My concern was not just to do well in the campaign, though, but also to be prepared for what might follow: a hung parliament. I set up a small and secret team – Alan Beith, Bob MacLennan and myself – to begin to prepare for how we would handle this eventuality. We drew up papers on our bargaining positions, rehearsed who would play what role, and undertook training in negotiating techniques. Our bottom line was that we could not enter into any coalition unless proportional representation (PR) was part of the deal. Our reason for this was not just because we believed that PR would revitalise elections and lead to a more citizen-based politics; it was also – and perhaps chiefly – because we knew that when eventually a coalition government falls (as it must) it is always the junior party that suffers most. By accurately relating the number of seats in Parliament to votes won across the country, PR would have reduced the unfair share of the seats the big parties enjoy under Britain’s present voting system and increased the number of seats allocated to the other, smaller parties (including the Lib Dems, of course). We saw PR, therefore, as the essential ‘lifeboat’ that would provide us, as the third party, with the insurance policy necessary to survive the end of a coalition.
But I was also beginning to think about what would happen if, unexpectedly, the Tories won. Privately, I viewed this as perhaps the most beneficial outcome for us. I judged that a coalition with Neil Kinnock and Labour in its current form would have been very difficult to handle and almost impossible to make a success of. On the other hand, a fourth Labour defeat could open up the road to a historic realignment of the Left, which would heal the rift that had occurred when Labour broke away from the Liberals in the early years of the twentieth century. In early July 1991 I asked a very close and trusted friend, William Wallace, to start thinking about what we could do to push this forward as soon after the election as possible, if the Tories won again. I asked him, in particular, to look at the wisdom of my giving a speech, perhaps as early as the week after the election, which would propose a deal between us and Labour, based on a broad programme of constitutional reform, beginning with a joint Lib/Lab convention on a Scottish Parliament.
It was also about this time that some newspapers started to report trouble in Yugoslavia. I asked for a briefing and had to be shown where the various ‘countries’ of Yugoslavia were, after which I dismissed it all as too complex and, anyway, not something for me to bother about, because it wasn’t going to amount to anything important.
Reviewing progress at the end of the year, I felt rather self-satisfied. We had made real advances, taking a third Tory seat (Kincardine and Deeside) in November of that year. The reckoning was that I had had a ‘good’ Gulf War. The Parliamentary Party was united and purposeful. And my personal ratings in the polls were consistently higher than either of the other two party leaders. I thought us well placed for what everyone recognised would be a very tight election in a few months.
It was in just this upbeat mood that I was enjoying a late-night glass of whisky with Des Wilson in my flat after a long but successful day, when the phone rang. It was Tricia Howard saying the News of the World had been round to her house. I made an excuse to bid Des goodnight and rang her back. Apparently a woman reporter had called on her and related the full story of our relationship when she was my secretary back in 1985. I felt my stomach sink into a black pit. I asked her if the reporter had given any indication where they had got the information from? None. I promised her all the support I could provide and said I would ring her again in the morning after I had time to think. I then rang my solicitor and old friend, Andrew Phillips, to tell him what had happened. So began the worst week of my life.
The following morning I briefed my close advisers, who were, without exception, supportive. It was in the course of this briefing that Andrew Phillips told us that a few days previously the safe in his office (where he had put the envelope containing the notes of my conversation with him about my affair with Tricia) had been broken into, and the notes had been taken. What this meant was that the News of the World was using stolen private documents as the basis for its story, something that was plainly illegal. We agreed that, on this basis, it was worth trying for an injunction to prevent the News of the World and other newspapers who might follow its lead from publishing, or at the very least buy us a little time to make our dispositions. Andrew put the relevant papers together and, that afternoon, obtained an ex parte injunction in very short order.
Meanwhile my brother Mark, who is himself a solicitor in Bristol, collected Tricia, who was living alone and had no one to help her, and brought her to London, so she could get some advice from Andrew Phillips and we could provide her with the support she needed. After this I returned to Yeovil and went through the excruciatingly painful process of telling first Jane, and then my Constituency officers what had happened and discussing with them what action we should take next.
