Breaking the Code (12 page)

The Social Security Secretary Tony Newton
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was our VIP yesterday and since nobody seemed to have heard of him Vanessa decided that we’d take him to a nursing home. It was the kind of visit Michèle hates. The poor inmates are all siting in armchairs ranged round the walls gazing blankly into the middle distance while the television in the corner blares away from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave. We troop round, shaking the palsied hands, booming our names, grinning inanely at uncomprehending
faces. Mr Newton, who smokes as much as Sir Peter and the Duke of Westminster, didn’t look as if he was enjoying himself. Other than making little jokes about how nobody knows who he is, he had no small talk. He was obviously exhausted. He said he was weary of the campaign and feels it hasn’t gone particularly well. The press turned up to photograph us, so I suppose the visit was worthwhile. Let us hope the old dears we were pictured with survive till polling day. (Vanessa has been brilliant with the nursing home vote. The trick she says is to get the matron on your side. She’s the one who fills out the postal and the proxy votes … Vanessa’s also got me going to see the nuns in Curzon Park: ‘You only need to nobble the Mother Superior. If she votes for us, they all will. It’s called the rule of obedience.’)

The Business Club
Any Questions
was fine. I hit my stride and Robinson was rattled and all at sea. If last night’s audience were my electorate, I’d win. They aren’t, of course, and I have no idea what the outcome will be. We’ve been canvassing on the doorstep and by phone and I’m told we’ve covered about 80 per cent of the constituency, but when I ask Vanessa for the figures she says getting them out of the computer is a nightmare but ‘it’s looking good’ – which suggests to me that it’s looking very bad indeed. What the hell.
Que sera sera
. Paddy Ashdown
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seems to know what to expect. He’s demanding four posts in a coalition Cabinet.

Peter Lilley
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came and went. Old Uncle Charisma he ain’t, but he was decent and intelligent and businesslike and the (fairly small) crowd we’d gathered for him at the Association Hall liked what he had to offer. The moment he’d gone we went back to Blacon and the worst of the high-rise blocks. They are squalid and soulless, the public parts filthy, the walls covered with mindless graffiti. The Right to Buy has made no impact here. When doors were opened almost every flat looked equally unloved, unkempt – and then you’d find one belonging to an elderly person who opened the door a crack and then opened it wide and you could see how house-proud they were and sense how they must hate having to live where they do with the neighbours they have to endure. Grim places, grim lives. And if and when I become a Member of Parliament, will I be able to make any impact at all on that?

Mr Major has just been on the box setting out ten Tory truths for a golden future. He
believes he ‘understands what makes the heart of Britain beat’ and the way he says it you believe him. He’s no Churchill, but when it comes to simply tugging at the heart strings he’s hard to beat. We’ve also been parading our celebrity circus: Labour have come up with Simply Red, Nigel Kennedy and Steve Cram; we’re fielding Ruth Madoc, Lynsey de Paul, Elaine Paige. Not bad. (We seem to be keeping Russell Grant and Bob Monkouse under wraps. Perhaps Chris Patten has locked them in the Central Office cellar, along with Norman Lamont, John Gummer, Peter Brooke, William Waldegrave and all our other missing ministers. I imagine the thinking is ‘out of sight, out of mind’.)

A depressing start to polling day. The headline in the
Standard
, delivered free of charge through every door in Chester this general election morning, reads ‘Brandreth fires back at missed meetings charge’. They’ve got the wretched missed meeting at Queen’s Park High School and they’ve topped that up with the line that I’ve ‘shirked’ public meetings and ‘even forced the abandonment of one live radio debate’. In fact I did five meetings with the other candidates (every one a nightmare and of no value – people’s prejudices are simply confirmed – which is no doubt why Peter M. very sensibly only ever agreed to do one) and I deliberately turned down the local radio debate because, thanks to the Representation of the People Act,
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if I didn’t show I knew it couldn’t happen and I thought ‘why give air time to my opponents? What’s in it for me?’ Still, it doesn’t look good and it’ll dishearten the troops.

