EDWINA UNLEASHED

UTTERLY shameless yet compulsively readable, the latest collection of Edwina Currie’s political diaries have left Westminster quivering. Continuing our exclusive serialisation, she rages as her former lover John Major’s government becomes mired in sleaze,

Tower House (Edwina’s home in her South Derbyshire constituency), Sunday, January 30, 1994, 9.25am

WHAT is it with Tory politicians? In the last few weeks, we’ve had five mistresses — Tim Yeo (two); Gary Waller (two); Malcolm Caithness (one). Plus four illegitimate children — Yeo (two), Waller (two). And three resignations (Yeo, Caithness — and Alan Duncan, over a row about purchasing a ‘ council house’ from Westminster Council). Oh, and David Ashby was caught sharing a bed with his (male) psychiatrist when on holiday in France and declared it was just to save money. His nutty Italian wife Silvana has thrown him out.

I don’t know what’s funnier, the idea of David having a cuddle with another bloke, or his furious denials that anything untoward happened.

What a shower! I couldn’t have made that lot up. It’s blown John Major’s ‘ Back to Basics’ campaign out of the water, and with it the PM’s future, I’m afraid. This was supposed to be his great unifying theme, encompassing law and order, education, and sound finance. It was promptly hijacked by the Right-wingers — John Redwood, Peter Lilley, Michael Portillo — to mean ‘back to the old morality’. Not that Portillo’s on safe ground, if the rumours are true.

So we grind the faces of the poor into the dust and label all single mothers slags and harlots, more or less.

House of Commons, Tuesday, February 8, 8.10pm

MY GOD, am I feeling depressed. Yesterday afternoon, Stephen Milligan, the MP for Eastleigh, whom I’ve known since we were at Oxford together, was found dead in his flat in Hammersmith. He may have been there all weekend.

He was semi-naked, wearing only women’s tights and a suspender belt, with a plastic binbag over his head, tied with a flex which was wrapped around his body and hands.

Apparently, he had an orange stuffed in his mouth.

I feel so desperately sorry for him. He was a hard-working, unassuming and thoroughly nice man; much brighter than the average here, and destined to be a minister soon.

There was never any suggestion of anything odd — the only pointers were a high whinny of a laugh, as if he were embarrassed rather than amused, and the fact that at 45 he’d never married (though he’d had plenty of girlfriends).

So the possibility is that he sought sexual pleasure by nearly killing himself through oxygen starvation.

A sex game that went horribly wrong, perhaps. What a waste.

Did he ever find joy in ordinary sex? If not, he can’t for one day of his life have been a happy person.

Nothing at all seems to be going right for the Government at the moment. It seems to have dawned on no one that the bloody ‘Back to Basics’ campaign is to blame, for it outlawed the one protective factor the Tory Party’s always relied on — hypocrisy.

Hertfordshire Moat House Hotel, Friday, February 18, 11.45pm

I’M HOLDING my breath at the moment and feel in a complete daze. My new book, A Parliamentary Affair, went straight to number one in the Sunday Times fiction list, unheard of for a first novel. The moment the news was announced, Hodder & Stoughton came winging back with an offer for two more novels. I didn’t like the tone of their fax: without seeing any synopsis, they want no more than 150,000 words, ‘in view of all the trouble with the last one’.

What trouble? It went straight to number one, damn it.

House of Commons, Wednesday, March 16, 7.50pm

I’VE BEEN assuming that Ray [Currie’s husband] will be upset at what I have to tell him in due course about the state of our marriage — but maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe he’ll be pleased, or at least relieved. That, I realised with a jolt, would upset me.

How terrible it would be if, after all these years, we both discovered we’ve been living a lie — that all the words of endearment (which I’ve stopped using) turned out to be empty. What a failure I should feel.

Up till now, I’ve regarded myself as quite a successful wife. Supposing that wasn’t so? Heavens, it would be like a scene in a novel.

Ray and I went for a meal tonight, but for most of it he clearly wished he was somewhere else.

On our return, he stolidly settled in front of the TV and then came to bed, his back turned the whole time.

Once, I’d have been cursing and tearful. Now, I’m simply astonished, and rueful.

While I’ve been typing this, my agent Lisa has phoned to say a £150,000 contract for the next novel has been agreed. Whoopee.

I feel a bit like a weary general who’s been fighting battles simultaneously on all fronts; then at the end of a long day, he sees his standards, tattered and bloody, being raised all over the battlefield, the enemy is surrendering and there’s the sound of distant cheering.

