Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  And I’m going to lose Simon. That’s life. And I can’t bear it.

  SUNDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 1993

  I’m on the 8.30 flight to Heathrow. I came up for the Cheshire Regiment officers’ association dinner, a generous spread and good people. I sat next to Lt Col Bob Stewart,322 hero of Bosnia. He’s attractive but strange, a little overweight, possibly a little too ready to believe his own publicity. I liked him, but I can see why the MoD is wary of him. He has all the qualities to take him to the top – energy, intelligence, courage, achievement – but there’s something there that isn’t quite right. A perversity, a devil, something. His speech was a bit all over the place, which surprised me, but I liked his line: ‘Gentlemen, my rule is this. If there’s a battle, go towards it.’

  Michèle is meeting me at Heathrow. We are going straight to the Harley Street Clinic and then on to lunch with Stevie and Jo.

  FRIDAY 1 OCTOBER 1993

  According to the latest opinion poll, 92 per cent of the population oppose the imposition of VAT on domestic fuel. We do not seem quite to be marching in step with the people. The Labour Party on the other hand … Tony Benn has just been voted off Labour’s national executive after thirty-four years and, largely thanks to a wonderfully passionate speech by John Prescott, John Smith has won his battle to reform Labour’s links with the trade unions. They’ve discovered the will to win while we don’t seem to be able to get our sticky fingers off the button marked ‘self-destruct’.

  I am on my way to Liverpool to address the Merseyside Conservative Ladies at the Adelphi. I have the draft of the Chancellor’s conference speech with me, and as whatever I say will go completely unreported, I’m going to try it out on the good women of Merseyside. (I’ve got a couple of extra gags for him and I’m going to be going more softly on the VAT on fuel section. He wants to bang on about ‘why we must carry it through’. This could provoke jeers on the day and be a hostage to fortune. Whether the policy is right or wrong, if we can’t muster the support for it in the House a retreat will become inevitable.)

  An earthquake in India has killed 10,000, which should put the Chancellor’s troubles in perspective.

  WEDNESDAY 6 OCTOBER 1993

  At 6.30 I turned up at the conference hotel ‘autocue room’ to rehearse the Chancellor’s speech with him. Ken knows this sort of thing is necessary, but he can’t bring himself to take it seriously. Just as he gets to the podium and is set to start, in comes Jeffrey Archer. It seems that he is expecting to rehearse the Chancellor. Ken reads the script. He isn’t a natural orator and he isn’t any good at reading a script either. He manages to emphasise all the wrong words and he puts over the jokes in a curious one-note sing-song without any inflexion at the finish so the audience has no idea if this is the point at which to laugh. I don’t say any of this – or indeed anything – because Jeffrey is saying all that needs to be said, and more. KC reads a chunk and pauses. Jeffrey offers his critique. He’s so joyously bombastic, so cocksure it’s terribly funny. KC turns to me, ‘What do you think, Gyles?’ ‘I think Jeffrey’s spot on and you are quite brilliant, Chancellor.’ There’s no point in saying anything else.

  When our time was up, Jeffrey sailed off, very pleased with his endeavours, the Chancellor, chuckling, rolled away in search of a pint, and I made my way to some South Ribble backwater called Grimsargh where I was doing a turn for Nigel Evans.323 It went rather well: they liked the jokes and the answers to the questions came easily. For what it’s worth (which isn’t much in the wastes of Lancashire on a wet Wednesday night), I felt I’d hit my stride.

  THURSDAY 7 OCTOBER 1993

  A long day. I drove up to Blackpool in time to be on the platform for the Chancellor’s speech. He is such a nice guy, chuckling nervously in the wings as we waited to go on, chortling with relief when it was over. He paid absolutely no regard to anything that Jeffrey or I had said at the rehearsal. He just did it as he’d have done it anyway, and it worked. The troops rose to his rallying cry: ‘Any enemy of John Major is my enemy. Any enemy of John Major is no friend of the Conservative Party.’ And, despite my misgivings, he got through the passage on VAT and fuel without interruption.

