Breaking the Code (15 page)

I have come in to the Commons to take part in the Road Safety debate. I wanted to wipe away the memory of yesterday’s humiliation. I was pleased with my speech just now. It wasn’t overprepared; I knew what I was talking about (more or less) and I made a couple of points that I believe in and that even have some relevance to my constituency! What’s more I have discovered that whatever you say on the floor of the House, you can ‘tidy it up’ before it’s printed in Hansard. After you’ve spoken you make your way up a narrow flight of stairs behind the Speaker’s chair to the Hansard editors’ room. There, twenty minutes or so after your speech has been delivered, they’ll show you a typed copy of what you’ve said. They’ve already touched up the English here and there and corrected any obvious errors and, so long as you don’t alter the sense and substance of your contribution, you are permitted judicious fine-tuning.

In the election for the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee I voted for Marcus Fox,
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pronounced Fux by some colleagues – but with affection. He’s dapper, rather delightful, a touch too much of the professional Yorkshire man maybe, and not, I imagine, weighed down by too many ‘views’, but he’s got a twinkle and he’s approachable and he won. Cranley Onslow has done it for nine years and looks old and frail and disappointed.

The Tea Room talk is of Thatcher’s speech in The Hague. We need to watch out: the Germans are coming and the EC is ‘scurrying to build a megastate’. It seems somewhat over-alarmist to me, but Bill Cash
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and co. evidently agree with every word. ‘The lady across the water,’ sighed Nick Budgen.
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‘We miss her so!’

At 6.00 p.m. I had an assignment with DD of the SS. I was to meet him in Member’s Lobby. We were both on time (people are pretty meticulous about time-keeping here). He didn’t say anything, just gave me a conspiratorial nod implying ‘Follow me’ and led me into one of the division lobbies where we sat in the far corner, at one of the writing tables, and he whispered to me, ‘You’re doing well. Keep it up. I’m trying to get you onto a little group we have – good men who can be trusted. We meet in secret, usually on a Monday evening, and look at ways we can undermine the opposition. It’s called the Q Committee – named after submarines used in the First World War. Don’t mention it to anyone. I’ll keep you posted.’ It’s a very odd place this. Sebastian [Coe] and I thought it was about time we braved the Members’ Dining Room, so in we went,
à deux
, at about eight and, of course, it was full. You can’t book. Our lot eat at one end of the room, the Labour people at the other – and the Liberals wait at table. (My little joke: the Lib Dems have a table to themselves, as do the Ulster Unionists.) Anyway, the only table at our end that was free was a table for four right in the corner. We made for it, sat down and waited. As we sat, we sensed a roomful of eyes flick towards us, but thought ‘Let’s not get paranoid here’. We sat, we waited. We looked expectantly towards the waiters wandering past. None caught our eye. We waited and we sat. Eventually, a colleague from an adjacent table leant over and hissed, ‘I take it you
are
waiting for the Chief Whip?’ Oh God! We had sat at the table reserved exclusively for the Chief Whip. No one ever –
ever
– sits at this table except by his express invitation. Now they tell us … Pale-faced we got up and searched the room for another perch: all eyes were on us: it was a Bateman cartoon: The New Boys who took the Chief Whip’s table.

A nice letter from Windsor Castle [from Prince Philip]: ‘Things have been a bit hectic recently, culminating with the Windsor Horse Show over this last weekend.
Congratulations on your election. I should think Chester must be a delightful constituency. I cannot see any objection to your remaining as chairman of NPFA as long as there is no clash between its interests and the policies of the government. However, I am sure you will be able to steer a middle course!!’ He is a good man.

I wasn’t in a state to steer anything this morning thanks to my sustained attendance in the Chamber yesterday. The Maastricht debate (aka Second Reading of the European Communities (Amendment) Bill) began at 3.30 p.m. and concluded at 7.40 a.m.! When Edwina spoke at 5.55 a.m. she noted she was the fifty-fifth speaker called and thanked the Speaker ‘for calling me in daylight’. She spoke rather well – notwithstanding repeated interruptions from Sir Nicholas Fairbairn
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who is mad and brilliant and perpetually drunk. As he weaves his way into and out of the Chamber, the tail-coated flunkies are hovering, at the ready to catch him if he falls.

