Breaking the Code (31 page)

The Chester papers have arrived full of the good news about MBNA [the Maryland Bank of North America]: a £43 million investment at Chester Business Park, promising a thousand new jobs. My hastily faxed press releases – claiming a fair share of the credit for GB and the PM – have paid off. We get good coverage – and deservedly. The taxpayer has coughed up some £7 million in assorted inward investment incentives. I reckon MBNA would have come if the sweetener had only been half as much, but I got a near-hysterical call from Paul Durham [chief executive, Chester City Council] spitting and spluttering that if ‘
your
government doesn’t come up with the money’ the whole deal would fall through. Paul’s tone needled me. I wanted to say, ‘Fuck off, you silly little man’, but I didn’t. I said, rather petulantly, ‘It’s not
my
government; whether you like it or not it’s
our
government’ and added, rather pompously, ‘I shall speak to the Prime Minister.’ I called Alex Allen at No. 10, and put the case and asked the PM both to take a personal interest and to write a personal letter to MBNA saying how Britain in general, and Chester in particular, wanted – really wanted – MBNA. The PM obliged. (That is the joy of our system. Every member of the government is a Member of Parliament. Every MP has ready access to every minister. Time it right, pitch it right, don’t try it too often, and you can cut through the bureaucracy and go straight to the top.)

The Chester press for the PM is good. The national press is less encouraging. Cecil Parkinson has gone into print with an energetic denunciation of a ‘terrible twelve months’ of drift and dither. The voters ‘feel let down, even betrayed.’ Thank you, Cecil.

This is so terrible I don’t want to write it down. I don’t want to see the words on the page. Simon [Cadell] is going to die.

We were in the kitchen having lunch. The phone went. Michèle answered. It was Simon. ‘You’re going to have to be brave, darling. I’m in the Harley Street clinic. It’s not good news. I’m riddled with cancer. It could be just a matter of days. Of course, I’ll want Gyles to do the address at the service. We must talk about that.’ He was so matter-of-fact
and brave and several times he tried to be funny. When we had both talked to him (and been wonderfully British and brave too) we put down the phone and stood in the kitchen clinging onto one another, sobbing uncontrollably. It is so awful. I don’t know what to say.

I am on the 8.30 a.m. flight from Manchester to Heathrow. I flew up yesterday afternoon for the Bingo Evening at the Sealand Deaf Centre. The flying trip to play bingo with around thirty-five frail folk of riper years will have cost the taxpayer several hundred pounds, but there we are.

Simon’s got it into his head that the press vultures are circling and word is going to get out. We are drafting a press statement to pre-empt them.

He is being so brave and funny. A nurse whipped back the bedclothes to give him an injection. ‘Just a little prick,’ she said. Simon looked at her indignantly: ‘There’s no need to be insulting.’

The Harley Street Clinic put out the statement yesterday. Simon is the lead story on several front pages. ‘I am dying says Hi-de-Hi star Simon’ is the main headline in the
Mirror
, reducing the political story of the hour to a single column:

It is so strange to see pictures of my best friend staring out at me like this, stills of his funny, lovely, lopsided face, alongside these stark headlines. It’s an odd (macabre) thing to say, but I think he’ll be quite pleased with the coverage.

I wonder who Mr Major’s best friend is? It was never Lamont. Norman managed his leadership campaign, but I don’t believe they were ever especially close. They were colleagues and allies, but it was a friendship of convenience. Norman is bitter because he feels betrayed. This time last year he offered to resign. Major said ‘I’m not going to, you shouldn’t either’. Norman believed he was safe because the PM told him he was safe. That’s why he feels betrayed. He
was
betrayed. That’s politics.

And I’m going to lose Simon. That’s life. And I can’t bear it.

I’m on the 8.30 flight to Heathrow. I came up for the Cheshire Regiment officers’ association dinner, a generous spread and good people. I sat next to Lt Col Bob Stewart,
322
hero of Bosnia. He’s attractive but strange, a little overweight, possibly a little too ready to believe his own publicity. I liked him, but I can see why the MoD is wary of him. He has all the qualities to take him to the top – energy, intelligence, courage, achievement – but there’s something there that isn’t quite right. A perversity, a devil, something. His speech was a bit all over the place, which surprised me, but I liked his line: ‘Gentlemen, my rule is this. If there’s a battle, go towards it.’

