Breaking the Code (69 page)

The Committee Stage of the Finance Bill. We have two days on the floor of the House, then we go upstairs to a committee room. After protracted negotiations with Labour, we have agreed a loose timetable in return for parity on the committee – seventeen of them, seventeen of us.

Today we’ve agreed to have a possible division at around 7.00 p.m. and a definite one at 10.00 p.m. This seems sensible because it means people can go out to dinner between votes. In fact, while it may convenience the diners, it makes a nonsense of the legislative process. To achieve the agreed timetable the Financial Secretary has to reply to one full debate in under forty seconds and then be ready to expatiate on another (more minor) subject for anything up to three hours!

There has to be a better way.

I sit on the bench all evening marvelling at my colleagues’ capacity for blather. Generously three of them have volunteered to talk and talk and talk to ensure that the business doesn’t collapse and we’re not forced into a vote at an unexpected and vulnerable moment.

At regular intervals my infernal pager throbs with playful messages from fellows in the Whips’ Office: IS EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL? HOW LONG IS THIS OLD FOOL GOING ON FOR? ARE WE BEING AMBUSHED? (The pager is helping make the game ever more unreal. There’s a story going round that ITN paged Gordon Brown
at the despatch box
because they missed his sound bite first time round – or he fluffed it – and they needed him to say it all over again.)

The bastards don’t force a vote at seven after all, but because they might have done they’ve achieved their object: inconveniencing us. The Foreign Secretary, who I last saw here late last night, has just come in to report that he’s back.

‘Where have you been?’ I asked.

‘Madrid. It went well.’

Cabinet meets to discuss the Chancellor’s paper on EMU.

At one o’clock at the Treasury we gather round the television to watch Ken emerging from No. 10 brandishing a piece of paper and telling us our European policy is quite unchanged. William arrives and leads us to the sandwiches at the Chancellor’s table. His lips are pursed.

‘The Chancellor appears to be on television telling us that nothing has changed and this may cause a leetle un’apiness in certain quarters.’

This is a deliberate understatement, intended to be mischievous and droll, but it goes entirely unnoticed because the rabble is standing around chatting, chuntering, chuckling, grabbing sandwiches, pouring wine. William raises his voice.

‘If we can have some order, I can tell you what has been decided.’

Still they go on burbling. Eventually, William is heard.

‘There has been a
change of emphasis,
’ he says with satisfaction and authority – at which precise point Ken strides through the door: ‘What are you saying, William? There has
not
been a change of emphasis.’

‘Well,’ says William, with a smile, ‘Time has passed and we can come to a clearer judgement.’

Ken is not amused. He repeats, ‘Nothing has changed. I’ve said before that EMU by January 1999 is unlikely, but when I say it nobody listens.’

An hour later when the PM spells it out at Prime Minister’s Questions it goes down exceedingly well with our troops. Blair is lame. Whatever Ken says, the PM has given a clear, personal, sceptical spin to the policy and our boys and girls lap it up.

Later I’m on the bench and the PM comes in and sits himself down next to me. This is always disconcerting. He covers my hand with his and gives a little squeeze. As ever, I marvel at the amount of luxuriant dark hair sprouting out of his cuffs.

‘How’s it gone down?’ he asks.

‘Nicely,’ I say (which is true). ‘People are taking from the statement exactly what they want – the antis love the brave new scepticism and the Euro-enthusiasts are saying nothing’s changed.’

The PM gives me another squeeze. He’s pleased. This is Ur-Major. The policy hasn’t changed, but he’s been able to give it a gloss that makes it much more evidently sceptical, will please the majority in the party but won’t do much more than unsettle Ken and the DPM.

‘This is it though,’ he says, eyes narrowing. ‘We’re not going to move from this.’

When the PM goes, Michael Jack summons me to his end of the bench to ask what the boss was after. I tell him and add how unnatural I always feel when I’m talking to
him. ‘I’m so glad you say that. I find it impossible to be normal with him. He telephoned me at home early this morning and I was in the shower. I didn’t dare tell him. I was stark naked and dripping, but because it was the PM I felt I had to stand to attention.’

