Boris’ dinner party disaster: why is it so hard to get an RSVP from past Prime Ministers?

“We regret that, owing to a previous engagement, we are unable to attend.” The trustees of Chequers were treated to the standard brush off by four of the six surviving men and women who have had the run of the Prime Minister’s official country residence. John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron all have something else to do, leaving just Theresa May and the current tenant, Boris Johnson, to grace the gala dinner this weekend to celebrate the centenary of Prime Ministerial retreat in Buckinghamshire.

The trustees made some elementary errors organising the function. The most basic is never to set the date and announce your plans until you have checked privately that the VIP guests you want will attend. Secondly, some background research on relations between the key invitees is helpful. If some are known to go to great lengths to avoid others, it is not a good idea to put them on the same list. Unless, tip three, you can find some overriding attraction which all of them would not wish to be seen to have snubbed. 

The no-shows at Chequers no doubt have valid reasons for being unable to attend. But their failure to get together has more behind it than a series of unfortunate diary clashes. As the mood of the times becomes angrier and more divided, the idea of a cosy establishment club of living Prime Ministers or indeed of living US Presidents is a delusion, if it was ever real. Cancel culture rules even between ex-Premiers. 

The Prime Ministers do not have anything against celebrating Chequers itself. All of them have praised the perk and used the mansion extensively “as a place of peace and recreation” as its donors intended. It has ten bedrooms, a swimming pool, a tennis court (resurfaced during Blair’s tenure) and rolling Chiltern acres. Thatcher admitted losing access was one of the worst consequences of leaving office. 

Thatcher kept Chequers private. Cameras were not invited into its wood-panelled Elizabethan halls. If she wanted to speak to the public, she was often made herself available for comment when leaving Sunday Service at what she called “Chequers Church”, a public building a few miles from the estate.

Tony Blair opened up access to the building. Finding himself under siege when Labour accepted a million-pound donation from Formula One shortly after he was elected, he had to obtain permission from the Chequers trustees to be interviewed there for a BBC Sunday morning show. It was a memorable encounter for two reasons.

 An over-enthusiastic make-up job painting him with a bright yellow flesh and pink cheeks left the Prime Minister looking like a Pinocchio marionette. He also uttered one of his most famous soundbites: “I think that most people who have dealt with me think that I am a pretty straight sort of guy.”

The Blairs hosted both Presidents Clinton and George W Bush at Chequers and used it extensively for parties and other entertainment. An invitation was as a hot ticket, intended to flatter the recipient. I have done pieces to camera overlooking Chequers walls many times. I’ve only been invited inside once, for lunch, along with other political editors from the main TV news political editors, when Alastair Campbell was trying to foment discord between us and our newspaper colleagues. 

The Blairs set the pattern for the modern usage of the estate. John Major developed the routine of taking visiting dignitaries to the nearby pub. A favourite anecdote of his tells how the landlord refused to believe it was the Russian president Boris Yeltsin beating on the door when they turned up before opening time. President Xi joked that he’d like to buy the pub. On another occasion, David Cameron forgot to take his young daughter Nancy home with him after a relaxing family and friends lunch at the Plough.

At a loss what do with Donald Trump, Theresa May gave him the full Chequers treatment. She was duly thanked with awkward comments and inappropriate body language from the President.

As Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury went one better than his Victorian peers. He didn’t only have a country estate like them, he had a private train at a London terminus to take him to and from Hatfield. (Rail is still the best way to get that part of Hertfordshire). 

By 1921, when Arthur Lee and his American heiress wife donated Chequers to “England”, Prime Ministers were less likely to be so well-heeled. The first political beneficiary, David Lloyd George saw to it that the Lees were elevated to the peerage as Lord and Lady Fareham, although he subsequently fell out with them.

Chequers allows British Prime Ministers to live above their means. They have to pay for the food and drink consumed, but the taxpayer now contributes £916,000 a year to the trust for its upkeep, and it is staffed by military personnel. 

