The Downing Street Years (144 page)

The debate on the Address would give me an opportunity to renew my authority and the Government’s momentum. So I put extra effort into work on the speech. On the day itself (Wednesday 7 November), I was helped by yet another feeble attack from Neil Kinnock whose latest metamorphosis as a market socialist I mocked in the line: ‘The Leader of the Opposition is fond of talking about supply-side socialism. We know what that means: whatever the unions demand, Labour will supply.’ But I also had to deal with the more delicate issue of Geoffrey’s resignation. And that had hidden traps.

In his resignation letter Geoffrey had not spelt out any significant policy differences between us. Instead, he had concentrated on what he described as ‘the mood I had struck … in Rome last weekend and in the House of Commons this Tuesday’. I therefore felt entitled to point out in my speech that ‘if the Leader of the Opposition reads my Rt. Hon. and learned friend’s letter, he will be very pressed indeed to find any significant policy difference on Europe between my Rt. Hon. and learned friend and the rest of us on this side.’

That was true as far as it went, and it supplied my immediate needs. The debate went quite well. But it soon became clear that Geoffrey was furious about what I had said. He apparently felt that
there were substantial points of difference on policy between us, even if he had not so far managed to articulate what they were. We had reached nothing more than a lull before a political storm that was to rage ever more strongly.

At the end of Thursday’s Cabinet (8 November), we took the unusual step of adjourning for a political session, civil servants leaving the Cabinet Room. Ken Baker warned of the likelihood of extremely bad results at the Bootle and Bradford North by-elections. Things turned out as he feared. The worst result was in Bradford, where we slumped to third place. Early the next morning (Friday 9 November), Ken telephoned me to discuss these results which I had, as usual, stayed up to see. I put on a brave face, saying it was no worse than I expected. But it was bad enough, and at the wrong time.

What really set the political commentators talking, however, was a statement that day by Geoffrey that he would ‘be seeking an opportunity in the course of the next few days to explain in the House of Commons the reasons — of substance as well as style — which prompted [his] difficult decision’. The speculation that Michael Heseltine would stand naturally increased over the weekend. Indeed, politics entered one of those febrile nervous phases in which events seem to be moving towards some momentous but unknowable climax almost independent of the wishes of the actors. And there was little I could do about any of this. I soldiered on with my arranged programme in the constituency on Saturday (10 November) and at the Cenotaph Remembrance Day Service on Sunday (11 November).

On Monday (12 November), as the previous week, there was only one subject on our minds at my morning ‘Week Ahead’ meeting with Ken Baker and at the subsequent lunch with colleagues — and again, significantly, none of us really wished to talk about it. No one knew as yet what Geoffrey would say, or even when he would say it. But never had a speech by Geoffrey been so eagerly awaited.

I delivered my own speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in Guildhall that evening, striking a deliberately defiant note. But words now began to fail me. I employed a cricketing metaphor which that evening drew warm applause but which would later be turned to my disadvantage:

I had now learned that Geoffrey would speak in the House the following day, Tuesday 13 November, about his resignation. I would, of course, stay on after Questions to hear him.

Geoffrey’s speech was a powerful Commons performance — the most powerful of his career. If it failed in its ostensible purpose of explaining the policy differences that had provoked his resignation, it succeeded in its real purpose which was to damage me. It was cool, forensic, light at points, and poisonous. His long suppressed rancour gave Geoffrey’s words more force than he had ever managed before. He turned the cricketing metaphor against me with a QC’s skill, claiming that my earlier remarks about the hard ecu undermined the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England: ‘It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.’ He persuasively caricatured my arguments of principle against Europe’s drift to federalism as mere tics of temperamental obstinacy. And his final line — ‘the time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long’ — was an open invitation to Michael Heseltine to stand against me that electrified the House of Commons.

It was a peculiar experience listening to this bill of particulars, rather like being the accused during a prosecutor’s summing up in a capital case. For I was as much the focus of attention as was Geoffrey. If the world was listening to him, it was watching me. And underneath the mask of composure, my emotions were turbulent. I had not the slightest doubt that the speech was deeply damaging to me. One part of my mind was making the usual political calculations of how I and my colleagues should react to it in the lobbies. Michael Heseltine had been handed more than an invitation to enter the lists; he had been given a weapon as well. How would we blunt it?

At a deeper level than calculation, however, I was hurt and shocked. Perhaps in view of the irritability that had been the coin of my relations with Geoffrey in recent years, I was foolish to be so pierced. But any ill-feeling between us had been expressed behind closed doors, even if news of it had sometimes leaked into political gossip columns. In public, I had been strongly supportive of him both as Chancellor and as Foreign Secretary. Indeed, the memory of the battles we had fought
alongside each other in Opposition and in the early 1980s had persuaded me to keep him in the Cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister when a closer attention to my own political interests on Europe, exchange rates, and a host of other issues would have led me to replace him with someone more of my way of thinking.

Yet he had not been similarly swayed by those memories. After living through so many difficult times and sharing so many policy successes, he had deliberately set out to bring down a colleague in this brutal and public way. And with what result? It was not yet certain what would happen to me. Whatever it was, however, Geoffrey Howe from this point on would be remembered not for his staunchness as Chancellor, nor for his skilful diplomacy as Foreign Secretary, but for this final act of bile and treachery. The very brilliance with which he wielded the dagger ensured that the character he assassinated was in the end his own.

The following morning (Wednesday 14 November) Cranley Onslow telephoned to say that he had received formal notification of Michael Heseltine’s intention to stand for the leadership. Douglas Hurd now proposed my nomination; John Major seconded it; this was intended as a demonstration of the Cabinet’s united support for me. Peter Morrison quickly had my own leadership team up and running, though some people subsequently suggested that this was too energetic a metaphor. The key figures were to be George Younger, Michael Jopling, John Moore, Norman Tebbit and Gerry Neale. MPs would be discreetly asked their views so that we knew who were supporters, waverers and opponents. Michael Neubert was to keep the tally. Opponents would not be approached again, but waverers were to be called on by whichever member of the team seemed most likely to be persuasive.

