An Unexpected MP

by Jerry Hayes

  I was once having lunch in L’Amico, then a popular Westminster troughery, when she as City spokesman was doing her prawn cocktail charm offensive. She was with some pretty wide-looking City types whom she got rid of fairly quickly and came over to join us. She kicked off her shoes, lit a fag and had a long slurp of wine.

  ‘God, I’m fucking bored.’

  The rest of the afternoon was a bit of a blur, but it would have been a complete gossip fest.

  I have always done my very best not to be bitter. The world of politics and journalism is full of bitter men and women whose disappointment disfigures their souls and eats away at their humanity. So the Tory right wing have not made me bitter, just angry. Their total selfish indulgence destroyed what history will eventually record as a great Prime Minister in John Major. He was no flash-in-the-pan Prime Minister either. People forget that he was in office for seven years. He achieved great things for his country while his party kicked him in the teeth. When you see him in long interviews with Andrew Marr, you realise what the nation has lost. Judgement, compassion and a single-minded determination to put the country back on its feet. He bequeathed Labour a thriving economy, low debt and low unemployment. Sadly, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband’s Treasury trashed it.

  And history is in danger of repeating itself. Thatcher worship is often accompanied by Cameron hatred. These same people who sabotaged their own party in the ’90s are at it again. On the Tory back benches, treachery is never more than a shadow away.

  CHAPTER 17

  PARLIAMENTARY AIDE

  The 2010 intake, particularly those with marginal seats, really don’t know how lucky they are. I used to dread the dawn chorus every morning. It heralded the beginning of spring and that could be the countdown to a summer election. Now that the next election date is set in stone, those who will be the parliamentary roadkill of 2015 at least will know when they will be crushed under the wheels of the electoral charabanc.

  I know that most politicians are far better at self-delusion rather than mass deception, but I was pretty sure that I was going to win the 1992 election. The clue is on the doorstep. If people are unwilling to say how they will vote or there is a slight flicker in the eye when you mention the C word (Conservative), you can be pretty sure that there is not a cat’s chance in hell that they will vote for you. But the key indicator is the ‘knocking up’ just before the polls close. Electioneering is about finding your voters and making sure that they actually turn out and do the business. When your supporters are either ringing or knocking on the doors of those who said they will vote for you, you know what the lie of the land is by the response. If they’ve turned out and voted you have a reasonable chance of success. But if they are giving excuses you know that the chances are that you have been stuffed.

  In 1992 the reception on the doorstep was pretty good and those who promised to support were voting in droves. And yet strangely the opinion polls were telling us this was going to be a Labour victory.

  Mike Brunson rang me up on election night and told me that he was getting similar responses from all over the country. I told him that the polls were just plain wrong. That night, in his final broadcast before the polls closed, he kept his options open by declaring that that ‘tonight could hold some surprises’. Well, it did.

  John Major’s Conservatives achieved the highest vote of any political party in history, but because of the quirks of our system he won a parliamentary majority of just twenty-one. And my majority was halved at just over 3,000. But we had survived. For now.

  The Mail on Sunday’s political editor, Peter Dobbie, warned me that the next five years were going to be complete and utter boredom. ‘There’ll be nothing to get my political dick into at all,’ he moaned. As it happened it was one of the most fraught and poisonous parliaments in living memory. But that’s for another chapter.

  But what was going to happen to me? I’d had to leave the Health Select Committee under a cloud before the election as I was suspected of leaking a draft report. The truth of the matter, which I have never admitted before, was that I did. I had no choice. To be honest, I felt very uncomfortable about it as Nick Winterton was both a good friend and an excellent chairman. But he had a very big bee in his bonnet about the government’s health policy. And this draft report was so damning and so wrong that, due to be published just before a general election, it would have destroyed any chance of a return of a Major government. A government that I believed in and was utterly loyal to.