In the United States, the Chequers equivalent, Camp David, is classified as a US Navy ship. Guests are greeted with “Welcome Aboard”, even though it is a series of log cabins in the Maryland forest. It has been the site of some critical political meetings but is used more occasionally by Presidents for recreation. 

Many of them have had second homes of their own, including Hyannisport for JFK, the “Western Whitehouse” for Nixon, Kennebunkport, Maine for Bush Senior, and Prairie Chapel Ranch, Texas for Bush junior. Trump preferred to hang out at one of the golf resorts branded with his name or, better still, Mar-e-Lago, the private club in Florida where he is now based. 

In spite of their political antipathy, the Bushes and the Clintons struck up a friendship once out of power. George H W Bush and Bill Clinton made joint rescue appeals after the 2004 Tsunami. The Democratic ex-Presidents Clinton and Obama attended Bush’s funeral along with his son George W, as was expected. 

Extraordinarily, Trump who had abused all of them was actively dis-invited, although he had already said he wouldn’t go. This month three of the four ex-Presidents took part in the official 20th-anniversary commemorations of 9/11 led by President Biden: Clinton and Obama at Ground Zero and Bush in Pennsylvania where United 93 came down. Trump snubbed his invitation, only to try to make it all about him by turning up at a New York City fire station prompting claims from his fans that he is “the People’s President”.

Antipathies between our Prime Ministers are less open. The last time Theresa May and Boris Johnson were at Chequers together was for the Cabinet meeting where he endorsed her EU negotiating paper, only to resile from it days later and speed her political downfall. May is still staunchly attending the Chequers celebration as Prime Minister Johnson’s guest.

John Major and Tony Blair campaigned together before the Brexit vote, warning presciently of its danger to the Northern Irish peace process. But there was no joint appearance by the Prime Ministers before either the 2016 EU referendum or the 2014 Scottish Independence vote, even though they were all strongly on the same side of both questions. It turns out that Gordon Brown is very reluctant to be seen with his former friend and colleague, Tony Blair. 

A new documentary series, diplomatically entitled Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution, is running soon on the BBC. It is going out six months late and re-edited because Brown flatly refused to take part, despite repeated invitations, until the very last moment after the team had reluctantly been forced to finish the project without him. Now, they had to film Brown and rewrite their programmes. Brown also displayed his manipulative skills by phoning a prominent Labour figure on the day they were about to record their interview for Blair & Brown to complain that he’d heard they had said very bad things about him.

In 2013, all available Prime Ministers attended the funerals of Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela independently of each other. Death was a unifier again in 2019 when the four prime ministers who he had served – May, Cameron, Brown and Blair – spoke at the memorial service for the senior civil servant Jeremy Heywood. 

Johnson became Prime Minister a month later. All six extant premiers, including John Major, was last witnessed together at the Cenotaph commemoration in November that year. Death was also a unifier of Prime Ministers. Both were solemn occasions that required little interaction between the Prime Ministers. 

I can find only three occasions since 1985 when all available Prime Ministers have socialised with each other – all well before the ascendance of the Marmite Brexiteer Boris Johnson. 

They gathered in 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee when Thatcher was too frail to attend. In 2002, Blair hosted Major, Thatcher, Heath and Callaghan for her Golden Jubilee. And in 1985, when Thatcher assembled all of the then six living Prime Ministers – Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath (Thatcher’s Gordon Brown), Callaghan and herself – to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Number Ten Downing Street. 

Number Ten is a Prime Ministerial building like Chequers. But there was a key difference: her Majesty herself was the guest of honour in 1985. As she quipped herself that evening, she receives surprisingly few invitations out because of the shame of the would-be hosts if it becomes known that they’ve been turned down. 

For all that, if they wanted a full house of Prime Ministers to fall in line at Chequers the trustees should have got Her Majesty to come along this weekend.