Free Breaking the Code by Gyles Brandreth Page A

It’s come to the end of the line. It’s got nothing to offer because it appears to have nothing it wants to offer. No ideas, no vision, no purpose.
    Judith seemed personally affronted. ‘Civil servants shouldn’t be speaking like that.’
    ‘But they are.’
    ‘It’s so unfair on John.’
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘Yes, it is. But you’re right. We should do something about it.’
    We have agreed to meet and talk it through. I like Judith. She knows her way around the system. She has the ear, and I imagine the trust, of the PM.

THURSDAY 28 JANUARY 1993
    This place is a village. The corridors (there are two miles of them) are streets and alleys, Central Lobby is the market place, Members’ Lobby the village green. Gossip travels from one watering hole to the next in moments. There was a buzz in the Library earlier, the crackle of electricity suggesting ‘something’ was in the air. I went in search of further and better particulars and the first person I came across was Emma Nicholson.
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Haven’t you heard?’
    (How one hates admitting one hasn’t heard!) ‘No. What is it?’
    ‘It’s John. And his catering lady, Clare Latimer.’
    ‘What? Having an affair?’
    ‘So they say.’
    ‘Is it true?’
    Emma gives her barking laugh. ‘John has always had an eye for the ladies. I know…’
    Emma is deaf so regularly gets the wrong end of the stick. She’s also vain. No doubt the PM has squeezed her hand in the way he does and Emma (poor deluded creature) has mistaken his naturally flirtatious way with women for a bad case of the hots. On the other hand, if the Clare Latimer story is true (and we know Michèle’s line: ‘Men – they’re all the same’), what a field day Kelvin’s going to have!
MONDAY 1 FEBRUARY 1993
    Biddle & Co., the Prime Minister’s solicitors, have descended from a great height and successfully killed the story. They’ve issued a disdainful denial on behalf of the PM and instant writs against the
New Statesman
and the
Scallywag
, the low-life perpetrators of the libel. That seems to be that. If there had been anything in it, the tabloids would have snuffled it out. I think one or two in the Tea Room are a mite disappointed to discover the story has no legs. They’re making do with today’s twist in the Downing Street soap opera: the PM and the Chancellor barely on speaking terms, Lamont sidelined, economic policy now being run from No. 10 rather than the Treasury. I go along to Drinks and Q thinking we might be given a line to take on all this, but no, the stories on all the front pages, the fact that the pound has just slumped to an all-time low (I’ve just read it on the tape outside the Smoking Room), none of this features on our agenda. Our theme for the week is the government’s assault on unnecessary bureaucracy, how we’re cutting through the red tape to help small businesses. That’s what they want us to talk about, so (even if no one’s listening) we will.
WEDNESDAY 3 FEBRUARY 1993
    Good news. Malcolm [Rifkind] made a statement at 3.30: the army is getting an additional 5,000 men and the proposed amalgamation of the Cheshire and Staffordshire regiments will not now proceed. We’ve saved the Cheshires! The moment Malcolm sits down I beetle over the road to the office and fax the good news to the Chester media. I hail it as a great victory for our campaign – which it is. I do believe all the lobbying did make a difference. That’s one of the real advantages of our absurd voting system. We are herded together in the division lobbies, government and backbenchers, from Monday to Thursday, for twenty minutes at a time, sometimes several times in a night. There is ample and regular opportunity for the ordinary backbencher to badger ministers – and, in this instance, it’s paid off. Let’s face it, Colonel Bob Stewart and the Cheshires’ deployment in Bosnia haven’t been unhelpful either. Anyway, whatever brought about the U-turn, it’s what we