YEAR OF SLEAZE

Auberon Waugh's Diary of 1994, in

which every event of any note seems to have involved varying degrees of immorality

THE NEW year of Mr Major's `Back-to- basics' campaign (thought to have been the brainchild of Mrs Sarah Hogg) did not open auspiciously. Mr Tim Yea, a 48-year- old junior minister in the Department of the Environment, admitted, under pres- sure from the tabloid press, that he had fathered a child by a Tory councillor in his Suffolk constituency. It looked as if he would be able to hold his job until women in his constituency formed up and said this was unacceptable. Resigning, Yeo announced he had fathered another illegit- imate child 25 years earlier when he was a student.

ALMOST immediately afterwards the wife of Lord Caithness, a transport minister, shot herself, apparently in protest against his having a mistress. Caithness resigned, so did Mr Alan Duncan, the 46-year-old mem- ber for Rutland after being PPS for less than three weeks to Dr Brian Mawhinney, the Government's temperance fanatic. Duncan's mistake was to lend money to his next-door neighbour who bought his home from the council and later sold it to Dun- can. With greater dignity than most of his colleagues in similar circumstances, Duncan commented, 'At least if I'd been fucking someone, I'd have been enjoying myself.'

NOBODY hazarded a guess about whether Dame Shirley Porter, the former leader of Westminster City Council, had been enjoying herself in the role, but an Audit Commission inquiry found that the council had been guilty of 'wilful miscon- duct' which was 'disgraceful and improper' in providing council houses at favourable rates for Tory voters. Dame Shirley denied that any impropriety had occurred, but Westminster Council suspended the scheme.

Nothing improper occurred, either, when Mr David Ashby, the MP for North- West Leicestershire, decided to share a bed in a hotel room with a male friend while on holiday in France. His wife, who had denounced him to the press with bitter things to say about his friendship with this man, later announced that they were rec- onciled. A 59-year-old career businesswoman gave birth to test-tube twins, having been impregnated in Italy after treatment was refused in Britain. She had put off the moment in the interests of her career, but the BMA approved a new technique to take ovaries from aborted foetuses to allow infertile women to bear children and fulfil themselves that way.

THE QUEEN, having announced in her Christmas message that the daily diet of bad news in the media had become almost overwhelming, saw, in the first month of the year, her youngest son, Prince Edward, write a petulant open letter to newspaper editors denying that he proposed to marry a 28-year-old PR lady with whom he was romantically attached, and demanding that he should be left alone. The Prince of Wales sent out a newsletter to 3,000 prominent people in Britain explaining the nature and philosophy of his various chari- table trusts, and the Duchess of Kent became a Roman Catholic. All this hap- pened in January, a month when President Clinton was continually under fire for alleged sexual and financial improprieties while Governor of Arkansas. In Russia, Eugene Ivanov, the Soviet spy whose affair with Christine Keeler prompted the great Profumo scandal of 1963, was found dead in his Moscow flat at the age of 66.

IN FEBRUARY, Mr Major confirmed his belief in the `Back-to-basics' campaign, and repeated its message. Under the circum- stances, it was most fortunate that no impropriety had occurred between Mr Hartley Booth, Conservative Member for Finchley, and his young female secretary in the House of Commons when a tabloid drew attention to their friendship, although he resigned as PPS to Douglas Hogg just the same, commenting, 'It isn't a matter of being careful — just don't do it' — the sort of pavid remark which may yet be admired by the Department of Transport for its Christmas Misery campaign. In February, the Church Commissioners announced they would halve their contribution to parish funding, having lost millions of pounds in incompetent property specula- tion.

IN MAY, as the sleaze factor began to get out of hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury ordained 22 women as priests and a Gov- ernment Whip, Mr Michael Brown, resigned after a tabloid suggested he Was ,a

demo. The homosexual, which he de. The Commons voted in favour of betting shops being allowed to open for Sunday racing, and Mr Silvio Berlusconi emerged as Prime Minister of Italy. A WOMAN and her daughter, both claim- ing to have had sexual relations with Alan Clark, the exhibitionist former junior min- ister at Defence, arrived in London to sell their stories to the gutter press. Clark said he deserved to be horsewhipped, but nobody volunteered for the task. A retired Ministry of Defence official, 69-year-old Gordon Bixley, received four years in prison, and was ordered to pay back the £1.5 million he had taken in bribes, but the juicier Defence scandal, involving the sale of arms to Iraq and the apparent readiness of four Government ministers to allow an Innocent man to go to prison rather than divulge information which would have Proved his innocence, remained under wraps in the Scott Enquiry.

IN JULY, the Sunday Times tried to pay two Conservative MPs £1,000 each for tabling questions in Parliament. The extent to which the newspaper succeeded remains a matter of contention, immediately put under the wraps of an investigation by the Privileges Committee to see whether any- one had breached Parliamentary privilege. Someone who was no friend of Jeffrey Archer in the Department of Trade let it be known that he was being investigated for possible insider trading in shares of Anglia Television, of which the fragrant Lady Archer was a non-executive director.

Ma NEIL HAMILTON resigned as Minis- ter for Corporate Affairs after having been a guest of Mr Mohammed Fayed, the Egyp- tian businessman and owner of Harrods, at the Paris Ritz. A junior Northern Ireland Minister called Tim Smith also resigned, after allegations that he had taken money from Mr Fayed to ask questions in the Commons, but Mr Jonathan Aitken, who had also, like Hamilton, stayed at the Paris Ritz under Fayed auspices, revealed that he had later sent his wife to pay the bill in cash. After Mr Howard was described by One of his former junior ministers as having Intervened three times on Mr Fayed's behalf in the course of a naturalisation pro- cess, Sir Peter Tapsell asked Mr Major whether Mr Fayed would be prosecuted for

attempted blackmail. Mr Major replied that he had sent notes of a meeting with one of Mr Fayed's representatives to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and set up a stand- ing committee to examine the whole busi- ness. Mr Fayed, who hinted that he had many other allegations to make if he felt like it, was jubilant to be cleared of any impropriety whatever.

THE BISHOP OF DURHAM, the Rt Revd Michael Turnbull, was revealed by the News of the World to have been con- victed of gross indecency in a public lava- tory 26 years ago, when he was said to have allowed himself to be fondled by a farmer. In Ireland the government tot- tered after the Prime Minister, Albert Reynolds, appointed as President of the High Court a man who, as Attorney-Gen- eral, had been accused of neglecting to prosecute a pederastic priest. Many peo- ple in both countries came forward to tes- tify that they had been abused by Roman Catholic priests.

MR DAVID MELLOR admitted impro- priety with Lady Cobham, saying he loved her and intended to marry her when both had shed their respective spouses, and the Prince of Wales seemed to admit to impropriety after the breakdown of his marriage. This encouraged republicans, who averred we could never have an adul-

terer as king. The Princess of Wales was accused of making nuisance telephone calls to Oliver Hoare, the art dealer and a close friend. Her former friend, Captain James Hewitt, became the most reviled man in Britain after selling a version of his story to the newspapers, and Anna Pasternak, who wrote a fictionalised account of it called Princess in Love, received a special award for having no sex in it at the annual Bad Sex Trophy prize-giving of a distinguished literary magazine.

THE 'Back-to-basics' campaign was never closed, but in November Sarah Hogg left Downing Street.