Breaking the Code (14 page)

The whip is a document as well as a person. The written whip is sent out to each of us each Friday with details of the forthcoming week’s business. I received my first whip yesterday. It is a plain piece of A4 marked ‘SECRET’ and lists what’s happening on each day of the week. The funny bit is that it looks as if it’s typed on an old-fashioned sit-up-and-beg 1905 Remington and you know whether it’s a one, two or three-line whip because the business in question is actually underlined once, twice or three times. One-line business is optional; three-line business compulsory; when it’s two lines you have to be on parade unless you have secured a ‘pair’ and cleared it with the ‘pairing whip’. I have just telephoned Angela Eagle to learn that she does not wish to pair with me. She’s planning to be in the Commons for many years to come so she’s looking for a ‘pair’ who is a little younger than I am and is likely to be in the House after the next election because he’s got a safer seat than mine. The bitch.

This morning I was in my place (third row back, third seat in) at 11.25 a.m. for the State Opening. The House was packed. Black Rod came and did his stuff: ‘The Queen
commands the honourable House to attend Her Majesty immediately in the House of Peers.’ Major and Kinnock led the way and we all trooped from our end of the building to the House of Lords – which I’m told, for some reason, we must never refer to by name. We have to call it ‘another place’ or ‘the other place’ or some such tomfoolery. Anyway, by the time tail-end charlies like me got to ‘the other place’ there was no room to get in so I watched the Queen reading her speech on one of the TV monitors in the Lords’ lobby. At 2.30 we were back in our places for the ‘proposing and seconding of the motion on the Loyal Address’. This is the traditional start to a five-day general debate on all aspects of the government’s proposed programme and it’s deemed a great honour to be one of the opening bats. Kenneth Baker
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kicked off, followed by a bespectacled beanpole who I’d never heard of but who is now ‘destined for great things’
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and was certainly very funny – and cleverly self-deprecatory: ‘I’m told the motion is usually proposed by some genial old codger on the way out and seconded by an oily young man on the make.’ Kinnock was very good at Kenneth Baker’s expense – ‘he has seen the future – and it smirks’ – ‘he is adept at keeping one step ahead of his own debris’ – ‘he moved from being Education Secretary to becoming chairman of his party, proving that the Tory Party is one of the few organisations where a move from education to propaganda is regarded as promotion.’ Dennis Skinner,
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heckling from below the gangway, was somewhat less subtle: ‘He’s the big fat slug on
Spitting Image
!’

It was about four when Paddy Ashdown got to his feet – and, as he rose to address the multitude, the whole House emptied. Literally. Labour, Conservative, Unionists, the Welsh, up they got and off they went.

‘Is this normal?’ I asked my neighbour.

‘Oh yes, he’s an utter bore. Even the Liberals despise him.’

Apparently the rule is: when Mr Ashdown gets up to speak it’s time for tea.

Coming away from the Tea Room (where I treated myself to a toasted teacake) and crossing the Members’ Lobby to go back into the Chamber I was stopped by a fellow whose face I recognised but whose name I don’t think I’ve ever known. He said, ‘Sign this.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a written question.’

‘Who is it for?’

‘The Secretary of State for Employment.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just sign it, would you?’

I read the question typed on the piece of paper. It was something about the Conciliation and Arbitration Service. ‘But I don’t know anything about this?’

‘That’s why you’re the man we need. Just sign – and you’ll get the answer in tomorrow’s Hansard.’

‘But I don’t even understand the question.’

‘Then the answer doesn’t matter very much, does it? Come on, I need to get it in before six. It’s all right. I’m a PPS at Employment. If we want to get something on the record, we plant the question. That’s the way it works.’

I signed.

So I have asked my first question in the mother of parliaments and I have no idea what it means.

Marlene Dietrich has died, aged ninety.