Michèle is meeting me at Heathrow. We are going straight to the Harley Street Clinic and then on to lunch with Stevie and Jo.

According to the latest opinion poll, 92 per cent of the population oppose the imposition of VAT on domestic fuel. We do not seem
quite
to be marching in step with the people. The Labour Party on the other hand … Tony Benn has just been voted off Labour’s national executive after thirty-four years and, largely thanks to a wonderfully passionate speech by John Prescott, John Smith has won his battle to reform Labour’s links with the trade unions. They’ve discovered the will to win while we don’t seem to be able to get our sticky fingers off the button marked ‘self-destruct’.

I am on my way to Liverpool to address the Merseyside Conservative Ladies at the Adelphi. I have the draft of the Chancellor’s conference speech with me, and as whatever I say will go completely unreported, I’m going to try it out on the good women of Merseyside. (I’ve got a couple of extra gags for him and I’m going to be going more softly on the VAT on fuel section. He wants to bang on about ‘why we must carry it through’. This could provoke jeers on the day and be a hostage to fortune. Whether the policy is right or wrong, if we can’t muster the support for it in the House a retreat will become inevitable.)

An earthquake in India has killed 10,000, which should put the Chancellor’s troubles in perspective.

At 6.30 I turned up at the conference hotel ‘autocue room’ to rehearse the Chancellor’s speech with him. Ken knows this sort of thing is necessary, but he can’t bring himself to take it seriously. Just as he gets to the podium and is set to start, in comes Jeffrey Archer. It seems that
he
is expecting to rehearse the Chancellor. Ken reads the script. He isn’t a natural orator and he isn’t any good at reading a script either. He manages to emphasise all the wrong words and he puts over the jokes in a curious one-note sing-song without any inflexion at the finish so the audience has no idea if this is the point at which to laugh. I don’t say any of this – or indeed anything – because Jeffrey is saying all that needs to be said, and more. KC reads a chunk and pauses. Jeffrey offers his critique. He’s so joyously bombastic, so cocksure it’s terribly funny. KC turns to me, ‘What do you think, Gyles?’ ‘I think Jeffrey’s spot on and you are quite brilliant, Chancellor.’ There’s no point in saying anything else.

When our time was up, Jeffrey sailed off, very pleased with his endeavours, the Chancellor, chuckling, rolled away in search of a pint, and I made my way to some South Ribble backwater called Grimsargh where I was doing a turn for Nigel Evans.
323
It went rather well: they liked the jokes and the answers to the questions came easily. For what it’s worth (which isn’t much in the wastes of Lancashire on a wet Wednesday night), I felt I’d hit my stride.

A long day. I drove up to Blackpool in time to be on the platform for the Chancellor’s speech. He is
such
a nice guy, chuckling nervously in the wings as we waited to go on, chortling with relief when it was over. He paid absolutely no regard to anything that Jeffrey or I had said at the rehearsal. He just did it as he’d have done it anyway, and it worked. The troops rose to his rallying cry: ‘Any enemy of John Major is my enemy. Any enemy of John Major is no friend of the Conservative Party.’ And, despite my misgivings, he got through the passage on VAT and fuel without interruption.

Even more remarkable was that I got through my lunchtime address to the Ulster Conservatives without embarrassment. I don’t quite know how I came to let myself in for it. I simply hadn’t thought it through. The invitation came and I said yes and it wasn’t until I arrived at St John’s Church and saw it surrounded by police that I began to register that Northern Ireland is one of those delicate issues that require deft handling and
a sure touch! Anyway, I nailed my Unionist colours to the mast, hoped I was taking the government line, and appeared to get away with it.

