Authors: Rosa Prince
Standing Down (15 page)
A few months after his resignation, a colleague suggested Mr Denham put his name forward for the vacant chairmanship of the Home Affairs Committee.
Despite some opposition from MPs who thought former ministers should not take on a plum post traditionally reserved for backbenchers, he got the job, and made a name for himself as a campaigning but collegiate chairman. It would prove the high point of his career:
The politics of it was fascinating, the leadership involved in producing cross-party reports when you’ve got Ann Widdecombe [the right-wing former Conservative Prisons Minister] and David Winnick [the left-wing Labour backbencher] on the same committee and nine times out of ten you produce a unanimous report.
There’s that switch in mentality from being a partisan person to being a House of Commons committee chair.
Two years into the job, as Mr Blair carried out a government reshuffle, rumours circulated that Mr Denham had been due to enter the Cabinet as chief secretary to the Treasury, only to be vetoed by Gordon Brown.
He says:
I read those stories, there’s absolutely no truth in them. I certainly was never offered the job of chief secretary. I have no idea if anyone had intended to offer it but it didn’t happen.
Tony did offer me a ministerial position and it was a good job, it was employment-related in DWP [the Department for Work and Pensions].
My son was born that year, we were shopping for a pram [when the call came]; actually I didn’t want to go back into the stress of it.
It sounds very picky but I thought, ‘That’s not a good enough job to get me back into government.’ So then I thought: ‘Well, that’s probably it.’
It wasn’t it though, as two years later, ironically, having become Prime Minister himself, Mr Brown invited Denham to join the Cabinet:
And it was great. I remember that call because I was given a job that hadn’t previously existed, and that was DIAS, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
Various announcements were trickling through, as they do. I thought I would get a ministerial position [although I] hardly knew Gordon – hardly know him now.
As the morning went on all known Cabinet jobs had clearly been allocated to people so I thought: ‘Oh well, I’m not going to get it.’ I wasn’t devastated by it. And then he rang up and he told me he wanted me to do this job.
That’s quite something when you go to your first Cabinet meeting. In those posts you pick and choose the issues on which you contribute, you don’t speak all the time, every meeting. Conversations were short but good. It wasn’t a nod through. There were real discussions. I really enjoyed the work of DIUS because it was fun.
Just over a year after Mr Denham joined the Cabinet, the 2008 financial crisis hit:
Quite quickly everything became focused on the response to the economic crisis. We did a lot.
It was totally different to anything I’d ever been in in government in that it was ministers having discussions and taking decisions without the ability of the civil service to delay everything, slow everything down.
It was a terrible situation and challenge for the country – and for the world – and Gordon’s leadership in that was tremendous. This rewriting of history has gone on ever since – that we messed everything up – when actually there was all this conscious decision-making about what we were doing, and the alternatives would have been much worse. That was an interesting time, the most hands-on government that I saw.
In 2009, Mr Denham moved to the Department for Communities and Local Government, where he was able to take forward two areas of interest: tackling the issues that had led to riots and home-grown terrorism, and his localism agenda.
Although he enjoyed his new post, there was a growing awareness that Labour was about to be plunged back into opposition.
By 2010 Mr Denham was ready to bring his time in Parliament to an end, but given his position felt unable to do so:
I couldn’t see that a Cabinet minister fighting a marginal seat could be so self-indulgent to leave. I think it would have been terrible.
I won by 192 votes and I just think if I hadn’t stood then that seat probably would have gone Tory and that would have been an unforgivable way to repay the people in Southampton who had worked so hard for me for so long to get me elected.
There was no panic that night at all. We thought we would win by 400 or 500 so it was a bit close, but I never once thought we were going to lose.
After the election, however, uncertain whether his desire to stand down had been a temporary or more long-term sensation, Mr Denham agreed to serve in new leader Ed Miliband’s shadow Cabinet. He had supported his candidacy, and at the outset of the Parliament found himself relishing the challenge of reframing Labour for the next election:
I think what excited me about it and the reason I supported Ed from the beginning was I was certainly of the view that, although we’d done lots of good things in government, we couldn’t simply go into the next government picking up where we left off in 2010. There had to be some quite profound rethinking. And I found that intellectually really exciting.
Before long, however, he was certain his time was drawing to a close:
I knew once I’d been there about a year, no I didn’t want to stay around long enough to come back. I didn’t want to come back and be a minister again.
