Speaking for Myself (29 page)
The kitchen cupboards had less to offer in the way of equipment than a holiday cottage. In the short term Ros and I could bring things over from Richmond Crescent. I had not even begun to think about what was going to happen to everything there.
Tony spent the rest of the weekend closeted with Jonathan and Alastair, working out his Cabinet appointments. I tried to make sense of how I was going to move the whole caboodle in on Monday. Carol Allan agreed that they would open the windows and fumigate the rooms before we came in, so that was a start. There was no time to organize a moving van, not that we really needed one; all we were taking was our personal possessions, clothes, the kids’ toys, and general bits and pieces, which all went in one of the regular Number 10 vans — what they call a comms wagon, which is used to transport secure telecommunications equipment for the Prime Minister when he’s traveling. With the help of Ros, her mum, and her brother, we managed to accomplish all that on Monday morning. John Holroyd came in with a hammer and helped the kids put some of their posters and pictures on the wall, so it was quite sweet. But Number 11 was not set up for a family; that would take several years.
There was one near disaster. Kathryn and her friend Bella Mostyn-Williams, having decided that her wardrobe was exactly like the one in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
climbed in looking for adventure Narnia-style. An almighty shudder echoed through the building as the whole vast edifice crashed to the ground, with them within. Fortunately neither girl was injured, but if it hadn’t been clear before, it was now: this was no way to furnish a kid’s room.
That Monday evening Bill and Katy Blair came round bearing their usual gift of Chinese takeout. Over the following ten years, they never appeared without it. The next day being Tony’s forty-fourth birthday, we squashed round that terrible table and raised our glasses to him and to the first night in our new home. And, incredibly, it was already beginning to feel like ours. The party had given us a framed poster, and the kids had stuck it up in pride of place beside the sink: “New Labour. Britain just got better.” And it was true — we felt it in the streets, in the smiles of the people, in the air of jauntiness. It was as if a great weight had suddenly been lifted from everyone’s shoulders.
The following morning, a huge birthday cake arrived courtesy of the
Mirror,
and somebody sent an even more enormous bouquet of red roses, about 350 of them, one for every Labour MP.
I didn’t see them delivered, as for me it was business as usual, this time in the Court of Appeal. It was a big case about a European Union measure that protects employees when their companies are bought out. The reporters’ bench was unusually full. When I stood up to open the case, I remarked how gratifying it was to see so much press interest in the technicalities of the Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment Regulations. Some of the reporters were there for the right reasons — it was an important case in terms of industrial relations. But most were political reporters, all wanting to see what I would do. (They lasted about fifteen minutes.)
Little did I know as I stood there discussing the finer points of employment law that a bombshell awaited me when I got back to Downing Street.
At the end of 1996, when the move to Number 10 became a probability rather than a possibility, the accountant had suggested that I undertake an income and expenditure exercise, such as you might do when applying for a mortgage. The results weren’t exactly encouraging. Whereas Tony’s income would go up, mine would go down. I didn’t know exactly how being the Prime Minister’s wife would affect the number of cases I could take, but it would certainly be lower. And with the official duties I’d have to carry out, I knew I’d have less time to devote to my career.
We’d been told that living in Downing Street would be treated as payment in kind and would, therefore, be taxed. Yet we still had a big mortgage to pay on Richmond Crescent, plus the loan I’d taken out for the refurbishment. I didn’t want to give up our home. I had no idea how long Tony would be Prime Minister, so I needed to make sure that we had a home to return to if Labour lost the next election. On the plus side, I knew that MPs and ministers were about to get a 26 percent salary raise, which Parliament had approved a few months earlier and which was due to take effect following the 1997 election. With that increase, I decided, we could probably manage.
Then Gordon threw a wrench in the works.
