Breaking the Code (23 page)

Emma is deaf so regularly gets the wrong end of the stick. She’s also vain. No doubt the PM has squeezed her hand in the way he does and Emma (poor deluded creature) has mistaken his naturally flirtatious way with women for a bad case of the hots. On the other hand, if the Clare Latimer story is true (and we know Michèle’s line: ‘Men – they’re all the same’), what a field day Kelvin’s going to have!

Biddle & Co., the Prime Minister’s solicitors, have descended from a great height and successfully killed the story. They’ve issued a disdainful denial on behalf of the PM and instant writs against the
New Statesman
and the
Scallywag
, the low-life perpetrators of the libel. That seems to be that. If there had been anything in it, the tabloids would have snuffled it out. I think one or two in the Tea Room are a mite disappointed to discover the story has no legs. They’re making do with today’s twist in the Downing Street soap opera: the PM and the Chancellor barely on speaking terms, Lamont sidelined, economic policy now being run from No. 10 rather than the Treasury. I go along to Drinks and Q thinking we might be given a line to take on all this, but no, the stories on all the front pages, the fact that the pound has just slumped to an all-time low (I’ve just read it on the tape outside the Smoking Room), none of this features on our agenda. Our theme for the week is the government’s assault on unnecessary bureaucracy, how we’re cutting through the red tape to help small businesses. That’s what they want us to talk about, so (even if no one’s listening) we will.

Good news. Malcolm [Rifkind] made a statement at 3.30: the army is getting an additional 5,000 men and the proposed amalgamation of the Cheshire and Staffordshire regiments will not now proceed. We’ve saved the Cheshires! The moment Malcolm sits down I beetle over the road to the office and fax the good news to the Chester media. I hail it as a great victory for our campaign – which it is. I do believe all the lobbying did make a difference. That’s one of the real advantages of our absurd voting system. We are herded together in the division lobbies, government and backbenchers, from Monday to Thursday, for twenty minutes at a time, sometimes several times in a night. There is ample and regular opportunity for the ordinary backbencher to badger ministers – and, in this instance, it’s paid off. Let’s face it, Colonel Bob Stewart and the Cheshires’ deployment in Bosnia haven’t been unhelpful either. Anyway, whatever brought about the U-turn, it’s what we wanted. Three cheers.

Rather less exciting is the fact that I’ve been dragooned onto the Standing Committee considering the Railways Bill. This means that from 10.00 a.m. onwards every Tuesday and Thursday for the next two months I’m going to be imprisoned on the committee room corridor going through a piece of legislation in which I have scant interest. I wanted to be on the Lotteries Bill. I volunteered to be on the Lotteries Bill. That was probably my mistake. Cecil Parkinson
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put it so nicely: ‘People here like to give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.’

My real mistake was letting slip to the whip that I knew quite a bit about the lottery and even had the managing director of Vernons Pools as a constituent. He wheeled me in to see the Deputy Chief Whip
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where I compounded my error by showing off the extent of my knowledge of the bill, its strengths and its weaknesses.

‘I don’t think you’ll find this government’s legislation contains any weaknesses,’ said the Deputy with a wintry smile and a slightly raised eyebrow.

I still didn’t get it. I thought because I was keen and informed I’d be the man they wanted. Now I realise, it’s
because
I’m keen and informed I’m the very last man they want. The upshot is I’m off Lotteries and onto Railways.

And I’m not going to New York either. Gerald and the Select Committee are off to the US at the weekend, gathering evidence for our enquiry into the cost of CDs. (Gerald buys a lot of CDs. They cost much more in the UK than in the US. Gerald wants to know why. Fair enough.) Lizard-like, skin glistening, eyes narrowed, tongue flicking, Gerald explained to us that if we all went, the Budget wouldn’t stretch to us travelling
Business Class. He felt that those going would want to travel Business Class (murmurs of assent), so was anyone ready to volunteer not to go? I put my hand up. I’ve got a nightmare weekend in the constituency, things that to get out of would bring the house down; I’m committed to the wretched Winter Ball on Monday; there’s the dinner with the PM on Tuesday; now there’s the Railways Bill. I’ve been to New York – and in better company. It’s less stressful staying put.

