An Unexpected MP (11 page)

Sorry, Neil.

But I did meet Senator Dan Quayle who became, rather extraordinarily, Vice-President a few years later. He was
devastatingly
handsome (think Robert Redford crossed with Brad Pitt). He had only one serious drawback. He was a master of talking total gobbledegook with great charm. Obviously nothing compared to the batshit-crazy, hog-whimperingly dumb ignorance of Sarah Palin. That is an aberration of nature in itself.

No, dear Dan was just run-of-the-mill dim. But at least he wasn’t dangerous. When I left his office, a senior aide summed it up rather well. ‘Nice guy, huh? Just darn stupid.’

I found a great bar in DC, at the Ritz Carlton. I was first taken there by the head of the election commission. He invited me for tea, which I thought was a rather genteel idea. Ten Black Russians later (don’t worry, it was a drink), I
realised
that the old boy liked to tope. I haven’t a clue what we discussed. But the bar was a magnet for some serious
characters
. Dodgy judges and the cream of organised crime. Often they arrived together. I became friendly with an enormous guy of Italian descent called Joe. On my last day he invited me to lunch at one of his restaurants. A stretch limo, with a large muscly guy in attendance, drove me and Joe downtown to an Italian restaurant. When we entered, the waiters stood to attention, but never quite relaxed. All through the meal, dodgy-looking fellows would come up to pay their respects to Joe. Just passing the time of day, I brightly enquired if there really was such a thing as the Mafia any more. The restaurant went deathly silent and waiters shiftily eyed each other. Until Joe spoke.

‘Jerry, you are a good guy, but if you cut your linguine again I will have you rubbed out.’ Then he smiled, slapped me on the back and everyone laughed. A little nervously. I never mentioned the subject again. I presented Joe with a splendid House of Commons keyring. It is probably now embedded in some poor fellow’s eye socket.

Then off to San Francisco. Wonderful. There was only one minor hiccup. At the bar I was approached by a number of ladies in need of a shag. I was rather flattered until I realised that they were more interested in the bulge in my wallet than anywhere else. Uncle Sam had put me up in a brothel. I made my excuses and went to my room and locked the door. Yup, I’m pretty sure about that.

The next stop was Minnesota. I was to stay with a family on a farm. It was a nightmare. I first realised that there were going to be problems when I noticed that there was a large Pat Robertson (a mad gospeller of the right) magnet on the fridge. And when, after dinner (not a whiff of alcohol in sight), their idea of entertainment was the non-stop showing of hellfire sermon videos.

They were a charming family, but were creationists and believed that the Bible was a manual to life that could be used for everything. Literally. They told me with a straight face that if the devil deprived you of money the Lord would recompense you seven-fold. I nodded politely. They saw my scepticism. So they gave me an example of the Bible in action. Here was their story. A few months before, they had received what they believed was an unfair tax demand. So they consulted the Bible and prayed with their community. Guess what? A few weeks later they received a tax rebate. The amount?
Seven-fold what had been demanded of them. Jesus! Or maybe not.

Then off to Florida, where I had a volunteer driver called Felix who was a rocket scientist at Cape Canaveral. He drove me to an engagement with the Episcopal Church stuffed full of daughters of the revolution who were utterly convinced that they were related to royalty. They were a pretty grim bunch. The plan was that there was to be a finger buffet, after which I would make a jolly speech. All went well until Felix walked in after parking the car. There was a stunned silence. Felix was black. When they had recovered from the shock I suggested that he join us for the buffet. It was as if I had offered them a gynaecological examination with a used knife and fork. With a fake smile that revealed expensive plastic surgery, the head daughter, through perfectly formed gritted teeth, gave me the full Southern hospitality treatment. ‘We are delighted to feed Felix,’ she drawled, ‘but I am afraid he will have to eat in the kitchen.’ I was puzzled.

‘Why? There is no table plan and Felix is being kind enough to drive me around for nothing.’

‘I am afraid that it would be inappropriate.’

‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll do my speech as long as Felix joins us for supper.’

‘I’m afraid that will not be possible.’

‘Then thank you and good night.’

So Felix and I drove off into the night. We dumped the car and spent a wonderful time singing blues round the piano in a bar. It was depressing that even at the end of the ’80s racism was still alive and well in some parts of the United States.