The Finance Bill clauses under discussion this afternoon merited fifty minutes at most, but for some reason Labour didn’t want a vote before 6.45 p.m. so they padded it out for two and a half interminable hours. After the vote we moved on to an environment bill or some-such and I retreated to the Whips’ Office. In the corner we have a drinks cupboard (we each pay a share) but there’s only a tiny fridge and that’s tucked away in the Chief’s room. I poured out some glasses of tepid white wine and recalled the Duke of Wellington’s remark to the flustered hostess who apologised for the fact that the food was lukewarm because the kitchens were so far away from the dining room: ‘No matter, dear lady. At least the champagne was warm.’

This prompted the Chief to offer his Wellington story – the Iron Duke’s diary entry soon after becoming Prime Minister: ‘Held my first Cabinet meeting today. Rum do. They all turned up. I gave them their marching orders. Then they sat around for two hours discussing them!’

Kensington & Chelsea have chosen Alan Clark. The mind boggles. Oh, he writes like an angel, but he’s the very devil … Never mind his age, his philandering, his intoxication at the despatch box (at least Nick Scott was only discovered drunk in the street!) I was sure the way he’d described his old constituency association – ‘petty, malign, clumsily conspiratorial and parochial’ – would have sealed his fate. Wrong again. Clearly, you can’t beat star quality.

The PM will be irritated – not so much by AC as the fact that ‘Kensington Come-back for Clark’ is getting more coverage than ‘Major rules out Euro in 1999’. The boss notices these things. Last night he said to me, ‘You know I spoke to 400 businessmen last week and only Andrew Marr in
The Independent
wrote it up.’ I imagine the PM is the only person still reading
The Independent.

I’m writing this on the bench where the week’s business is drawing to a bizarre close. One day we’re trawling for speakers to talk about nothing for hours on end: the next we’re rattling through nine separate bits of legislation (all stages!) in less than six minutes. The mumbo-jumbo is amazing, with me bobbing up and down moving various stages of each Bill and the Deputy Speaker commuting between the Speaker’s chair and the committee chairman’s chair (two feet away, on a lower dais) as we move in and out of committee stage in a matter of seconds. In the space of six minutes the
Serjeant At Arms, in full fig, has advanced and retreated nine times to move the mace from position A (House sitting) to position B (Committee sitting). There’s one Bill we have to postpone because it requires the Queen’s Consent and a Privy Counsellor is needed to ‘nod briefly’ at the appropriate moment. It’s Friday and all the PCs are out of town. Last night, the Queen’s Consent was required on the Environment Bill, but because the PC was at the WC at the critical moment there was panic in the ranks and the House was suspended pending his return…

Chester. Friday night, after the TA do, I took part in Christian Question Time, much enlivened by a Paisleyite in the body of the church who lambasted us for failing to mention the scriptures in our answers and by my opponent from the 1992 election who, purple-faced with indignation, stormed down the aisles to protest hysterically at the insufferable smugness of my answers. The Labour people on the ground are clearly driven mad by Brown’s edicts on public spending. It’s very helpful.

The sun rises on a Prime Minister at ease with himself welcoming his Cabinet to Chequers for a session ‘fine-tuning the manifesto’, and sets a few hours later on a government in disarray and on the ropes. A disaster of a day. Through a straightforward cock-up – we should have kept speakers speaking and simply didn’t – Labour managed to force a vote an hour earlier than expected and consequently we LOST the division by one vote. The PM was incandescent. Not a pretty sight. While he’d spent the day confidently telling the world that we were planning to play it long and go for 1 May, we kiboshed the whole exercise by failing even to survive the evening.

Over dinner Portillo looked bleak. Scrubbed and polished, the hair up and at it, but something mournful in the eye that said ‘I’m not a happy bunny.’ I suspect it wasn’t so much the lost vote as the way the royal yacht decision has backfired. Soames was booming. He appears to have a new baby: ‘I like it to be handed to me like a machine gun, lightly oiled. There’s a crisis back at base though ‘’cawse Nanny Caroline’s gawn and the new gal doesn’t arrive till Thursday. Cue for me to decamp on manoeuvres, don’t ya think? Four nights at the Dorchester, eh? Eh? Ha-ha! Ho-ho!’

Verdict on the day at Chequers from three sources: ‘Quite unreal, a complete waste of time.’

The PM’s worst fears are realised. The fiasco of the lost vote on the Education Bill has eclipsed the Chequers story.