The Winter Ball could have been worse. I did my stuff. It turned out they asked me because they were weary of ‘Jeffrey’s hectoring tone’. I bet he raises more money though. I didn’t do too badly, but it isn’t much fun trying to raise £30,000 in under eight minutes flogging three items to four interested punters surrounded by 900 garrulous but non-bidding spectators. One good woman bought a bottle of champagne signed by the Prime Minister for £16,000. She deserves a peerage. (And I understand she may get one.)

I was warned off taking bids from punters at one particular table. Their dusky hue wasn’t the problem; it was their ‘slightly doubtful business reputation’: ‘they’ll want a picture with the PM – we can’t be too careful.’

The best bit of the evening was encountering David Cameron,
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special adviser to the Chancellor.

‘Well done,’ he purred, pink cheeks glowing. ‘I hear you’ll soon be joining us at the Treasury.’

‘Really?’ I tried to look as if I knew exactly what he was talking about while being far too discreet to let on. ‘Tell me more.’

‘PPS to the Financial Secretary. Can’t be bad.’

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true? In case it isn’t, I’ve not mentioned it to Michèle. Let’s wait and see.

This comes to you late on Tuesday morning, from Committee Room 12, where I am advised I shall be closeted every Tuesday and Thursday from now till the end of April. Three months locked in a room with John Prescott
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and Glenda Jackson! Can you imagine? Prescott is pug-ugly, overweight, overbearing, but not, I imagine, over-promoted. He is brutish, but there’s something rather brilliant about him as well. He’s sharp, he’s relentless, he has no way with words but he feels formidable, and he’s openly
contemptuous of our side. The contrast between him and our leading player could hardly be greater. Roger Freeman
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is an old-fashioned smoothie. He’s stepped straight out of the ’50s: the posture, the manner, the pin-stripe suit, the Brylcreamed swept-back hair. When Prescott addresses the committee he leans forward in his place and simply belches out whatever he’s got to say. Roger gets up and carefully stands behind his chair. He is punctilious with the courtesies, urbane, gracious, but businesslike not flowery, effortlessly reasonable, never crudely partisan. I’m impressed.

I’m also relieved to learn that this morning we just sit till lunchtime. From Thursday the routine is 10.30 a.m. till 1.00 p.m., 4.30 p.m. till whenever. It will be a long haul but it is, I suppose, what I’m paid for.

A day that’s included tea with the editor of
Izvestia
, drinks at Buckingham Palace, and dinner with the Prime Minister, is almost worthy of Chips Channon. For tea in the Pugin Room with Oleg Golembiovsky I’m joined by Chips’s son, Paul, the other non-jet-setting member of the National Heritage Select Committee. (I like to think Paul – ‘his cheeks are pink, his hair is sleek’ – urbane, amused, amusing, only flies
first
class.) The Foreign Office has set up the meeting and it’s fascinating. Clearly nothing but uncertainty is certain in Russia now. Amiably chain-smoking, Igor tells us that
Izvestia
’s circulation has dropped from three million to one million since, now they rely solely on sales and advertising for revenue, the price of the paper has rocketed to fifteen roubles. The problems are no longer state control and government interference (you can print what you like), but the alarming cost of paper and distribution. Igor has been learning about how to become a capitalist from an American paperback: a do-it-yourself guide on how to start your own business that he picked up in an airport bookstall.

As Paul and I speak no Russian and Igor admits to little English we communicate through the good offices of the interpreter, who glories in the name of Aubone Pyke (you couldn’t make it up) and appears to have no difficulty interpreting my story of the electronic translating device that was given the phrase ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and asked to translate it into Russian. The same machine was then asked to translate the phrase back into English and on retranslation ‘out of sight, out of mind’ came back as ‘invisible lunatic’. I offer this to Aubone as reassurance that he’s unlikely to be made redundant by a computer. He smiles at me indulgently. As we leave,
sotto voce
Paul cautions me against making jokes with interpreters. ‘An awful lot of them are spies.’

