Breaking the Code (49 page)

We went to the Olivier Awards last night
in loco
the Secretary of State. It was
quite
fun (we saw a number of chums, we sat with Sally Greene
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and Diana Quick – in my mind’s eye still in that leather mini-skirt
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– and Bill Nighy
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– whose half-hesitant self-consciously sexy style M and I love and Simon [Cadell]
loathes
) – but it doesn’t work. If Stephen can’t go/won’t go (and these events are often on a Sunday night, his one certain night at home in Worcester), then it’s better to send no one. My turning up just advertises the fact he’s failed to show – again. In the speeches there was the customary mocking of Stephen and sneering at the government.

Good old Sproatie. John K. has just shown me a minute from Sproat’s office to the SoS, cc Lord Astor and the Permanent Secretary:

Palm Sunday. No hosannas. The
News of the World
strikes again. Last month, my friend Bob Hughes.
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Today, my friend Richard Spring.
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‘Tory MP, the Tycoon and the Sunday School Teacher. We expose three-in-a-bed sex session. Exclusive.’ Richard, tall, likeable, languid, elegant in a Bertie Woosterish-Newmarket Races sort of a way, appears to have invited an acquaintance (a pensions company executive) and his girlfriend (Odette Nightingale, occasional Sunday school teacher – you couldn’t make it up) to dinner last Sunday. The hospitality was generous, the conversation lively (it seems Richard thinks Portillo’s quite fanciable, doesn’t rate the PM but is ready to give Norma one anytime), and, evidently,
chez
Spring the post-prandial treats go well beyond
crème de menthe frappé
and a Bendicks Bittermint. Poor bugger. I talked to him during the week. He was positively chirpy – off on Friday on a freebie fact-finding jaunt to the Canary Islands. No doubt the vermin from the
News of the World
will have taken particular delight in dragging him from his Lanzarote poolside to confront him with their ‘allegations’. Anyway, though he’s divorced, though presumably what consenting adults do in private is still nominally their own affair, he’s a goner. He’s done the right thing: he’s resigned as Paddy Mayhew’s PPS and he’s flying back to face the music. The pity of it is that because the PM has been concentrating so much on Ireland in recent weeks he’s seen a lot of Richard and I get the impression (indeed, I know) he liked what he saw: promotion was on the way. Being a hidden genius in an obscure backwater (i.e. yours truly at the DNH) is neither here nor there: in this place being seen to be good by the right people in the right places is what counts. And now he’s blown it – and for what?

Progress on assorted fronts:

Appointments
. Stephen is not interested so Sproatie, Tim Kirkhope and I are now having a weekly meeting to vet the department’s candidates and feed in our own ideas. We know Hayden will always have the last word (we’re just the poor elected), but as Sproatie says, ‘Let’s see if we can’t get the occasional right-thinking bloke with a bit of experience in there alongside the disabled black lesbians – excellent though they no doubt are.’ Today’s inspiration: my friend Richard Whiteley
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for the board of the Royal Armouries in Leeds. (Says TK, who is a Leeds MP, ‘We must make sure he knows who he’s got to thank for this.’)

Libraries
. I believe there’s mileage, purpose and value in rediscovering/reinventing the library service. (An author and communitarian speaks!) Danny agrees and we’re developing ideas for a pilot project, involving private finance. Stephen’s eyes glaze over (‘Let’s get the film policy out of the way first’) but I’m going to persist.

Film
.

SD: ‘Gyles, have you got anything to do over the next three weeks?’

GB: ‘Er…’

SD: ‘Clear your desk – completely. Write the film policy.’

GB: ‘Er … fine.’

The truth is we’ve got little time, little scope, little room for manoeuvre. What the industry wants are Irish-type tax breaks which the Chancellor can deliver, but we can’t. But we can at least put our best foot forward – and raid the lottery. I am seeing David Puttnam
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at 7.00 p.m. Sproatie would not approve.