It was agreed that I would use press interviews as the main platform for me to set out my case. So on Thursday evening (15 November) I was interviewed by Michael Jones of the
Sunday Times
and Charles Moore of the
Sunday Telegraph.
Nor did I back away from the European issue which Geoffrey’s speech had reopened. Indeed, I said that a referendum would be necessary before there was any question of our having a single currency. This was a constitutional issue, not just an economic one, and it would be wrong not to consult the people directly.

When the nuts and bolts of my campaign were explained to me, they sounded fine. Unfortunately, it was not clear how much time some of the main members of my team could give to the campaign. Norman Fowler had been approached by Peter and agreed to be part
of it, but then dropped out immediately, claiming past friendship with Geoffrey Howe. George Younger, about to become Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was heavily involved in his business affairs. Michael Jopling too bowed out. John Moore was not always in the country. Subsequently, a number of my younger supporters in the ‘No Turning Back Group’ of MPs, alarmed at the way my campaign was going, drafted themselves as helpers and pulled out every stop. Their help was welcome; but why had it become necessary? This should have been a warning sign. But the campaign played on, and I carried on with the arrangements already in my diary, spending Friday 16 November on a visit to Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, Michael Heseltine’s campaign was in full swing. He had promised a fundamental review of the community charge and was talking about transferring the cost of services like education to central taxation. I had already noted in the House that this could mean an extra 5 pence on income tax or large cuts in other public spending — or a budget deficit just when we had enjoyed four years of surplus and had redeemed debt.

I now pressed home the attack on Michael’s approach in a
Times
interview with Simon Jenkins where I drew attention to Michael’s long-standing corporatist and interventionist views. This appeared on Monday and was promptly criticized in some circles as being too aggressive. But there was nothing remotely personal about it. Michael Heseltine and I disagreed fundamentally about all that is at the heart of politics. MPs should be reminded that this was a contest between two philosophies as well as between two personalities. It was a sign of the funk and frivolity of the whole exercise that they did not want to think anything was at stake apart from their seats.

On Saturday evening 17 November Denis and I had friends and advisers to dinner at Chequers — Peter Morrison, the Bakers, the Wakehams, Alistair McAlpine, Gordon Reece, the Bells, the Neuberts, the Neales, John Whittingdale and of course Mark and Carol. (George Younger could not attend because he had another engagement in Norfolk.) We had an enjoyable dinner, and then got down to business. My team gave me a run down on the figures which seemed quite favourable. Peter Morrison told me he thought he had 220 votes for, 110 against and 40 abstentions, which would be an easy win. (To win in the first round I would need a majority of at least 15 per cent of those entitled to vote.) Even allowing for a ‘lie factor’, then, I would be all right. But I was not convinced, telling Peter: ‘I remember Ted thought the same thing. Don’t trust our figures — some people are on the books of both sides.’ Everybody else seemed to be far more confident,
and indeed spent their time discussing what should be done to unite the Party after my victory. I hoped they were right. Some instinct told me otherwise.

The next day (Sunday 18 November) I departed for the CSCE summit in Paris. It marked the formal — though sadly not the actual — beginning of that new era which was termed by President Bush a ‘new world order’. In Paris far-reaching decisions were taken to shape the post-Cold War Europe which had emerged from the peaceful defeat of communism. These included deep mutual cuts in conventional armed forces within the CFE framework, a European ‘Magna Carta’ guaranteeing political rights and economic freedom (an idea I had particularly championed), and the establishment of CSCE mechanisms to promote conciliation, to prevent conflict, to facilitate free elections, and to encourage consultations between governments and parliamentarians.

As usual, I had a series of bilateral meetings with heads of government. The Gulf was almost always at the forefront of our discussions, though my mind kept turning to what was happening back in Westminster. On Monday (19 November) I had breakfast with President Bush, signed on behalf of the United Kingdom the historic agreement to reduce conventional forces in Europe, attended the first plenary session of the CSCE, and lunched with the other leaders at the Elysée Palace. In the afternoon I made my own speech to the summit, looking back over the long-term benefits of the Helsinki process, emphasizing the continued importance of human rights and the rule of law, pointing to their connection with economic freedom, and warning against any attempt to downgrade NATO which was ‘the core of western defence’. I later talked with the UN Secretary-General about the situation in the Gulf before entertaining Chancellor Kohl to dinner at the British Embassy.

It was characteristic of Helmut Kohl that, unlike the other leaders I had met, he came straight to the point, namely the leadership election. He said it was good to talk about these difficult issues rather than bottle them up. He had been determined to devote this evening to me as a way of demonstrating his complete support. It was unimaginable that I should be deprived of office.

Given that the Chancellor and I had strong differences on the future course of the European Community and that my departure would remove an obstacle to his plans — as, indeed, proved to be case — this was big-hearted of him. With a more serpentine politician, I would have assumed this to be merely insurance against my victory. But Chancellor Kohl, whether as ally or opponent, was never devious. So I was very moved by his words, and by the real warmth of his feeling. I tried to overcome my confusion by explaining the peculiarities of the Tory leadership electoral system, but he said that my account only confirmed his suspicion that the system was quite mad. By now I had concluded he had a point. Then, somewhat to my relief, the conversation turned to the prospects for the IGCs and economic and monetary union, where Chancellor Kohl seemed willing to make compromises, at least on timing. Whether anything more would have come of it than from earlier assurances I cannot say; but I like to think it would have done.