Why the newspapers broadsheet as well as tabloid continue to chase that Portillo story
STEPHEN GLOVER
Last week there was an editorial in the Sun that cannot have gone down well at Portillo HQ. The newspaper does not like Mr P. The reason is not his homosexual past — oh no, the Sun is enlightened now — but his lack of candour about it. He was compared unfavourably with Peter Mandelson who, the newspaper assured us, has 'never misled us about his bedroom antics'. Mr Portillo, by contrast, had been rather slippery. He had not told us the full truth when he first mentioned his homosexual experiences. 'If it turned out,' the paper warned, that Portillo has been lying about his sexuality even now — then he would be finished.'
Two days later the Daily Mail tucked away a story on page 29 under the headline 'Portillo's sadness as second gay lover dies'. The paper had discovered that Francois Kervran, who was HIV positive, had died in France on 8 June. Mr Kervran's relationship with Mr Portillo was not news. The News of the World had first produced him in its issue of 10 September last year. He had been quoted then as saying that he began an affair with Mr Portillo in 1980 having been introduced to him by Nigel Hart, also a lover of Mr Portillo's. Somehow the Mail had learnt of his death. A spokesman was quoted as saying that the would-be Tory leader had been aware that Mr Kervran had died, and that he had responded with 'great sadness'.
Though they contained no new damaging revelations, the Sun leader and the Mail story mark the early shots in a war that is certain to get a lot nastier. If Mr Portillo imagines that he has put all this stuff behind him, he is sadly mistaken. Of course, it may be that he has told us the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In this case he has nothing to worry about. But if he has held something back, there is going to be trouble. The newspapers are good at sex. It is their main area of expertise.
There is reason for Mr Portillo's admirers to feel disquiet, as a rehearsal of the known facts will demonstrate. On 9 September 1999 the Times published an interview, undertaken some weeks previously, in which Mr Portillo alluded to his homosexual past. His exact words were, 'I had some homosexual experiences as a young person.' The suggestion was perhaps of high jinks at Cambridge. Three days later the Mail on Sunday unveiled a gay lover called Nigel Hart who maintained that he had had an intermittent eight-year affair with Mr Portillo which had overlapped with his relationship with Carolyn Eadie, whom he later married in 1982. According to Mr Hart's chronology, the affair began in 1973 and 'petered out' just before Mr Portillo became engaged to Ms Eadie in 1981. Mr Hart, who was HIV positive, died in December 1999.
In October 1999 Mr Portillo was selected for the safe Tory seat of Kensington and Chelsea, which he subsequently won in a by-election. It was widely reported that he had told the constituency association that there would be no further embarrassing revelations about his past. Whether the News of the World's story about Mr Kervran last September was embarrassing may be a matter of opinion. I should have said that it was. Mr Kervran was certainly not moved by spite or vengeance to talk to the newspaper, whereas there had been an edge of bitterness in Mr Hart's disclosures. He had nothing but good things to say about his old friend. Nonetheless, he had spoken to the News of the World. It had got its story.
Let me try to summarise Mr Portillo's predicament. By confiding in the Times, he made his past homosexuality an issue. There had been rumours, of course, but he gave them shape. It soon became apparent that he had not told the whole truth. There may have been no requirement for him to do so; he could hardly be expected to supply names and addresses. Nonetheless, he set off a media chase which is still going on. The newspapers — by which I here mean the tabloids, though the broadsheets will cheerfully muck in — have two aims. One is to discover more lovers from the period
1971 to 1981, during which time it has already been established that he had affairs with Mr Hart and Mr Kervran. The other, more ambitious, is to produce lovers from the later period when he has been happily married, thereby lending substance to wild tales which circulate around Westminster.
It may be that there were no other relationships in the 1971 to 1981 era, in which case the press will eventually give up. If lovers of this vintage are produced, Mr Portillo may suffer some embarrassment, as will the Tory party if he is its leader. But, though tiresome, none of this would be destructive, and the prospect of such disclosures should probably not discourage people from voting for Mr Portillo. Obviously the threat, which would blow him and the Tory party some distance the other side of the election of 2020, would be revelations covering the period of his marriage. All the inclusivity in the world could not then save him because the issue, in the eyes of his critics, would not be his homosexuality but his lack of truthfulness.
Liberal-minded people may find all this very distasteful. The sexuality of Pitt the Younger was not anatomised in the public prints. What on earth have Mr Portillo's sexual predilections to do with us? The trouble is that this is the country we live in, and this the press we have. Moreover, Mr Portillo has given the witch-hunters an element of justification by himself raising the issue of his homosexuality. He has opened himself to the test of straightforwardness, where in areas quite unconnected with his sexuality he happens to be vulnerable.
If I were voting for him, either as an MP or as a member of the Conservative party, I think I should feel entitled to some clarification. Over the coming weeks he is almost bound to be asked by a journalist (his senior colleagues being too frightened to do so lest they are frozen out of a Portillo shadow Cabinet) whether there is any more to emerge. It will not be very encouraging if he takes refuge in the usual formula that he has said all he has to say on the subject and has no more to add. A statement disavowing any homosexual relationship since 1982 would give cheer to his supporters. Newspapers would continue their investigations for the time being but that would not matter. If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear; but if he has something to hide, he is doomed.
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