At the first Cabinet meeting of the new Labour government, the new Chancellor announced that he was not going to take the salary increase, and he put pressure on the others not to accept it either. Tony told me as soon as he got back to the flat. I couldn’t believe it; all my calculations had been based on the increase. This wasn’t an optional perk: Parliament had endorsed it. Ministers had been specifically mentioned: “We believe that additional recognition of the job weight of the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers is long overdue.” As the Leader of the Opposition, William Hague, did take his increase, this meant that Tony was now earning less than Hague.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table at Number 10, putting my head in my hands, and staring at the now completely redundant financial breakdown, as Tony tried to calm me down. But I wouldn’t be calmed down: How dare Gordon do that? What did he know about financial commitments? He was a bachelor living on his own in a flat with a small mortgage. Tony admitted it was a problem, but every problem, he said, has a solution — I just had to find one. He wanted to get on with the business of governing.
Despite my reluctance, it seemed like the obvious solution was to rent out the house in Richmond Crescent to cover the mortgage. But it wasn’t that simple. First, the advice was that this should be done through the Foreign Office. As I would later discover when we needed a new nanny, we could no longer go through the
Northern Echo
or
Lady.
From now on, we could use Civil Service–vetted agencies only. It was a security issue.
“Your problem,” the Foreign Office official explained, “is that the people we deal with don’t want to live in Islington. They want to live in Kensington or Knightsbridge.” Surely, I thought, there might be a junior official who wouldn’t mind slumming it in our neighborhood. The Foreign Office came to have a look.
“If you’re going to rent out this house, it’ll have to be completely redecorated, because it’s not suitable for the sort of families it would be suitable for.” I was entering the world of doublespeak.
Okay, I decided, we’d rent it privately. “Forget it,” said Alastair. When the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont had rented out his house, the tenant had been revealed as some sort of Miss Whiplash — manna from heaven for the tabloids.
“So what do we do?” I asked him. “We can’t afford to go on paying the mortgage. It’s as simple as that.”
“Why don’t you have a word with Michael,” he suggested.
Michael Levy was the Labour Party’s fund-raiser in chief, and also a friend and a successful businessman. If anyone would know what to do, he would.
Michael had been very good to us during the run-up to the election, letting the kids use the swimming pool at his house in north London, just to give them a break from Richmond Crescent.
“Sell,” he said. No other options? “No. Sell.”
We put it on the market, got an offer in fairly quickly, and accepted it. I didn’t want to leave our home, and I worried about losing our footing on the property ladder. After the sale of the house, we had £200,000 left, so I suggested putting the money into another, smaller property. No. As Prime Minister, Tony was not allowed to have any investments, and if we bought a house without living in it, this would be classed as an investment. We were obliged to put the money into a blind trust, with me as the sole beneficiary.
The one bright spot on the housing front was Chequers. When Tony first became Leader of the Opposition, I remember Jill Craigie, Michael Foot’s wife, coming up to me at some do and saying, “I don’t envy you much, but I do envy you Chequers.” As the wife of a Cabinet minister in the last Labour government, she had been there. With that kind of recommendation, I couldn’t wait to see it.
The Friday of our first visit, the auguries did not look good. The curator whom Mrs. Thatcher had chosen to run Chequers had been a career naval officer — bizarrely, Chequers is officially considered a ship and is staffed by naval and air force personnel — and we’d heard that she had no experience with children. Sadly, she had taken over from her predecessor just as Mrs. Thatcher was ousted, and Mrs. Thatcher’s successors, the Majors, hardly ever went there. When they did, they found things rather more regimented than they were used to. Meals had to be at regular times, and the curator believed in staying up until the Majors went to bed, which they found less than relaxing. It didn’t sound to me like the kind of system that would go down too well with our kids, and I wondered how she would cope with having children running round the place, let alone going a bit wild.
John Holroyd did his best to allay my fears. “We very much want you to use Chequers,” he said. “It hasn’t been used recently as much as one would hope, so staff morale has gone down as a result, and I do assure you, they’re all looking forward enormously to your coming. While it’s true that the curator isn’t used to having children around, there is no reason to think they won’t charm her as they are already charming everyone here. Unfortunately,” he continued, “she won’t be able to welcome you herself this weekend, as she’s injured her back.” (In fact, the injury was serious enough that she never returned.)
