The Queen’s Press Secretary said Diana was a basket case obsessed with revenge on Charles
John Major’s secret ‘breakdown’ how Blair nearly made MP minister by mistake day Hezza said Maggie was ‘barking mad’. The jaw-droppingly indiscreet diaries of Westminster’s ultimate insider
THE ultimate political insider, Lord Donoughue has been at Westminster’s heart for more than 40 years, as a senior adviser at No 10 to Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan before being appointed to Tony Blair’s government as a minister for agriculture. In our second extract from his gossipy, mischievous diaries of the early Blair years, he turns his beady eye on the Royals, sanctimonious Hampstead liberals — and his fellow politicians.
JANUARY 1997
WENT to Buckingham Palace for the farewell party of Charles Anson, the Queen’s Press Secretary. Prince Andrew was present looking even fatter than Fergie.
FEBRUARY
I ASKED Melvyn Bragg for his order of priorities for jobs under us if we win. He said BBC first and Arts Council second.
JOINED at lunch in the Lords dining-room by [former SDP leader] David Owen. He says he will stay crossbench, but would move to Labour ‘if Blair is in trouble’.
We chatted about the old Social Democratic Party. He said he could never have supported their move to merge with the Liberals ‘both because it wasn’t right and because I would have lost my seat in Plymouth, as there are no Liberals there’.
Also said that his former Labour colleagues Roy Jenkins, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams don’t talk to him because he rightly didn’t join them going to the Lib Dems and they ostentatiously walked out of the Chamber when he was introduced as a peer: ‘Didn’t bother me, but pretty petty, I think.’
WE GAVE a dinner party in the Barry Room in the Lords, sitting Raine Spencer (now Countess de Chambrun or something) next to my friend the pop singer Adam Faith. They got on like a house on fire. He is terrific fun and gently stroked her back throughout. She, in return, virtually sat on his lap. Beneath the glitter is a seriously effective operator.
LUNCH with Sue Robertson from the London Arts Board. Discussed giving more support to Irish arts in London. This is my revenge on the Politically Correct Claptrappers at the Arts Council who discuss multicultural minority arts only in terms of black and Asian. In fact, the Irish are our biggest minority — though white, so the claptrappers cannot bear to give them any support.
MARCH
DINNER, intriguingly, was at the grand Kensington home of Conrad Black, the Canadian proprietor of the Telegraph. Looking around the group of rampant Tories there, I couldn’t see why I’d been invited.
But I have always been interested in and tolerant of a wide range of different people; to see how those with privilege enjoy — and sometimes abuse — it.
I’m least comfortable with the high-minded, sanctimonious, morally superior, progressive liberal breed, often found in Hampstead and Islington and the older universities, usually reading the Guardian, and infecting the newer Lib Dems and the academic ranks of my Labour party.
I find their self-righteous tone difficult to bear and that is why I dread the proposed deal with the Lib Dems contemplated by Blair.
The coalition of the self-righteous, which that would involve, daunts me. It is probably the only thing that could provoke my departure to the crossbenches. Two months before the General Election:
THE Tories look glum — and I noticed when I went into the government whips office that they had a blackboard with a sweepstake on the result: almost everyone was betting on a Labour victory, often of over 100 [seats].
IN THE Guardian, [columnist] Hugo Young attacked me for having voted with the Government on the Criminal Justice Bill. Said I was ‘once of repute’, but no longer.
Typical high-minded Hampstead crap. Must remember that Labour has always had an excess of the sanctimonious tendency which, along with envy, is one of our least attractive characteristics.
I always imagine that Hampstead is full of nightly judgmental dinner parties devoted entirely to selfrighteous disapproval of everyone else except themselves.
All others, in their view, fall short of the lofty moral standards, which the sanctimonious, having never had responsibility, are able to maintain because they’ve never been tested.
Like Hugo Young, they also usually have private incomes to bolster life on the high moral ground.
APRIL
THE long election drag nearly over. Major actually has fought a strong and brave campaign, often seeming almost alone. He is a bigger political figure than I had allowed. But not big enough as a prime minister.
He is one of those middling, wellmeaning, wanting-to-be-nice people who are fatal as leaders because they have no decisiveness, no ruthlessness and no real leadership qualities (as Thatcher did have).
The German military expert Clausewitz said that when you had that kind among your Army generals, you must take them out and shoot them straight away.