When I left the shadow Cabinet [Miliband] would have rather that I stayed on but he understood that I had to go and he said, ‘Well, we should find a role for you.’
And then it suddenly struck me that I could do the PPS role. He said, ‘Would you do a role like that?’ because it’s widely seen as a demotion, wrongly of course.
You spend more time with the leader than a lot of shadow ministers do. A lot of the work is actually focused around PMQs, so you get the access that comes with that. It’s quite fun really.
I did that for a couple of years and I enjoyed it, and then you get to the stage where you think, well actually I now need to start planning what I do next, and disengage.
Mr Denham says he is good at moving on from places and will not miss Parliament. Instead, all those years after he staged his school sit-in, he has important plans for the future:
I haven’t watched as much cricket as I would like.
I’ve got a nine-year-old. If I do another five years he’ll be doing his GCSEs before I’m home every evening. I’m fed up with not coming out of the same front door every day of the week.
You go down the list, you look at all of these things and you say: ‘What are the arguments against it?’
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CV
Born in Seaton, Devon; raised in Lyme Regis, Dorset; attended University of Southampton; became a campaigner with Friends of the Earth, War on Want, Christian Aid and Oxfam.
1983: Unsuccessfully fights Southampton Itchen
1987: Unsuccessfully fights Southampton Itchen
1992: Elected MP for Southampton Itchen
1995: Becomes shadow Social Security Minister
1997: Becomes Social Security Minister
1999: Becomes Health Minister
2001: Becomes Policing Minister
2003: Resigns over opposition to Iraq War; becomes chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee
2007: Becomes Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills
2009: Becomes Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
2010: Becomes shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
2011: Announces he will be standing down at the 2015 general election; becomes PPS to Leader of the Opposition
2013: Returns to the back benches
John Denham has two grown-up children from his first marriage and a son, aged nine, from his current relationship.
David Heath
, sixty, was Liberal Democrat MP for Somerset & Frome (1997–2015).
‘The last time I get to speak in the House of Commons is going to be difficult.’
***
At the 1985 county council elections I became, at the age of thirty-one, the leader of Somerset County Council, the youngest ever leader of a county council.
By then the die was cast. I was effectively a full-time politician. It seemed a natural transition to eventually move to national politics and Westminster.
You arrive here, you have no office, you have no staff, you have nowhere to live. In the first weeks you think: ‘How the hell am I going to manage?’ But then you get your systems in place.
I am still one of those people who gets a romantic buzz about being able to go into the chamber of the House of Commons, stand upon my feet and say what I think.
When you cease to be a minister it is very odd. You suddenly have a great deal of time on your hands and you don’t know how to fill your days.
I am not enjoying politics as much as I used to. It is not the House, actually I think that has improved over the last few years. It is politics, the mistrust of Members of Parliament. It’s when you sit down with a constituent and they start off by assuming you are trying to cheat them.
I expect so. The last time I get to speak in the House of Commons and cease to be an MP I guess is going to be difficult. I have got to pay a mortgage so I need a job. I can’t afford to retire.
I hope for a start that people coming into the job have some understanding of how the real world works. And take Parliament seriously, it is not just something to swing along to between radio interviews.
***
the full story
David Heath grew up in Liberal country, the west of England, where, although his parents were not ‘immensely political’, he nonetheless could not help but pick up the mood in the air.
At Oxford and later City University, where he studied to become an optician, he got involved in student politics.
Returning to Somerset to practise, he ran for election to Somerset County Council in 1985 and found himself, at the age of thirty-one, the youngest ever leader of a county council – a record he believes he holds to this day:
I realised without sounding too precious about it that I had abilities as an advocate. Quite a vocational pull, that if you can represent people who can’t represent themselves then you ought to do it.
Although I was trained as an optician I always realised I would end up as an advocate of sorts, whether it be in the law or politics.
From his vantage point on the council, he was the obvious candidate ahead of the 1992 general election to fight the Westminster seat of Somerset & Frome, held by the Conservatives with a 10,000 majority:
The weekend before polling day we were very optimistic although not confident, then there was that last-minute swing back to the Conservative government, so we fell a bit back.
It was a huge ask. And probably it was a good thing to give me another four years in the real world. It increased my experience.