Victoria [her London flat], Thursday, March 31, 2.40pm

AT PRIME Minister’s Questions, Tony Marlow [Tory MP] demanded that the PM resign — and there were glum looks of agreement all round.

They’ve all had enough of the PM’s incompetence and vacillation.

It would be better if he went quickly now.

Meanwhile, I’m preparing to fly to France tomorrow to join Ray, who went out yesterday with the car.

But I really don’t want to go — much of the time I’m devising excuses for sleeping in a different bed, or pushing him away, or lying still in the hope he’ll go to sleep.

House of Commons, Wednesday, April 13, 11.15pm

THE PM has no friends left. So I asked if I could go in and see him alone, and have just done so.

He was nice: gentle, touched my hair and commented that it was a different colour. His face was drawn and grey — the bouncy bonhomie has all gone. Replaced, to my horror and disgust, by a kind of paranoia.

If he really believes the things he said to me, then he’s more stupid, more foolish, than ever I knew him to be years ago.

It was the same, uncannily, with Margaret in her last months.

It’s as if there’s something in the water at No. 10 — a bromide, inimical to life, destroying all the natural human qualities that made him so special.

We were in his room at the back of the Speaker’s Chair: large, featureless, dull. This is a man who fails to impose his personality on the rooms he inhabits — or maybe he has no personality.

I used to believe he had deeply buried secret passions, but now I don’t think he has any.

PM: ‘If there’s a leadership contest, I will fight. [ Michael] Heseltine would split the Party.’

EC: ‘The Party’s already split. If you fight you’ll lose — you’ll be humiliated. Nobody’s telling you the truth. What matters to me is to ensure you come out of it with your reputation intact. You’ll be blamed for the poor results of the forthcoming [local] elections — they’re looking for a scapegoat and it’ll be you.’

PM: ‘So many lies have been told about me in the last two years — lies, innuendo, fabrication ... Murdoch . . . the press have been poisonous — no one should have to put up with all that . . .’

(He was trying to be assertive and failing completely — sounded petulant, peevish, foolish instead, like an old man losing his grip.)

EC: ‘You mustn’t fight. Instead, if you do the brave thing and resign immediately after the elections — take responsibility, Japanese- style — everyone will heap praises on your head.’

PM: ‘That would be walking away without a fight. I can’t do that.’

EC: ‘They’ll cut your legs off and make stumps and you’ll crawl away bleeding. Don’t do it.’

PM: ‘I’d leave completely — not go to the Lords, not go to Europe, not do anything else in politics ever again.’

I’m left with the impression that he plans to force an early leadership contest in the summer on a ‘back me or sack me’ ticket. He’s convincing himself he’ll win.

Victoria, Sunday, May 8, 11.15pm

THE local election results were ghastly. We lost council after council — over 400 seats in all.

Major wittered on at No. 10 about how anyone who wanted to stand against him in a leadership contest would find he’d taken on the PM himself. He didn’t actually say: ‘I fight on, I fight to win’ — but came

close. Stupid. It’s to be hoped that the men in white coats get to him before the rest of us do.

Tower House, Sunday, May 15, 8.50pm

[LABOUR leader] John Smith’s death has left us all stunned — he was one of the good guys. If Labour have any sense, they’ll choose Tony Blair. He could win the next election by a landslide.

It makes our leadership problem even more of a muddle. We can’t, now, seek to depose John in June, however awful the Euro results.

On the train to Liverpool, Friday, June 17, 5pm

THE size of my defeat in South Bedfordshire [Euro election] — more than 30,000 — was a bitter blow.

It’s left me feeling punch-drunk. Brussels would have solved a lot of problems — plenty of money, a good lifestyle, new friends, a new role in life, a lover or two.

Lots of notes of commiseration came in, but nothing from John. Nothing at all. And there I was in the tea room on Tuesday, with the PM at the table opposite, and he didn’t even trouble to come over and offer some sympathy.

Tower House, Saturday, July 2, 9.15pm

YESTERDAY was my wedding anniversary. Ray kept cooing ‘22 years, Boot!’ [His pet name for her, short for ‘Bootiful’]

We decided to go out for a meal and I insisted on somewhere new — the Full Moon.

So typically Derby — just cream walls and brown paint. There was a water feature next to our table and we asked if it could be turned on.

The waiter obliged, then after a couple of minutes, presumably having shown us that it worked, it was switched off again.

Les Tuileries [Edwina’s house in France], Monday, August 1, noon

GILL Shephard went to Education in the reshuffle — and I felt a twang. That job I should have liked, and the timing would have been nice.