Michèle came with me to meet Mr Fletcher in the Fees’ Office. He was friendly and helpful and advised that we should register London as our main residence (which it is anyway) because that’ll work to our advantage with the mileage allowance. For travelling between London and the constituency it’s 68.2p per mile if your vehicle is 2301 cc and above, and 43.4p if you are between 1301 and 2300 cc. Our old Mercedes falls into the lower bracket. Mr Fletcher explained that a number of MPs upgrade their cars to take advantage of the higher mileage rate. I don’t think we’ll be doing that. Indeed I don’t think there’s going to be
any
capital expenditure in the Brandreth household for several years to come. My salary is going to be just £30,854 which is a nightmare. Michèle is not amused. ‘You didn’t think about the money did you? You were so desperate to find yourself a seat you rushed in regardless.’ The only flicker of silver lining is the news that all my train and plane fares to Chester will now be covered (they’ve cost a small fortune this past year) and Michèle gets fifteen paid ‘spouse journeys’
per annum
.

DD of the SS is proposing that I jump in at the deep end and give my maiden speech next week. He’s leant me a little paperback guide to Parliament he did for the BBC when they started televising the proceedings and it’s rather good. He quotes Harold Macmillan on his ‘Maiden’: ‘Except for “going over the top” in war, there is hardly any experience so alarming as this…’

Buffet lunch at No. 10. It is infinitely bigger than it appears from the street. There’s a long corridor that leads from the front door straight to the Cabinet room, then you turn right and go up a flight of stairs (photographs of previous incumbents in reverse order as you climb) to a series of intercommunicating reception rooms where we mingled and joshed and rubbed shoulders with our genial Prime Minister and felt how good it was to be Members of Parliament and in government again. ‘You can fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.’ – Abraham Lincoln. ‘You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but do it once and it lasts five years!’ Eric Forth, MP, Under Secretary of State, Department of Education.
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Having sat in the Chamber from 2.30, through Health questions, through Prime Minister’s questions, through the opening stages of the education and local government debate (Bryan Gould
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v
Michael Howard, nothing special), in a nearly deserted House, at exactly 5.35, I was called to give my Maiden speech. It was fine. I stuck to the formula recommended by DD of the SS: a couple of minutes in praise of your predecessor (‘whatever they were like’), three or four in praise of your constituency, four or five on the issues under discussion – nothing too controversial, keep it under ten minutes. (When Robert Rhodes James
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spoke for twenty-three minutes, Ted Heath said, ‘Congratulations on both your Maiden speeches.’) I opened with a couple of jokes (‘humorous sorties’ is probably more accurate…) and then led into the challenges of doing the right thing as a ‘new boy’ at Westminster: ‘Sitting in the right place is obviously vital. On the day of Madam Speaker’s memorable election, I found myself innocently drawn to the spot immediately behind the Prime Minister – instinctively drawn there, I now realise, by the assumption that it was the correct place for the Member for the City of Chester because that is exactly where my predecessor, Sir Peter Morrison, was wont to sit when he served the Prime Minister’s illustrious predecessor so ably and so loyally.’ (Interestingly, doing my homework for my paragraph about Sir Peter, I came across this in
The Times
of 24 July 1990: ‘The appointment of Peter Morrison as the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private
Secretary may well prove to be as important as any of the ministerial jobs announced yesterday.’ Mmm, yes, but perhaps not quite in the way intended.)

The point is: it’s over, I’ve done it, it wasn’t too bad. My only real mistake was to speak from notes. It’s permissible (especially with a ‘Maiden’) but a speech without notes earns brownie points. Later on I heard a couple of other new boys on our side (Liam Fox
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and Jonathan Evans).
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Their speeches were no better than mine, less elegant, less carefully crafted in fact, but both spoke without notes and I noted the whip on the front bench nodding with approval. Well done them.