Trafalgar Square plinth
. Months ago, doing a photocall for the lottery launch in Trafalgar Square, I noticed the empty plinth in the top left-hand corner of the square, by the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery. As a joke, making small talk at prayers, I suggested we put a statue on it. And everyone said, why not? My idea was to make it ‘the people’s statue’ – recruit suggestions through a TV show. Naturally, it’s not that easy. It seems all sorts, from Lord Pisspot of Fawsley upwards and downwards, have to have a say, but we’re making progress. Tomorrow we’re meeting Prue Leith
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and we’re going to get the RSA to handle the nominations. The Queen Mother is out because she’s alive. Ditto Mrs T. in the tank. Stephen favours the Duke of Wellington on horseback. Sproat says Shakespeare. I have floated the notion of Britain’s leading children’s characters: Alice, the Mad Hatter, Peter Pan, Rupert, Paddington, Winnie-the-Pooh.

The drink with David Puttnam was very funny. He’s diminutive, friendly, eager and has the perfect solution to each and every problem on the planet. He has
all
the answers and has written papers outlining most of them. I rather hoped he’d be turning my children’s books into movies. Dream on. He clearly can’t wait to get out of movies into politics. Anyway, he’s on board. I’m wheeling him in to Stephen on Monday. Because of his Luvvies-for-Labour connections, we shall keep his involvement hush-hush, but at least our policy will be written with a practitioner to hand.

I’m Chester bound. A day of local election canvassing beckons. The chairman of the party is on his way to Derbyshire on the same mission – but unfortunately the local Conservatives don’t want him! He was due to walk the streets in Erewash, but he’s not welcome. The council candidates there say my friend is ‘so gaffe-prone’ he’s bound to bring up ‘smutty’ national issues when what they want to do is emphasise their local achievements. Poor Jeremy.

And poor Graham Riddick. Last night we ‘censured’ him, ‘suspended’ him from the House for ten working days, docked his pay and watched him make another grovelling apology and slink away. I had a cup of tea with him before the debate. He’s still kicking himself at his own stupidity. He has handled the aftermath impeccably, but thanks to being set up by the
Sunday Times
and a moment of folly his career has been ruined and he knows it. Nice man.

Good breakfast: Stephen, Danny, Andrew Lansley,
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Michael McManus.
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Afterwards, we agreed that we’ll have Stephen as the new chairman of the party and Danny as director of the Research Department. Now, to make it happen…

The whipless wonders have been invited to return to the fold – but the mischief will go on. At PMQs Blair played a blinder. He taunted the PM on the returning Eurorebels. The PM countered with Blair’s Clause IV rebels. What was he going to do
about them? Blair came back: ‘There is one very big difference – I lead my party, he follows his.’ The Labour benches went berserk. We sat sullenly, knowing it was true.

The PM was unhappy. John Ward was unhappy. ‘The boss needs the support behind him – he needs to
hear
it.’ And where were the planted questions, where were A and Q? What were we playing at? Jim Spicer
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asked about homosexuals in the armed forces. This is not what the PM needs. He did his best to show he understands the concern of the defence chiefs while keeping sweet with Ian McKellen.
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Alan Howarth invited the PM to abandon the quest for a national identity card scheme. The PM couldn’t oblige him. (This is another fine mess we’re getting into quite unnecessarily. We advertised our enthusiasm for identity cards (‘a bite-sized chunk of policy’) before thinking it through. Privately Michael Howard acknowledges it isn’t practical and it won’t happen. Publicly we’re still flirting with it, there’s to be a Green Paper, but we’re rousing the rabble
knowing
that in due course we’re going to have to disappoint them. Madness.)

Unhappy bunnies everywhere. I’ve just opened a note from Michael Morris,
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Deputy Speaker: ‘I am just a little surprised and disappointed that I never seem to get invited to functions in my own right … It may be too late now but I would have hoped that my wife and I might have been included in the VIPs for the VE concerts either on the Monday or the Saturday. While the honour of being Deputy Speaker is very nice, it would be equally nice to enjoy some of the fruits of government.’ Stephen is not impressed.

