Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  I suggested to the PM that less-legislation-not-more could be part of the back to basics programme. People are suffering from change-fatigue. We are going to have a Deregulation Bill essentially to undo all the unnecessary regulations we have introduced! Why not revisit the good old Tory adage, ‘When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change’? His eyes glazed over. A government that isn’t busy-busy-busy is perceived to have run out of steam.

  The truth is there’s too much legislation, inadequately prepared, pushed through in too great haste. There was a good piece on all this by Anthony King332 last week. He noted that on John Patten’s last Education Bill there were 278 government amendments introduced during the Commons committee stage, 78 more on report, 258 more during the Lords committee stage, 296 more on report and 71 at third reading. King reckons this mania for legislation began with Thatcher. Action, revolution, change, never let up, never stop. ‘I tinker, therefore I am.’ King quotes Bagehot333 with approval: ‘If you are always altering your house, it is a sign either that you have a bad house or that you have an excessively restless disposition – there is something wrong somewhere.’

  WEDNESDAY 24 NOVEMBER 1993

  Last night I spoke in the debate on the Queen’s Speech. I was called at 8.20 p.m. when all sensible people should be (and were) elsewhere, feeding their faces. Janet Fookes,334 birdlike and motherly, was gently clucking in the chair, John Patten flounced and bounced on the front bench, and I think I counted a total of six other lonely souls dotted about the Chamber. They weren’t there to hear my words of wisdom, of course: they were simply waiting to offer their own. Why did I speak? Because I had something to say? Yes, oddly enough. Was anyone listening? No. Will anyone read it in Hansard? No. Was there any point to it? None at all – except that someone’s got to speak because the whips believe they’ve got to keep the whole thing going till 10.00 p.m. regardless – even on a night like last night when there isn’t going to be a vote. Naturally, I can – and have – done a press release based on what I said, but you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of putting in to speak and hanging around for hours to make your ten-minute contribution to get a paragraph in the Chester Chronicle. Regularly I do press releases beginning, ‘Gyles Brandreth said in the House of Commons today…’ meaning that I dictated the words to my secretary in the purlieus of the House of Commons.

  At prayers this morning I told the Chancellor that I’d been advocating a brief Budget statement. ‘The recovery is coming along nicely, we’ve had some encouraging figures, we had a very full Budget earlier in the year, steady as she goes – thank you very much.’

  He laughed. ‘I think you’re going to be disappointed. It could be the fattest Finance Bill on record. You and Stephen [Dorrell] are going to enjoy that.’

  ‘As long as it doesn’t include VAT on reading.’

  He disappeared inside a cloud of cigar smoke. ‘What about newspapers?’

  Oppenheim looked up from the Financial Times. ‘You could hardly describe VAT on The Sun as a tax on knowledge.’

  SATURDAY 27 NOVEMBER 1993

  Last night I went to Enfield to speak for Michael Portillo. They treat him like a god. He comes into the room and the crowds part like the Red Sea. He walks among them without hauteur but with a complete assurance, an absolute acceptance of the fact that they are the worshippers and he is the worshipped one. All this – in Enfield!

  I’ve just come from doing Loose Ends.335 Without warning Ned [Sherrin] got me to tell the Queen Mary story and I stumbled through it because I couldn’t remember the pay-off. (As Kenneth [Williams] used to say, ‘For gawd’s sake, don’t tell a story unless you can get the bloody tag right. It’s all in the tag.’) The story starts with George V out walking in the garden of Buckingham Palace and asking why his customary equerry was not in attendance. He is told the man is unwell. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ asks the king. ‘Oh, you know, sir, the universal complaint…’ Next day, Queen Mary remarks to someone, ‘I hear His Majesty’s equerry is ill. What is the matter with him?’ ‘A bad attack of haemorrhoids, I’m afraid, ma’am.’ ‘Oh,’ says the queen, ‘Why did the king tell me it was the clap?’

