Monday, November 8, 1999: JP, Gus Macdonald and I had a meeting with a delegation of backbenchers. It went off well enough, but JP was fing and blinding up to the moment of their arrival.

He maintained an unprecedented silence while the MPs stated their case, which they did calmly and moderately. Gus responded while JP, eyes down, sat scribbling furiously.

Then when everyone had said their piece, he suddenly sprang to life. Words spouted like a huge geyser from which a temporary blockage had been removed.

Monday, February 28, 2000:To Admiralty House, in the company of about 25 junior and middle rank ministers, for one of the informal lunches organised by the Cabinet Office. This one addressed by Jonathan Powell.

Curly-haired, fluent, aloof (never quite looking us in the eye), he was unapologetic about the strengthening of the centre, saying that weakness had been one of the chief faults of John Major’s government.

We treated him warily. This was, after all, a man who could make or break careers. Nick Raynsford talked of “unhappiness at control freakery”, to which Powell retorted that this government had given away more power than any other. “Trying to be competent,” he added, “was not control freakery.”

I asked: “Have any lessons been learnt from our recent difficulties in Scotland, Wales and now London and, if so, what are they?” (In Scotland the veteran Labour MP Dennis Canavan was excluded from the shortlist for his own seat in the Scottish parliament. He stood as an independent and won the largest majority in the country. In Wales a disastrous attempt was made to exclude Rhodri Morgan from the leadership of the Welsh assembly. In the London mayoral election Ken Livingstone was threatening to stand as an independent.)

Lessons had indeed been learnt, asserted Jonathan, but when it came to saying what they were he was surprisingly reticent.

“You beast,” he said cheerfully as we were leaving.

“So what were the lessons that you couldn’t talk about in there?”

“Well, for a start, we f***ed up.” Then he spoilt it: “But we couldn’t allow a bozo like Livingstone to win.”

So there it is. The language of the Nixon White House. Bozo, indeed. Oh the arrogance of the unelected.

“A good question,” whispered the cabinet secretary, Richard Wilson, who had overheard the exchange. “The truth is they haven’t learnt any lessons. They can’t let go.”

Wednesday, May 10, 2000:Came across JP, alone. He had just fled the meeting of the parliamentary party, where some of the strident sisters were demanding better facilities and more consideration from their male brethren.

“Is it just me who finds it hard being lectured by middle-class women about being too aggressive? I find some of them very aggressive.”

He wasn’t ranting or angry, just puzzled: “It’s not so much aggression, it’s just that I feel passionately about things. And what would they know about how working-class women feel?”

Someone had given him the book The Women’s Room in an attempt to educate him: “I was appalled to read how barren and empty they thought their lives were. Pauline says that the years when she was looking after the children were the happiest of her life.”

This was JP the Bemused. A side not often on display. Gradually, I warm to him.

Thursday, March 20, 2003:To a meeting of the liaison committee where a wonderful, hilarious, shameless discussion took place about the extent to which select committees should travel club class. Nicholas Winterton expressed concern that to travel by economy would diminish our status. Status is something with which Sir Nicholas is frequently preoccupied. He went on: “It’s not the food, it’s the sort of people.”

“He doesn’t want to meet his constituents,” remarked Michael Mates to general merriment.

“You’re totally missing my point,” huffed Sir Nicholas.

Someone pointed out, as if it were a clinching argument, that Sir Patrick Cormack, who is even grander than Sir Nicholas, refused to fly anywhere by anything less than club.

It was brought to an end by Edward Leigh. We weren’t doing ourselves any good spending 30 minutes on this subject, he said. We should bear in mind that we were spending £1m of public money.

He added that Nick Winterton’s comments were pompous and ridiculous. One could almost hear the expulsion of wind as Sir Nicholas visibly deflated.

© Chris Mullin 2009

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