actually nobody else is that interested, and there’s a certain quiet sense that you guys, you can all talk, and there are things that don’t leave that group,’ says MP Bim Afolami. ‘You look at 2005, 2001, ’97, they all have little groups and tight relationships of “we’ve been through the wars together” and “we’ve been here 20 years”. There are things there that will never get out of that group.’
Who else do you have? If you’re in a relatively small parliamentary party like the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru or the SNP, you will get to know your fellow MPs soon enough, but given the number of seats usually gained by Labour and the Conservatives at each election, you cannot reasonably be expected to know all your colleagues.
This is where your politics come into play. As one of Gordon Brown’s former advisers points out, A lot of the factional thing is historic: there are broad tendencies within the parties, and when you become politically active and join that party, you’re probably politically and historically aware enough to understand which strain of that party you identify most with, and that’s probably generational. There are pre-existing historical strains running throughout the party, both the parties, and you naturally gravitate towards one of those.’
These factions tend to run along the political spectrum, with centrist, centre-left/right, left/right-wing MPs sticking together, but people also coalesce around the more senior politicians of each political strand. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are the obvious examples of this: at any given point during the New Labour years, there were Blairite or Brownite cabinet ministers, ministers, backbenchers, advisers and aides. If you’re on the senior end of this, it helps to have a clan as you will need to have a base in Parliament to back you when things get tough, and fight some fights on your behalf. On the more junior end, it obviously helps to be able to rely on people in positions of power for influence and advice.
These are relationships not fundamentally based on personalities, but it doesn’t mean they do not stick together. Afolami explains it well: ‘So I think there are two levels. You’ve got first-order relationships, and then second/third-order relationships. First-order relationships are entirely whom you get on with. And that crosses intake, it crosses age, crosses committee, it crosses even to some degree party, even though the party thing is more tribal than I think people fully appreciate. That is entirely personal. But those in Westminster terms don’t really go very far as to explaining why people are allies with other people.
‘The second and third-order relationships between people are really about political factionalism. It’s about who’s on your team, broadly. So, for example, you have a bunch of people who see themselves as holding up the true Brexit flame. They don’t all like each other, more than some people who aren’t outside that group they get on with. But they’ve all bound together around a policy. Normally you will have two or three cabinet ministers who have a bunch of people whom they spend time with, they have drinks with, they give a bit of information to … That group doesn’t all hang together because they get on.’
This logic also works for MPs and their aides. Though every office will be different, a good relationship between the two can be mutually beneficial. An ambitious staffer will take it upon themselves to spend time around the bars and with assistants working for other MPs, which means that they will have access to a whole lot of information, both salacious and useful.
A Conservative aide puts it in a slightly unkind way: ‘They’re really clueless. I can tell MPs that I know, “Oh, did you hear this?” and they say, “Oh my God, no way! Where did you hear that?” “Literally from everybody. Where have you been?”’ MPs might be slightly too busy to pick up on everything doing the rounds, but what they do end up hearing tends to be more likely to be true.’*
When it comes to cross-party gossip and relationships, the dynamics aren’t exactly straightforward, especially between the main parties. Individuals might get along, but it can be hard to properly get across partisan lines. Two useful set-ups are select committees and all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) as they involve MPs from all parties having to effectively work together and spend time with each other as a group. While there is also a level of trust involved in these groupings, it does not mean that the information shared within them isn’t used for party political purposes.
‘If you’re on select committees together, or party parliamentary groups, you do form good working relationships that do occasionally lend themselves to “God, it’s a terrible nightmare on our side at the moment,” or, “Oh, interesting speech by Sajid Javid at the weekend, I didn’t think he’d say that,” and they say, “Well, that’s because he’s trying to appease this particular base,” or, “That’s been leaked because Gavin Williamson tried to do Y,”’ says one Labour MP. ‘It can be really, really useful to get those snippets and insights, because then you can work out how to divide the government more effectively.’
Another angle worth considering is people’s identity, both cross-party and within parties. There are too many men in Parliament for them to be considered as a grouping, but until recently, there weren’t that many female MPs, so they tended to have a closer relationship than their male counterparts. This doesn’t mean that they would go easier on each other, but both main parties have some women-only WhatsApp groups, and women from all across the political spectrum have worked together on issues relating to their gender.
Geography matters too: MPs in neighbouring seats will occasionally have to work together on issues that touch both their constituencies, as well as campaign for each other, and those in areas far from London might travel together to and from the Commons when the House is sitting.*
Age can also help, as those with young families will have an easier time bonding with fellow mothers and fathers than with those with grown-up grandchildren, and though the stigma is mostly gone from the Palace, some LGBT MPs can still have a closer bond with each other than with their straight peers. Ethnicity can be a defining factor too. There is still a shockingly small number of BME MPs, and even if the journeys that took them to the green benches can differ wildly, some of their experiences will be similar. This goes for religion as well.
Given that the country we’re talking about is Britain, it feels nearly superfluous to point out that class can help define who hangs out with whom as well. Its influence can be more latent within the Labour Party, but it’s on the Tory side that it really makes itself felt.
‘Class generally in the Conservative Party is one thing that I think people don’t really talk very much about,’ says Tim Bale of Queen Mary Universit
y, ‘but actually when you talk to people, you get a sense that it still does matter quite a lot in terms of their personal relationships. There are people who move in circles that don’t include other people, and that’s partly because of class and there are resentments that are built up. I was talking recently to someone, a friend of John Major’s, about John. He was very clear there that [working-class] Major never really got over that “not quite one of us” thing and felt it very strongly.’
Major’s resentment wasn’t necessarily paranoid: there might be solidarity among working-class MPs, but it is mostly among the upper classes that alliances are formed. A telling example came from Boris Johnson and David Cameron. Though the former PM was incandescent at Johnson and Gove for backing Leave in the Brexit referendum, he eventually made up with his old school chum, but still doesn’t talk to Gove. It might be an overinterpretation, but some who know the lot have suggested that class had something to do with it, as poor old Michael was only ever middle class.
This conveniently brings us to the next axis: personal connections. To dreadfully misquote Simone de Beauvoir, you’re not born an MP – you become one. Though sometimes people get elected by surprise or mistake, the process to even get selected is a complicated one, and those who go for it will have been involved in politics for a while.
‘These people, they’ve all known each other for fucking years,’ says academic Phil Cowley. ‘Most of them anyway. Most of them were involved in Conservative students, or Labour students, where they knew some of them. They worked then as an adviser for someone, and they met someone else who was working as an aide for an MP. So they have these friendships that don’t go back since they were elected, they go back ten, 15, 20 years.’
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