Breaking the Code (79 page)

Interesting call just now. I was surprised to see Prince Philip in the formal funeral procession, walking behind the gun carriage bearing Diana's coffin along the route to Westminster Abbey, but I have now learnt why he was there. Prince Charles and Charles Spencer were expected to walk, with the boys, but it seems that Prince Harry and, in particular, Prince William were initially reluctant. The Duke of Edinburgh, who had not planned to walk (he is merely the ex-father-in-law, after all), said to William, ‘If you don't walk, you may regret it later. I think you should do it. If I walk, will you walk with me?'

Yesterday, I wasted half a day reworking the peroration for William Hague's end-of-conference speech. I have just faxed it over. It won't be used – and William doesn't need help from outsiders anyway. This kind of thing comes naturally to him. Far (far) too much time is spent on the leader's speech at conference. (My favourite conference speech story is John Whittingdale's
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about Mrs T. and the Monty Python parrot sketch. They had drafted a paragraph for her in which the Liberal Party was likened to the dead parrot − ‘This is an ex-party' etc. Mrs T. didn't get it. They explained to her: ‘It's a joke, Prime Minister, from Monty Python. It's very funny. It will work. Trust us.' Reluctantly, she went along with it, but she had her reservations to the last. Even as she was approaching the podium to deliver the speech, she said to John Whittingdale: ‘This Monty Python – is he one of us?')

In advance of next week's referendum, I took part in the Evening Standard/Newsnight ‘debate on London'. We don't need a Mayor for London. We certainly don't need a new ‘Assembly'.
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I thought we Conservatives were supposed to believe in less bureaucracy, not more; in containing public expenditure, not extending it; in encouraging grass-roots democracy, not imposing additional tiers of know-it-all, top-down government. We have elected members in thirty-two London boroughs already. Enough's enough. And as for Jeffrey [Archer] promising to work ‘nineteen hours a day, 364 days a year' running the capital, heaven forfend! I said some of this tonight, not very well and to little effect. What I didn't say is that I have already been approached about the possibility of becoming the Conservative mayoral candidate – not because they want me, but because they want anyone but Jeffrey. I know they've tried to persuade Seb [Coe], too. The approach was not
altogether flattering: ‘Don't worry, you won't win. London votes Labour. We expect to lose, but let's lose quietly and with dignity – that means without Jeffrey.'

Late night, lots of laughs: Joanna and Stevie, Biggins and Neil [Sinclair, his partner] Nikko Grace
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and Ian, Lynda Bellingham.
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Non-stop laughter, in fact. (Can't remember what about, but it was good for the soul.) Early start:
Breakfast with Frost
at 11 Downing Street. I told David that Joanna would like to be asked to his summer party: she will be. I told the Chancellor [Gordon Brown] it was good to be back in Downing Street: he said he'd been amused to read my articles about my time at the Treasury. ‘You lot seemed to do a lot of eating and drinking and telling jokes. We don't tell jokes.' I can believe it. He is grouchily amiable, but so earnest – and still biting his fingernails to the quick. After the show, he took us upstairs to his flat. He lives above No. 10, while Blair and family are in the No. 11 duplex, which is bigger and more like a proper house. I was intrigued that when he took us into his bedroom, the Chancellor rather ostentatiously opened the built-in wardrobes as if he wanted us to see the women's frocks that were hanging in there. They looked quite large, but I don't think they belong to Gordon. I assume they belong to his girlfriend.
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I presume he was keen for us to know that he has one – and that she's not a ‘beard'. I don't think he does anything without calculation.

This morning I was on the radio being touted as a possible mayoral candidate. I pointed out to the listeners that last week's referendum showed that three-quarters of Londoners either don't want a Mayor or don't care. I said that if I stand and if I'm elected, I'll do nothing: no press conferences, no initiatives, no grandiose strategies, nothing. Best of all, I'll even give the money back. (The Mayor and Assembly are going to cost £20 million p.a. minimum. It's truly appalling.)

This afternoon, tea at the House of Commons with Virginia Bottomley. We talked about the mysteries of the honours system and her plans for the future. She's going to be a headhunter. Afterwards, as I was walking through Central Lobby, I bumped into Benazir
Bhutto.
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I greeted her like a long-lost buddy – which she is – but clearly my cheery informality was not what was expected. I remember her being rather fun at Oxford in the '70s. She took herself very seriously today. I tried to disarm her. ‘It's only me,' I said.

‘So I see,' she replied.

‘It's just us, Benazir,' I persisted.

‘We are in the Palace of Westminster,' she answered crisply. ‘A certain decorum is called for.'

By coincidence, lunch with Norman Lamont and tea with Julian Clary.
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I didn't mention one to the other. I don't think they have met since the notorious night when Julian announced on live TV
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that he had ‘just been fisting Norman Lamont … talk about a red box…' The audience roared and I doubt that Norman minded, but it played badly in the press and, for a while, derailed Julian's career.

Five years on, they are both doing fine, even if the glory days are gone. Norman is stouter, but still fun – obsessed with the dangers of the euro, still brooding on the injustice done to him by John Major, and he appears to have mislaid his nice wife along the way. Julian is tall and slim and beautiful – the beauty of his face is extraordinary. But he is about to turn forty and needs to do something new, hence our meeting. I told him about the bizarre life of Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey – ‘the dancing marquess'. He died young in 1905, celebrated for his beauty, notorious for his extravagance, his eccentricity (he would lie naked in a coffin covered only in jewels), his non-consummated marriage (he was gay), his love of theatre. He put on his own shows and starred in them, with the estate staff as extras. There's a film in this – it has everything: love, heartache, skulduggery, buggery, Monte Carlo and bust – and, if beautifully written, could be a break-out vehicle for Julian. Except, I don't think he was very interested. And I'm not sure he can act.