The debate began with the PM setting out his stall: it was all very measured, moderate and reasonable, strengthening Community law, securing the single market, but resisting the Social Chapter and keeping our options open on the single currency. Who could possibly object? Peter Shore,
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Teddy Taylor,
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Austin Mitchell,
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Nick Budgen, Tony Benn, Bill Cash – all the usual suspects plus Kenneth Baker who was more sceptical than ever and rather impressive. There were several alarmingly good maiden speeches: Roger Evans
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at 4.45 a.m. was terrific: trenchant and appallingly well-informed; Iain Duncan Smith,
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another anti, broke the rules, did twenty minutes and certainly didn’t avoid controversy, but it was undeniably powerful stuff. I do envy these people who feel so passionately about it and seem to have such a good grasp of the detail. Stephen Milligan did his maiden: good-humoured, easy-going, wonderfully knowledgeable, and not a note in sight. He is ambitious. The government’s policy is pro-European, but if you discount the mad women (Edwina and Emma Nicholson
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– who is
strange
), there aren’t that many articulate backbenchers ready to take the pro-European line. Stephen’s decided to fill the gap and make his mark.

He will succeed.

High drama last night. In the second division, twenty-two of our side defied the whip and voted against the government, ignoring Douglas Hurd’s plea not to inflict ‘a savage blow’ to John Major’s authority. Hurd was good. He’s stylish. And Heath was a joy to watch: he is so arrogant, so convinced of his own rightness about everything. He didn’t deign to mention Mrs T. by name, but he called her remarks about Germany ‘rabid, bigoted and xenophobic’. He rumbled and he thundered, but, oddly, he didn’t cut much ice.

I am writing this on the train from Slough. I have been addressing members of the Beaconsfield Conservative Association in the absence of their member who doesn’t seem enormously popular.
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He is, however, very thin, which is more than can be said of some. Now I’m drinking again, and eating toasted teacakes in the Tea Room, the pounds are piling on. Geoffrey Dickens,
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who is gross but very jolly, is encouraging me to join ‘the Currie Club’ – ‘we eat all the things Edwina’s told us not to eat.’

I see in the paper that Chris Patten has lost a stone and a half and been to a health farm. Also, Elizabeth David
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has died. I think this calls for a typical Brandreth compromise: steering the culinary middle course, it’s going to be a light lunch then something rather good tonight…

I am in the Library hiding from rampant Eurosceptics. Word has just come through that the Danes have voted No in their referendum on Maastricht and the Eurodoubters are in a tizzy of excitement. I’ve just been accosted by Bernard Jenkin.
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He was bouncing up and down with glee.

‘Have you heard? Have you heard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘Well, er—’

‘You must sign this.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s an EDM
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calling for a fresh start. This is the one chance the government’s got to think again. Come on, everyone’s signing it.’

He had a lot of signatures already, but I managed to resist, and now I’m lurking in here in the half-light hoping I won’t be discovered.

A bad day. About seventy of our people have signed the wretched EDM to date and the buzz is that at least a dozen junior ministers would have liked to – and probably three or four Cabinet ministers as well. The PM made a statement saying the government is as committed as ever to Maastricht and reminding us that the policy has been endorsed on three occasions: when he came back from Maastricht last December, in the general election, and when we voted for the second reading of the bill a couple of weeks ago. He set the government firmly against a referendum of our own: ‘I am not in favour of a referendum in a parliamentary democracy and I do not propose to put one before the British people.’ It was a workmanlike effort, but our side certainly weren’t cheering him to the rafters. Only eight weeks ago he won us the election against all the odds and could do no wrong. Now there’s muttering on all sides.

I came in expecting an all-night sitting, but further consideration of the Maastricht Bill is now postponed and instead we had a rather briefer debate on the Rio Earth Summit. I sat through all five and half hours of it (in a largely deserted Chamber) in order to make a seven-minute contribution. My reward was to witness an extraordinary performance from Sir Nicholas Fairbairn – bizarre yet bravura – in which he seemed to be telling us that famine was necessary in the interests of population control. ‘The Queen was in China for ten days during which time the population of China increased by twice the population of Scotland. The people who died in the Ethiopian famine were replaced by new births in six months. The people who died in the earthquake at Mexico City were replaced in sixteen minutes. It is all about death.
Death is natural and should not be unexpected, postponed or wrong, but births can be prevented. There is no purpose in cutting down a rain forest so that a million bureaucrats can descend on Rio and eat themselves stupid on the world’s resources.’ He is quite mad, but rather wonderful. I have no idea how the Hansard people will manage to make sense of it.

