THE MAKING OF A PRIME MINISTER

Bruce Anderson was part of John Major's

campaign team. He tells how the battle for the leadership was won

ON SATURDAY 17 November, John Major went into hospital for an operation on a wisdom tooth. The trouble had first flared up in September, but this had been the first week that could be cleared in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's diary.

Mr Major was informed that it would take him about ten days to recover from the operation. During that time, he should have a complete rest, and should try to speak as little as possible. It was not then expected that his ten days' convalescence would culminate in his accession to the Premiership.

Three days later, however, Mrs Thatch- er narrowly failed to eliminate Michael

Heseltine's challenge. Throughout Wednesday 21 November Margaret Thatcher's position slowly crumbled. A number of erstwhile Thatcher loyalists approached John Major and asked him to stand against her, or at least to refuse to sign her nomination papers. He brusquely rejected both requests: if the PM wanted to run, he regarded himself as honour-bound to support her.

Meanwhile Graham Bright, Mr Major's Parliamentary Private Secretary, was also being lobbied. During Wednesday, nearly 100 Tory MPs approached him with offers of support for Mr Major should Margaret Thatcher withdraw.

Within the hour, Mr Major had decided to let his name go forward for the succes- sion. Norman Lamont, Peter Lilley, Michael Howard and John Gummer met in the Treasury to begin planning his cam- paign. A campaign headquarters was needed. William Hague, Mr Lamont's PPS, suggested a house in Gayfere Street just off Smith Square: it belonged to a friend of his called Alan Duncan, an oil trader and Tory prospective candidate.

Mr Hague telephoned Mr Duncan, who turned out to be at his tailor's. When Mr Duncan returned to his office, he found a message to ring the Chancellor's office, and assumed, as most people would, that someone was pulling his leg.

William Hague, meanwhile, had grown impatient with the delay. He had a key to the Duncan residence, as he sometimes used the spare bedroom, so he simply took it over. When Mr Duncan arrived home, he found Norman Lamont and Richard Ryder in full command, moving furniture around and reorganising all the rooms, while British Telecom engineers were in- stalling extra telephone lines.

Fortunately, Mr Duncan is a political addict of considerable resilience with a matching sense of humour. So when he was welcomed to his own house, and they said `So glad you can join us, and who exactly are you?' he contented himself with pour- ing his visitors a drink. It was a couple of days before everyone in the Major team realised that the self-effacing, endlessly helpful and amenable character who was constantly volunteering to do whatever needed doing was actually their landlord.

The speed with which the Major cam- paign sprang into action was impressive. By Thursday evening almost everything was in place. Messrs Lamont and Ryder had already created a structure, while the volunteers to man it poured across from Westminster. Your correspondent debar- red from his usual journalistic outlets by some little local difficulties, joined up as a foot-soldier.

Within hours, over 50 Tory MPs had signed up to work for the Major team. They were instantly divided into two groups. One lot were assigned parliamen- tary duties: their job was to patrol the House of Commons, listening, lobbying, persuading, eavesdropping, and to feed back every piece of information to the Gayfere Street headquarters.

There the second group met in the basement, in what had been and may in the future become once again Alan Duncan's dining-room. 'The bunker', as it quickly christened itself, functioned as a Whips Office. Any scrap of intelligence that came from Westminster was sifted, assessed, tested and re-tested. The Major campaign was well aware that Mrs Thatcher's team had been duped into overestimating her support, and they were determined not to make the same mistake.

In charge of the bunker was Francis Maude, who is now a Treasury minister but was formerly a Whip. Mr Maude, a witty, sardonic character, proved a most effective chairman. Several times a day, he and his team ran through their lists, discussing every single Conservative MP; at regular intervals new running totals were issued but again these bore little relation to the raw data.

One of Mr Maude's principal adjutants was Ralph Hayward, whose Who's Who entry lists psephology as his main recrea- tion. Mr Hayward who looks like a bank manager, is a formidable number- cruncher. Together, he and Mr Maude evolved a method of discounting the pledges they had received, in order to allow for the mendacity quotient.

In any such campaign, a certain number of disgusting, unprincipled characters are known to pledge themselves to all the camps. So, right until the end, the figures for firm pledges published by the Major team were adjusted to allow for this. In the event, the 'disgusting, unprincipled' dis- count proved exaggerated, as John Major himself always thought it would. Mr Major, too, is a former Whip. He has often regretted the fact that he never did a stint as Chief Whip. While he was a Whip, he had the reputation of being the office's most accurate counter of heads: so it proved during his own campaign. He con- stantly twitted the bunker for the timidity of its figures, and used to complain in mock horror when, at the end of a day in which he himself had won over half a dozen converts, he would be informed that the number of firm pledges had only increased by four.

Ideology played little part in any of the candidates' campaigns. Mr Major had the advantage of being thought to be the most right-wing of the available candidates, but Mr Heseltine was doing everything possi- ble to move into Mr Major's natural territory, and to claim that he was Mrs Thatcher's rightful heir. That, however, was not a successful tactic. Most Thatcherite MPs would have wished Mr Heseltine to understand that matricides cannot be heirs.