Mr Heath became chairman of the local police association and served on the Audit Commission, all the while increasing his knowledge of ‘the real world’.
By the time of the 1997 election he was reasonably confident of success. ‘I thought it was likely,’ he says. ‘We had serendipitous circumstances [but] I knew it was going to be tight. Somerset & Frome had by then become a hyper marginal [but] in ’97 there was a distinct feeling that the time had come for a change.’
After the usual hiccups, which every new member experiences, Mr Heath settled well into life as an MP.
His summers were spent touring his constituency, one of the most beautiful parts of the country, where he made it his goal to visit more than 100 villages a year.
After serving on the council, the Commons chamber wasn’t as ‘scary’ as it appeared to most. He began to make a name for himself as a frequent and vociferous debater.
And if the downside of being a Liberal Democrat was that – in 1997 anyway – the prospect of becoming a minister appeared remote if not impossible, one of the perks of membership of a small parliamentary party was the opportunity to get involved in front-bench politics sooner and at a higher level than would be expected in parties with more MPs.
Paddy Ashdown, who represented the neighbouring seat of Yeovil, and who he had known from his council days, invited him to join the Foreign Affairs Committee – one of the most senior in the House.
He developed an expertise in home affairs, justice and the law, while raising the ‘quaint’ topics of interest to his constituents, such as thatched cottages and dairy farming.
But it was perhaps in the Commons chamber that he felt most at home:
I have always felt that I took a rather old-fashioned view of being an MP, which is that I am employed to be in Parliament, standing on my hind legs, speaking out for my constituents. I can’t understand people who sit there in silence and troop through the lobbies. To me, if I don’t say those things, who else is going to?
Meanwhile, the Lib Dems were going through leaders at a rapid pace. Mr Heath was close to Mr Ashdown, who stood down in 1999, but less so to Charles Kennedy, and was unaware of the scale of the drinking that would ultimately lead to his ousting in 2006.
He remains angry at what he sees as the unfair treatment dealt out by the media and the ‘cult of youth’ during the brief leadership of Sir Menzies Campbell.
And Nick Clegg? Within a year of the new leader being elected in 2007 he had sacked Mr Heath – the first of what would turn out to be two dismissals.
The issue was the Lisbon Treaty, and Mr Heath’s determined view that the British public deserved a vote on membership of the European Union:
I first came across Nick when he was working in Leon Brittan’s office in Brussels. He came across then as being a very bright young man.
I have always got on well with Nick [but] we had a falling out over the Lisbon Treaty. I don’t regret it, I am still absolutely clear in my mind – that is what I promised my electorate. There were three of us who took a different view, partly because of our own convictions, partly because of the strength of views in our electorate.
I have been absolutely consistent throughout my parliamentary career that we should have a referendum on the European Union. I am to a point Eurosceptic. I am very committed to reform of the EU. Nick said: ‘If you’re going to vote this way then we are going to have to part company.’ Perfectly respectful. No hard feelings on either side. Just a realisation that I couldn’t stay as a front-bench spokesman for the party.
It certainly wasn’t easy. I didn’t like falling out with [my] colleagues. I was sad because I did actually think the party had made a mistake.
The estrangement was short lived, however, and Mr Clegg brought him back to the front bench within a year, meaning he was in prime position to take part in the extraordinary coalition government formed following the indecisive outcome of the 2010 general election.
However, although Mr Heath was still enjoying life as an MP, by 2010 his wife had had enough and he was painfully aware of the impact his job was having on the lives of his two children.
They agreed that he would serve one last term, meaning that the prospect that he once considered almost an impossible fantasy – that he would become a minister – would come true:
Family had been really supportive over the years. I like to think they’re pretty proud.
But I do think there really isn’t much upside for the children of MPs. There are no perks at all from their point of view. They had a reasonable amount of teasing at school. Dad’s away all week, working Fridays and Saturdays. Sundays if you’re lucky is a family day. Plus you can’t go around Sainsbury’s without someone stopping you and telling you their life history, which does get to you.
I don’t think it occurred to me that I would become a minister. That needed a certain particular chain of events to happen, for the chips to fall that way.