I am sitting in the Chamber writing this. There are 651 MPs, but right now – registering concern for the future of the planet – there are just a dozen of us. The ‘form’ is that when you’ve spoken you always listen at least to the next speaker and then come back to hear the winding-up speeches at the end of the debate. We’re nearly through: Mark Lennox-Boyd
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(Our Man for the Third World) is droning peacefully to a close and at 10.00 p.m. on the dot he’ll stop – and then home!

An ‘Ed Blair’ from the Hamilton Oil Company came to bend my ear. I am not sure why I had agreed to see him and I am not at all clear what he wanted. General Peter Martin followed him and we had a good session on the Cheshires.
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The case for the Cheshires I do understand, do believe in and do want to do something effective about. His briefing was clear and to the point.

At 5.30, with a group of ‘arts-minded’ colleagues, I went over to the Department of National Heritage for a ‘working session’ with the new Secretary of State.
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He’s an unlikely-looking specimen, but he’s an enthusiast and he made us all feel enthusiastic about both his commitment and the part we might have to play. He wants us to go out as ambassadors for the department and spread the word. This clearly excited Patrick Cormack.
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‘We’ll be like unofficial ministers, will we?’ he asked, puffing himself up at the prospect. In the Tea Room they call him the Bishop.

Later it was drinks in the Northern Ireland Office with Sir Patrick Mayhew, a gentleman politician of the old school, Brian Johnston with a bit more up top. Virginia Bottomley saw me setting off up Whitehall on foot and gave me a lift in her ministerial car. ‘I take it you’re not one of the rebellious new boys? John’s doing absolutely the right thing, no question. I’m sure you agree.’

I do – I think.

Our nineteenth wedding anniversary. It began with me declining to comment on the state of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. All the papers (here and, apparently, right round the world) are full of backwash from the serialisation of Andrew Morton’s revelations about Diana – how she’s suffered from bulimia, has attempted suicide, is locked in a loveless marriage. I had nothing to offer, but others were less reticent. Lord St John of Fawsley (who now looks like a Tenniel drawing of himself – the Fish Footman meets the Red Queen) was Olympian: ‘A warning needs to be uttered that our institutions are fragile.’ Peter Mandelson,
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Labour MP for Hartlepool, declared that the scurrilous book proves there are no longer any boundaries between fact and fiction when it comes to royal reporting. I said, ‘I’m taking my wife to lunch at the Royal Oak at Yattenden’ – which I did, and it was good, but I wasn’t relaxed because all the time I was half-thinking that I ought to get back to Westminster.

I had to be on parade at six for my first meeting of the Q Committee: a mixture of whips and backbenchers (senior and junior) plus some people I’d never seen before (from Central Office, I think) plus the PM’s PPS. The object of the exercise is to go through the week’s business and work out if there are ways of ambushing the opposition. ‘And when the PM gets back from Rio,’ concluded our chairman,
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not one to be frightened of the obvious, ‘he’s going to need all the support we can give him. Right men?’ (There were no ladies present.) We all banged the table in agreement. (It’s another odd custom: no clapping in the Chamber, just cheering and waving order papers, and in committee rooms we beat our fingers against the desk in a rapid tattoo while growling a half-swallowed ‘Hear! Hear!’ at the back of the throat.)

The round of ministerial briefings for new recruits goes on. Last night it was Gillian Shephard in Room 605 at Caxton House (a pretty dreary gathering) and this afternoon it was tea at the Treasury with Badger Lamont who assured us that all’s well, the ERM is working, inflation is conquered, and the recession has blown itself out. So that’s all right then. And, as I write, I’ve just come down from Committee Room 5 where President Heseltine has been giving us a
tour d’horizon
of the DTI. I asked some damnfool question
(just to fill the air) and the poor man couldn’t decipher my name from his crib-sheet. He was clearly anxious to respond to me by name, but simply couldn’t.