I have decided to like Cherie Blair, partly because others seem to despise her (she doesn't take a good photograph: mouth like a letter box), but mainly because she has
been very helpful and friendly, lending me ‘Tony Blair's Teddy Bear' to put on display at our Teddy Bear Museum. The bear is called Lynton (as in Anthony Charles Lynton Blair) and today, after his long holiday with us in Stratford, I took the little fellow back to Downing Street. As Iraq was being bombed,
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I stood in the hallway of No. 10, holding the bear in my arms, waiting for Cherie, when who should come marching into the building but John Prescott. I said, ‘Hello, John.' He simply glowered. His face turned purple with suppressed rage. Anger, rudeness, resentment are his stockin-trade. (And yet, apparently, he stills gets the girls. It's almost incredible, but they say it's so. There were hacks haunting Chester when I was there, digging for dirt about JP.)

An evening among the fallen – rather jolly, as it happens. Supper with Neil and Christine Hamilton at their flat on Albert Bridge Road. They fight on – they fight to win.
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They are like things possessed: Neil drinking too much, Christine on manic overdrive. But they are still fun, still friends, and Christine is a fine cook and a generous hostess. Also of the party: a remarkably sanguine Jonathan Aitken. He thinks prison is a possibility. He seems quite ready for it.
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Breakfast with Jeffrey in the Archer embankment penthouse. I went to interview him for the
Sunday Telegraph
. He wants to be Mayor of London – the first. He is campaigning hard. ‘It's going well, Gyles. I don't want anything to go wrong. I've got to be careful. I know I can trust you.'

We are not alone. It is 8.20 a.m. and already, up in the gallery, Jeffrey's PA is fielding phone calls. Joseph, the butler (of Middle European extraction and riper years, straight from Central Casting), pads discreetly in and out. While Jeffrey and I tuck in (for the master, a boiled egg, timed to the second; for me, crunchy brown toast and the crispest bacon), two of the mayoral campaign team sit quietly in attendance. They do not eat. Or speak. Jeffrey runs his life as though he's a character in one of his own novels.

I know almost no one who doesn't mock him, but I know few so successful – at least in monetary terms. What is his secret?

What fuelled his ambition?

I mentioned a line of Aristotle Onassis: ‘I must keep aiming higher and higher − even though I know how silly it is.'

Jeffrey chuckled, ‘That's good. The line I love of Aristotle Onassis is: “If you can count it, you haven't got any.”'

I am making two films for ITN: one about the nature of leadership, the other about the future of the Conservative Party – is there life after death? I went down to Alfriston in Sussex to see Denis Healey and get some historical perspective. The joy with Denis is that, though he is now eighty-two and beginning to shrink, he remains so certain about
everything. Sitting in his handsome mock-Lutyens sun lounge, weighing Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher in the scales, the name of the Leader of the Opposition cropped up. ‘William Hague?' snorted Denis. ‘He's a twerp. A twerp. There's nothing more to be said. Forget him, forget it. Move on.'

Denis is not troubled by self-doubt. And he is blessed in Edna. I like her approach to life. As she brought in the coffee and ginger cake, I said, ‘How are you?'

She replied, pleasantly: ‘You don't need to know. If you've got worries, keep them to yourself. A trouble shared is a trouble doubled.'

I have been granted the pre-conference interview with the Leader of the Opposition. (Perhaps no one else wanted it?) I went to see him at Central Office in Smith Square. The foyer is now New Conservative: colour scheme by Gap, Sky News on the TV,
The Independent
the one newspaper on the coffee table. The only vestige of William's predecessors is a small bust of Winston Churchill, the last bald leader of the party. Beneath a huge portrait of a purposive Master Hague, finger pointing to the future, is a yellow flyer inviting the faithful to sign up for a seminar at which ‘leading professional consultants' will provide ‘an excellent opportunity to perfect your skills in three key areas: presentation, personal development, interview technique'. (A four-hour session: £10 including lunch.)

I had a good hour with William, but I came away with nothing. Because of yesterday's excitement,
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I felt obliged to ask him all sorts of impertinent questions. Was he gay? Had he ever had any homosexual experiences? Would he mind if his children were gay? He played it all with a straight bat. I moved on to confront him, rather rudely, with his failure to make an impact. He answered, genially, ‘Time will tell.'

I confronted him with his critics: ‘The unkind ones picture you as a foetus in a baseball cap,' I said. ‘The others see you as an old man in a young man's body, an odd-looking political nerd reading Hansard at the age of seven. What do you say to that?' He said something anodyne.

Interviewing a safe pair of hands like William will never be easy. He won't drop catches. I asked him if he had a favourite maxim. ‘I think Willie Whitelaw said, I think he actually said to me, “Nothing is ever so good or so bad as it first seems in politics.”'

Seb (who sat in attendance at the interview, with the glossy-lipped Amanda Platell)
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claims his boss is ‘the most qualified man who ever wanted to be Prime Minister'. Denis Healey says he's a twerp. I reckon the Whitelaw maxim may be nearer the mark. William is thirty-eight, a considerable achiever, likeable, clear-headed, quick-witted, rational, reasonable, intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, shrewd. But something's missing. I was impressed, I wasn't moved. I was charmed, but not inspired. In theatrical terms, he is a first-class leading man: he knows the lines, he won't bump into the furniture, he'll never miss a performance. But he isn't a star in the way Blair is. He won't be Prime Minister. (Foreign Secretary perhaps, twenty years from now, in our next administration.)