  My days of rebellion ended the moment John Major became Prime Minister. To let his premiership be destroyed by Labour was not something I could possibly contemplate. And in the 1992 election the NHS was being used cynically by Labour as a political football, with the most wicked scaremongering tactics over the War of Jennifer’s Ear, about a little girl and her lack of a grommet operation. So I made sure that the government had a copy of the first draft so that it could be neutralised.

  Soon after the election I received a call from the Chief Whip, Richard Ryder. Would I like to be PPS to Robert Atkins in the Northern Ireland Office? Of course.

  I had always got on rather well with Ryder, a fellow member of Major’s East Anglian mafia, who used to bring me in once a week for a one-to-one to discuss the political climate. The trouble was that I didn’t know Ratkins very well at all, and we got off to rather an unfortunate start when my mates at the Mail on Sunday wrote what they thought was a helpful piece, saying that Ratkins would be grateful for my input as I was so much brighter than him. This meant that our first meeting was distinctly chilly, with him chucking a copy of the paper at me and warning that if I thought I was going to be leaking everything that went on in his department to my mates in the press then I should fuck off now. It was sound advice which I took to heart.

  Ratkins turned out to be a seriously bright and astute political operator and we became great friends. They nicknamed us Hale and Pace, as we used to roam the bars to sort out backbenchers, particularly the Euronutters, usually with charm which could sometimes be a bit quirky. And sometimes with a snarl.

  One day we were on manoeuvres in one of the lobbies and were having an amusing discussion about a well-known Eurotwunt.

  ‘God, that man is a total cunt,’ chirped Ratkins to me, not realising that the Eurotwunt was standing right next to us.

  I discreetly coughed and without breaking step Ratkins turned to the guy, put his arm round him, smiled and said, ‘Good to see you, old boy, we were just talking about you!’ And off we sniggered to a bar, where we collapsed in hoots of laughter.

  One of my responsibilities was to be his minder at ‘gang bang’ lunches. These sorts of affairs were when two senior journalists from different newspapers would take a minister to lunch and share the spoils of their indiscretions. As Ratkins was a close personal friend of John Major, he tasked me to ensure that he never let any tasty morsels slip into their hands. For the first time in my life I was to be the arbiter of discretion.

  We had a code. I would kick him under the table if I thought he was heading into dangerous waters.

  Once, we were being gang-banged by Trevor Kavanagh (The Sun) and Simon Walters (then of the Sunday Express). Both are masters of mining gold nuggets which may seem innocuous at the time but could lead to embarrassing headlines. In the trade we call this ‘polishing turds’. And these guys’ turds would gleam so brightly that you would have to wear welding goggles.

  Lunch was going well, with Ratkins at his most discreet, and then suddenly I could see that they were gently corralling him into a corner. I delivered a series of rapid kicks, to no avail. Afterwards I asked him why he’d ignored my signal.

  ‘But you never bloody kicked me!’ he roared. And then the penny dropped. I had been kicking the long, gangly legs of Trevor Kavanagh. Heaven knows what he thought.

  A couple of hours later I bumped into Trevor in the Members’ lobby. He looked distressed.

  ‘Quick, quick, pretend we’re having a private discussion,’ he pleaded.


  I gave him a puzzled look. He pointed to the man who bores for Britain on all matters Brussels hot-footing it for Trevor with a stack of papers. So Trevor and I engaged in very serious conversation, and Bill Cash swerved towards another prospective lobby victim.

  In those days the Northern Ireland Office was even more fascinating than it is now. It was based in the Old Admiralty Building just off Horse Guards Parade. Now it is in the MI5 building.

  The Secretary of State’s room was Churchill’s office as First Lord of the Admiralty. We used to open the map case for visitors which still had the pins to show where the British convoys were in the Atlantic. And at the Trooping of the Colour we would hold a party for the good and the great overlooking the ceremony presided over by the Queen.

  One day, we were sitting in Paddy Mayhew (the Secretary of State)’s office when we heard loud footsteps and the even louder voice of the Reverend Ian Paisley, whose tone rather shocked us as it was in the form of a rallying prayer.