  Even more remarkable was that I got through my lunchtime address to the Ulster Conservatives without embarrassment. I don’t quite know how I came to let myself in for it. I simply hadn’t thought it through. The invitation came and I said yes and it wasn’t until I arrived at St John’s Church and saw it surrounded by police that I began to register that Northern Ireland is one of those delicate issues that require deft handling and a sure touch! Anyway, I nailed my Unionist colours to the mast, hoped I was taking the government line, and appeared to get away with it.

  Michèle arrived for our party at the Savoy (the Blackpool Savoy) – nuts, crisps, an open bar and a motley crew of activists from Cheshire, Kent and Kingston, with GB, Alastair Goodlad, Jonathan Aitken and Norman Lamont as an equally motley crew of co-hosts. Norman feels he’s had a good week. He’s certainly had plenty of coverage. He wants to see a further £5 billion cut in public expenditure. KC said to me, ‘Do ask Norman where we’re going to find it.’ I think he feels we could make cuts in health and education. That’s a political impossibility. Indeed, much of what we might like to do is a political impossibility.

  We then went on to the Conference Ball where I conducted a knockabout auction and the PM spoke informally to the troops. I think he’s at his best off the cuff. He was surprisingly relaxed and fresh. We talked about tomorrow’s speech. Stephen [Dorrell] has produced reams of ideas, none of which are going to be used. Clearly they’re still dithering as to whether or not to mount a full-scale assault on the ‘fringe lunatics’. I said, ‘If you attack the people causing the divisions you make them the focus of the headlines. The Chancellor has done the call for unity.’

  ‘Yes, wasn’t he good? Isn’t he good?’ The PM trusts KC. He is right to.

  ‘Mrs T. has called for unity,’ I added.

  The PM gave me one of his blank stares, with the hint of a raised eyebrow. ‘If you do another call for unity, that’ll end up as the story. “Prime Minister pleads for unity”. What we want from you is the core message. “What I believe. Here I stand”.’ I think that’s what we’re going to get.

  FRIDAY 8 OCTOBER 1993

  ‘Let me tell you what I believe … It is time to return to the old core values. Time to get back to basics. To self-discipline and respect for the law. To consideration for others. To accepting responsibility for yourself and your family, and not shuffling it off on the State. Madam President, I believe that what this country needs is not less Conservatism. It is more Conservatism… It is time to return to our roots.’

  It went down wonderfully well. He did it wonderfully well. I watched it cocooned inside the Channel 4 commentary box, surrounded by professional cynics, but even they had to concede that he’d touched a chord with the faithful. They don’t adore him as they adored Thatcher, but they love him and they share his nostalgic longing for Miss Marple’s England.

  When it was over we met up with Peter Lilley and drove him to Chester for the reception at the International. Clearly, the right feel they’ve had a good week. Portillo has told the PM he mustn’t appear to be all things to all men. Peter has called for the return of ‘conviction politics’. The espousal of ‘core values’ is just what Mrs T. wants to hear. The mood music certainly suggests a shift to the right, but Clarke and Hurd and Heseltine aren’t worried. They have nothing to fear: they know that, whatever the rhetoric, Major shares their instincts.

  In his dry/shy way Peter did us proud at our gathering of the local business community and then raced off with Michèle to catch the train from Crewe. Because he was on party, not government, business there was no ministerial car, and she said he cut rather a pathetic figure struggling up the lane to the station, lead-lined ministerial box in one hand, overnight bags in the other. It was the last train, so no buffet, and he made it with only seconds to spare. He’ll get in to London
after midnight. He’s due on the Today programme at 7.00 a.m. It’s a punishing life.

  The Chester troops are in high spirits, not just a good conference but, better still, a full spread featuring our ‘Summer Soirée’ in the ‘Mr Society’ pages of Cheshire Life! This is what they want and what, on the whole, I fail to deliver. (My only recollection of the evening is of how we all stared frantically into our coffee cups as Cecil Parkinson told a never-ending story about a serial adulterer and a bicycle. Lady P. maintained a brave grimace throughout.)