Michèle and I voted first thing, up on St Mary’s Hill, in the nursery school I saved (my one achievement to date!) and then spent the day in John Shanklin’s
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little car criss-crossing the constituency without pause, visiting every one of our twenty-four committee rooms and as many polling stations as we could manage. John is lovely, intelligent, undemanding, easy to be with and ‘all I ask is strawberry tea on the terrace when you’re elected’.

Everywhere we went we did our best to be jolly, but it’s clear it’s going to be a close-run thing. The Labour people are certainly more ruthless when it comes to getting out
the vote: they turn up at the old folks homes and shovel the old dears into charabancs. They are bolder and, I suspect, more systematic. Our teams were mostly optimistic, the kindly branch chairmen nodding sagely and saying ‘It’s holding up quite nicely.’ (How do they know? I don’t think our canvassing has been that scientific!) John Cliffe may have been nearer the mark. Hangdog face, fag cupped in the palm of his hand (he was in the merchant marine and rolls as if he’s still on deck), he shook his head mournfully, ‘They’re not coming out for you. It’s a damned disgrace. They don’t deserve you. You’re too good for them. It’s a crying shame.’

David Parry-Jones (from the
Chronicle
) has sent a nice note saying I’ve fought a brilliant campaign and that the combination of that and the fact that I’m not Sir Peter will give me a majority of 8,000. We shall see.

It’s just gone ten. We’re watching the box and it don’t look good. Ask not for whom the exit poll tolls, it tolls for thee…

I am now the Member of Parliament for the City of Chester.

Soon after ten last night we put on clean clothes and brave faces and trudged up the hill to the Town Hall. The entrance and the press room were full of happy Labour activists – buzzy, busy, running from computer to calculator filling in the latest data, the scent of victory already in their nostrils. At the best of times, a Labour activist is not a pretty sight. Good-looking people seem to eschew mainstream politics. (Tom Barker, our young Green candidate is the exception to the rule. He is fresh-faced, fair, pretty – all of which I’d have said to him, except now I don’t say that sort of thing. Michèle has even coached me out of the habit of calling everyone ‘darling’. It was when I called the Bishop ‘darling’ that she put her foot down. ‘Enough is enough.’ ‘Yes, darling.’) Labour activists on heat, ready for the kill, beards bristling, red faces glistening, the women either appallingly overweight or peculiarly scraggy (not
one
with a normal figure), hunting as a pack – it wasn’t nice to see. They
knew
they had won and they couldn’t contain themselves. We knew we’d lost and all I really felt was tired.

Inside the main hall, the atmosphere was much more subdued. I had never been to a count before. I couldn’t believe how primitive it all is. The ballot boxes are emptied, the papers are sorted and bundled into bunches of fifty and held together with clothes-pegs – yes, plastic and wooden clothes-pegs. They are then carefully placed in lines on long trestle tables and as the night wears on you can see who’s line is the longest. For most of the night, Labour’s line was longer than mine by far, but gradually I could see I was catching up, and by two in the morning, when word was coming in from around
the country that perhaps we hadn’t lost after all, I could see that in Chester too we were neck and neck.

The Labour people couldn’t believe it. The leader of the Labour Group, whose gross red face had glowed with complacency all evening, now turned purple with anger and dismay. I am ashamed to say it was pleasing to see him looking quite so ugly and unhappy. He wanted recount after recount, and the pegged bundles were checked and rechecked; we argued over the spoilt ballot papers, but there were only a handful of them (where voters had put question marks or squiggles instead of crosses, or placed their mark adjacent to the box not in it), so I conceded the point. And then the moment came: the Returning Officer whispered the final figures to each of us in turn, we accepted them (the Lib Dem and the Green with good grace; Robinson, now ashen-faced, through gritted teeth), and processed onto the stage for the result formally to be announced to the waiting world.

I have a majority of 1,101 and 44.1 per cent of the vote. In 1987 Peter Morrison secured 44.9 per cent of the vote, so the Conservative vote held and the reduced majority is entirely down to the Liberal collapse: their vote fell by 7 per cent, all of which went to Labour.