MAY
Election day:
TOOK a taxi to the Festival Hall beside the Thames, where the great party celebration was in full swing.
I slept for an hour and then went to the ITN studio, where they interviewed me. I met Ken Livingstone there — he was already beginning to earn a rich living being the Left-winger the media could rely on to attack the new Labour government.
AT KEMPTON racecourse. I was preparing to watch a horse run when my portable rang. It was Sarah [my wife] warning me that Downing Street was on the phone.
I quickly moved away from the racehorse parade ring to sit in my car in the car park, so that the new Prime Minister wouldn’t phone and hear the loudspeakers giving the names of the runners in the next race and so guess how I was wasting my time at the races at this great and serious moment in the nation’s history.
The switchboard rang me, but then said he wasn’t ready. So I sat in the car park for nearly two hours, until the racing was over. Then Blair came through and said: ‘I want you to go to Agriculture.’
My heart sank. I knew quite a bit about most policy areas, but agriculture is the one I know least about. It is also bottom of the Whitehall pile in departmental seniority. All my years of mastering the arts and sports and broadcasting fields were wasted. So I drove home feeling very down.
FIRST proper day as a minister. I am to be called Minister for Farming and the Food Industry. That accurately describes the areas of life of which I am seriously ignorant.
The PLP [Parliamentary Labour party] was an incredible gathering. Atmosphere electric. All the excited new MPs congratulating one another. John Prescott looked happier than he’d ever done before, though some of his sentences were still incomprehensible.
Blair made a dramatic entrance from off-stage. He pulled no punches. Told the MPs they were there only because of the Labour Party and so they’d better toe the line. He obviously means to run things dictatorially.
Going home, my lady driver said she’d heard from the No 10 drivers that John Major had a nervous breakdown on Black Wednesday. All day vomiting in the lavatory.
She drove [former Health Secretary] Stephen Dorrell from studio to studio to deal with the media because the PM was unfit to talk.
MY OFFICE at the Ministry of Agriculture is not very impressive: narrow and poky, with dreary modern furniture, shabby doors and a big table filling most of the centre. Certainly no trappings of power here. It’s like shopping at Tesco after a lifetime at Harrods. I TOOK [Economic Secretary] Helen Liddell to lunch at the Lords. Collected her from the Treasury where her office is four times as big as mine with an imposing desk. Next door she has an ante-room, which had been tarted up by her predecessor, Anthony Nelson, like a brothel boudoir.
At 6.30pm I walked to Downing Street for the No 10 eve-of-Queen’sspeech party for junior ministers.
Tony Blair walked upstairs with me. He apologised for what he called ‘my cock-up’ — he’d offered my job first to Brian Donohoe. He said he asked for B. Donoughue and forgot about Brian. He clearly doesn’t know Labour MPs very well, as Harold Wilson always did.
I addressed him as Prime Minister, ignoring his trendy appeal that ministers ‘call me Tony’. I said: ‘I’ve used the formal approach too long and too often to adjust now.’
WENT with Sarah to Derry Irvine’s Opening of Parliament party in his Lord Chancellor’s grand apartment. I would settle for one of his several bathrooms in place of my dingy office.
DRIVER Maggie arrived to collect me and take me to London. Not as comfortable as my dear old Toyota Supra: a small clapped-out Vauxhall, no air conditioning and I cannot listen to classical music. These are the ‘chauffered ministerial limousines’ the journalists bleat about. Still, mustn’t complain. EARLY to weekly team meeting in farming minister Jeff Rooker’s room. He has cleverly been exploring the other MAFF [Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food] buildings and found some desirable ones in Smith Square — been hidden from us because excellent and now occupied in great comfort by officials. Real Yes Minister stuff.
Jeff, inexperienced, asked the officials to explore this possible move. I told him this simply alerted them to block the move. Should have agreed it among us ministers first and then instructed them to execute it.
So, after many years, the officials have managed to manoeuvre the ministers into miserable small rooms and to grab all the best rooms for themselves! Unstitching this will be straight Sir Humphrey/ Jim Hacker stuff. My money must be on them defeating us.
Felt pleased to have survived my first Questions and several Tory peers congratulated me. Jim Callaghan was more perceptive. He passed me a note saying: ‘Never has such a thin veneer of knowledge been deployed with such panache and conviction!’
