Breaking the Code (68 page)

At 3.30 the Treasury team is on the front bench to support William [Waldegrave, Chief Secretary] as he moves the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. Listening to William isn’t easy because I’m distracted by the fact that the Chancellor keeps falling asleep. Every time Ken nods off too obviously I give him a gentle prod and attempt a little small talk. ‘Normally jetlag doesn’t get to me like this. It’s very odd.’

I had my first sighting of the Deputy Prime Minister’s celebrated office today. ‘It isn’t a tennis court, is it?’ said Lady Strathnaver
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proudly, ‘It’s a football pitch!’ Actually, it isn’t that large. What are big are the sofas – big and ridiculous. It’s impossible to sit on them: either you perch right on the edge or you sit back and disappear. (We can assume this is where John Gummer has got to – he’s slipped down the back.)

Sandwich lunch with Roger Freeman, Chancellor of the Duchy, minister responsible for the civil service, the Citizen’s Charter and anything else the PM lands on his desk (i.e. mopping up after Hoggie on BSE). Roger’s room is on the same floor as the DPM’s, much, much smaller, but with wonderful views – one way over Horseguards Parade, the other over the Downing Street garden.

‘I can see into the Prime Minister’s bedroom.’ Roger presses his nose to the window. He gives a little wave. ‘Hello John!’

I’ve never known Roger as unbuttoned as this. Customarily he’s a caricature of a minister from a ’50s Ealing comedy, all pinstripes, Brylcream and punctilious correctness. But today he’s Mr Mischief. With a twinkle he produces the scorecard on which he has marked the ministerial teams who are best and worst at getting the government’s message across. The Treasury team score particularly poorly…

One of Roger’s jobs is to monitor the cost-effectiveness of government PR. He reveals that the press conference to unveil the age of electronic government – No. 10 on the Internet! – cost £250,000 and resulted in just one small paragraph in the
Evening Standard
. We laugh that we may not weep.

We laugh too when Michael McManus (formerly David Hunt’s special adviser and now ‘Head of Edward Heath’s Private Office’ and, intriguingly, apparently a regular at these lunches) tells us that Ted is contemplating suing the odious James Goldsmith over the slur that Heath ‘lied to the people’ when persuading the nation to sign up to the Common Market. We agree that it’s terribly unfair on poor old Ted, but when it comes to litigation, ‘Far better not.’ Ted is eighty but determined to stand again at the election. ‘Why does his Association let him get away with it?’ ‘Because they’re
terrified
of him.’

A typical Freeman touch (unique in Whitehall, I’d say): as we leave, his special adviser collects £3 from each of us to pay for the refreshments.

Dinner (at his suggestion) with Bowen Wells in the Churchill Room. He volunteers for the Dorrell campaign. Heseltine’s over the hill, Clarke won’t make it, so what else have the centre ground got? Bowen supported Hezza in 1990 and has names to offer. Paddy Ashdown is at the next table being severely reprimanded by his wife for leaving his unwashed shirts all over the house.

Willetts catches me in the division lobby. While we’re chatting (‘I haven’t been approached to join any of the campaigns yet and I wouldn’t want to at this stage’) Quentin Davies sidles up awkwardly. ‘David, I just wanted to say that your speech yesterday provided the best argument I’ve heard against the windfall tax. It was quite excellent.’ Brow moist, face red, olive branch extended, the assassin withdrew. David muttered, ‘Thank you, Quentin.’

Breakfast at the Ritz. David Mellor is at the adjacent table negotiating a fat fee to chair some international conference. The first time I lunched here (more than thirty years ago) I remember Reginald Maudling
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was seated at the selfsame table – fast asleep.
Plus ça change.

The Chancellor was wide awake at lunch today. He was brilliant on the
Today
programme this morning – genial, sharp, on top of his brief, and they managed EIGHT WHOLE MINUTES without touching on Europe once!

Before Ken arrived, William [Waldegrave] was attempting to impose some order on
the meeting. Should we sacrifice our proposed hike in airport duty to keep the Ulster Unionists on side? We don’t come up with an answer because the moment Ken appears the usual brouhaha breaks out. William shakes his head, the Chancellor winks at me, and the rest of the team all talk at once. They want to agree lines to take at Treasury questions. ‘We’re going to say we’ve created two jobs a minute, aren’t we?’ ‘Since when?’ ‘Since last year.’ ‘No, since ’92.’ ‘Is that two jobs for every minute? Or for every working minute?’ ‘Are we using the European forty-eight hour week?’ ‘I think it’s better to say 10,000 jobs a week.’ ‘What’s our line on Halewood?’ ‘Isn’t it 15,000 jobs a week anyway?’ Calculators are produced, banter is exchanged, but a definitive answer comes there none.