The moment we arrived, driving up through the Victory Gate, with this historic Tudor pile standing right ahead of us, I couldn’t believe it. We left the children outside kicking a soccer ball, relishing the acres and acres of space, while Linda, the housekeeper, showed us around: all ancient paneling, gorgeous oil paintings, ornate carvings, mullioned windows, and rooms big enough to run races in.
As we went back to the children, Tony began shaking his head. “We can’t possibly bring the kids into this place,” he said. “They’ll wreck it.” From outside we heard the sounds of squabbling and decided they needed to walk off the excess adrenaline. Grass led away from all sides of the house, apart from the front, into woodland — wonderful and unsettling at the same time. By now the kids were really playing up, and Tony began to raise his voice, shouting at them to “just behave!” Suddenly he looked round and saw that we were being followed by the protection officers. And he went stiff with frustration and bewilderment.
“I don’t believe it,” he said through clenched teeth. “I can’t even yell at my own kids, because the police will hear.” Never again would Tony be able to walk anywhere without being followed, albeit at a discreet distance.
By the end of the weekend, it was obvious to us that Chequers was a good place to be. There was an indoor swimming pool. Did we want to use it? Under Mrs. Thatcher it had been drained because she didn’t swim. The Majors had used it, and in fact Norma had learned to swim there, but because they hardly ever went, the heating had been turned off. Our answer was a resounding yes.
The pool had been presented to Chequers by Walter Annenberg, the American Ambassador to Britain, in memory of Richard Nixon’s visit in October 1970. It’s built like an orangery, with a glass roof and glass sides that open completely in the summer. But because it’s basically an indoor pool, you can swim there all year round. As far as the kids were concerned, it was complete heaven.
For ten years Chequers became our refuge. Although it might look like a stately home, inside the atmosphere is far more comfortable and domesticated than the outside view suggests. We would all breathe a huge sigh of relief when, on a Friday evening, the Jaguar turned through the gate into the east courtyard. Linda or Ann, her successor, would come out to greet us, and the children would run in, throw off their coats, and rush off to their bedrooms, or to see the rabbits, or to search the kitchen for treats they could scrounge.
Chequers was the one place where Tony could be just a dad and kick a ball round with his children like any other father. It was an illusion, of course. As we were quickly learning, police and security people were always round, but at least at Chequers, we didn’t see them. At least there, we had the space to lead a normal life.
Special Relationship
T
he first official visitors we hosted at Downing Street were, appropriately enough, the Clintons. It was barely a month after Tony took office, and I remember everyone being very excited, because everyone wanted to meet Bill: the kids, the nanny, my sister, and my mother. For the benefit of the press, we greeted the most powerful political couple in the world outside on the front steps. I had a special outfit made by Ronit Zilkha: “nonthreatening” was the brief from the office. Heaven forbid that I should look like a career woman. The office was terrified that I might turn into Hillary Clinton.
The Downing Street administration also had concerns about Hillary, albeit on a more pragmatic level. She would need somewhere to “park” herself, they said. The Number 11 downstairs toilet was deemed unsuitable for the wife of the American President. Only the bathroom off Ros’s room met the standard, the former Chancellor’s guest room being the sole part of the flat that had been decorated in the past ten years.
At least by the time Hillary took a look round, Number 11 had improved noticeably in terms of the jazz-club haze. When I recounted to her my run-ins with Downing Street over the most modest improvements (such as built-in wardrobes for the kids and a new kitchen), she was amazed. In America, she told me, the incoming President’s wife had the choice of keeping the White House the way it was or redecorating. There was a charitable fund entirely devoted to its refurbishment, for which the First Lady would actively seek donations — and get them. When I suggested to the Cabinet secretary that we might do something similar to refurbish the state rooms in Downing Street or Chequers and save the taxpayers money, the answer was no.