Anyway, I’ve won. And it does feel good. And Michèle has been wonderful. She seems quite pleased. We’ve had no sleep – well, three hours, but I think I lay awake for most of that. After the count I did radio and television and gabbled away to the local press and we went to the [Conservative] Club and caroused with the victorious troops. They have been fantastic. I didn’t have a celebratory drink. Oddly, I wasn’t even tempted. On Easter Sunday we are lunching at the Caprice and, then, boy, will the champagne flow…

We’re going home. I’m about to see London for the first time in four weeks. Thanks to pounding the beat (and laying off the bottle) I’ve lost a stone – so the election
was
worthwhile. In truth, I’m not sure what impact I had on the result. At constituency level
you’re not driving the election: it’s simply happening to you. Clearly I didn’t frighten off our supporters, but I don’t think I made much of a difference to the outcome, did I? The activists believe what we do does make a difference, but they have to believe that, don’t they?

Chris Patten, Lynda Chalker,
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David Trippier, John Maples,
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Colin Moynihan all lost their seats. Two of my friends got in for the first time: Stephen Milligan
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and Sebastian Coe.
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Mr Major is starting his reshuffle today. Mr Kinnock is pondering his future. We have an overall majority of twenty-one seats and a majority of sixty-four over Labour. According to the nation’s most popular newspaper, ‘It was
The Sun
wot won it’ and certainly Thursday’s front page can have done us no harm among
The Sun
’s more thoughtful readers. Alongside a distorted mug shot of poor Mr Kinnock trapped inside a light bulb ran the headline: ‘If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights … You know our views on the subject, but we don’t want to influence you in your final judgement on who will be Prime Minister. But if it’s a bald bloke with wispy red hair and two Ks in his surname, we’ll see you at the airport. Good night and thank you for everything.’

I got back to Chester on the 11.23. There’s a sackload of mail, including a handwritten note from Chevening House, Chevening, Sevenoaks, Kent: ‘Dear Gyles, Many congratulations – that’s excellent news. I’m sure our stroll among the swans a month ago was decisive. See you soon. Judy joins me in welcome. Yours, Douglas.’ The Foreign Secretary finds time to write to the new backbencher. I’m impressed – and pleased. There are lots of gratifying messages. Oddi wrth Ysgrifennydd Gwladol Cymru: ‘What a magnificent victory. Many congratulations and welcome to the Commons. I am sure you are just beginning what will be a long and distinguished career and I look forward to working with you for many years to come. Yours ever, David.’ Hurd and Hunt are back in post; Kenneth Clarke
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is Home Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind
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goes to Defence,
Michael Howard
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is at Environment and Heseltine goes to Trade and Industry. Two women join the Cabinet (Virginia Bottomley
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at Health, Gillian Shephard
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at Employment) but one other (Edwina!) is offered a job at the Home Office and – very publicly – declines. ‘Currie snubs Major’ is this morning’s headline. This morning’s rumour is that Chris Patten is going to be Governor of Hong Kong.

God save the Queen! And God bless the Duke of Edinburgh! Her Majesty came to Chester today to distribute the Royal Maundy at the Cathedral and to bestow upon us the gift of a Lord Mayorlty in a little ceremony at the Town Hall. When I arrived at the council chamber to take my place it was made pleasantly but firmly clear to me that I am merely the Member of Parliament and consequently somebody of pretty little significance on these all-important civic occasions. At Chester Town Hall, councillors rule, okay? And kindly don’t forget it. Suitably humbled I took my allotted place tucked at the end of the third row back. Mayors past and present, sheriffs, councillors, clerks, freemen, county councillors, city and county dignitaries by the score, processed with wonderful dignity to their places. And when everyone bar Larry the Lamb himself was in position, we the riffraff were ordered to our feet and in came the Lord Mayor in all her glory with Her Majesty, small and smiling, and Prince Philip, tanned and gently amused. The ceremony didn’t last long and, when it was over, we all stood for the reverse procession. The Queen and the Lord Mayor followed by Prince Philip made to leave, but as they were turning to depart the Chamber Prince Philip suddenly caught my eye. His brow furrowed, he left the procession and moved down the line towards the cheap seats.