An Unexpected MP (15 page)

‘Jerry, my supporters are very upset that my majority has
been significantly reduced. They think it may have something to do with you blaming me for our defeat.’

Considering that this ghastly woman spent most of the time undermining the Prime Minister and destroying any chance of a Conservative victory, I gave her short shrift. I suggested that she fuck off, and never spoke to her again.

It is strange how a hard core of Tory backbenchers
regularly
conspire against their leadership. Heath, Thatcher, Major, Duncan Smith and now Cameron. The trick is to try and keep as many on side as possible. It is easier to herd cats. The worry in 1995 was not that Major would lose the leadership but what the numbers would be. There was considerable speculation that real challenges would come if Major failed to get the 50 per cent of the vote or, like Thatcher, was holed below the waterline. And in the true Tory tradition of ‘never kick a man unless he is down and there are at least five of you’, Michael Portillo was on manoeuvres, installing a bank of
telephones
at a secret campaign headquarters. Just in case. Except that nothing in Westminster is secret for very long. He, of course, professed nothing but utter loyalty to Major. But it was the end of his career. Nobody trusts underhand behaviour if it is coupled with a lack of courage. It was a shame because deep down he is quite a decent soul. But it is very deep down. I just wish he had told us before he lost his seat in 1997 that he was a compassionate Tory.

A few days after the telephone business I was particularly exercised about Portillo’s disloyalty. I was chatting to a chum near the Members’ taxi rank and exclaimed my frustration with a shout of ‘Portillo. What a total cunt.’ It was then that I noticed the diminutive shape of the delightful Ann
Widdecombe. I was mortified that I had used the C word in her presence and profusely apologised.

‘There is absolutely no need to,’ she smiled. ‘The only word that I objected to was “Portillo”.’

I am very fond of Ann. Feisty, opinionated and a heart of gold. Although we don’t always agree.

Well, Major received 218 votes with Redwood at 89, 12 abstentions and 8 spoilt papers. I was appointed as one of the scrutineers. It was all rather peculiar. I would be sitting in Committee Room 14 and ballot papers were handed out. Loyalists would flourish them while those who were going to vote for Redwood would scamper into the shadows. Needless to say the names were all noted. We all hoped that this would be the end of the matter and that the troops would realise how close they had come to destroying the party and behave.

Wrong. The right seemed to get another wind. And after Black Wednesday the press was gunning for us. The
Mail
and
The Sun
had been charmed by Blair and Mandelson and were moving over to New Labour.

I remember when Blair stood for the leadership. I bumped into him with a member of my constituency executive. After a brief hello from Tony, my supporter wished him well, ‘but I hope you don’t win the leadership because you will win the election’. A year later I bumped into him in a corridor. ‘Why don’t you join me in New Labour?’

‘Tony, I’d love to but you’re a bit too right-wing for me.’

He grinned.

But everyone was out to get us now. At one time, Major came down to Harlow and asked me to mind the local press. I remember one interview with ITV’s Tim Ewart, who behaved
with aloof condescension, bordering on the downright rude. It was a very unpleasant interview. John appeared charming and affable, but inside he was fuming.

‘How can he talk to the Prime Minister like that?’ he said after Ewart, now the royal correspondent for ITV, had departed in a cloud of televisual glory. If he was made of chocolate that man would eat himself.

It is a horrendous job being Prime Minister even at the best of times. When your party is ripping itself apart and the press has turned against you, it must be the worst job in the world. I suspect that he hated it. And yet he transformed the economy and, because of his special relationship with Albert Reynolds, he started the peace process in Northern Ireland with the Downing Street Declaration, which culminated in a ceasefire, setting us on the road to peace.

I was particularly fond of Major’s brother Terry. We met at events and various TV programmes. A very kind and decent man with a great sense of humour. But he had hardly any money. Not that he cared. One day I asked John why he didn’t sort out a job for him. He looked at me with incredulity.

‘You really don’t understand our family. Terry would be mortified. When I needed a room to study for my A levels he left home to live in a flat so I could have his room. Except he wasn’t in a flat; he was living in a lock-up garage.’

The press was wicked towards Major. Kelvin MacKenzie, the
Sun
editor, was really beyond appalling, ringing him up and, when asked how the next day’s front page would be
treating
the government, replying, ‘Prime Minister, on my desk I have a large bucket of shit and tomorrow I’m going to pour it all over you.’ Simon Heffer (then of the
Telegraph
) and Peter
Hitchens (
Mail on Sunday
) were particularly vicious. That always caused me a problem, as personally I like them both. Aha, you might say, how can you like these guys when they are slagging off your party and your friends? Easy. You can like someone socially but professionally you could quite
cheerfully
murder them. And sometimes I could, particularly over the appalling rubbish they write about Cameron, whom I like and admire.

The worst thing in politics is to bear grudges. This helped me tremendously when I became a journalist.

On one rare occasion I actually found a Hitchens column that I quite liked, which must be a collector’s item, I told him. Peter was horrified.

‘People like you are not meant to like my column,’ he sighed.

At one occasion I bumped into John at one of Jeffrey Archer’s sparkling summer parties. We spied Heffer in the distance.

‘Shall I hold him down and you kick him in the balls or would you prefer it the other way round?’ I suggested. He just smiled enigmatically.

Apart from the normal cut-and-thrust of politics there were some very exciting moments which I will never forget. For a few years I had been a PPS in the Northern Ireland Office and knew the territory well. One late night I received a call from No. 10 saying that the PM wanted to see me in his office behind the Speaker’s chair. A crowd of Northern Ireland hands were seated around the table. Major was ashen with anger. He wanted to brief us about the front page of the next day’s
Times
, where Matthew d’Ancona had obtained what he thought were the government plans for the Unionists in the
peace process. Actually, it was a very early draft which had been rejected. But it was very, very inflammatory. I remember Major banging his fist on the desk. He felt that this could derail months of hard work. He wanted us to blitz the media to say that this document did not represent government policy. Robert Cranborne, leader of the Lords and staunch Unionist, was in the room. There was an uneasy feeling that he might have had something to do with the article. Major turned to him: ‘Robert, are you content?’

‘Prime Minister, I am content.’ From that moment we knew that Robert was on side and that he had had absolutely nothing to do with the story. Robert may have been sacked later by William Hague after he put together a lifeboat under the radar to save ninety-two hereditary peers from Labour’s reforms, but I have always found him to be utterly trustworthy and loyal. In the Lords he was revered.

On the way out I bumped into shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam. We had been friends for years so I told her what was going on.

‘Ah, well,’ she said, sensing a great bi-party media
opportunity
. ‘I had better do my hair, then.’ And off she flounced. What a great lady with a tremendous sense of fun and mischief.

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.

T
he 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.