Gavin Esler - A Scandalous Man

Then the Vice President put an arm round President Chirac and they walked inside. The affable reporter started to speak again.

‘ Publicly neither the Labour party nor the Conservatives are saying much about Robin Burnett, but privately Labour cannot believe their luck. On the day Tony Blair has called a General Election, here we have a reminder of all the sleaze once associated with the Conservative party and attached to the scandal involving Robin Burnett .’

He paused for a second to deliver his punchline.

‘ In politics, of course, as in stand-up comedy, timing is everything. Now back to the studio .’

Oh, god, I thought. It’s starting again. All over again. And there is nothing I can do to stop it. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Could this day possibly get worse? Another deep breath. Perhaps I should introduce myself properly. My name is Harry Burnett. I am a full-time translator and part-time interpreter. Despite what the New York lawyer said, I do a lot of work for American clients, most of whom I like, and I only very rarely lose my temper. I am also the estranged son of the former British Cabinet minister Robin Burnett. And he is a scandalous man.

ROBIN BURNETT’S STORY

The first time I saw the woman who was to change my life was in 1982. I had no idea who she was, but I had an instinct that she meant trouble. At the time I could not imagine how much trouble. Let me set the scene for you. It must have been early in 1982, because it was shortly after the Argentine junta had sent their troops to invade the Falkland Islands. I was preoccupied. Happy. Busy. Successful. Duties. There was a profound air of crisis within the British government, but it brought out the best in everyone, especially the Lady. She knew the old wisdom that the Chinese written script for the word ‘Crisis’ contains the characters for ‘Opportunity’ as well as ‘Danger’, and so did I. Up until the moment the Argies invaded, I was convinced we were going to lose the next election. It had to come by the spring of 1984 at the latest. Unemployment was very high. Not our fault, of course, but people thought it was. Cyclical factors. World downturn. They blamed us. In fact they hated us. I was spat at in the street at a housing project in Bristol. One of the other ministers, Henry Charlwood, had red paint thrown over him in Glasgow. Another, Michael Armstrong, was sprayed with slurry at a market in Leicester. Our economic policies needed more time to work, much more time – as I kept telling everybody and anybody who would listen. Thankfully, the Lady was one of those who did listen.

‘Prime Minister, you cannot turn around a pessimistic, unionized, programmed-to-fail economy like Britain in less than a decade.’

‘We do not have a decade, Robin,’ she reminded me. She actually looked at her watch as if the seconds were ticking away towards the next General Election and the end of her time in Downing Street. ‘We have five years. Four, actually. I intend to go to the country next year. So we have about twelve months remaining.’

‘It’s not enough.’

‘It might have to be enough,’ she whipped back at me.

We were in her room at the Commons, having tea. She had a whiff of perfume about her. Powder blue suit. Handbag. In real life she was smaller than most people will ever understand if they only ever saw her on television, where she seemed a huge figure. And in reality she was also much more feminine than she appeared on TV. Her femininity tended to bring out the masculine in a man. You were aware of her physical fragility, which was impossible to reconcile with her mental strength. It made some men go a bit wobbly. Mitterrand had a soft spot for her. He said she had the mouth of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula. One of the few things in life Mitterrand ever got right.

‘If you go to the country next year, then you almost certainly will lose, Prime Minister,’ I told her. ‘I am sorry to say it, but you will. We need as long as possible.’

The Lady looked at me coldly. Caligula. She knew they were plotting against her, within the party, but the word ‘lose’ was not in her active vocabulary. I changed the subject.

‘And also, Prime Minister, as I keep reminding people in Cabinet, we do not fix the economy. It fixes itself. We in government can only help by getting out of the way as much as possible. Benign neglect. It works for houseplants, and it certainly works for the economy. The more you fuss around, the worse it gets. The houseplants wilt and die from too much fussing. Just let it be. You cannot buck the market.’

The Lady looked at me quizzically, turning her head to the side, that way she did which always reminded me of a small bird.

‘Say that again, Robin.’

‘You cannot buck the market, Prime Minister.’

‘Thank you, Robin. For speaking honestly, as always. So many don’t, you know.’

Oh, yes, I knew. The trades unions were behaving like donkeys – mules – desperate to bring us down as they had Callaghan in ’79. The only thing that stopped them taking action was their terror that we would call their bluff. I wanted them to try it, so we could announce an election on one simple question: who rules Britain? Them or us? The democratic parliament that you elected? Or a bunch of union leaders that you did not? I wanted to hit them in the face with it. The unions circled, waiting for their chance, snapping and barking, but not daring to bite. I repeatedly told the Lady that if she insisted on holding a General Election in 1983, the only way she could win would be to engineer a crisis.

‘A crisis?’ she said, the way Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell said ‘a handbag?’ ‘Did you say a crisis, Robin?’

I gulped.

‘Take on the unions, Prime Minister. Make it Them or Us. Take on the despots.’

She smiled. Marilyn Monroe. Then she shook her head. The miners had destroyed Heath. The public sector workers had destroyed Callaghan. She did not feel strong enough to risk being destroyed in ’83, though I thought she might be destroyed anyway, and it was better to go down fighting. And then! And then! Hallelujah! Along came a better class of despot, from the other side of the world. Thank god for General Galtieri! A central casting villain! A proto-fascist South American in a bad uniform, with the air of a man who could strut even when sitting down! Just what we needed. What luck!

When Galtieri sent his Argentine conscript troops to the Falklands, I confess that most British people, including me, could not have pinpointed the godforsaken islands on a map. Peter Carrington, decent man, resigned as Foreign Secretary. Someone had to carry the can. It could not be her, of course. We were agreed on that. So it had to be him. The truth is, we had all ballsed it up. We had a British submarine lurking off the coast of the Falklands for a while and then removed it in the name of ‘constructive dialogue’. Not only that, we told everybody we had removed it, including the Argentine military dictatorship. I don’t recall the word ‘dialogue’ being much used in the Lady’s presence thereafter. It also taught us a lesson about dictators, Saddam Hussein and the like. You can show them the brink, but they never pay attention until they fall over it. The Lady knew this was her crisis. Her moment in history. Winning was never the most important thing to her. It was the only thing.

‘It’s a carrot and a stick policy with Galtieri,’ she told Cabinet the Thursday following the invasion, slapping her tiny right hand on the table. ‘He can get his troops out immediately, or we will destroy him.’

There was much bemusement around the room. People looked at their hands, or at their papers, not at the Lady and certainly not at each other. Every single person present around that Cabinet table wondered if she would fail, including her. Every single person present wondered who would succeed her, if she did fail. Including her.