  MONDAY 18 OCTOBER 1993

  As Mrs T. launches her memoirs, she tells us the PM is now back on ‘the true path’ and rejoices. At Drinks in the Lower Whips’ Office, we turn our minds to lower things: Steve Norris324 and his five mistresses. We are full of admiration. It is amazing – and amusing – apparently Mrs Norris knew what was going on, it was the mistresses who were unaware of one another – but utterly maddening for No. 10. ‘Back to basics’ was never supposed to be about sexual morality. Jonathan Hill tells me, ‘It hasn’t backfired. We’re sticking with it. This Norris nonsense will blow over. It’s a nine-day wonder. People wanted the PM to have a theme. Returning to our core values is his theme and he’s sticking with it. It’s working for us.’

  Iain Sproat wants me to meet with him and officials at the DNH to talk about violence on TV. ‘The PM believes there’s too much violence on TV. It desensitises people. We must do something about it.’

  Agreed. But what?

  FRIDAY 22 OCTOBER 1993

  I’m on the train from Derby to Crewe. I travelled to Derby with Edwina [Currie]. I like her, but I’m not sure that anybody else does. In the Tea Room, she’s the easy butt of every joke. In the Chamber, she speaks well, with conviction and authority, but no one seems to rate her. Perhaps it’s because she behaves like a man – she interrupts, she’s loud, she’s opinionated. I asked her why she turned down the chance to be in government again. ‘Who’d want to be Prisons Minister? And I couldn’t stand working for Ken Clarke again. He’s impossible.’ (I wonder how she’d have done as Prisons Minister. In the Tea Room queue, lining up for our lunchtime salads, David Maclean325 told me that drugs are now endemic in our prisons – in every prison – and there’s nothing we can do about it. Try to clear out the drugs and you’d have riots in every gaol in the land. With Edwina as Prisons Minister we might well have had riots in every gaol in the land…)

  At Westminster, the right despise her, the old buffers regard her as a vulgar parvenu, and her natural allies, the Euro-enthusiasts, don’t love her as they might because she steals their limelight, treads on their toes. Happily, in South Derbyshire, where I’ve been doing my turn on her behalf, she seems genuinely quite popular. I’d half thought of trying to get out of going because today’s the day Mrs T. is in Chester, talking about her book at the Gateway Theatre, and they’d asked me to chair the session. In the event, I decided I’d better stick by Edwina and they’ve got Nick Winterton fawning on Mrs T. instead.

  THURSDAY 28 OCTOBER 1993

  At lunch the Chancellor is in expansive mood – literally. Glass of wine in one hand, cheroot in the other, he tells us he’s ruling out early independence for the Bank of England, leans back with a contented sigh and a button bursts from his overstretched shirtfront, wings its way past Portillo’s ear and gently pings against a Treasury chandelier. Silence falls. We’re not sure whether to laugh. This is the Chancellor of the Exchequer after all. The team look down at the table, the Chancellor giggles, and we carry on as if nothing has happened.

  He has given the Bank greater operational independence – they can publish their inflation report without Treasury approval now – and he may go further in due course, but clearly complete independence is a way down the road. Lamont is advocating it now (as is Lawson), but I imagine KC sees merit in the final say on interest rates remaining in the hands of the elected politician who can take his own instincts as well as the statistics into account … especially, of course, when KC is the elected politician in question.

  WEDNESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 1993

  What nonsense it all is. Yesterday we were here till two in the morning struggling through the Lords’ amendments to the Railways Bill. Since it took five hours to get through barely fifty out of a total of 500, Tony Newton moved a guillotine motion to put a timetable to the proceedings. Uproar followed and tonight Labour mavericks have been seeking their revenge by lurking in the lavatories in the division lobbies so as to delay/obstruct/derail the votes. At about half past nine we were plodding through our lobby during the fifth division of the night when Greg Knight326 suddenly pounced on me.

  ‘Get back in there.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get back into the Chamber now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ve got to make a point of order. Complain about the delaying tactics. Get the Speaker to order the Serjeant At Arms to clear the lobbies. Now.’

  When the whip speaks, you move. I stumbled into the Chamber, where all was chaos, several hundred people milling all over the shop. I said to the whip on the front bench, ‘I’ve been told to make a point of order.’