Michèle arrived for our party at the Savoy (the
Blackpool
Savoy) – nuts, crisps, an open bar and a motley crew of activists from Cheshire, Kent and Kingston, with GB, Alastair Goodlad, Jonathan Aitken and Norman Lamont as an equally motley crew of co-hosts. Norman feels he’s had a good week. He’s certainly had plenty of coverage. He wants to see a further £5 billion cut in public expenditure. KC said to me, ‘Do ask Norman where we’re going to find it.’ I think he feels we could make cuts in health and education. That’s a political impossibility. Indeed, much of what we might like to do is a political impossibility.

We then went on to the Conference Ball where I conducted a knockabout auction and the PM spoke informally to the troops. I think he’s at his best off the cuff. He was surprisingly relaxed and fresh. We talked about tomorrow’s speech. Stephen [Dorrell] has produced reams of ideas, none of which are going to be used. Clearly they’re still dithering as to whether or not to mount a full-scale assault on the ‘fringe lunatics’. I said, ‘If you attack the people causing the divisions you make them the focus of the headlines. The Chancellor has done the call for unity.’

‘Yes, wasn’t he good? Isn’t he good?’ The PM trusts KC. He is right to.

‘Mrs T. has called for unity,’ I added.

The PM gave me one of his blank stares, with the hint of a raised eyebrow. ‘If you do another call for unity, that’ll end up as the story. “Prime Minister pleads for unity”. What we want from you is the core message. “What I believe. Here I stand”.’ I think that’s what we’re going to get.

‘Let me tell you what I believe … It is time to return to the old core values. Time to get back to basics. To self-discipline and respect for the law. To consideration for others. To accepting responsibility for yourself and your family, and not shuffling it off on the State. Madam President, I believe that what this country needs is not less Conservatism. It is more Conservatism… It is time to return to our roots.’

It went down wonderfully well. He did it wonderfully well. I watched it cocooned inside the Channel 4 commentary box, surrounded by professional cynics, but even they had to concede that he’d touched a chord with the faithful. They don’t adore him as they adored Thatcher, but they love him and they share his nostalgic longing for Miss Marple’s England.

When it was over we met up with Peter Lilley and drove him to Chester for the reception
at the International. Clearly, the right feel they’ve had a good week. Portillo has told the PM he mustn’t appear to be all things to all men. Peter has called for the return of ‘conviction politics’. The espousal of ‘core values’ is just what Mrs T. wants to hear. The mood music certainly suggests a shift to the right, but Clarke and Hurd and Heseltine aren’t worried. They have nothing to fear: they know that, whatever the rhetoric, Major shares their instincts.

In his dry/shy way Peter did us proud at our gathering of the local business community and then raced off with Michèle to catch the train from Crewe. Because he was on party, not government, business there was no ministerial car, and she said he cut rather a pathetic figure struggling up the lane to the station, lead-lined ministerial box in one hand, overnight bags in the other. It was the last train, so no buffet, and he made it with only seconds to spare. He’ll get in to London after midnight. He’s due on the
Today
programme at 7.00 a.m. It’s a punishing life.

The Chester troops are in high spirits, not just a good conference but, better still, a full spread featuring our ‘Summer Soirée’ in the ‘Mr Society’ pages of
Cheshire Life
! This is what they want and what, on the whole, I fail to deliver. (My only recollection of the evening is of how we all stared frantically into our coffee cups as Cecil Parkinson told a never-ending story about a serial adulterer and a bicycle. Lady P. maintained a brave grimace throughout.)

As Mrs T. launches her memoirs, she tells us the PM is now back on ‘the true path’ and rejoices. At Drinks in the Lower Whips’ Office, we turn our minds to lower things: Steve Norris
324
and his
five
mistresses. We are full of admiration. It is amazing – and amusing – apparently Mrs Norris knew what was going on, it was the mistresses who were unaware of one another – but utterly maddening for No. 10. ‘Back to basics’ was never supposed to be about sexual morality. Jonathan Hill tells me, ‘It hasn’t backfired. We’re sticking with it. This Norris nonsense will blow over. It’s a nine-day wonder. People wanted the PM to have a theme. Returning to our core values is his theme and he’s sticking with it. It’s working for us.’

Iain Sproat wants me to meet with him and officials at the DNH to talk about violence on TV. ‘The PM believes there’s too much violence on TV. It desensitises people. We must do something about it.’