I go in to the office in a state of suppressed trepidation because I’ve spent most of the night hoping, praying I’d counted the numbers right. As I arrive my throat goes dry as I discover we cocked-up the cock-up. We didn’t lose the vote: we were tied. I counted our side correctly. It was poor Anthony Coombs who got the Labour numbers wrong. Anthony is grey with dismay. It is a nightmare. Hezza, who is beginning to look more like his
Spitting Image
puppet daily, wearily shakes his mane: ‘John has had extraordinary bad luck. I’ve never known anything like it.’

Dinner with Ted Heath, the old boy at his most curmudgeonly. ‘The Whips’ Office is a disgrace. Wouldn’t have happened in my day.’ Everything was better in his day; everything is dreadful now. RAB
635
was a proper Home Secretary, ‘with vision, decent, humane, not like this fellow now’. Ted was specially scathing about the royal yacht, called Portillo ‘Porthole’ and couldn’t believe that Major hadn’t consulted Blair. ‘When I was Leader of the Opposition Harold Wilson had me in two or three times a week.’ (Really?)

He was contemptuous – of course – of the plans for the Millennium Exhibition at Greenwich and when he warmed briefly to my suggestion that the elimination of Third World debt should be an international millennium project it became quickly apparent this was because, when he was on the Brandt Commission, they’d thought of it first. Eventually we got round to the point of the dinner – keeping Ted on side during the election – and Roger Freeman who, having contained BSE for us has now been given the rather greater challenge of containing Ted, purred: ‘We need you to see John, Ted, spend some time with him – he’s so nice.’

‘So I’m told,’ said the old monster, shoulders heaving.

‘He needs your advice,’ urged Roger.

‘Would he take it?’ harrumphed Ted.

Later, I pass another Grand Old Man in the corridor. Tony Benn is telling a young colleague: ‘I don’t understand what Blair thinks he’s up to. You know, Clem would never have done it like this …’

Incredibly, in the light of last night, one of our ministers has just missed a vote! I think we can guess where he is. A little earlier I heard him boasting: ‘I’ve got some right high-class shank tonight. I’m going to take her home and knob her rigid.’

When I got home just now I found that Michèle had left a sweet note and a consoling bottle of wine open on the kitchen table. She’s heard about the miscounting of the vote on the news and assumed it must have been me.

Last night David Willetts was summoned to No. 10 to work through the draft manifesto with Norman Blackwell. The Willetts verdict: ‘It’s terrible – dreadful, truly dreadful. There’s nothing there. It’s like a Research Department brief – lots of bullet points, a few new ideas – very few – but no theme. You’d think we had a year to go till the election, not a few weeks. It’s like being an understudy and finding you’re in a play that hasn’t yet been written, let alone rehearsed and blocked.’

It’s because there’s nothing there that all we could spin on Monday was the line that the PM’s going for 1 May. Today No. 10 is spinning that the PM has NEVER committed himself to 1 May! Speculation on dates is all we have to offer. Perhaps we should be publishing a calendar instead of a manifesto…

At Prime Minister’s Questions the boss was in sensational form. There was some splendid knockabout at Blair’s expense, followed by two solid statesmanlike answers on Northern Ireland that brought a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye. None of this will come over on TV, but it does our side good.

The Chancellor was equally sensational at lunch! So off-message on Europe that all you could do was gasp and laugh. William wanted to concentrate on ways of skewering Labour, but Ken, in swaggering mood, wanted to toast the chairman of Toyota whose line this morning is that there’ll be no new Toyota investment in the UK if we’re not part of the single currency.

‘That’s what he told me weeks ago. That’s what they all think. That’s why virtually every businessman I meet wants us to join!’

Fortunately Ken’s on the three-thirty to Geneva (world bankers – say it carefully – are gathering at Davos) and it’ll be good to have him out of the way. He’s managed to antagonise all and sundry today with an interview in the
FT
. He sticks to the letter of the
agreed line in public, but gives it
his
spin not the PM’s. And he’s also shared again with journalists his continuing ambition one day to lead the party. If it weren’t for Europe, he might. As Chancellor, he’s a domestic triumph. As a performer, he’s a class act. As a person, he’s irresistible. But if he stands, he’ll get forty votes.