Last on the list was Boston. A great place. I was invited to
the President of the State Senate Billy Bulger’s St Patrick’s Day lunch. This was a very Irish, very pro-Irish Republican event, where the dogs were painted green, as was the beer and the food. With Noraid raising funds in the shadows. What’s more, Billy was a man who took great pleasure in ripping the guts out of his guests, who included Vice-President Bush, Governor of Massachusetts and presidential candidate Mike Dukakis, Joe Kennedy and me. A Brit MP and a Tory at one of these events was not dissimilar to lions having a pleasant chat with a Christian at the Colosseum. I was going to be creamed. So I came prepared. I appeared on the platform in a green leprechaun hat and an enormous badge
emblazoned
‘Irish is beautiful’. I then ripped the piss out of Billy (‘It is always a pleasure to see you on TV so I can switch you off’) and told a load of off-colour Thatcher jokes. It was a high wire act.

Mercifully, they loved it. My miserable skin was saved and I became a good friend of Bulger.

Hollywood later made a film based on Billy’s brother Whitey. It starred Jack Nicholson and was called
The Departed.
Whitey was a gangster and was the FBI’s most wanted man. He is now behind bars. We never met. I think.

Next, a trip to Israel, where Sir Ivan Lawrence and I read the Beatitudes on the spot where Christ would have given them: at the bottom, by the Sea of Galilee, where the acoustics are amazing, as the hills provide the perfect amphitheatre.

Later we had an uncomfortable meeting with the Prime Minister and former Stern Gang member Yitzhak Shamir of Likud. A sinister little man.

Then, a wonderful chat with Shimon Peres (now President).
What a great man. What a fantastic and charming sense of humour. This was his icebreaker. In his thick Middle European accent he said this: ‘Gentlemen. We in Israel have an
incompetent
government and more Arab firepower against us than that of NATO. But it is not as serious as your poll tax.’

We also had an opportunity to meet with the Palestinians, which was invaluable. The way it worked was like this. The British ambassador dealt with the Israelis, while the consul had great contacts with the Palestinians. However, at the dinner the Defence Secretary, Tom King, came in for a slagging-off. Andrew MacKay, who was on the trip, was not amused. He, after all, was Tom’s PPS.

Then a little trip to the Dead Sea. My old chum David Amess, a fellow Essex MP, was a little concerned. ‘I don’t want to go in, I can’t swim,’ he moaned. We gently explained to him that swimming wasn’t relevant as one tended to float. The Israelis always called him Mr A. Mess. Well, we thought it was funny.

The good thing about select committee trips is that this is the only time you really get to know your colleagues from other parties. It is a great bonding exercise. This is what makes these committees invaluable to democracy and potentially lethal to the executive. By and large, reports are delivered that grapple with the issues rather than with the party politics. It keeps ministers on their toes.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time on the Health and latterly the Heritage (now DCMS) Committees. We had three wonderful chairmen, Frank Field, Nicholas Winterton and Gerald Kaufman. All dedicated, all bright and all great fun. It would be far too dull to log every trip, but two come to mind.

One was a visit to Holland to investigate childbirth. It was all rather scary and very Calvinistic. Women in the late 1980s and early ’90s were encouraged to give birth at home rather than at a hospital, and a white bedstead would be set up in the living room. We asked a senior consultant about the sort of pain relief that was available. He looked (it would have had to be a he) at us with total incredulity.

‘Pain relief in childbirth is not part of our culture,’ he snorted. ‘Our women believe that once they have had the pleasure they then have to take the pain.’ I made sure that when my wife Alison was pregnant we didn’t travel anywhere near Holland.

Then, a lovely trip to the USA with Kaufman. For anyone interested, the way to his heart is ice cream, as he is a serious connoisseur.

His tales about the days in Harold Wilson’s kitchen Cabinet could fill a library. I once asked him about Joe Haines, Harold Wilson’s notorious press secretary. ‘Introducing him to Harold was the biggest mistake of my life.’ They despise each other.

This trip was just before the 1997 electoral slaughter. Gerald predicted the overall Blair majority within a couple of seats. He asked me what I would do when I was flushed down the
political
pan. I remarked that I would rather like to write a column.

‘If you do, use it to destroy your enemies and promote your friends.’ Mmm.

My only recollection of that trip was going to Salem (where the witch trials were held) and its famous maritime museum. There, in pride of place, was an enormous ear trumpet. I asked its provenance.

‘Ah, it is made out of a whale’s penis,’ intoned a straight-faced
curator. Of course. What else could it made of? As it was America, I thought it best not to attempt any Dictaphone jokes.

Sometimes it is necessary to milk your contacts to arrange an overseas trip for political advantage. The 1987 election was bound to be a tricky one, particularly in a marginal seat like Harlow. So the splendid Ann Widdecombe came up with a wheeze. Why don’t the Catholic MPs get an audience with the Pope? So we all contacted our local bishops and it was sorted. Wonderful. Particularly as it was John Paul II; a proper Pope and now a saint. So off we popped to Rome, lined up and got a hug and a blessing from the old boy. Within an hour and minus six quid, photos of the great event arrived at our hotel rooms. To milk the whole affair for all that it was worth, I filled my pockets with rosaries so that I could
distribute
them to Catholic Harlow voters like some Chaucerian indulgence seller. After all, they had been blessed by the Pope. Then I ensured that the photo was splashed on the front pages of my local newspapers. Harlow was awash with Catholics and the cherry on the cake was that I had helped the local Catholic club get their booze licence back. In the 1987 election I doubled my majority to over 6,000. No wonder the man is a saint. That was probably his first miracle.

My last little jaunt abroad before being taken to the electoral vet and put down by the people of Harlow was to Paris. This was a group of Labour and Tory MPs who had a large French company based in their constituencies. This was pure
indulgence
and fantastic fun. On the last day, after a magnificent lunch, our beautiful hostess asked in her perfumed,
delightfully
French and hormone-fuelled accent what we wanted to do next. She listed a number of cultural attractions. To this
day I still tease my mate Bill Olner and remind him of his request. In his broad Yorkshire accent he asked this
insightful
question: ‘Merci, madame, mais où est le knocking shop?’ What a star. Of course, we never found it.

O
f all the government jobs, the one I really coveted was a place in the Whips’ Office. But as I am an inveterate gossip and as discreet as Katie Price in full
Hello!
mode, I was never a candidate.

The job of the whip is to fade into the background and sniff out what Members are up to. They are a sponge to soak up all the gossip, intrigue and backstabbing and report back to the Chief about who is trustworthy and who is a total shit. The Chief is the Prime Minister’s Beria. The job of the Whips’ Office is not to bully or threaten but to flatter and cajole. Lots of carrot and just a little bit of stick when absolutely
necessary
. Their power is knowledge. MPs love to gossip and plot. To gain brownie points there are always those who will quite happily stitch up their colleagues in the hope of personal advancement. Very few MPs don’t have one or two skeletons rattling around in the cupboard. And before they step out of line there is always the fear that the whips might just know about them. The chances are that they won’t, but one of the great strengths of the Whips’ Office is that it is shrouded in mystery. Break that mystique and they lose their authority. And the Chief’s official title is not Patronage Secretary for
nothing. He can determine the future of even the grandest of ministers.

Once, when I was PPS to Robert Atkins (Ratkins) when he was Minister of State in Northern Ireland, there was a
three-line
whip on some nondescript and eminently forgettable piece of legislation. Ratkins couldn’t be arsed to fly over from Belfast as he had a full diary the next day. So I was despatched to negotiate with the whips. As Ratkins was a close friend of John Major, then Prime Minister, I thought that this would be easy. Unfortunately, the whip in charge of this vote was my old adversary, the ‘caring whip’ David Lightbown. I could hear the low growl of his twenty-five stone lumbering into action down the phone. ‘I imagine your monkey enjoys being a minister? If so he’d better be at the vote tonight.’ And the phone was slammed down. That was that.

Ratkins did like to chance his arm. He once asked Major if he could have a few weeks off so he could go to Australia and watch the cricket. John realised that if he allowed this it would open the flood gates to daft requests from ministers and play very badly in the press. So Ratkins had his request denied, but his disappointment was rewarded with elevation to the Privy Council. He was styled The Right Honourable Sir Robert Atkins MP. The jammy devil.

There seems to be a misunderstanding by some of the 2010 intake about what the role of the Whips’ Office really is. One poor dear was moaning in the press recently that his whip never took him to one side, bought him a cup of coffee and listened to his woes and brilliant policy ideas. The whips are not the Samaritans. Their overriding responsibility is to push through the government’s business. If you find yourself in a
spot of bother, like being found with a cold woman, a hot boy or a serious drink problem, they will advise you how to
minimise
the damage. But they are primarily doing this to protect the government. Not you.

I recall two very sad cases when the whips took their eye off the ball. John Heddle, the delightful Member for Lichfield, took his own life rather than face the horror of bankruptcy. He was a lovely chirpy man. It was awful going to his memorial service and witnessing the distress of his widow and two little boys.

Then there was the tragedy of Iain Mills. He had been missing for days. He had had a messy divorce and had taken to drink. His body was found in a bottle-strewn flat. He had been dead for three days. Alone.

Mind you, some of the guys did take advantage when we were effectively in a minority government in the ’90s. The last thing anyone wanted was a by-election. It came to the
attention
of the whips that an MP was facing bankruptcy due to gambling debts. A donor was found. But rather than pay off his debts this MP took the family off on an expensive holiday. He was not flavour of the month.

The whips tend to classify their little charges as ‘
troublesome
… shit … absolute shit … insane’. The worst offence is not rebellion; it is not playing the game. This means letting them know if you have problems with a vote. In other words, if you feel very strongly on an issue and particularly if it affects the constituency, let them know well in advance. They will arrange a meeting with the minister, who will do his best to persuade you that the slaying of the firstborn male child is very much in the interests of the economy and an
overburdened health service. If you have listened to the
arguments
and are still concerned then they will do everything they can to persuade you to support the government. But if you really want to incur serious anger, just roll up to the vote and go into the wrong lobby without having the courtesy to let them know. They need to know the numbers.

On one successful rebellion which I was part of, to ensure that child benefit should be paid to the mother rather than the father, the minister (the lovely Tony Newton) had two speeches prepared. One conceding, the other battling on. He had to choose the former when the whip on duty told him that we didn’t have the numbers … one minute before Tony got to his feet.

On his death, John Major said of him that if someone robbed Tony of his coat he would chase after them and offer them his shirt. He was a great human being.

During the Teeth and Eyes rebellion (over the
government’s
plan to save £30 million by abolishing the free sight test and dental check-up) I asked my old chum Tim Devlin how he was going to vote.

‘Oh, with you,’ he said in his charmingly laid-back way.

‘So long as you tell the whips.’

‘Oh, really? Oh, not to worry.’

Well, he did need to, as he was torn limb from limb. But at least his heart was in the right place.

Veteran
Telegraph
sketch-writer Ed Pearce gave me a tip on how to impress the whips and get a job. ‘Make a speech defending the utterly indefensible. Read Michael Howard on the economic case for not allowing local authorities to spend all of their council house sales receipts on new builds. He will
get a job in the next reshuffle.’ And he did. It was the
beginning
of a meteoric and distinguished career.

Ed is an interesting fellow. After university he won a writing competition organised by the
Sunday Express
and was hired, on a piece-by-piece basis, by the legendary John Junor. When I was first elected Ed was a parliamentary sketch-writer for the
Telegraph.
I say ‘a’ because he shared the job with Godfrey Barker. In those days, Prime Minister’s Questions were
fifteen-minute
slots on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For reasons beyond human understanding, the two of them would race to sit in the
Telegraph
perch in the press gallery overlooking the
chamber
. Sometimes this led to unpleasantness. I will never forget seeing Ed fighting with Godfrey for the seat. Mercifully, this was before the cameras were permitted in the chamber,
otherwise
viewers would have been entertained by Godfrey getting perilously close to being flung over the railings.

The clamour for whips to get information knew no bounds. They would attend all committee meetings, patrol the bars, sit in the Tea Room and strategically plonk themselves in the Members’ dining room. They also kept a close eye on the two biggest enemies of the executive: the lavatories and the
photocopier
. If ever you wanted to have an indiscreet chat in the loo, you always had to check that the cubicles were empty. More often than not one would be occupied by the ‘toilet whip’, some poor devil sitting there for a couple of hours in the hope of eavesdropping a tasty morsel of gossip. The photocopier was also a source of indiscretion. All governments arrange for questions to be planted, and the whips distribute helpful
suggestions
for supplementary questions and ‘lines to take’. Every now and again some hapless aide would leave the original
plants on the photocopier. They would then be found by an Opposition aide, who would re-photocopy them and distribute them throughout the chamber to embarrass the government.

In those days the Members’ dining room was configured along strict party lines. Government at the bottom, Lib Dems and minority parties in the middle and the Opposition at the far end. The government Chief Whip’s table had one special feature: the chair for the great man had arms. The only chair with arms in the whole dining room. Heaven knows why. Every so often, Labour would send over a raiding party to occupy the Chief’s table. All very public school.

I always used to enjoy a drink with Walter Harrison, the iconic Labour Deputy Chief Whip under Wilson and Callaghan. His stories of how his Whips’ Office kept the minority government in office were scarily fascinating.

On one clincher vote Walter and his opposite number, John Stradling Thomas, went down to the courtyard to inspect a Labour Member on a trolley connected to a spaghetti of wires and tubes. Those were the terrible days when even the most mortally ill had to be ‘nodded’ through.

Stradling Thomas looked at the poor inert patient who had clearly popped his clogs.

‘You can’t count him, Walter, he’s dead.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ says Walter and kicks the life-support machine, making the corpse convulse. ‘There you are. I told you he’s alive.’

And he was duly nodded through. In those days even the dead voted.

The Tory whips were known for their cunning subtlety, like hiding MPs in cupboards and calling surprise votes.

Violence was rare. Sir Spencer Le Marchant was a legendary Tory whip. His job was to ensure that his MPs stayed to vote. One evening out of the corner of his eye he spotted a Tory MP creeping down the steps to slink out of a vote. This seriously angered the old boy and he aimed a kick which sent the MP flying, with the shout of, ‘And you can fuck off, you lazy bastard.’

However, there was a slight problem. The kickee wasn’t a Tory at all. Nor an MP. It was the Peruvian ambassador on his way home from a drinks party. This caused the Foreign Office one or two difficulties.

Spencer was a popular whip on the Finance Committee. This was the standing committee by whom every dot and comma of the Budget would be pored over. The sessions went on long into the night. So, to keep the troops happy, Spencer would lay on vast quantities of free booze in an adjoining committee room and allowed his little charges access on a rota basis.

But back to Walter Harrison. The acclaimed play
The House
was based on his antics. Sadly, he was too unwell to see it. He wasn’t exactly the most subtle of operators. After all, he and his boss, Michael Cocks, had to keep hard-drinking, very tough working men on the reasonably straight and narrow. He told me that he would not tolerate shagging on overseas trips and would order room inspections every night after ten.

One week there was a desperately tight vote and Walter could not find one of his Members. His government could fall if they lost. Eventually, a lackey passed him the phone.

‘Where the fuck are you?’

‘Er, just taking a short break in Crete.’

‘Well, if you’re not back in time for the vote you’ll be in fucking concrete.’ And he meant it.

Another time Walter was concerned for the whereabouts of one of his confirmed bachelors, who had a keen interest in rent boys. He wouldn’t answer his telephone (there were no mobiles in those days) and hadn’t been seen for days. So Walter despatched a junior whip to go to the old boy’s flat. He sat outside in his car for a day and a night. Nobody answered the door but there was a steady stream of young men who were let in. After a while the whip could take no more and broke the door down. He entered the bedroom to find the MP sitting up in bed with a smile on his face – stone dead. He rang Walter.

‘Found him, but I’m afraid he’s dead.’

There was a growl at the other end of the phone.

‘I said find him, not fucking kill him.’

Peter (now Lord) Snape was a newly appointed whip and received a call from Michael Cocks. Labour MP Maurice Edelman’s voting record at the dying embers of the Callaghan government was woeful, so Snape was sent round to give the slacker a serious bollocking. Off he trundled to Edelman’s magnificent old house in Belgravia and read the riot act. That night, Edelman came in to vote. Sadly, the next day he died. Cocks rang Snape.

‘Overkill, boy, overkill.’ And slammed the phone down, to the hoots of laughter in the Whips’ Office.

Jack Weatherill was a thoroughly decent Deputy Chief Whip and a great Speaker. When he was Speaker he used to pop into the Labour Whips’ Office to keep them up to date with the gossip. One day he told them that he had just
received a report from the Papua New Guinea Parliament that its Speaker had been sacked for being drunk and urinating on the floor of the parliamentary press gallery. I can imagine how tempting this might be for John Bercow.

When Jack was Speaker he would always host a reception if any Member’s child was christened. In 1984 my daughter, Francesca, was baptised by my old friend Tommy McMahon, the Bishop of Brentwood. Usually, before the Speaker entered, his train bearer would formally shout ‘Speaker’ and we would all stand as the great man walked in. On this occasion he sent in his five-year-old grandson wearing his full wig, which trailed on the floor.

Jack used to organise prayer suppers from time to time and invite a guest speaker to address us. One evening the famous American evangelist Billy Graham was invited to give a talk in the state apartments. Billy was an imposing, lantern-jawed charismatic used to wowing stadiums of 100,000. So
addressing
thirty of us ought to have been a piece of cake. But at the last moment a familiar figure seated herself on the front row: Margaret Thatcher. Her steely blue eyes pierced into him all evening. The poor man fell apart.

It is remarkable the lengths some Members go to in order to be called to make a speech. Labour old guard and Glaswegian hard man Jimmy Wray once complained to his Chief Whip, Derek Foster, that Betty Boothroyd wouldn’t call him in debates.