Be Careful What You Wish For (The Clifton Chronicles 4)

“Why?” demanded Diego.

“Because he’d send it back.”

“Why would he do that?” asked Don Pedro.

“Because this isn’t Argentina, and if the press found out that a foreigner was backing Wilson’s campaign, he would not only lose, but be forced to withdraw from the contest. In fact, he’d not only return the money, but make it public that he’d done so.”

“How can you possibly win an election if you haven’t got any money?”

“You don’t need a great deal of money if your electorate is only two hundred fifty-eight members of Parliament, most of whom spend all their time in the same building. You might have to buy some stamps, make a few phone calls, stand the odd round of drinks in Annie’s Bar, and by then you’d have been in touch with almost all your electorate.”

“So if we can’t help Wilson win, what can we do to make sure Barrington loses?” asked Luis.

“If there are two hundred fifty-eight voters, we must surely be able to bribe some of them,” said Diego.

“Not with money,” said Fisher. “The only thing that lot care about is preferment.”

“Preferment?” repeated Don Pedro. “What the hell is that?”

“For younger members, a candidate might hint that they were being considered for a front bench job, and for older members who are retiring at the next general election, a suggestion that their experience and wisdom would be greatly appreciated in the Lords. And for those who have no hope of ever holding office, but will still be around after the next election, a party leader always has jobs that need to be filled. I knew one member who wanted nothing more than to be chairman of the House of Commons Catering Committee because they get to select which wines go on the menu.”

“OK, so if we can’t give Wilson any money, or bribe the voters, the least we can do is recycle all the dirt we have on Barrington’s family,” suggested Diego.

“Not much point, when the press will be only too happy to do that without any help from us,” said Fisher. “And they’ll get bored after a few days, unless we come up with something fresh for them to get their teeth into. No, we have to think of something that would be certain to make the headlines and, at the same time, knock him out with one blow.”

“You’ve obviously been giving this considerable thought, major,” said Don Pedro.

“I must admit I have,” said Fisher, looking rather pleased with himself. “A

nd I think I may have come up with something that will finally sink Barrington.”

“Then spit it out.”

“There’s one thing a politician can never recover from. But if I’m to set Barrington up, I’ll need to put a small team in place, and the timing will have to be perfect.”

19

GRIFF HASKINS, THE Labor Party’s agent for Bristol Docklands, decided he would have to give up drinking if Giles was to have any chance of becoming leader of the party. Griff always went on the wagon for a month before any election, and on a bender for at least a month after, depending on whether they’d won or lost. And since the Member for Bristol Docklands had been safely returned to the green benches with an increased majority, he’d felt he was entitled to the occasional night off.

It wasn’t good timing when Giles called his agent the morning after he’d been on the binge to let him know that he was going to stand for leader. As Griff was nursing a hangover at the time, he called back an hour later to make sure he’d heard the member correctly. He had.

Griff immediately phoned his secretary, Penny, who was on holiday in Cornwall, and Miss Parish, his most experienced party worker, who admitted she was bored out of her mind and only came alive during election campaigns. He told them both to be waiting on platform 7 at Temple Meads station at 4:30 that afternoon if they wanted to be working for the next prime minister.

At five o’clock, the three of them were seated in a third-class carriage on a train bound for Paddington. By noon the following day, Griff had set up an office in the House of Commons, and another at Giles’s home in Smith Square. He still needed to recruit one more volunteer for his team.

Sebastian told Griff that he would be delighted to cancel his fortnight’s holiday to help his uncle Giles win the election, and Cedric agreed to make it a month, as the lad could only benefit from the experience, even though Sir Giles was his second choice.

Sebastian’s first job was to make a wall chart that listed all 258 Labor members of Parliament who were entitled to vote, and then place a tick beside each name to show which category they fell into: certain to vote for Giles, red tick; certain to vote for another candidate, blue; and undecided—the most important category of all—green. Although the chart was Sebastian’s idea, it was Jessica who produced the finished article.

On the first count, Harold Wilson had 86 certainties, George Brown 57, Giles 54 and James Callaghan 19, with Undecided a crucial 42. Giles could see that his immediate task was to get rid of Callaghan and then overhaul Brown, because if the Member for Belper were to withdraw, Griff calculated that most of his votes would come their way.

After a week of canvassing, it was clear that Giles and Brown were no more than a percentage point apart in second place and, although Wilson was clearly in the lead, the political pundits all agreed that if Brown or Barrington were to withdraw it would be a close-run contest.

Griff never stopped roaming the corridors of power, happy to arrange private meetings with the candidate for any member who claimed they were undecided. Several of them would remain that way until the last moment, as they had never enjoyed so much attention in their lives, and were also keen to end up backing the winner. Miss Parish was never off the phone, and Sebastian became Giles’s eyes and ears, continually running between the House of Commons and Smith Square, keeping everyone up to date.

Giles delivered twenty-three speeches during the first week of the campaign, although they rarely made more than a paragraph in the following day’s papers, and never the front page. With only two weeks to go, and Wilson beginning to look a dead cert, Giles decided it was time to go off message and take a risk. Even Griff was surprised by the reaction of the press the next morning, when Giles made every front page, including the Daily Telegraph.

“There are too many people in this country unwilling to do a day’s work,” Giles had told an audience of trade union leaders. “If someone is fit and healthy and has turned down three jobs in a period of six months, they should automatically lose their unemployment benefit.”