JEFF ROOKER told me yesterday he had a private meeting with [Fisheries minister] Elliot Morley to discuss the badger problem.
Two hours later, Rooker’s Private Secretary produced eight officials to hold an unscheduled meeting with
him telling him why what he and Elliot had privately agreed was wrong.
He is deep into Sir Humphrey country. But these are not as clever as Humphrey and we can outwit them sometimes. Not too often, though.
JUNE
MEETING with David Naish, President of the National Farmers Union. He wants more compensation for the beef farmers hit by BSE and also for the rise in sterling (they are silent when it goes down).
Some farmers get more than £1million a year in compensation (the biggest is embarrassingly Labour’s ally the Co-op, with over £2 million). Yet always want more. BEFORE lunch I gave the prize for the winning national sausage of the year at the Harrogate Food Exhibition. At lunch I was photographed eating the winning sample — and by late afternoon was feeling queasy and burping impressively.
But that is the price ministers pay. I dare not turn down the offer of any British meat or they will accuse me of betrayal.
HOME to change for my Buckingham Palace audience to shake hands with the Queen. There were a couple of dozen other ministers, including the clown Tony Banks, trying to appear to disapprove of it all but unable to hide how much he enjoyed it.
I waited at the back of the queue. This meant I had longer with HM, since there was no one else waiting to come forward. We discussed racing and next Saturday’s Derby, not knowing who could beat the favourite.
Then she told me how pleased she was with a present ‘from Arnold’ [Weinstock — former boss of GEC]: a TV set on which she can watch racing from France.
She thought the French Derby winner looked very good.
Also discussed the Irish election; she said [John] Bruton was an ‘above average Irish PM’, clearly implying the average was pretty low.
DASHED home to change for a great ball at Claridge’s. Dazzling Joan Collins was there, looking remarkable for her uncertain age.
Drove home in the early hours. In the car, remembered I had promised to go and sit with Princess Margaret, who doesn’t like being abandoned yet does little to encourage her companions. I forgot.
DINNER with Labour peer and old friend Bob Gavron, who is on the board of the Guardian. I told him I still found the self-righteous sanctimoniousness of the Guardian insufferable. He agreed.
JULY
GORDON BROWN’S first Budget day. Jack [Cunningham, Agriculture minister] told us that last night the Chancellor has sent him a letter warning him of the Budget references to our department.
In a large envelope saying ‘From the Chancellor Only for the Minister’, and within that another sealed confidential letter. Both had been opened by an official.
Jack has asked the establishment officer to look into it. I told him to get in security. Somebody could sell that information to a tabloid for thousands.
Jack said it’s because the officials cannot bear not to control and know every single thing about the minister. This is why I now write to Jack separately and put it directly into his pocket.
I REALISE one of the unsatisfactory aspects of being a minister at Agriculture is that one, in fact, has few discretionary decisions. If it’s financial, then 80 per cent is decided in Brussels and we merely execute, risking legal action if we don’t.
Dashed home and changed, then off to a great gala for Covent Garden Opera. Dazzling turnout. What was wrong was that they were nearly all Tories — yesterday’s men — and they occupied the best seats.
Chris Smith, the new Arts Secretary, was seated at the far end, while his Tory shadow, young Francis Maude, was in the centre. That will cost Covent Garden several millions of grants.
In front of me sat three people who never spoke to one another: Margaret Thatcher, William Hague and his fiancee. The body language of each was uncomfortable, not to say hostile.
Afterwards, Michael Heseltine invited us to the Ivy restaurant for dinner with [wife] Anne and [former Channel 4 boss] Jeremy Isaacs and his wife.
Michael was in terrific form, doing a lovely skit on Thatcher and advising Jeremy (who is doing a TV series on the Cold War) on how to tempt her to give an interview, by appealing to ‘her raving ego’. He said that, in his view, Thatcher ‘is now barking mad’.
ADAPTED by Corinna Honan from Westminster Diary: A Reluctant Minister Under Tony Blair by Bernard Donoughue (I.B. Tauris, £25). © Bernard Donoughue 2016. Offer price £20 (20 per cent discount) until June 21, 2016. To order a copy, please call 0844 571 0640 or visitmailbookshop.co.uk. P&P free on orders over £15.
TOMORROW: JOHN BERCOW? HE WAS LIKE A TAXI DRIVER