Over the next few days rumour started to spread like wildfire around Westminster, and articles hinting at ‘a senior politician in a sex scandal’ started to appear in the newspapers. The Independent published just such a blazing headline, juxtaposing it with a separate report and full page photo of me at a minor meeting they would never normally have given two column inches to. Moreover, it was clear that, although the injunction would stop English newspapers publishing, it would have no effect on Scottish or European ones, and the moment one of them ran the story, the English Press would be free to follow suit.
On 4 February (actually in the middle of a private reverie during a pre-election dinner with the BBC) I took the decision that I was not going to wait for the papers to break the story; I was going to grab the initiative and break it myself. I phoned Jane that night to tell her. She agreed it was the right course of action and said she would come up to London the following day to be with me. The following morning I called in my key advisers and informed them what I was going to do and, at a packed and highly charged press conference at noon, made a clean breast of it all.
The following couple of days were terrible in the Press, with the Sun coming up with the headline, ‘Paddy Pantsdown’, which is still sometimes shouted at me from a distance by drunks or young men wanting a bit of fun. Even the Guardian went to town, with a lead story spread over ninety percent of the front page and the whole of pages two and three, plus the main leader and another three pages with articles on the subject. Some of my political enemies enjoyed this greatly, especially because, although I have never either commented on or criticised anyone on matters of private morality, I did have a habit (chiefly springing from nervousness) of sounding a bit self-righteous and even priggish in the House. Indeed, the current joke about me was that the message on my answering machine was ‘Hello. This is Paddy Ashdown. Please leave your message after the high moral tone’. So this fall from grace caused a good deal of quiet satisfaction for some. But the Lib Dem MPs in the House of Commons, and especially my front-bench colleagues were outstanding, as was John Major, who wrote me a private letter expressing his sympathy and support.
And the British public at large seemed to be extraordinarily forgiving, too – my opinion poll ratings actually went up as a result! I was in no doubt, though, that this did not mean that they approved of what I had done, only of the way it had been handled. So often in these matters it is the public lying that does the most damage.
But nothing could lessen the shame I felt, especially at bringing such pain to Jane, my family and, indeed, to Tricia, quite apart from letting down so many in the Party who were preparing for a vital election. Indeed, the damage from my actions spread even wider, for the Press were determined to try to find other scandals to uncover, and for months up to and including the Election, there was barely a female friend who was not approached and accused of having an affair with me, and barely a day without some rumour or other being relayed to me. Jane, meanwhile, received a string of most unpleasant letters and phone calls which gave further ‘details’ of my supposed indiscretions, while in pubs and phone boxes
in my Constituency anonymous flyers were circulated purporting to be a personal message from someone claiming to be my ‘love child’, complete with a picture, saying that I had abandoned her. All this made life for my family even more difficult, and seriously undermined my self-confidence too. That, it appears, was precisely what was supposed to happen – as we discovered after the Election, when we learned* that some Tories had imported a group of US activists called ‘The Nerds’, whose job was to manufacture and spread malign rumours and make unfounded personal accusations against senior opposition MPs to undermine their effectiveness. Perhaps this was done without official sanction from the top of the Conservative Party. But perhaps not. After the election Kelvin Mackenzie, then editor of the Sun, revealed that at least one Cabinet-level Tory Minister had approached him seeking to retail scurrilous and untrue allegations against a number of senior opposition MPs.
None of this, of course, made for an easy general election campaign – though it had its moments. John Cleese helped us a lot during the campaign with appearances, advice and some very useful speech suggestions. Jokes (which I am not good at) are as valuable as gold to politicians, and they are always on the look-out for good ones – especially one-liners which can defuse a tricky moment. On one occasion, at a crucial point in the campaign, the Tories announced that David Owen was going to vote for them. I knew that the first thing I was going to have to do on the news that night was to give my reaction to Owen’s defection. Lost as to how to respond, I rang John, who gave me, seemingly without a moment’s thought, the perfect response. Sure enough, the first question I was asked that evening was ‘Mr Ashdown, what is your reaction to the fact that Dr Owen has announced that he will be voting Tory at the Election?’ To which I responded, with appropriate concern on my face, ‘Well it’s only fair. It is their turn.’
