Breaking the Code (26 page)

The Maastricht nightmare drags on – we finished at 1.13 a.m. yesterday. The Railways Bill drags on – Roger Freeman is a joy to watch, but I’ve fallen between two stools. You can either (like Sproat)
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ignore the whole thing, sit in a far corner of the committee room, reading correspondence, signing letters, or (like Stephen [Milligan]) you can get stuck in and follow the bill line by line. I’ve been following it, but not with sufficient attention to detail to make either a worthwhile contribution or any impact. (My only ‘moment’ was when Prescott started muttering ‘Woolly jumper! Woolly jumper!’ while I was speaking. I came up with a reasonable riposte: ‘The advantage of a woolly jumper is that you can take it off at will. The disadvantage of a woolly mind is that you are lumbered with it for life.’)

I’ve just been for supper with Lord James.
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I love him. He’s straight out of
Jeeves and Wooster
– tall, slim, a little crumpled, slightly bent, blue-blooded, sandy-haired, sweet-natured, and can’t be as bumbly and daffy as he pretends to be. Can he? Famously, he turned up for Colin Moynihan’s charity boat race on the Thames wearing a pair of ancient gym shoes covered with filthy brown blotches. ‘Filthy kit you’ve got there,’ boomed Soames or some such. ‘What are those horrible brown stains on your shoes?’ ‘Blood,’ muttered James, ‘my opponents’ blood.’ At Balliol he had five ambitions: to get a boxing blue, to become President of the Union, to be elected a Member of Parliament, to join the government, to become PM. Four down, one to go.

He said he thought we had time to go to his club. Pratt’s, of course. I’d never been. His ministerial car drove us up St James’ and dropped us at the corner. All the way, James
told me how much he liked Pratt’s, ‘my favourite club, my father was a member.’ We got to the street, got out of the car, and James stood there, looking quite lost. ‘Now where is it? I know it’s along here somewhere. Let me see.’ Like the White Rabbit searching for his gloves, he scurried up and down the street until eventually he hit upon the right one. ‘Here we are!’ It was like disappearing down the rabbit hole: another world, cosy, comfortable, safe; we shared the club table, ‘the lamb looks excellent and I think you’ll like the club claret.’

This is a good place with good people. I have just been having dinner at the Chief Whip’s table with the Deputy [David Heathcoat-Amory]), Tim Wood
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and Tim Smith. They have been jolly and supportive and kind, and have taken the bitterness out of a beastly day.

I arrived at NPFA at lunchtime for my last council meeting as chairman. On the way over I bought the
Evening Standard
to read on the tube. Sitting in the meeting room waiting for the others to arrive I was flicking over the pages and, suddenly, my stomach lurched, my heart was in my mouth. The lead story in Londoner’s Diary: ‘Treasury man Gyles at a loss’. Six snide paragraphs, a picture of me looking bleary-eyed and sinister, an assertion that Complete Editions is going down the pan and speculation about what happens when an MP goes bankrupt.

I got on to Allen & Overy at once. At 1.48 p.m. Tim House [solicitor] got hold of a Mr Young in the legal department of the
Standard
and told him the piece is defamatory, it’s clearly intended to mean that the business is in difficulties and I am facing a risk of personal bankruptcy, neither of which is remotely true. I faxed a letter simultaneously to Stewart Steven
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– who I thought was a friend, but, of course, you can’t have friends who are journalists. He turns out to be away but, come what may, we need a retraction, an apology, costs, damages – the lot.

I wrote a detailed note to my whip telling him there was nothing in it and went over to the Treasury to see Stephen [Dorrell] to apologise to him – because, of course, they’ve dragged his name in, included a picture of him. He couldn’t have been sweeter, totally easy and relaxed about it. (He’s fortunate – and wise. He doesn’t let the papers impinge on him at all. I think he only reads
Der Spiegel
and the
Financial Times
.) I ended up looking in on the Upper Whips’ Office (thinking I should be seen to be showing a face) and David [Heathcoat-Amory] said ‘Join me for dinner’, a kindness
much
appreciated.

A good day. On page 8 of the
Evening Standard
, Londoner’s Diary: ‘GYLES BRANDRETH – AN APOLOGY.

Last Thursday I suggested that Gyles Brandreth’s company, Complete Editions Ltd, was facing financial problems. I am happy to report that I was wrong, and in fact the company is trading profitably. I apologise to both Mr Brandreth (pictured) and to Complete Editions director Michèle Brown for any embarrassment I have caused. I would also like to apologise unreservedly for any suggestion that Mr Brandreth is in personal financial difficulty. I had no basis whatsoever for any such suggestion, which I unequivocally retract.’ And the photograph, I have to say, is one of the best I’ve seen. I look positively boyish.