  As I write I’m in the plane flying to Manchester. Because we signed our wills this week, because the insurance means that I’m worth a lot more dead than alive, because the children are virtually grown up, because I’ve ticked off my little list of footling ambitions, because Simon is dying, I suddenly realise I’ve lost my fear of flying. If the plane falls out of the sky, so be it. I don’t want to die, but I’m not frightened in the way I used to be. I used to be terrified. Now, here I am, drinking my British Airways coffee, feeling childishly pleased because I’ve secured my favourite front row seat, feeling (dare I say it) happy. (Michèle says I dare not say it. She never lets herself feel happy because she knows the moment she lets her guard down, the moment she allows herself fleetingly to feel relaxed, the moment she thinks for a second ‘Well, things aren’t too bad’, disaster strikes.) I am even ready for what Chester has to offer this weekend: the dinner dance at Upton Golf Club, my quarterly meeting with the farmers tomorrow, Sunday lunch with Anne, Duchess of Westminster as guest of honour. (She’s wonderful value: a game old bird, with a deep-deep voice, a low-slung bosom and a big heart. She has no idea who I am, but so long as she’s got a fag on the go and there’s plenty of G in the G&T, she’s the easiest company in the world.)

  WEDNESDAY 1 DECEMBER 1993

  A long forty-eight hours. To secure my rightful place behind the Chancellor for the Budget, I turned up at the Commons at 7.00 a.m. yesterday morning to join the queue. The Chamber opens at eight, when we fools rush in, armed with our little green prayer cards and bag our favourite places. By tradition Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman336 (knocking seventy) is always at the front of the line. She brings a sleeping bag and a portable bed which she parks outside the door to the Chamber and she spends the night there, sleeping in the shadow of the statues of Churchill and Lloyd George. By the time I arrived there were about forty ahead of me, some standing, some squatting, quite a few with chairs they’d brought from nearby offices, and the line stretched back from the Chamber across member’s lobby through the swing door towards Central Lobby.

  The Budget itself was a triumph for KC. It was a delicious, teasing, playful performance. He is a wonderful operator and such a likeable man. He’s had a superb press: ‘A Budget for economic and political recovery’ says The Times. ‘No smoke, no mirrors, just loads of chutzpah’ says Anatole Kaletsky. And so say all of us – though the Chancellor said to me last night, ‘It’s a golden rule – a Budget that’s acclaimed on the day doesn’t fare so well in retrospect. Let’s not get too cheerful too soon. Wait till they’ve read the small print.’

  I think I’m weary through a surfeit of duchesses. I was on the bench till gone ten, not in bed till gone midnight, then up at dawn to fly to Manchester for the Waterstones’s Literary Lunch. The line-up was Trevor McDonald,337 Lt Col Bob Stewart, Fergie and me. Fergie338 spoke surprisingly well: she’d worked on her material, had several pages of notes written out in a large and loopy hand. She rather overdid her undying devotion to the present Queen and her grovelling gratitude for Her Majesty’s sustained and unstinting kindness to her, and I imagine her claims to have some sort of spiritual connection with Queen Victoria has the widow of Windsor spinning in her grave (and the likes of Lord Charteris positively spitting), but she was eager and good-hearted and nicely flirtatious in a gosh-golly-girls-in-the-dorm kind of way, and I liked her – especially because she gave me a copy of her book and bought three copies of mine.

  ‘What’s the worst thing about being royal?’

  ‘When you meet them, people remember what you say. And when you meet them for the second time, years later, they say, “You don’t remember me, do you?” I hate that.’

  I was planning to come back by train because it was going to be easier for me from Euston. ‘No,’ she said, ‘Come on the plane.’

 
; ‘I haven’t got a ticket.’

  ‘I’ve got two tickets.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just in case! I always get two … you never know.’

  I imagine the money’s pouring away. She bought several copies of everybody’s books. She gushed and gladhanded and yearned to be wanted and liked and loved. Colonel Bob did his best to imply an established intimacy. (‘Yes, Sarah, I’ll call you.’ It has all gone to his head.) Trevor and I settled for a new friendship and, while I imagine our hoots and giggles and guffaws will have been immensely irritating to our fellow passengers, we rather enjoyed the flight home.

  As a consequence of being seduced onto the plane, I arrived late for the charity do at St James’s Palace. They were already à table. I went to apologise to our hostess, the Duchess of Gloucester, knelt at her side and said ‘I’m so sorry I’m late.’ She was not amused. I compounded my lèse-majesté, by telling her (as Fergie insisted I should, absolutely insisted, ‘You must, please, please. I don’t see any of them now and I don’t want to be frozen out’) that I’d spent the day with the Duchess of York and ‘Sarah particularly asked to be remembered to you.’ The Danish duchess said nothing, nothing at all, frowned ever-so-slightly to get her ‘Who do you think you are?’ message across, and returned her attention to her plate.