We’ve found Iain Mills dead in his flat, surrounded by bottles. We’re now a minority government. Suddenly 20 March looks more likely.

Watched
Dispatches
on Channel 4 last night: a hatchet job that rehashes all the worst slurs about Neil – the trips to the Paris Ritz, which he admits, and the brown envelopes stuffed with used notes, which he strenuously denies. Shots of Neil and Christine are intercut with shots of money being counted and champagne being poured. It’s TV crucifixion and what’s alarming is this: I know and like Neil and if he says he never took the money I’m ready to believe him – and yet, as the slanders are repeated and repeated, even their best friends begin to wonder…

Christine has just been on the line, inarticulate with sobbing. ‘We don’t know what to do. They’re killing us. We’re alive, but only just. They keep on repeating these lies and what can we do? We’ve been found guilty without a trial. They’ve ruined us. I don’t know how we can go on.’

In the division lobby we make sympathetic noises at Angela Knight whose ex-husband has been assisted by Max Clifford
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to vilify Angela in the
Daily Mail
. Waldegrave comes up with a comforting arm and a gentle joke: ‘The last time I said to a colleague “Don’t let the buggers get you down” I was talking to Jerry Hayes…’ Poor Angela looks wan and whispers, ‘I don’t find I can take it very easily.’

At 6.00 p.m. in the Chancellor’s room in the House the red wine flows and blue smoke fills the air. Senior backbenchers have come bearing advice. Nigel Forman, eyes gently popping, leans forward: ‘We’re on the defensive, Ken. We talk about the Labour government as a fact: we use the future tense, not the conditional. We need to reintroduce the subjunctive – and we need two or three big speeches, Ken, from you and the PM, on the key issues: the economy, education, law and order. We want to hear from you on law and order. Michael Howard may go down well with the constituency associations, but he’s a mixed blessing with a wider audience.’

Robert Atkins proposes – apparently in all seriousness – an immediate referendum on Europe, not just EMU, but the EU itself, in or out. The Chancellor is unconvinced: ‘If we keep arguing about Europe it just shows up our divisions. We no longer look like a natural party of government and that’s Blair’s opportunity: to offer Tory measures with new faces. If we go all anti-European we’ll go glug-glug down the plughole.’

While we’re quaffing and sluicing with the Chancellor, the Deputy Prime Minister is meeting the 92 Group. He tells them the European issue is settled and nothing will be gained by reopening it. They beg to differ. Later, Nicholas Winterton, red face glistening with excitement, tells me proudly how he led the assault on Hezza: ‘Michael, I believe the PM would like to rule out EMU for the whole of the next parliament, but he’s being held back by two or three Cabinet colleagues. Michael, just as we toed the line when we were in a minority, isn’t it right that the new minority accept what the majority now want?’ Nick was clearly delighted with his self-styled bravura performance, but Heseltine ‘put the shutters down – he wasn’t even listening.’

Sitting next to young Raymond Robertson on the front bench we play the leadership game and he offers a novel scenario: ‘Portillo knows he can’t make it this time, so he does a deal with Heseltine. Hezza as leader, Portillo as deputy.’ Sounds a bit unlikely to me.

Martin Redmond
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has died, so we’re back to level-pegging. Even so, there’s a vote tonight that we expect to win comfortably, but we scrape home with a margin of one. In the Whips’ Office nerves are a little frayed.

In Washington, Bill Clinton has been inaugurated for a second term. At Westminster, Gordon Brown has promised a public spending freeze, no income tax increases and no extension of VAT. In Kensington & Chelsea, Alan Clark has reached the shortlist. We live in an age of miracles.

At Treasury prayers the Chancellor confesses that excessive indulgence with his PPS last night has left him feeling a little fragile – and no doubt lunch in half an hour with his brother-in-law will leave him feeling worse. Ken closes his eyes and the Chief Secretary looks pained as three or four simultaneous discussions ensue. Later in the day I remark to Ken that prayers appears to have changed since I was last at the Treasury: ‘Everyone seems to speak together and all at once these days.’