When the narrative was of a two-party system, with these oddities of the Liberal Democrats occasionally getting in the way, you couldn’t predict a coalition. It was always a possibility but it was certainly not something one would have put a lot of money on. Having been a local politician who had exercised power, it [was] frustrating. We were always buoyed up by the fact that our influence was increasing, that we were about articulating a point of view that needed to be articulated. Sometimes our being at odds with what the two main parties were saying, I think we were comfortable with that role.
It is remarkable we made the transition to government as easily as we did.
The days following the election, as the leaders of the three main parties circled each other, were ‘tense’.
When the deal was finally done, and the call came from Downing Street, it was not in the circumstances Mr Heath had imagined.
He says:
I genuinely thought there was no reasonable alternative once the offer had been made. The interests of the country actually demanded we go into government and form a coalition. The consequences of not doing so would have been disastrous in the short term.
I am quite convinced that, had we said no, there would have been a minority Conservative government and a second election, at which we would have had no argument. I think we would have been wiped out. I am absolutely convinced it was the only proper thing to have done. That doesn’t make it easy. I had spent my whole life in opposition to Conservatives.
It was by no means certain I would be offered a role. I was hopeful. You always imagine that when you are offered a ministerial post it is going to be in the drawing room, and the phone will ring and a hushed voice will say, ‘Hello, this is No. 10.’ Actually I was at Bath Rugby watching them play Leicester Tigers at Leicester. It was just after the final whistle, Leicester won unfortunately, and there were shouting Leicester fans in the background.
Mr Heath was put into the office of the Leader of the House, serving as deputy to the Conservative Sir George Young.
With a few difficult exceptions – tuition fees, the alternative vote referendum and reform of the House of Lords – Mr Heath found the coalition personally enjoyable and an overall success:
I knew I could work with George Young. We disagreed only twice in two and a half years, and once was over a split infinitive.
Tuition fees were very difficult. I actually didn’t sign the infamous pledge [not to raise tuition fees, which most Lib Dem MPs promised]. I wasn’t sure we could live up to it and I don’t like signing pledges I’m not able to live up to, but I didn’t get any credit for it. It certainly was very difficult for our activists.
[Ministerial life] is never dull. My honest [view] is I thought that the personal relationships in government were much stronger than anyone could reasonably expect between two people of different parties. That did involve a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. George and I were involved in quite a lot of troubleshooting of one sort or another [but] people within government were working well with one another.
The position was slightly soured when we had the AV referendum. Certainly my colleagues felt that the Prime Minister should not have allowed such personal campaigning against Nick. People were not playing fair. There was a loss of faith in the good faith of the coalition.
In 2012, Mr Heath was moved to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, serving in his dream job as Agriculture Minister.
He enjoyed a hectic year, relishing every minute, but to his dismay was sacked thirteen months later.
Returning to the back benches was hard, and cemented the tentative decision he had already taken that he would stand down at the 2015 election:
It certainly didn’t provide a contrary argument. I was very sad to leave. I had promised my wife before I fought the last election that this would be the last one.
She would have been happy if I had stood down at the last election but I didn’t feel I was ready.
I decided to leave about a year or so ago. I thought by now I would be regretting it deeply but the honest answer is I don’t.
Everything that has happened since has persuaded me that I went at the right time.
Fighting time after time in a highly marginal constituency where every time you don’t know what the outcome is going to be is hard work; nursing a constituency like that is constant pressure. Frankly, there are other things you can do. I think it is time to make the break.
I look at some of the people who are standing down at this time and it worries me that Parliament is losing a higher share of people I consider good MPs. I hope we are not driving out the best people and leaving behind those who are not so good.
I will miss it, no doubt whatsoever. It has been a very big part of my life.
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CV
Born and raised in Somerset; attended Oxford University; became a qualified optician and the youngest leader of a county council.
1992: Unsuccessfully fights Somerset & Frome
1997: Elected MP for Somerset & Frome; appointed foreign affairs spokesman
1999: Becomes agriculture spokesman
2001: Becomes work and pensions spokesman
2003: Becomes home affairs spokesman
2005: Becomes spokesman for the office of Leader of the House
2007: Becomes justice spokesman
2008: Sacked from front bench after voting in favour of referendum on Lisbon Treaty
2009: Returns to front bench in office of Leader of the House
2010: Becomes deputy Leader of the House
2012: Becomes Agriculture Minister
2013: Sacked as minister; returns to back benches; announces he will not stand at the 2015 general election
David Heath is married to Caroline and has two children.