Mr Hurd, meanwhile, was reduced to the claim that he would improve MPs' conditions at Westminster. That promise had a ring of desperation to it, and only confirmed the bunker in its view that Mr Hurd was suffering the same fate as the weakest candidate in a by-election — his vote was being squeezed. The determining factor was personality. A large section of the Tory Party could not forgive Mr Heseltine for unseating Mrs Thatcher. Some Thatcherites, however, were so upset that they could hardly think straight when it came to the choice of successor and were disinclined to vote for anyone. Throughout last weekend, the Major camp was encountering such charac- ters, one of whom, Michael Brown, left a message on his answerphone: 'If that is a candidate, I would like to be Governor of the Cayman Islands'. Some of these disgruntled Thatcherites clearly felt that their leader had been the victim of an establishment plot, which might even have involved John Major himself. The figure of Tristan Garel-Jones was often cited. Mr Garel-Jones — former- 1Y the Deputy Chief Whip and now a Foreign Office Minister — would he re- garded as a cunning fellow even in his native Wales. At Westminster, he is widely credited with diabolic powers. No use explaining to the enraged ultra- Thatcherites that Mr Garel-Joncs was working for Douglas Hurd (the outcome of the I lurd campaign puts the diabolic pow- ers in perspective). Anyone in the present Cabinet was blamed for being insufficiently supportive of the PM, while Mr Heseltine was at least given the credit for stabbing her in the front.

Mr Heseltine, meanwhile, did every- thing possible to appeal to the Right, and succeeded in gathering up a few misfits, mainly thickos and hysterics, who were so shell-shocked at the removal of Mrs Thatcher that they proceeded to vote for the man who had destroyed her. Margaret Thatcher herself, horrified at the thought of a Heseltine victory, appealed to the right-wing defectors to vote for Mr Major. She even saw some of the more bovine spongiform cases individually, to no avail. Protesting their undying admiration for the Prime Minister, they proceeded to ignore her wishes.

But their behaviour was straightforward compared to that of Nigel Lawson. The Major camp was determined not to allow the campaign to destroy friendships, and by and large succeeded in their objective. In Mr Lawson's case, however, matters are more difficult.

Those who worked with him at the Treasury can remember his spending hours denouncing Mr Heseltine's entire approach to government. Mr Lawson has never been known for his tolerance, but even by his own high standards, his intoler- ance of Mr Heseltine was striking. Yet here he was supporting Mr Heseltine against Mr Major, who had been Mr Lawson's loyal deputy when he was Chan- cellor, and for whom Mr Lawson was known to have a high regard.

In recent months, Mr Lawson, formerly so cosseted by the Tory Party, has suffered grossly unfair treatment. In particular, his stance on inflation has been ignorantly and maliciously misrepresented. But those who know and respect him would have thought him well able to brush aside belittlement from little men. In the light of his recent behaviour, however, the Major camp re- luctantly concluded that his judgment had been undermined. A great man now allowed himself to be turned into a dancing bear in Mr Heseltine's menagerie: the only hope is that the aberration will prove temporary.

Neither Mr Lawson's nor Sir Geoffrey Howe's adherence to the Heseltine camp worried Mr Major's supporters. It was not felt that either man had much in the way of coat-tails. By Monday night, the Major camp was having difficulty in restraining its optimism. The total of firm pledges was approaching 180, while the press coverage reflected our own belief that we had the `Big Mo': political momentum.

However, on Tuesday morning we were less confident. First, the Independent story about Mrs Thatcher's professed intention to do some tackseat driving' caused anxie- ty in the tea-room, and was heavily ex- ploited by both Heseltine and Hurd can- vassers. Then an ITN poll of backbenchers — which correctly identified Mr Hesel- tine's vote of 131 — gave us only 158.

Our canvassing gave Mr Hurd no more than 60, but suppose we were out by 15? If his vote were higher, that might well be at Mr Major's expense. If lower, the defec- tors could switch to Michael Heseltine.

The final hours of most election cam- paigns are a nerve-wracking business, as John Gummer reminded the team at lunch- time on Tuesday. We had been in danger of walking out of No 11 with depressed faces, which might have been spotted and commented on. Mr Gummer called every- one to order, assured us that he had no doubts as to the result, and reminded us all of the innumerable previous occasions when we had had unjustified anxieties on the eve of a poll.

By then, of course, there was nothing further to do except feel anxious. Press briefings were prepared, to cover every contingency from an outright Major win to an outright Heseltine win. As to the latter contingency, Peter Lilley commented that it was now established practice that anyone coming top in a Conservative leadership ballot should promptly withdraw. But we did not really think that Mr Heseltine could win, so a list of Mr Hurd's supporters was compiled; discreet enquiries began as to their second preference.

No second preference was necessary. Francis Maude's final, unrevealed, figure — which Mr Maude himself showed no sign of believing — gave Mr Major 194 votes. As margins of error go in a secret ballot, under 5 per cent is not bad.

So, early on Tuesday evening, a weary, ecstatic throng drank champagne, cheered, sang 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow' and swapped stories of our opponents' ini- quities and our own superior cunning. All agreed that it had been a tremendous campaign — whose success had no rele- vance whatsoever to the problems of gov- ernment.