They’re bastards, they’re vermin, but we got the retraction, we got the space, we got the photograph, we got the costs, we got the damages,
we won!

We have lost the Newbury by-election [caused by the death of Judith Chaplin] to the Liberals by a margin of 22,000. It’s devastating. And the local elections are not much better. Up here John Shanklin, Margaret Walker, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, all lost. A lot of local politicians are second-raters (some of the Labour people locally are third-rate), but these three are good: intelligent, sane, experienced –
normal
.

A real loss.

No. 10 for lunch. There were ten of us in the small panelled dining room on the first floor; a delicious haddock pie (really delicious) and fresh green salad, followed by a splendid chocolate mousse. The PM was remarkably cool, calm and collected under the circumstances. He began by offering us his ‘analysis of why we’re in the doldrums’. He blamed a) the recession and b) the antics over Maastricht. I think there’s more to it than that. My feeling is there’s nothing in any of our policies or present programme that makes
anyone
feel good – let alone any of
our
people feel good.

My suggestion that John Smith’s lamentable performance last Thursday might prove to be the beginning of the end for him prompted to PM to reveal that he has ‘a fingertip feeling’ that John Smith won’t be the leader of the Labour Party come the next general
election. ‘It’s just a fingertip thing, a pricking of my thumbs. I’m not sure why, but I just don’t believe John will make it.’

‘Who do you think it will be?’

‘John Prescott or Bryan Gould.’

I sat one away from the PM, between the Chief Whip, who said nothing, and Alan Howarth,
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who said a great deal. (Alan is eager for a return to government. Given that he is articulate and able, why do I feel this is unlikely? I imagine the whips think him longwinded, prissy and now rather wet. Perhaps they’re right.) The PM made great play of the fact that he was here to ‘listen’, but I looked at him several times while the others were speaking and his eyes had glazed over. He was somewhere else, probably brooding over William Rees-Mogg’s poisonous, patronising personal attack on him in today’s
Times
. It’s vile: ‘the most over-promoted politician for a generation – at best suited for the role of Deputy Chief Whip’. The PM referred repeatedly to the coverage he’s getting, ‘the acid rain’ that keeps pouring down on him, the ‘war of attrition they’re waging against me personally’. He asked for our advice and John Horam
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came closest to offering a clear line to take: concentrate on the rhetoric of recovery, talk up our belief in manufacturing, maintain our position as the party of competitiveness; let social policy bed down, no more revolutions; play down Europe except as a means to improving the prospects of UK plc. The others rambled. The PM turned to his acting PPS (James Paice
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who, bless him, has gone all serious and intense-looking since his appointment) just once to ask him to make a note – and that was to remind him to do some TV interviews in the West country … Nigel Forman,
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eyes gently popping, wiry and cerebral, lamented the fact that ‘we don’t seem to have a lot to say. It’s a shame. The think tanks and the policy-making groups of the ’80s seem to have lost their cutting edge.’ ‘Yes,’ said the PM, ‘all their knives are now buried in my back.’

As we wandered out of Downing Street, up Whitehall, leaving the Chief Whip and the PM’s acting PPS behind us, we came to the conclusion that we were coming away feeling very much as we did when we went in. We like the man, we appreciate his clear head and his courteous manner, we know our victory a year and a month ago is down to him, but we’re in desperate straits now and that’s down to him as well – and he seems to have nothing to offer. Nigel said, ‘He’s drawing in the threads and we want him to be showing us the lead.’

Convivial drinks in John MacGregor’s room to mark the successful conclusion of the Railways Bill. We have privatised the railways. ‘Will it work?’ I asked, innocently. John gave his Mr Pickwick’s laugh: ‘It had better.’ Roger [Freeman] looked quite concerned: ‘It most certainly will.’ They are a formidable double-act, the government’s unsung heroes. But curiously all talk of MacGregor going to the Treasury has stopped. I’d have thought he’d be ideal: a safe pair of hands, Dr Cameron’s bedside manner, as sharp a political instinct as you could ask for, but, no, somehow his moment seems to have past. Norman [Lamont] is convinced he’s going to survive, but he won’t. My bet (seeing the way the PM works, sensing his insecurity) is Gillian Shephard as the ‘big surprise’ for Chancellor, David Hunt to Education, Stephen [Dorrell] to Employment. John Patten certainly goes. And what about my friend William Waldegrave who seems rather to have gone to waste/waist? The mind’s still there, but the sparkle’s all gone. Stephen Milligan tells me that John Kerr in Brussels reports that David Heathcoat-Amory is destined to replace Tristan as our Minister for Europe. How come the civil servants know all about it weeks before we do?