Des Wilson’s brilliant campaign was later acknowledged to be, by a clear margin, the best of the general election. All the same, we did make one major tactical error, which was more my fault than Des’s. We had both agreed beforehand that the aim of the campaign would be to make a hung parliament, and our role in it, the key issue of the last week of the campaign. In this Des succeeded brilliantly. By the last weekend, all the polls were pointing to a hung parliament, and I was on every news broadcast being asked what my price for a coalition would be. I tried to pretend that I could go into a coalition with either Party, but everyone knew that, after thirteen years of an increasingly unpopular Tory Government, I could never in reality have helped them in through the back door of Downing Street if the public had kicked them out through the front.
However, what neither Des nor I had spotted was that, as the campaign wore on, the public were getting increasingly concerned about the prospect of Neil Kinnock moving into Downing Street. Meanwhile in my weekend interviews before polling day I compounded the error by sounding far too strident and cocky in my demands for proportional representation – I made it look as though I was more interested in what was good for the Lib Dems than in what was good for the country.
John Major caught the public mood much better when, on the Monday before the election, he pulled out his famous soap box and recast himself as the underdog, a decent man fighting against the odds and against a conspiracy between Kinnock and me. And then, at the infamous Sheffield Rally, Neil let his guard slip and indulged in a most unwise bout of loud-mouthed triumphalism, so confirming all the public’s fears about him. I once again felt the votes move massively away from us in the last days of the campaign.
On polling day, 9 April 1992, John Major, against the odds and all predictions, returned to Downing Street with a majority of 65, surprising the nation and, I think, himself as well. We had privately hoped to end up with 30 MPs, but we won only 20 seats, one more than when I was elected. Still, at least we had survived, which was more than almost anyone had predicted after the horrors of the first two years of the Party’s existence.
* The origin of this is a little obscure – but as I recall Des Wilson, one of the key members, had made a rather extended joke at one of our meetings about the curious name of ‘Ming’ Campbell, one of our target-seat candidates who was regarded as likely to win at the forthcoming election. This had caused such mirth that for some reason the name became applied to the group.
* After the famous Monty Python sketch.
* MORI/Times 26 Sep 1988.
* These occasions are not all Royal, though. They include, for instance, the Cup Final, Wimbledon, state anniversaries (like the Fiftieth Anniversary of D Day), etc. Because I have no interest whatever in sport, I found the sporting occasions boring and tried to avoid them whenever I could. The one exception was Wimbledon, not because I am at all a tennis fan, but because Jane is crazy about it and insisted that I attend this as my annual compensation for the things she had had to put up with on my behalf. On one occasion we were invited to the Royal Box for the semi-finals, to Jane’s complete delight. However, I sat there for a few minutes and then fell fast asleep; so the next day’s newspapers carried a most unflattering photograph of me in open-mouthed somnolent pose, accompanied by comments that might easily have graced a Bateman cartoon, entitled ‘The man who fell asleep in the Royal Box during the Wimbledon semi-finals’.
* Canon Myles Raikes, now sadly dead.
* Though they were not formally wound up until June the following year.
* Simon resolutely denied this.
* MORI/Times 27 June and 21 August 1989.
† Alastair Campbell, at that time still Political Correspondent for the Daily Mirror, wrote an excoriating article attacking me for getting personally involved in the Tiananmen Square affair, saying it proved I was just not serious. This he has subsequently and with great generosity apologised for, admitting that this judgement was wrong.
* This was originally designed for us by Rodney Fitch, probably the best-known brand consultant/designer of the time, who – together with others, like Peter Grender – helped us hugely in these difficult days.
* According to legend, Mrs Thatcher (famous for having a rather limited sense of humour and even less contact with popular culture) had to be shown the famous John Cleese sketch three times before, still apparently rather bewildered at its relevance to this line in her speech, she nevertheless agreed to use it.
