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My Private Secretary burst through my office door, abandoning the usual courtesies, but remembering to open it, and panted breathlessly – it was at least two yards from her office to mine – “Minister, the Prime Minister has resigned!”
The gates of Number 10 were visible from the office window, the then lavish lair of the Minister of State for Health in Richmond House, on a sunny 22nd June 1995, the day John Major resigned. Well, the gates were visible if you stood on a chair, stuck your head out the window and squinted north. Junior ministers felt pride swelling in our breasts, greater bragging rights over fellow pipsqueaks, if we were close to No 10, or even the gates.
“Bloody Norma, I mean Nora, turn on the TV”. When the tube warmed up – televisions took a not inconsiderable time to warm up then – we peered at the figure of the Prime Minister, making his “put up or shut up” statement from a dais in the garden of No 10.
“Oh, he’s only resigned as party leader,” said my deflated PS, clearly disappointed that a change of her boss was less imminent than she originally thought. Civil servants love new ministers and look on them much as a potter surveys a lump of malleable, formless clay. By then I had been fired in the kiln for a year and was becoming awkward to mold.
The Prime Minister’s initiative was effective because it came like a bolt from the blue, forced a crisis brewing in the party to a head, and confounded his opponents. During the short election campaign that followed, his opponent John Redwood was on the back foot and John Major was, at least, in the driving seat.
It worked – but only just. The figures still look convincing – 218 to 89 (12 pathetic abstentions), but Sir John had given himself a private threshold of only a few below his actual tally, beyond which he would have considered himself toast – lightly buttered, and perhaps, “Oh, Yes”, with thick cut marmalade …mmmm – but toast nonetheless.
Major went on in office for two more years, then he went down to disaster in 1997 as we all – and I, especially – know. But, governing for Tories, never a party of fantasy protest, is the very purpose of existence and those two years were important. (Self-indulgent apologia, perhaps on another occasion).
The contest in 1995 was a rapid process. A private party dispute was addressed and the public inconvenience over in days. Now the party and the country are being tortured on the slow moving rack created by William Hague’s leadership rule reform, a 48 letter rack that tightens notch by notch as each letter drops through the letter box of Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee. By the time you read this they may be up to 48.
It’s an absurd process. The country thinks my party are poltroons, unable to order our own affairs, and is keen, like my Private Secretary, while Tories wield their knives, axes, or in this case slow motion pens, to leave the room.
We should decide quickly to back or sack the PM, then get on with the job, as best we can, of getting the country out of the mess in which David Cameron thoughtlessly dumped us.
And what, I hear you ask, if Sir Graham receives fewer than 48 letters before Christmas? Well, it’s quite simple. Sir Graham will put the 28 or so he has (latest count) on his mantelpiece alongside his Christmas cards. He will keep them as a ticking time bomb, even after they come down on 12th night, which will continue to destabilise Theresa May’s authority and delight Messrs. Corbyn and McDonnell. Terrific!
Tory executions used to be competent. Harold Macmillan had his fabled “Night of the Long Knives” in July 1962, when seven Cabinet ministers were unceremoniously dumped. Now we have the “Weeks of the Slow Letters”, each eroding a little more whatever authority the Prime Minister has left.
And, it’s all on public display, rather like one of those thermometers outside a church where they’re raising moolah for roof repairs. “Oh, look, someone’s dropped another quid (letter) in the box. The thermometer’s moved up a bit”.
And where are the government whips amid the mayhem? It may be that they are doing their job, delivering red-hot intelligence to the Prime Minister as events unfold, but I “hae ma doots”. There are too many surprised faces on view to make me confident that the fabled well-oiled Tory machinery is turning.
I was in the Whip’s office from 1985 to 1987. One of the unwritten rules was – I hope still is – a pledge of “Omerta” re what went on – at both political and personal levels. Quaintly, it’s a pledge to which I still feel bound. So, no juicy revelations here. Sorry.
But, I may safely observe that Michael Dobb’s wondrous, only slightly, exaggerated figure of lethal Chief Whip, Francis Urquhart in the original “House of Cards”, was well founded on the reality of then Chief Whip, John Wakeham. His depth of knowledge of the ebb and flow of Westminster life in all its forms and determination to shape events in the Prime Minister’s interest made the office a power in the land.
Then, whips quietly told backbenchers what they were going to do. Now, backbenchers occasionally tell their whips what they’re going to do – if the whips are lucky. That this present leadership crisis is clearly out of control is mostly down to a failure of party discipline.
And, is Mrs. May being given the intelligence she needs by her Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS)? In the early Thatcher years 79-83, she was well served by her PPS, Ian Gow, who was indispensable. Ian, assassinated by the IRA in July 1990, was everywhere, her eyes and ears. Nary a day would pass without Ian chatting over Westminster events in her office – even for 10 minutes.
It’s often forgotten that Mrs. Thatcher’s hold on her party was never absolute – even when she was at the height of her powers there were grumbling ‘Wets” to cope with – and Ian was indispensable.
He cared about trivia. I know. In 1982 I was the trivia – a prospective parliamentary candidate in the Glasgow Hillhead by-election, pitted against Roy Jenkins, leader of the surging Social Democrats – and visiting Westminster at my own expense I recall on a “if you show him the glittering prize he may not end up sobbing in a corner” sort of exercise.
Within minutes I was introduced to Ian Gow at a small drinks party in Alastair Goodlad’s (latterly Chief Whip 95-97) Lord North Street home. He questioned, encouraged, flattered and offered a meeting with “the boss” in her office in the Commons, which happened an hour or two later.
There, glass of whisky in hand, the Prime Minister asked a lot of impertinent questions about what was going on in Scotland and asked if I going to win. She then gave me Cecil Parkinson’s (party chairman) private telephone number and told me to use it if there anything I needed. In fact, I did use it one Sunday to great effect, and to Cecil’s intense surprise.
When I left the office I was part of her gang and I had the impression that Ian Gow made everyone feel like that. It was not until she lost touch with her gang – and reality – following the appointment of a series of useless PPS’s that Mrs. Thatcher was eventually toppled in November 1990.
Theresa May has a gang, but it is tiny, isolated and pisses the parliamentary party off – vide Nick Timothy. God knows what her PPS’s – yes she apparently has two – do, or even who they are? No, I’m not going to spoil it by telling you. Try to find them for yourselves and you’ll understand exactly what I mean. Then, search online for Ian Gow.
Confession time. I have been a member of the Conservative Party since 1964. I adhere to its long-term instinct of history – spanning its inception in the 18th century until today. I was turned Tory by a history master in my 3rd year at St, Aloysius College Glasgow, who one morning acted out a debate in the Commons between Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger and a languid, oligarchical Charles James Fox, Whig leader of the opposition. I was left in no doubt whose political creed better represented the broad British national interest, whose side I was on.
Sometimes even lifelong loyalty is stretched, especially in these “it would never have happened in my day” times. Well, it just wouldn’t.
So, come on Theresa, if the letters haven’t bumped the thermometer up to boiling point in the next few days, take the initiative and force the issue. Get your pals (you do have some?) to take the magic number beyond 48 and force the election your assassins say they want but can’t deliver.
There is no ideal outcome, but this running sore is making you and the party look stupid, and reducing whatever little leverage you have left to make Brexit as positive as possible. You have the power to end this agony.
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.