  ‘Oh Lord, bring down that wanker Mayhew from his lofty throne and cast our enemies to eternal damnation,’ it went. This meant serious trouble. Paisley cursing? Catastrophe. Suddenly the footsteps stopped and the door flung open to reveal not the big man, but the junior minister Jeremy Hanley, who is a very talented mimic. There was a sigh of relief and a lot of laughter.

  Despite the appalling difficulties, the NIO was a great place. And the people in the Province were absolutely warm and wonderful. My first job was to trail Ratkins round the various departments, as his responsibility included the economy, employment, tourism and just about everything apart from health and security. It was a mammoth job and a terrible strain on the liver. Whatever time of day you visited a departmental head, a bottle of Jameson’s special crested whiskey would be cracked open. The North may have been a deeply troubled and dangerous place, but it was very convivial.

  Another job was to bring MPs over and give them a great dinner at Stormont Castle with the various factions. These always ran like clockwork. Industrial-sized spirits beforehand, gallons of wine during the meal, all sweetness and light until the brandy was poured and then animated argument, dates and general acrimony.

  The next morning we would give the MPs a political briefing and colour photos of the atrocities. Which usually made some of them chuck up their breakfasts. Then we would take them round to see the peace walls, show them the state-of-the-art council housing and trot them off to Derry.

  One of the strangest requests I had was from the adorable Lady Olga Maitland, who sweetly asked if she could pop into the Falls Road to see a few antique shops. I explained that this was a hotbed of Republicanism and if she was spotted as a Brit MP I couldn’t guarantee her safety.

  ‘Ah, don’t worry. I could always get a black cab.’

  I reminded her that black cabs in Belfast tended to be run by the IRA. The trip in search of knick-knacks was duly abandoned.

  Olga once told me how, many years ago, Norman Lamont serenaded her outside her bedroom window. Another time, she regaled us with the story of how she was once approached by a flasher and remarked to her husband that he had taken out ‘Mr Mouse’. She is a quality act.

  Derry was the original name of the city until it was anglicised to Londonderry. When Chris Patten was a minister he changed it back, upsetting some of the Unionists. When he became Governor of Hong Kong, the standing joke was that he would rename it Kong.

  We had put a former IRA man in charge of the rebuilding. Both his sons had been killed in the Troubles and he had turned his back on violence. I once asked him if he had ever met the Security Minister, Michael Mates, who had once served in the Province at the height of the Troubles, as an army colonel. His eyes narrowed to slit trenches.

  ‘Aye, I once had him in the sights of my rifle.’

  I didn’t pursue it.

  Poor old Mates came terribly unstuck by giving Asil Nadir a watch inscribed with the words ‘Don’t let the buggers get you down’. Nadir was the Polly Peck boss accused of fraud who had fled UK jurisdiction and is now in prison. Looking back now, it seems an awful fuss about nothing. A minister of the Crown giving some moral support to a man accused of serious offences when the minister is not in any department that can assist seems rather tame. But in those days the press was out to get him, and the situation from a news management point of view had spun out of control. The view that he was going to have to go was gaining currency simply because the story was drowning out any good news that the government wanted to present.

  Michael asked me what he should do. My advice was that he should resign with dignity and a grateful Prime Minister would reward him after a decent interval. He nodded. So I assumed that was it. I sent word back that that was what he would probably do.

  That night I was watching the six o’clock news and there was Michael standing in front of a bomb crater condemning the Provisional IRA. Then the interviewer asked him if he was thinking of resigning. He replied that he wasn’t and had the full confidence of the Prime Minister. My jaw dropped, as did my chum’s at No. 10, who rang me with a ‘What the fuck?’ The next day Mates got the chop.

  One of the PPS jobs is to get the troops prepared for departmental questions, which happens every few weeks. Luckily there was all-party consensus on Northern Ireland so it was fairly easy. But questions had to be planted, as otherwise there would not be much of a Question Time. God, it was tiresome, and not unlike selling insurance or encyclopaedias.

