THE SPECTATOR
PRATFALL
In Mr Jeffrey Archer's novel First Among Equals, Raymond Gould, a rising Young junior minister 'stuck with a small- town wife' (the paperback blurb), is return- Mg home from a grand dinner when he suddenly feels a desire for soineone other than the small-town wife with whom he is stuck.
. . . on Park Lane stood a young girl.
• . .mini-skirt so short it might have been better described as a handkerchief. . . Raymond travelled back up to Marble Arch but, instead of turning towards home he drove down Park Lane again, this time not as quickly and on the inside lane . . He returned to Marble Arch before repeating his detour down Park Lane, this time even more slowly.. .
In due course, the girl tells him: 'It's ten pounds at my place.' (This passage of the work takes place in the late 1960s, before the Great Inflation.) `Where's your place?' he heard himself say. `I use a hotel in Paddington'.
. . The room was small and narrow . . tiny bed . . . washbasin . . . a dripping tap had left a brown stain on the enamel . . . 'Let's get oh with it, darling, I've got a living to earn.'
Now turn to Monday's Daily Mirror. That paper speaks with authority, since it says it investigated the real-life prostitute's allegations that the novelist was one of her clients, decided that the evidence was `dubious', and abandoned its inquiries. The 35-year-old vice girl — who works under the name of Debbie — was dressed in a black leather miniskirt and blouse as she touted for business at the entrance to the Shepherds Market red light area near London's Park Lane. The man walked across to her from his car. He was just another possible punter to her:' Before any arrangement could be made between them, enter Mr Aziz Kurtha, the very nasty-sounding solicitor, former Labour local council candidate and recent presen- ter of an 'ethnic' programme on Channel Four. He is with two Arab business associ- ates. The prostitute tells them she uses the Albion Hotel, next to Victoria station. The three men drive off with her. The man in the car follows.
Mr Kurtha, the business associates, and the girl disappear into a building which perhaps has such amenities as threadbare Carpets and brown stains. When they emerge after midnight, the man in the car is still there, flashes his lights at the girl, and is taken for Mr Archer by Mr Kurtha who hawks the story around Fleet Street. According to the Mirror, the News of the World says it cannot print because there is no proof that the man in the car was indeed Mr Archer. But it tape records telephone conversations between Mr Archer and the girl, thereby discovers that Mr Archer is anxious to pay her off, and wires her up for her meeting on Victoria station with Mr Archer's emissary and banknotes.
We recount these two narratives in some detail in order to show how difficult it is to get at the truth of a matter involving Mr Archer. What are his facts and what are his fictions? Several explanations of the affair have been doing the rounds all week. There is the straightforward worldly one: that of course Mr Archer had met the girl. Otherwise, why would he pay her off, rather than go to the police? But there is the even more compelling thesis that, when We are dealing with Mr Archer, we are dealing with a character straight out of Jeffrey Archer. Judging by his works, and other evidence, Mr Archer admires 'fix- ers', and people who can handle them- selves in a tight corner. When this whore comes on the 'phone he knows that it is a `set up' by his powerful enemies, but he also knows how to handle it. He'll pay her off, or perhaps pretend to pay her off. That will buy him time, before he strikes down the villain, Kurtha, in the last chapter. Hence the terrific scene when his close friend hands her the banknotes on Victoria station. But in real life something goes wrong. The powerful enemies win. The set-up does indeed set him up and he is ruined — at least politically.
When, just after becoming Conservative deputy chairman, Mr Archer drew his comparison between his own predicament, on losing his parliamentary job, and that of today's unemployed, the Spectator argued that it was useless to say that he would be more sensible in future, since the man was `a prat'. This was an offensive description which — if the above explanation of Mr Archer's actions is true — has turned out to be correct. But, it may be objected, he has admitted that he acted foolishly, so it is wrong to go on about his being a fool. But there are issues in the Archer affair which do not involve only Mr Archer's foolish- ness. There is the Prime Minister's judg- ment in appointing to the deputy chair- manship a figure who was so widely known to possess the quality of prattishness. (The Spectator was not being exceptionally pre- scient at the time of the appointment: its view was almost the orthodoxy.) The appointment showed, in the Prime Minis- ter, an unworldliness (one of her strengths at other times) and a capacity to be taken in by young-ish people who make a point of showing off how energetic they are.
And the other issues in the affair? There are of course the activities of the News of the World. The paper was careful not actually to say that Mr Archer had slept with the prostitute. All it said was that he paid her off, which he does not deny. But if a politician is to be exposed and humiliated just for that, it is a disproportionate punishment for mere folly, particularly if he has been lured into that folly by the paper concerned. All week, the News of the World's goons have been closeted in a hide-out with the prostitute. This Sunday, it would be as well if they come up with proof that her association with Mr Archer was closer than he says it was. Otherwise they would have done all this to Mr Archer for next to nothing. This would be exces- sive and despicable even by the standards of the News of the World.
Then there is the left-wing lawyer, and admitted prostitute's client, Mr Kurtha. He was quoted as denying that he sought money for the story. If he is telling the truth, it makes his motive' interesting. Ideological, perhaps, a wish to ruin the deputy chairman of a party allegedly full of racists? He is said to be trying to get a job at the BBC. Let us hope that, by stopping him, Mr Alasdair Milne will show that he draws the line somewhere. At the least, Mr Kurtha's activities should be a matter for investigation by the Law Society.
As for any broader political implica- tions, the former deputy chairman's be- haviour — even in merely paying off a prostitute — will make it difficult for Mr Tebbit soon to make another speech im- plying that the Conservatives are more Moral than their opponents. That may be no bad thing. Mr Tebbit has not shown that he can put that thesis with the necessary subtlety. This could be because he is confused about it. He denounces the per- missive society. Yet the Tories have a majority big enough to repeal all of the permissive legislation associated with such opponents as Mr Roy Jenkins and Mr David Steel, and of course will do no such thing. Mr Tebbit simply uses the fruits of permissiveness against Mr Jenkins and Mr Steel. To shout 'What about Archer?' back at Mr Tebbit would be crude, and not take account of the complicated relationship between politics and morality. But that was also true of Mr Tebbit's speeches on the subject.
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