At six, I set off to find the Prime Minister’s room ‘behind the Speaker’s chair’. You go left, then right, then down a little corridor, through a pokey ante-room and there you are in a very handsome panelled spacious room, dominated by a large polished oak table, with a little sitting area with sofas and armchairs to the side. There we had a little gathering, not to meet the PM, but to meet his PPS – and a greater contrast between the amiable roly-poly man-of-the-people Graham Bright and the patrician Sir Peter Morrison would be hard to imagine. The one common feature is a certain
embonpoint
, but Graham is altogether smaller and easier and more comfortable. He’s Tigger and Bunter and Just William rolled into one: eager, bouncy, friendly, loyal,
fiercely
loyal, and he told us that if ever we needed to relay a message to the PM he’s our man. I liked him at once, but he did strike me as very
ordinary
. If these are the eyes and ears of the Prime Minister – if this is the man who must whisper the truth to our great leader in the dark watches of the night – is he really up to it? (This is what I
think
, but, of course, don’t
say
to anyone – except Michèle, who points out that Graham is the man who brought ‘Sweet ‘n’ Low’ sweetener to the UK and has made a
fortune
– ‘which is more than can be said of some of us.’)

My Maiden speech looks fine in print. My pigeon-hole contains a one-word note from Cranley Onslow:
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‘Excellent!’ I am rather gratified, until some cynic in the Tea Room points out that Cranley (funny old stick) is standing for the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee and needs my vote. The Chief Whip
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has got my vote, but he’s sent a note too:
‘
Many
congratulations on your Maiden Speech which I have just read in Hansard.’ Of course, he’s sent precisely the same letter to everybody, but it’s nicer to get it than not to get it, however cynical one is.

I’ve just returned from drinks with Virginia Bottomley in the Secretary of State’s office in Whitehall. Florence Nightingale on the wall, Virginia, shoeless, curled up by the fireplace. She really is very beautiful, which may be why she seems to irritate so many people.

I’m sitting in the Library. It’s a wonderful series of rooms looking out onto the Thames. I’m all alone in the last room, the ‘silent’ room. You can’t ‘bag’ a space here, but this has become my regular perch. I still don’t have an office, but I do have a cubby-hole where I can keep papers and really I’m quite happy camping here. The office I’m likely to get is across the road, above the Underground station, and pretty dingy. I’m waiting now for the ten o’clock vote. It’s a bizarre ritual. The bells ring and we then have six minutes in which to get into the appropriate lobby before they lock the doors. We then amble through the lobby at a leisurely pace (it’s more a long corridor than a lobby really) and come out at the other end, passing two clerks sitting on high stools recording our names, and bowing our heads as we make our way through the doors. The whole process takes about twenty minutes. Then we head for home. I take a taxi. It’s costing me about £15 a time.

Late this morning DD of the SS found me and handed me a slip of paper, a little strip, no more than two inches deep and four inches wide.

‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘It’s a question for the PM,’ he smirked. ‘You’re asking it. This afternoon.’

‘But I haven’t got a question down for the PM,’ I protested.

‘Stand up and you’ll be called.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know. Trust me. Just learn the question. You’ve got to have it off by heart, no reading, no glancing at notes. Just wait for the Speaker to say your name then spit out the question. We’ve put a joke in it for you.’

‘I … I…’

‘Good man.’ And he was gone. And my happy lunch with Michèle in the Strangers’ Dining Room (our first lunch in the Strangers’ Dining Room) was ruined as over the sliced
avocado and prawns I repeated and repeated and repeated DD’s wretched question. And it was wretched. The joke – a deliberate slip of the tongue – was as weak as they come.

Lunch ruined, I sat through forty-five minutes of Home Office questions, my stomach churning, and then, at 3.15, we got to Prime Minister’s questions. I stood up – along with a hundred others. I thought ‘I’m not going to be called after all. Please God, I’m not going to be called. Please God.’ Mr Kinnock asked his questions, Mr Ashdown asked his, then suddenly I heard the Speaker say ‘Mr Gyles Brandreth’, she was pointing at me and I was on. ‘Did my Right Honourable Friend happen to see the punch-up in the Italian Parliament yesterday, when it was attempting to elect a new President? Does he see that as an example of the benefits of proportional representation or merely a dress rehearsal for the election of a new loser – er, so sorry – I mean a new
Leader
of the Labour Party.’ God, it was so cheap, so contrived, so graceless, but the whip gave it to me and I spoke it as scripted, word for word.

Matthew Parris is spot-on – and not alone. His verdict on my performance yesterday: ‘Chester:
nul points
.’