I am in wine – and why not? I have just come from the Churchill Room where I have been embraced by Franco Zeffirelli!
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He does what I do: pretends to know everybody he meets so he doesn’t give offence by failing to recognise someone he met in Padua thirty years ago who recalls the encounter vividly while Franco naturally can’t remember it at all. We talked about (I raved about) his John Stride/Judi Dench
Romeo
and the Maggie Smith/Robert Stephens
Much Ado
which made him think we must have worked together at the Old Vic in the ’60s! He pressed me to come and stay in Amalfi. I presented him to Stephen.

I
dragged
Stephen down there to meet him. I said, ‘Stephen, you must meet him. This is a great man – theatre, opera, movies.’

Stephen looked bemused.

‘And politics,’ I said, ‘He’s a senator now.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Stephen, grinning.

DNH breakfast (coffee, cold croissants, warm orange juice): Grey Gowrie, Mary Allen, Peter Gummer,
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David Puttnam. I do envy GG’s civilised patrician manner. You can’t fake it and you can’t beat it. P. Gummer is so like J. Gummer it’s disconcerting. Mary Allen, I’m still figuring out. But the news is: we’ve lottery money for film all sewn up.

We also have lottery money, of course, for the Churchill papers – and, alarmingly, what we naively thought of as a timely triumph is turning out to be a colossal balls-up. The fact is that these are private papers, not state papers, and they’ve been acquired for the nation at a good deal less than the open market price. A fifth of the lottery money is ear-marked for ‘the heritage’ and these papers are indisputably part of our heritage and, in the run-up to the VE day anniversary, we thought ‘saving them for the nation’ would have been greeted with loud hurrahs. Instead, it’s loud raspberries all round. Young Winston is being pilloried as a greedy bastard and the government is being accused of slipping millions into one of its own backbenchers pockets. The horror of it is, we didn’t just walk into this blindly: we ran towards it eyes wide open, arms outstretched. The PM is not amused.

I took part in the debate on children. Andrew Rowe is a good man, thoughtful, with ideas. Why isn’t he in the government? Too soft, too woolly for the whips? Lunch at the Sony Radio Awards. I sat with Duke Hussey
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and John Birt, old school and new, both doing rather well in the eyes of the government, both seemingly unaware of the depth of despair felt by their ground troops.

Afternoon at the DNH closeted with Puttnam and Carolyn Lambert.
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The content will be workmanlike, but it’s going to
look
great. We are engaging a flash design house to design a flash report – each page presented like a giant screen, stills from British films from
In Which We Serve
to
Shallow Grave
. I guarantee this will be the
first-ever government command paper to feature a spread from
Carry On Up the Khyber
. (‘What did you do in government, Daddy?’)

‘Tory leadership tries to quell poll panic on back benches’. Sir Marcus is tottering round the watering holes saying ‘Now lads, steady the buffs.’ In fact, it isn’t panic. It’s a mixture of despair and resignation. That nice, mild man from Norwich who has been here for years but whose name nobody knows
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– he’s sitting in the Tea Room staring bleakly into his empty cup. We have seen the future – but we haven’t a clue what to do!

The manifesto policy panels are a complete waste of time. [Patrick] Cormack, Simon Coombs,
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Basil Feldman,
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they chunter on, the hour passes, but nobody has any fresh ideas to offer – not one.

Alan Howarth is profoundly unhappy. Stephen and I are taking him to Pasta Prego on Wednesday.

Norman Blackwell and Howell James
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came to the Marginals Club dinner. Norman gave edited highlights of his ‘five themes for a nation of opportunity’ and was respectfully received. Howell (whom I know from TV-am days) surprised them by not being what you expect a Prime Minister’s political secretary to be: jokey, camp, quirky, shrewd. I think he’s going to be very good news. He’s been talking with Nicholas O’Shaughnessy
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about ways to ‘present’ the PM. N. O’S sees Major as a modern Baldwin – I think Major sees Major as a modern Baldwin. I told Howell Frank Longford’s story about the time in the thirties when Frank was just starting out as a Conservative Party researcher and found himself at a country house party where Baldwin was the guest of honour. The Prime Minister invited the young Longford to join him for a stroll. The conversation didn’t exactly flow, but eventually Longford asked the great man, ‘Tell me, Prime Minister, who would you say has most influenced your political ideas?’