† This line actually came from one of Mrs Thatcher’s own Cabinet colleagues, Kenneth Baker, who replied thus when a Standard journalist asked his reaction to the contrast between Mrs Thatcher’s disparaging comment and our trouncing of the Tories at Eastbourne.
* Hansard 14 February 1991 Columns 994 and 995; ‘Mr. Ashdown: Does the Prime Minister agree that, in considering the lessons of the terrible tragedy that took place in Baghdad last night, we should not forget that Saddam Hussein has, not through inadvertence, but through acts of deliberate policy, killed more Muslims than any other living person? Does he also agree that, as the terrible toll of the war rises, so should our determination to build a just and durable peace to follow it?’
* See Sunday Times, 17 May 1992, back page.
CHAPTER 13
Leader II: Back on the Field
IT IS 2 AUGUST 1992, the Election is behind us and I am on my way to Sarajevo. Far below us the Adriatic shines with a deep ultramarine blue never seen in northern waters. Here the grain of Dalmatia runs parallel to the coast, leaving a necklace of islands and submerged inlets strung along the shore, where the great mountain ridges of the Dinaric Alps vanish under the Adriatic. After an hour’s flying we pass over the ancient town of Split, its red roofs a splash of colour against the slate grey of the hills which encircle it. This was the birthplace of the Emperor Diocletian, who drew, only two hundred miles to the east of us, the line that divided the Eastern from the Western Empire, around which blood and turmoil have swirled for two millennia and do so still today.
Suddenly the aircraft banks and gently dips, as we swing away from the coast towards the east and begin the long, slow incline downwards towards a distant rim of mou
ntains, etched in a darker blue against an azure sky. ‘Now it gets more tricky,’ explains the pilot, sitting just in front of me. ‘Sometimes they fire at us. It happens rarely. But it does happen, and it can be a bit hairy at times.’ I notice that the RAF Special Forces team flying this Hercules, with its thirty tons of aid, suddenly put aside the relaxed atmosphere of our journey so far and begin preparing the aircraft for our approach.
We are now flying across north–south ridges, watered by lively streams and sprinkled with small alpine hamlets. It appears idyllic – until I look closer and see that the land is abandoned: very few houses have roofs, and many are little more than blackened shells.
Ahead, the rim of mountains starts growing into a row of formidable 6,000-ft peaks, at the base of which I can now dimly see a dark grey smudge spread like a stain across a broad open valley between the peaks. As I watch, this resolves itself into the outlines of a great city with a blanket of smoke hanging in the still air above it, fed by several columns rising up from the buildings below.
Now I can see the airport, perhaps ten miles ahead of us. As we cross the final ridge, the pilot tells me that if I look down I will see a Serb radar-controlled anti-aircraft battery tracking us in – and, sure enough, there it is, swinging gracefully with us as we pass overhead. The aircraft sensors pick up the hostile radar, and suddenly there are missile alarms screaming in our ears. The pilot flicks a switch to turn them off and then, it seems almost at the same time, the ground tips wildly up towards us, as the aircraft’s nose dips down at a suicidal angle, pointing straight at the threshold of the runway fifteen hundred feet below. The pilot has forewarned me that, because of the danger of ground fire, we will be doing a ‘Khe Sanh’ landing (as used by planes resupplying US forces besieged there during the Vietnam war), which means a very fast descent from fifteen hundred feet. But this in no way diminishes my concern that the ground is now rushing towards me on a sharp collision course, while just behind my head thirty tons of stores are straining against their lashings to break free and obey the law of gravity. The copilot is now counting, ‘Twelve hundred, a thousand, eight hundred, seven hundred …’ When he announces four hundred feet the captain lowers the flaps; again the ground tips crazily, this time back up into the right position, and G forces push my legs into the aircraft floor so hard that my knees are forced to bend involuntarily. Then, with little more than a whisper and as gently as thistledown, we are on the ground and taxiing towards the end of the runway, where I can see a ruined tank sunk at a crazy angle in a ditch, its gun pointing aimlessly at the sky.
A Fortunate Life Page 34