  I should have remembered that she’s not an easy ride. At the Roy Miles Gallery, at a private view, somehow we’d been left alone in the middle of a quite small room. I’d struggled with the small talk long enough. She was saying nothing: I had nothing more to say. I moved slightly closer to her and, while I burbled some inanity in her ear, behind her back I frantically gestured to Michèle to come and rescue me. Suddenly I realised that Her Royal Highness was gazing over my left shoulder into the mirror that was facing her. She was staring at the awful reflection of me frantically waving – and drowning.

  WEDNESDAY 8 DECEMBER 1993

  Last night at the Foreign Office party, in the newly refurbished and quite splendid Durbar Room, I met up with Liza Manningham-Buller, whom I last saw when she played the Fairy Queen in my production of Cinderella at Oxford twenty-six years ago. She seemed remarkably unchanged, except that I gather she’s now one of our most senior spies, destined to be, if not already, the head of MI6.339 Extraordinary.

  Tonight we’re voting on Sunday trading. I’m voting for total deregulation. I like these free votes. It is a relief now and again to be able to make up one’s own mind – even if, as in this case, my vote is going to upset the churches, M&S, and the small shopkeepers in Chester. Never mind. For once I shall do what I believe to be right and hang the consequences. There’s got to be some point to being an MP. (People are quite shocked when you admit that most of the time most MPs have no idea what they’re voting about. They just walk into the lobby where they see one of their whips standing and that’s that.)

  TUESDAY 14 DECEMBER 1993

  The Treasury Christmas lunch was a fairly hard slog. The Financial Secretary entertained his team at Joe Allen’s, which was an ideal venue because the din and clatter were so great no one could hear anybody and the fact that nobody seemed to have much to say to anybody consequently didn’t matter. Stephen [Dorrell] is delightful, I like him more and more, but slumming it with the troops, small talk with the secretaries, seasonal banter with the lower ranks – these are not his forte. They are the sort of thing Mr Major does better than anybody. He (the PM) came to mingle with his men in the Tea Room this afternoon and did well. He’s engrossed in the Northern Ireland business and both his commitment and grasp of detail are impressive. He was busy sending out signals to reassure the UUs, he reiterated his line that having to deal with Gerry Adams340 would ‘make his stomach turn’, but he concedes there’s been a ‘chain of communication’ between the government and the IRA for years and there’s no doubt, before too long, we’ll be talking to the terrorists face to face. What happens to our fragile majority then?

  MONDAY 27 DECEMBER 1993

  We are in Framlingham with Simon and Beckie [Cadell]. Simon seems to be in much better shape. Beckie is a saint. The boys [their young sons] are amazing. They do their own thing, watch TV, play with the computer, scamper about outside, leaving us to get on with the serious business of working our way through Simon’s cellar. ‘We don’t know how long I’ve got,’ says Simon, in his best Ralph Richardson voice, dropping a splash or two of pêche into our mid-morning champagne, ‘so we’d better get on with it, eh cockie?’

  We’ve had a merry Christmas. I imagine the PM was feeling relatively festive too – until yesterday when the News of the World brought us its latest world exclusive. Tim Yeo,341 our Minister for the Environment and the Countryside, has a love child! Michèle has been against him since she saw him lolling on the front bench with his feet up against the despatch box. ‘Arrogant sod.’ I tried to explain that they all sit like that. ‘No they don’t. Mr Major doesn’t. I tell you: Tim Yeo’s an arrogant bastard. The sooner he goes the better.’

  According to today’s papers, the Prime Minister is taking a more charitable view. He is standing by his man. ‘Minister with love child wins Major support.’ ‘This is a purely private matter,’ says PM. Oh yes?

  THURSDAY 30 DECEMBER 1993

  Yesterday: lunch with the Hanleys. Jeremy told a funny story. Pretty young diary secretary comes in to see her minister.

  Secretary: Well, Minister, there’s good news and bad news.

  Minister: Give me the good news.

  Secretary: You’re not infertile.