My resolve not to get upset cracked a little, for now my political career is virtually at an end. On Friday night, as Ray slouched in front of the TV (yet another athletics competition), he said: good week?’ ‘No,’ said I, bluntly. ‘Oh?’ said Ray with a puzzled air. ‘ The reshuffle, and the new Parliament,’ I answer.

‘But I thought you’d given up hope of that?’ he asked, seeming puzzled. ‘I had, but it still hurts.’ Silence. What he should have done, of course, was get up and give me a cuddle. No chance. ‘Oh,’ he said, returning to the TV. I fled.

,

‘Had a

What do you do with a man who can only say ‘Oh’? I know now why women run into the kitchen and grab the frying pan and hit them over the head.

Tower House, Thursday, September 8, 10.15pm

I’VE just finished Andrew Davies’s novel, B. Monkey. The ending, when a character says ‘Where does it go, when it’s gone?’ suddenly overwhelmed me, and I had to put my head down on the kitchen table and weep. I feel so very sad about Ray. All our love — where did it go? It’s as if we woke up one morning to find it had stolen away quietly in the night: from then on, having him touch me, or make love, just felt wrong, as if I was doing it with a stranger, or even with a taboo person, such as my father.

Deb [her elder daughter] was funny. ‘ Will you have a boy-

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friend?’ she asked in the car, when I told her I thought the marriage was coming to an end.

‘Why do you ask?’ I said. ‘Well, won’t you miss the sex?’

I smiled ruefully. ‘Ah, young lady, I shan’t tell you the gruesome details, but I miss the sex now.’

QE2 — Day 1, Thursday, September 29, 10.35pm

I’VE AGREED to give two 45-minute talks, each way, on the QE2 — for which we get free first-class accommodation, meals and drink. But, oh God, it’s awful — just awful.

First, if this is a first-class, five-star hotel, it isn’t a very good one.

The cabin isn’t clean. The furnishings are drab and — unbelievably! — stained. Coffee? Blood? Who knows? Fingermarks on the coffee-table glass top. Glass shelves dusty.

No laundry bags. No flowers or fruit. No bathrobes. No kettle.

The dining room’s posh, but the food ordinary — my grilled chicken was dry and I didn’t finish it. I thought we might find ourselves on the captain’s table, but we have a table allocated to ourselves, so I’m obliged to make conversation with Ray. Like being in a straitjacket. Tonight, I made it to the Irish coffee, then fled. Oh, heavens. I think I’ll get drunk.

QE2, Thursday, October 6, 11.10pm

ON THE outgoing journey, I talked to Ray about the state of our marriage on the last afternoon, although my nerve nearly failed me. While it was a relief that he didn’t scream and shout, it was also a tragedy.

It would have been better if he’d got upset. But he didn’t — or if he did, he hid it pretty well.

He had no idea I was unhappy, he said; he was shocked. He seemed quite surprised that a wife should want her husband to be genuinely interested in what was going on in her head. I pointed out he hasn’t the foggiest idea what interests me, or what takes my time and attention — the novels, the French house, the election, even doing my accounts. How nice it would be if my qualified accountant husband, seeing me struggle, had said, ‘Leave those accounts — I’d be happy to do them for you.’

At this, Ray looked astonished. He had no response to my point that since we don’t talk and don’t share anything, we don’t have a marriage.

I asked if he had noticed anything wrong, and he answered, well, yes. He hoped it would right itself on the voyage.

At which point, I swear, he demonstrated everything that’s driven me crackers for years, and just gave in.

Not a word of reproach. Not a plea. Not a single ‘I love you — please stay.’

And that was it, all over in 20 minutes. A quarter-century disappears, just like that. Of course, it’s partly my fault. For a long time, it suited me to be allowed to go my own way and not be interfered with by my husband. His tolerance and easygoing manner, his casual acceptance of everything I did, was perfect.

But he needed to be warmer and more supportive. So when I got to Westminster and found men who scored more highly on both counts, I was off.

It would have been much easier to have made it to the Cabinet had my partner in life been as ambitious as me, for me; if he’d enjoyed the company of politically active people; if he’d been able to make contacts and provide a backdrop of solid networked support when it was needed.

But none of that ever happened. And then came the financial success of the novel, which makes it possible to get away.

Tower House, Sunday, October 16, 10am

TRYING something quite new: I’m in bed in the spare room. Slept like a log — and without any guilty feelings either.