  ‘You’ll need the hat.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get him the hat.’

  A collapsible black silk opera hat was produced from the clerk’s table.

  ‘Put it on, stay seated and catch the Speaker’s eye.’

  During a division the rule is that you can only speak when ‘seated and covered’. Don’t ask me why. I suppose it’s so you can be easily spotted. I donned the ludicrous top hat, feeling quite as foolish as I must have looked, and made my protest. Would the Deputy Speaker call the Serjeant At Arms to clear the lobbies and note the names of those members who were causing the obstruction? No, he would not.

  Immensely relieved, I sat back and took off the hat. The whip on the front bench whisked round and hissed. ‘Put it back on. Try again. Go on. Go on. Now, man, now.’

  On went the hat once more. I made a further protest, again to no effect. I passed the hat back to the whip. Someone called for it from the other side of the Chamber. It was flung over to Ernie Ross,327 tossed like a Frisbee. Then back it came to James Paice. Then it went shooting over to Mark Robinson.328 It whizzed here and there around the Chamber like a ludicrous flying saucer. Suddenly it disappeared and John Marshall329 was calling for attention. We turned to look at him and there he was, the Honourable Member for Hendon, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Lord President of the Council, seated in the Chamber of the House of Commons with a knotted hanky on his head.

  It’s nearly two in the morning and I’m going home, but I just wanted posterity to know how we conduct our business here.

  THURSDAY 11 NOVEMBER 1993

  Lunch with Jeffrey [Archer] and half a dozen new boys at Jeffrey’s flat. The view is fabulous. The host is generous. His great strength is his loyalty. He is gung-ho for the PM without equivocation. He thinks the PM’s initiative on Northern Ireland could transform his premiership. Others are more cynical. ‘You can’t go wrong with a peace initiative. If it succeeds, you’re a hero. If it fails, at least you were brave enough to try…’

  Under the Jumper is published today. The House of Commons Librarian has sent me a note explaining that it is a custom of the House for members to present a signed copy for the Library’s ‘special collection’. Clearly knowing nothing about my wild and woolly past, she assumes the title is based on a line of T. S. Eliot and calls the book Under the Juniper … I enjoyed writing it, but I don’t think it’s going to enjoy quite the success of The Downing Street Years. (Evidently I was right to avoid Mrs T. in Chester. The locals are up in arms about the cost of the visit and the disruption caused. The Police Authority is considering sending her publishers a bill for £26,000 to cover the security costs involved and today’s postbag contains a hoity-toity letter from one of my activists: ‘I would have been very sorry to see you with even a walk-on role in the Thatcher circus. Lord Home of the Hirsel is the proper ro
le model for all former Prime Ministers.’)

  A sobering letter today too from Sir John Page:330

  We met at the Harrow West lunch where I much enjoyed meeting you and listening to your speech. May an elder nobody put a, no, two thoughts in your mind? John Peyton once said to me: ‘The reason you never became a minister is that you make people laugh and then they don’t take you seriously.’ And, in about 1962, Harold Macmillan said to Bill Van Straubenzee and me, after a wind-up speech by Harold Wilson:

  ‘What did you think of Wilson’s speech?’

  ‘Brilliant. Marvellous. So witty,’ we said.

  ‘No good,’ said he, ‘Make more than two jokes and you become a turn.’

  So … work hard at trying to be dull! What awful advice – but well-meant by a new well-wisher.

  MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER 1993

  John Major will relaunch his faltering ‘back to basics’ initiative tonight by distancing himself from calls to cut back on welfare payments to single mothers. Amid signs that senior ministers are becoming alarmed that the Prime Minister’s social agenda is in danger of being bogged down in a political quagmire, Mr Major will turn the spotlight to his policies on education and law and order. We’re promised a new Criminal Justice Bill (the fifth in eight years), a Police Bill, and another Education Bill (the seventh in eight years). A full, fat legislative programme is going to be unveiled on Thursday and, according to Sarah Hogg331 and Jonathan Hill, every element of it will ‘go with the grain of our people’.