I did a couple of hours bench duty on the Finance Bill, sitting behind John Cope as he struggled with our fuel tax rebels. He was all over the place, but it didn’t matter; if you’re known to be a decent chap, if you make no pretensions to being a Big Beast, the House may jeer, may talk right through you, but everyone knows it doesn’t really matter.

We survived the vote, but it was too close for comfort: 295 to 285. Technically, since Thursday, we have a majority of just nineteen, but tonight good people (like big-hearted Geoffrey Dickens) abstained and tossers (i.e. Nick Winterton) voted with the opposition. How on earth can we manage three or four more years like this?

The smack of firm government? The broadsheets tell us that the PM has sanctioned a full retreat on Patten’s policy for testing in schools. The radio then tells us the opposite: the PM is four-square behind Patten, the tests proceed. I hear that the No. 10 briefing on the retreat was given last night, but that calls from the Patten camp
at 4.00 a.m.
(‘Back me or sack me!’) prompted this morning’s revisionary announcement.

In the event at 3.30 p.m. Patten made his statement: this year’s tests proceed, but for next year both the national curriculum and the tests are to be slimmed down and made more manageable. It’s a half-retreat and he gets away with it, but he’s subdued. The trouble with normally producing bravura despatch box performances,
con brio
and without notes,
is that when you don’t, it shows. He looked wounded and, unfortunately, a little absurd. Somehow his jacket wouldn’t hang properly. Fabricant, sitting next to me, wondered if his back’s gone and he’s wearing a truss and the back of his jacket had got caught up in it.

William [Hague] and I spent two hours alone with the beleaguered Chancellor this morning working on his ‘fighting speech’ to the party’s Scottish Conference. He was tired and twitchy, puffing on his cigars, hell-bent on knocking the press. As drafted, the speech sounded bitter and embattled. He had one good joke (about being born in the Shetlands and consequently being the only member of the government who could genuinely look down on a Scottish audience) and I did my best to add a bit more humour, more confidence, a lightness of touch. He wanted to go to town on how the press had misrepresented his
‘Non, je ne regrette rien’
remark and eventually we slimmed his media-bashing diatribe down to a single line: ‘As usual, the press did it their way.’ I also put into the section on unemployment: ‘My job is unimportant. What counts are
your
jobs.’ He’ll be fiddling with it all the way to Edinburgh. Poor man. I like him. I think he still thinks he can hang on.

Michèle and I gave the Lord Mayor of Chester and his wife lunch in the Strangers’ Dining Room. They are nice people, traditional Labour but genuinely friendly towards us. I followed Patrick Cormack’s advice and allowed them to see me paying for the meal. ‘If you just sign for it, they think that somehow the taxpayer is picking up the tab.’ Andrew Miller joined us for coffee. He’s so boring it’s unbelievable. What makes it quite funny is that he has no idea: he thinks he’s quite fascinating. (At the Lord Mayor’s dinner in the town hall Michèle sat next to him and followed her usual formula when seated next to middle-aged men at functions: ask them what they do and tell them how wonderful they are. The more tedious Andrew became the more wonderful Michèle told him he was. By the end of the meal, she was virtually asleep and he was in a state of ecstasy.)

At 3.30 p.m. all the PPSs gathered in the large ministerial conference room for a session with the Chief Whip. He looked a little peaky (as well he might) and his performance was as wan as his appearance. If his plan had been to rally the troops (or even to reassure them) I’m afraid he failed. He protested that he and the PM are ‘very much in touch’; they ‘recognise all the concerns’, but we have got to recognise the special problems that come when you are operating with a majority of nineteen. It came over as routine stuff, predictable and undynamic. The responses from around the table were equally predictable, ranging from ‘Don’t worry, Chief, we’ve been here before, we’ll come though’ to ‘Look here Chief, it’s more serious than you think.’ We went round in circles and emerged,
I imagine, just a fraction more despondent than when we went in. It interests me that no one seemed to want to make any
practical
suggestions about what we might do to improve morale and performance – e.g. find ways of involving the backbenchers more, test out proposed legislation before forging ahead with it, coordinate lines between government departments etc.