‘Oh yes,’ chortles Ken. ‘That’s deliberate. It saves so much time.’

Today is our first real parliamentary test of the New Year. Each year the opposition has around eighteen ‘opposition days’ when they can choose the subject for debate. Today they’ve gone for the NHS. If we win or draw we survive and live to fight another day. If we lose, Labour have promised a confidence vote – which we’d probably win, but in doing so we’d look beleaguered and reinforce the impression of a government ‘clinging to office’. It’s going to be tight. The basic arithmetic looks like this:

There are 651 MPs. Four don’t vote (the Speaker and her three deputies). Three are dead. And this is the balance:

Conservatives – 322

Labour – 271

Liberal Democrats – 26

Scottish Nationalists – 4

Plaid Cymru – 4 Ulster Unionists – 9

Democratic Unionists – 3

SDLP – 4

United Kingdom Unionist – 1

opposition parties total – 322

If all of the opposition vote against us and any of our troops fail to show, we’re in trouble.

We’re in trouble. Julian Critchley (self-indulgent
flâneur
of this parish) maintains he’s too ill to turn up, but we’re bringing in the rest of our sick and we’re praying that some of the UUs will abstain. (They don’t want an election yet, surely?)

At 9.30 p.m. I meet up with a desiccated hamster from the ranks of the Labour whips
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and together we set off on our rounds. We have two walking wounded to check and two lying in ambulances in New Palace Yard. (Sheila Gunn – formerly of
Steve Norris and
The Times
, now a friendly spin nurse at Central Office – rather hoped we could sneak the ambulances through the House of Lords entrance and avoid the cameras at our end of the building, but this isn’t on because the archways aren’t high and wide enough.) Griffiths
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and Grylls
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look quite perky. Tom Arnold appears shrunken and sad. Goodson-Wickes
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is distinctly woozy – he had a general anaesthetic only a few hours ago. Having agreed with Betts that they’re alive (and that the system is barbaric and absurd) we go back up for the vote itself. There’s tension in the air. The Chief mutters, ‘Lose this and it’s big potatoes.’

We win – by a margin of five. Four Labour members are missing, three UUs abstain and, bar Critchley, every living Tory turns up. Perhaps we can get to 1 May after all?

Before the vote the Marginals Club entertains the Foreign Secretary in Dining Room D. We swop stories about our appalling opponents. Someone mentions that his Labour PPC [prospective parliamentary candidate] (chosen in a women-only shortlist, natch) is rumoured to be a witch and he’s wondering how best to give the rumour wider currency. This prompts William Powell
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to tell the story of Melford Stevenson (later Mr Justice Melford Stevenson) standing against Tom Driberg
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just after the war. Driberg, of course, was a notoriously promiscuous homosexual. At a public meeting at the start of the campaign, Melford-Stevenson declared, ‘I have heard the terrible rumours that are circulating about my opponent, Mr Driberg. I want to deny these scandalous and scurrilous rumours here and now. There is no truth in them whatsoever. Indeed I say that with confidence as I was at the Old Bailey on the very day Mr Driberg was found Not Guilty.’

Malcolm [Rifkind], with a beady twinkle in his eye, offered an engaging pep talk and encouragement from Scotland. Apparently we’re up to 19 per cent in the polls. Sounds pretty dire to me, but Malcolm says that’s a point ahead of where we were at the start of the ’92 campaign. The discussion – inevitably – centres on Europe. In vain, Malcolm urges the company to toe the government line in their election addresses.

They won’t.

After the vote I make my way up to Stephen’s room at the far end of the ministerial corridor. As so often at the start of one of our conspiratorial chats, we agree that the best option – by far – is for the Conservatives to win the election under John Major. We do this both because it is self-evidently true and to salve our consciences. We then
review the prospects. Who’ll enter the ring? From left to right: Clarke, Heseltine, Lang, Rifkind, Hague, Howard, Portillo, Redwood. If he’s still around, Forsyth. And what about Gillian? It’s absurd to think it, but people do think the absurd. Stephen says, ‘Don’t discount Major. He could stand.’ But would he want to?

Even though we know he’ll prove unelectable, Clarke has to be the centre’s front-runner by a mile. I tell Stephen the Chancellor is entertaining our candidates in winnable seats at No. 11. ‘That’s a bit blatant isn’t it?’ ‘It’s legitimate – the economy will be central to the campaign. You need to see them to talk about health.’