  First you had to think of something that would put the department and your minister in a good light. Then you wrote it out on a yellow form. After that, it was begging your mates to table it. That was the easy bit. You then had to await the ballot to see who had a reasonable chance of being called, write to the poor unfortunate devils who had succeeded and politely suggest a supplementary question, which, in effect, you wrote out. Such great incisive questioning along the lines of ‘In the light of my Right Honourable friend’s careful stewardship of the Northern Ireland economy, is he not encouraged that this is one of the first steps on the road to peace?’ And other such mindless tripe. Then you had to go into the chamber, ensure that your plants were in their places and read the right script, and then drop them a note of thanks afterwards. This is what is whimsically called holding the executive to account. But it keeps the kids on the playground happy.

  You have to remember that this this was all before devolution, so ministers were effectively responsible for everything from vitally important matters such as the economy and security down to the utterly daft, such as car parking. But even car parking had its sectarian implications. In fact, everything did. I remember hosting a dinner to get MPs to know the DUP (Paisley’s lot). Just before the guests arrived, I noticed that some bright spark had laid a green tablecloth. On the mainland, this would be of mind-erasing irrelevance. In the Province you could start a riot for less. I quickly got the staff to put a few bowls of oranges on the table. And not a word was said.

  Politics in Northern Ireland has changed a great deal over the years – and very much for the better. The Ulster Unionists used to be the largest party and when I was in the NIO David Trimble had become their leader. I am very fond of David and he eventually became an effective First Minister, but in the early days he was hard work and would be easily offended, particularly by Paddy Mayhew. When he became really angry a vein used to throb on his left temple, which is how officials gave him the nickname Penis Head.

  Paddy was always good news. Tall, patrician and a very effective Secretary of State. Our Permanent Secretary was John Chilcot, later chairman of the Iraq War inquiry.

  One evening I received a call from Paddy on the day that Jacques Delors was due to pay a visit to Hillsborough Castle for a reception.

  ‘Bloody Delors has got the flu, come and help me with the food.’

  So Ratkins, Paddy and I spent the evening at Hillsborough, sitting on the floor of the Throne Room watching the telly and hoovering up all those wasted canapés and a few bottles of
wine.

  The video link, quite a modern innovation in those days, kept us all in touch. If in London, we would go into a leaky basement and chat on what we hoped was a secure link. After all, we remembered Richard Needham as a junior minister a few years earlier mentioning on his mobile that he was having to entertain the ‘old cow’ the next day. The IRA monitored all mobile phone traffic and released the tape. And the ‘old cow’ in question was Margaret Thatcher, who was decidedly frosty when Needham escorted her round Belfast town centre.

  One day, on the link, Paddy made an announcement. ‘Gentlemen, we have been less than honest with you recently, but for good reason. We have received a message from the Provisional IRA that they want to end the war.’

  This was the beginning of the peace process.

  Relations with the Irish were friendly but fraught. One of the difficulties was that every now and again there would be suspicions that we were leading them up the garden path, usually over something that had been said by John Hume.

  John is a very great man, the leader of the civil rights movement and a hardworking and decent bloke who did more than many to secure peace in the North. But he could be a little erratic after a drink. He would tell a journalist that there was about to be some breakthrough and then perhaps mention it to one of his mates in the Irish government. John would then disappear for a few days and none of us knew where the hell he was. So the Irish would ask us what the great breakthrough was and we would tell them the truth. We didn’t know. He hadn’t told us. And no, we hadn’t a clue where he was. They often didn’t believe a word of it. But we muddled through in the end.

  But the Irish were always great fun to deal with, although sometimes a little quirky. Poor old Paddy was totally exasperated by one Irish Foreign Minister who had agreed to keep silent about some recent progress and then went out to give a press conference on it. When asked why the agreement was broken, the minister looked rather confused. ‘Sometimes when you need to be silent you have to say something.’ Mmm.