  Jeremy is loving the MoD. He rates Rifkind highly, he’s wary of Aitken. They’re both (Jeremy & Verna) quite seduced by the PM. People who get close to him invariably are. We went to John Schlesinger’s new flat last night. He thinks Major is quite wonderful too. Close up, the PM has a charm that disarms, that positively seduces. The flat is fabulous (an unexpectedly spacious duplex perched at the top of a single mansion block on the Gloucester Road) and the evening was very jolly. Eileen [Atkins] & Bill [Shepherd], Twiggy, Albert Finney and co. Noel342 was so funny. The stories just keep tumbling out – the old favourites and always one or two someone hasn’t heard before. The Gurkha story, which I love, seemed new to one and all.343

  I doubt there’ll be much of that kind of humour here. We’re in Ablemont, in Normandy, staying in what I’m choosing to call ‘the valley of the Lilleys’. It’s a bourgeois house, not grand but solid, surrounded by farm buildings in the middle of nowhere. Peter and Gail escape here whenever they can. They say they just ‘hop over’. It took us rather longer to reach than that. We got to Folkestone to find the crossing cancelled. We moved on to Dover where they warned us the Channel was fairly choppy. This turned out to be something of an understatement. (Already we are dreading the return journey on Sunday.) It’s an odd party – Michael Brown, the Chopes,344 Peter Oborne345 (I am always wary when there’s a hack in the house) – but we’re promised plenty of wine, candles when the lights go (which apparently they will – they always do), no party hats but civilised parlour games. On the sideboard in the dining room there’s an elegant glass bowl engraved with a playful inscription to ‘The Bastards’. We arrived as night was falling, to see Peter through the window, sitting at his laptop, engrossed. What was he doing? ‘Looking for ways to reduce the social security bill.’ It is good to be spending New Year with the most thoughtful member of the government.

  239 The 2nd Earl of Gowrie, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts 1984–5, had given up his political career to concentrate on business.

  240 Theo Richmond and Lee Langley, writers, friends of GB.

  241 MP for Hendon North 1970–97.

  242 MP for Birmingham Hall Green 1987–97.

  243 Labour MP for Liverpool Broadgreen 1992–7; Liverpool Wavertree 1997–2010. She was then thirty-four.

  244 Lord Parkinson since 1992; MP for Enfield West 1970–74, Herts South 1974–83, Hertsmere 1983–92.

  245 David Heathcoat-Amory, MP for Wells since 1983. />
  246 MP for Witney from 2001; Prime Minister from 2010. He was then twenty-six.

  247 Shadow Transport Secretary; Labour MP for Hull East 1970–2010; MEP 1975–9; Deputy Prime Minister 1997–2007; later Baron Prescott of Kingston upon Hull.

  248 Minister of State for Transport; MP for Kettering 1983–97; later Baron Freeman.

  249 There had been press speculation that the Princess Royal might take an apartment in Dolphin Square, not far from the Palace of Westminster, where a number of MPs have flats.

  250 MP for Bolton North East 1983–97.

  251 MP for Loughborough 1979–97; Charnwood since 1997.

  252 Lyricist and broadcaster.

  253 1920–2003; Lord Jenkins of Hillhead from 1987; Labour MP for Southwark Central 1948–50, Birmingham Stechford 1950–76; SDP MP for Glasgow Hillhead 1982–7; Chancellor of Oxford University from 1987.

  254 MP for South Gloucestershire 1974–83, Northavon 1983–97; later Baron Cope of Berkeley.

  255 MP for Chichester 1974–97.

  256 MP for Basildon 1983–97; Southend West since 1997.

  257 MP for Edmonton 1983–97.

  258 MP for Windsor 1992–2005.

  259 MP for Westbury 1992–2001.

  260 GB’s short-lived constituency secretary.

  261 MP for Bebington & Ellesmere Port 1978–83, Wirral South 1983–96.

  262 MP for Harrow East 1970–97; a fervent pro-European.

  263 Monetarist guru and economic adviser to the Prime Minister 1981–4 and 1989.

  264 Tony Marlow, MP for Northampton North 1979–97.

  265 John MacGregor, Secretary of State for Transport; MP for Norfolk South 1974–2001; later Baron MacGregor of Pulham Market.