At Buckingham Palace we were launching the John Arlott Memorial Trust with the aim of raising funds to create low-cost rural housing and safeguarding recreational and play space to go with it. I’d said to the PM, as he was going to be in the same building at the same time, when he’d finished with the Queen why didn’t he look in? I told him Mrs Arlott would be there, so he said he might, but he didn’t. Because I was keeping my eye on the door in case he turned up, I fear I didn’t work the room very effectively. The Princess Royal, of course, was a brick. That’s the word for her. She’s horsey, she’s got an odd strangulated voice, a whinnying laugh, and yet there’s something almost sexy about her – if you like that sort of thing. She made an excellent speech: crisp, clear, businesslike. In my reply I was so busy trying to get away with a convoluted topical joke about Dolphin Square,
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royal palaces and leasehold reform that I lost my way and forgot two or three of the key messages. Bah.

In my vote of thanks at the Marginals Club dinner I avoided convoluted jokes altogether and went straight for lay-it-on-with-a-trowel grovelling. The PM was in cracking form, relaxed, confident and discursive. He didn’t say anything any of us hadn’t heard before, but he said it in a way that made us feel that he’s bigger, stronger,
better
that most of the press (and some of our colleagues) would have you believe. We presented him with our new club tie, made by the Chester Tie Company and designed by yours truly. (Diagonal stripes: dark blue, pale green, light blue. The dark blue and the light blue represent the
major
universities when your teacher is a
don
. The pale green is the colour of fresh
basil
. Basildon was the marginal constituency where the result last year showed us the way the election would go!) Peter Thurnham,
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a well-meaning woolly sheep of a man, is the club founder and chairman. There are about thirty members, from all corners of the party but united in a common purpose: a determination to be ineligible for club membership after the next election.

It’s 11.15 p.m. I’m in the Library, waiting for the last vote, which should be any minute now. An early night! At the table where I sit I have my back to a wonderful wall of books – plays, poetry, European literature. I am starting on
The Confessions of Felix Krull
.

No word of any PPS-ship at the Treasury. Heigh-ho.

This morning’s tabloids are dominated by lurid tales of the dirty doings of Major Ronald
Ferguson. Is this in the public interest? No. Is this even interesting to the public? Well, er, yes, sort of. Vying for front page space is a story about one of my constituents, a British ‘mercenary’ killed in Bosnia. The news of his death was brought to his parents by a local newspaper at 5.40 p.m. last night. They called me this morning. They are distraught and say they have nothing to say to the mass of press who are now besieging them. This is a tricky one. The story may well be in the public interest, but should grieving parents – even parents of a ‘mercenary’ – be obliged to submit to cross-questioning by the media? I have sent a fax to various papers asking them to leave the parents alone, but I don’t expect it to make any difference.

I was invited to a preview of the new sex-and-politics movie
Damage
(aka ‘Yes, yes, oh yes,
yesss
, Minister!) but because of the votes on the leasehold reform Bill couldn’t go – which turned out to be fortuitous because, just as I was wandering off from the six o’clock vote, Stephen Dorrell,
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Financial Secretary to the Treasury, tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Have you got time for a drink?’

We went to the Smoking Room, happily deserted, and sat in one of the deep, uncomfortable leather sofas by the window. ‘How would you feel about being my PPS?’ He has an engaging way with him, shy, unconsciously charming. I said I’d be honoured. He grinned. He must be three or four years younger than me, taller, slimmer, brighter, better-looking. ‘At Oxford,’ he said, disarmingly, ‘I used to sit at your feet at the Union. They told me I could have a PPS last year, but I didn’t like the people they had on offer. I thought I’d wait for you.’

I don’t really know him at all. He’s been here since ’79, a protégé of Peter Walker’s, pro-European, dripping wet, and consequently not in the fast-track in Mrs T.’s time. He became a whip in ’87, went to Health in 1990 and on to the Treasury after the election. They say he’s a coming man, a certainty for the Cabinet, a possibility as leader. And now I’m his bag-carrier. I couldn’t be more pleased.

I said, ‘What’s the job involve?’

‘Not a lot. Odd meetings, a bit of bench duty, keeping me in touch with what’s going on. Let’s fix a time to talk it through.’

He is easy-going but I sense fundamentally serious. I heard myself saying, ‘Well, if you’re going to be a dogsbody you want to be one to a decent dog.’ It sounded neither gracious nor right. As we parted (we drained our orange juices swiftly), I compounded the infelicity with my parting shot: