An Unexpected MP (13 page)

Private Eye
lunches were always splendid occasions. The idea was that Ian Hislop and his hounds would get you roaring drunk in the hope of a couple of hours of indiscreet gossip. Just up my street. They were held in a scruffy upstairs room in the Coach and Horses when the splendid Norman ran the place. We used to have a drink in the bar with Jeffrey Bernard and then up for steak, chips and vats of red wine. The journos and politicians would sit at editor Ian Hislop's end of the table and down the far end sat a tweedy Richard Ingrams with equally tweedy literary types. He always referred to me as The Beard. I never cared for him too much and always found him rather snooty. But to be fair to him, he probably was quite entitled to view me a cocky little sod, as humility was never my middle name. But at Hislop's end the gossip would flow. I have always found him to be very good news. At Leveson, he was one of the few editors to behave with absolute integrity. It was a powerful performance.

But since Norman left, the Coach and Horses is a dreadful little place. I never bother to go in any more.

The
Mail on Sunday
lunches for the ‘Black Dog' column were the most entertaining. Peter Dobbie, the political editor, was a rough diamond, but could squeeze a story out of a stone. Or, as we still say, polish a turd. Once, on my mate Adrian Lithgow's first day in the Commons as a journalist, Dobbie introduced me to him with these words: ‘This is that twat Jerry Hayes who hasn't given me a story in a week,' as he gently kicked me in the gonads.

Adrian was a serious ladies' man. His penis reached iconic status when it was described in a Julie Burchill novel as ‘the silken cosh'. I recall one famous Black Dog Christmas lunch when we shared a restaurant with the sports
department
, which got a little out of hand. I dimly remember being assaulted with a rubber chicken. Quite why, I can't remember.

Dobbie had a habit at the end of every party conference of apologising to each politician he bumped into. I asked him why.

‘Well, I probably twatted him, called him a cunt or both.'

Dobbie was a star.

But today it has all changed. The Commons bars are rarely full, Annie's is closed and journalists' expenses for a decent lunch are long-distant memories. Now pasty-faced youngsters are stuck in front of their screens picking up feeds and press releases from the internet. And apart from a few old-school MPs, the idea of going drinking with a journalist is too
terrifying
for some of them to contemplate. Clem Attlee used to advise all new MPs to stay clear of the bars and journalists. And what a dull little man he was.

The rot set in when Ali Campbell, as Blair's brilliant press secretary, pretty well lobotomised the press. They were prepared to be spoon-fed with press releases, as in those days the Tories were a hopeless shambles. Very few went in search of real political stories. There was also an element of fear. If Blair's chief fixer, Peter Mandelson, took exception to a story or what he thought might turn out to be a story, he would threaten and bully a journalist into submission. The veiled threat would be that he would go to the editor and have the journo sacked. Whether this ever actually happened we will never know.

In those days only the most secure journalists dared cross Mandelson. He was a terrifying and venomous figure. And nobody was safe. For an ambitious junior hack, these were very dark days.
The Thick of It
is not far off the mark. The only journalist who really had the courage to fight Mandelson was my old friend from the
Mirror
, Paul Routledge. But more of him later.

For now, a brief word about the legendary David Healey, a rough Glaswegian bruiser of the old school, but with a heart of gold. One day he told me of one of his first kick-in-
the-door
assignments as a young reporter. He had to go and
interview
some old duck who had had a bereavement. David, still suffering from the night before, slumped heavily down on the sofa and felt a bit of a crunch. The old duck came back rather distraught because she couldn't find her little dog. And off she popped to have a look round the house. Healey then looked at what he had sat on. Sadly, it was the dog. He popped it in his pocket, let himself out, and dumped it in a rubbish bin.

T
he 1987 election had secured Margaret Thatcher another large majority and she wielded absolute control over her party. Or so she thought. It is a fatal error for successful leaders to start believing their own propaganda. And when you have a 50 per cent approval rating, have routed your opponents in the party, defeated the miners and are faced by a weak and divided Labour Party there is a danger of becoming a cult figure rather than a leader. And if you surround yourself with sycophants who cocoon you in your own political la-la land and you humiliate and ignore your senior ministers it is inevitable that it will all come to a sticky end.

I always think that that overused phrase of David Maxwell Fyfe that ‘the secret weapon of the Conservative Party is loyalty’ is as hopelessly inaccurate as it is laughable. What makes it even more risible is that he coined this phrase two weeks before he was unfairly sacrificed by Macmillan in the Night of the Long Knives.

The secret weapon of the Conservative Party is adaptability. We will borrow or even steal policies, perhaps even dogmas, provided that they achieve the party’s default setting: power. And if any leader, however revered and feted, proves to be an
obstacle to re-election they will be destroyed. The Conservative Party has always been the cannibal of the political jungle. We eat our own and we do it swiftly.

Many commentators cast the poll tax as the beginning of the end of Thatcher. This was only contributory. Her real problems began when her political secretary, Stephen Sherbourne (now Lord Sherbourne), left her side. He was one of the few people who would politely stand up to her and tell her when she was wrong. And she would listen. Her sensible and cerebral adviser, Ferdinand Mount, tried honesty. But it cost him his job.

Stephen would have counselled her against the worst excesses of the poll tax and might just have saved her from her arrogance and hectoring. ‘Never explain, never apologise’ wears a little thin after a while. He might also have saved her from some seriously mad advisers, in particular the odious former Communist machine gunner in the Spanish Civil War, Alfred Sherman.

Determination and grit go a long way in politics. But if it transforms into arrogance, it is lethal. Grim as it is, a party leader has to keep the team on side, listen to the moans of senior ministers, flatter backbenchers and at least pretend to consult the party.

By 1989, Margaret Thatcher and her worshippers believed that she would (as she said to the press) ‘go on and on’. Coupled with attending a Guildhall banquet dressed not unlike Queen Elizabeth I, then, after the birth of a grandchild, the almost royal ‘we have become a grandmother’ utterance struck a sour chord with ministers and the public.

An alternative to the rates had always been high in the public’s mind. It is instructive to consider the origins of the poll
tax (it was actually the community charge, but we stupidly allowed the name to be hijacked). At every public and party meeting there was a strong feeling that the rating system was unfair. Why should a family of five in an identical house to their pensioner neighbour pay exactly the same as her when they used five times more services?

So there was a groundswell for change. The theory was to let the local tax be levied on the individual rather than the household, with exemptions. This was a very good and very popular idea. Sadly, in reality it gave the impression of being administered by the inmates of Bedlam. Pensioners, students and those on benefits would have discounts or total
exemption
. But they would have to pay first and reclaim the money. Totally crackers and a political nightmare.

And another barmy idea was to try it out in Scotland first and, to compound the lunacy, couple it with a property revaluation. So any financial gains were immediately lost. Our sensible theory to make the system fairer now looked punitive and expensive. It was a public relations disaster. And the
punters
didn’t like it one little bit.

Of course, many of the poll tax riots were manipulated by the far left. But when 18 million refused to pay the
community
charge and 100,000 marched on Trafalgar Square, alarm bells should have been ringing in No. 10 that this was time for a compromise. But that was not the Lady’s style. To her, compromise equalled weakness.

In those days we used to talk about the need for consensus politics. The look that you would get from her at the C word (far more offensive than the other one) was as if you had just served a rat sandwich garnished with Arthur Scargill’s blood
as a jus. So, all criticism had to be in coded language. There was nothing wrong with our policies, oh no. It’s just we need to present them more clearly and we must listen. It sounds awfully familiar. Utter bollocks, of course, but it was the best we could get away with.

So, party chairman Ken Baker joined the 1922 executive to troop into No. 10 to tell madam what needed to be done. I’m still not sure what they talked about or even if anyone got a word in edgeways, but there was a clear crossing of wires. The delightful Ken, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, appeared on the steps saying that she was ‘in listening mode’. A day or so later when the Lady was asked in an interview about this she looked rather puzzled: ‘Is that what he said?’ Things began to get worse.

It is worth remembering that although Nigel Lawson was one of the finest and most reforming of Chancellors, his reflationary 1988 Budget stored up a whole raft of economic difficulties. The hike in property prices made and broke the loadsamoney classes. By 1990, inflation was running at 9.7 per cent and interest rates nudging 14 per cent. Worse, the deficit was beginning to soar. With unemployment still high and the country reeling from the poll tax riots, the mood was getting very ugly on the back benches. There was much speculation of a stalking horse. Eventually, we settled for the stalking donkey, a charming old toff called Sir Anthony Meyer. He was never going to win but the idea was to encourage a real candidate later. But the No. 10 rubbish machine was cranked into action.
The Sun
was tipped off that the old boy had been up to naughties involving a bit of S&M with a comely black lady. He and his equally elderly wife Barbadee were ambushed by a hack one Sunday morning after attending church.

Any truth in the rumour that you have been engaging with a lady in bondage sessions, Sir Anthony?’

Without breaking step and still arm-in-arm with Barbadee, he replied – not quite as they were expecting.

‘Oh, you mean Simone? Barbadee knows all about that, dear boy. Good day.’

The now stalking stallion obtained thirty-three votes. A clear victory for Thatcher. But the writing was on the wall. Sadly, I didn’t have the courage to abstain or vote for him. The machine would have destroyed me.

Then something came along that catapulted me into the media: the ambulance dispute. Pay has always been hotly fought over in the public sector and in the NHS in particular. Ambulance care was very different from now and my dear old mate Ken Clarke did not help matters by suggesting that they were ‘professional drivers’. In fact (obviously), they weren’t. Ken was getting muddled with the people who dropped off the old dears to outpatients.

But this ignited a volatile situation. These guys were clearly underpaid and undervalued. Then, by chance, I was invited onto
The Time, The Place
, an ITV programme which was the forerunner to
Kilroy, Vanessa
and now
Jeremy Kyle
. In those days it was hosted by John Stapleton. Needless to say, despite my support for the ambulance men’s cause I was creamed simply because I was a Tory. Two days later I was approached by two trade union leaders, Roger Poole of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) and Bob Abberley of the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE). Would I be an honest broker between them and the
government
to break the deadlock? Of course.

And what a decent bunch of guys, in the old-fashioned trade union sense of not playing party politics but just trying to get the best possible deal for their members. We became good friends.

But it was a white-knuckle ride. Extraordinarily, Clarke, through no fault of his own, had never met any of the union leaders. The Department of Health, through their own depressing incompetence, were swapping round senior
executives
to negotiate. Ministers were left out of the loop.

I was able to sort this. Well, it was hardly political brain surgery.

The ambulance dispute was a massive political disaster. Four and a half million people signed a petition in favour of the ambulance men and according to opinion polls the
majority
of Conservatives supported them too. The strike lasted for months and concluded reasonably amicably in March 1990. I was trying to do a deal for a pay review body, which the Treasury was resisting. To be honest, in hindsight they had good reason to: these bodies were fair but uncertain. The Treasury is obsessed with certainty. Mostly their obsession is misdirected.

For months I had the media camping outside my house. I did my best to give a daily briefing about how it was all going. But my favourite experience was in December 1989. I was invited on a Friday to a very boozy lunch at a Chinese restaurant near where I lived. Negotiations were at a sensitive point. But it was the Friday just before Christmas. Nothing will happen, I thought. Wrong.

It all went a bit mad. No. 10 wanted a chat. The chairman’s office wanted to be updated and so did Clarke’s office. So I am
trying to balance all of this by talking with the health unions. I wanted everyone to be in the loop.

So, what’s the big deal, you might ask. The big deal was that I could only get a signal in the gents’ toilets. And this was before the days of mobiles, just a cordless. So trying to get a deal with the unions, Thatcher, Clarke and Baker had a rather surreal backdrop. Drunks falling around, out of their brains and swearing. Boozers throwing up. Kevin having very noisy sex in the cubicles with Kali from Accounts and, the pièce de résistance, a German oompah band playing in the background. Well, we were in Essex.

In March, the strike was over. No pay review body, but a commitment to paramedics and a promise to treat them as true professionals. Ken Clarke deserves much of the credit for this. He is a tough old warhorse. And he got it about right.

I am very proud of my small part in this, as my son Lawrence is a paramedic. And he reminded me of the dispute when he looked it up on the internet.

As a decent sort, John Stapleton invited me back to
The Time, The Place
. After the credits rolled, John opened
something
like this:

‘Well, a few months ago you howled at Tory MP Jerry Hayes. Now he has helped broker a deal. What would you say to him now?’ he asked, with a smile that expected an orgasmic televisual ovation for me. Needless to say, they howled at me far worse than Gordon Brown under a full moon with a warm Nokia in his hand and an adviser perched precariously on the stairs.

But there was more trouble in store for us. The economy was overheating. I used to come up on the train to London with
a senior Bank of England official called Ben Gunn. This was one of those joyous times when everyone was feeling happy. I had a smile on my face and not a political care in the world.

‘But don’t you get it, Jerry? It will all go tits up. Too much money chasing too few goods. Classic cause of inflation.’

All the other guys in the carriage nodded. They were all bankers.

But nobody in government seemed to get it. It was party time.

Interestingly, Ben had another complaint. Nobody ever accepted his cheques because his was a Bank of England cheque book. They all thought it was a scam. The man who advised government on credit just couldn’t get any himself.

In those days the NHS was even more of a poisoned
chalice
than it is now. In 1990, 83 per cent believed that the Conservatives weren’t the people to trust with it. I’ve
written
earlier about the effect of Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech. We all knew it was the end of the Lady. The question was when.

A few weeks later I was on a speaking engagement with Hezza. He gave me a lift back to the Commons.

‘Why on earth don’t you stand? Have you lost all ambition?’ I asked.

‘Dear boy, this has nothing to do with ambition. It is timing.’ A few days later he threw his hat in the ring.

The Thatcher campaign was a disaster. It reeked of
complacency
. John Moore was ‘running’ it yet spent most of his
time in the States. One day, Michael Forsyth (who has since become a big beast) sidled up to me and casually asked if I was ‘on board’.

‘Not on board the
Titanic
,’ was my reply.

Michael just smiled. There was no way the Lady could possibly be defeated.

Probably the biggest mistake she made was not enlisting the services of Tristan Garel-Jones. He was the über puppet master who made Mandelson and Machiavelli look like gifted amateurs. He offered help. But he was not ‘one of us’ as he was to the left of the party and a pro-European.