A Fortunate Life (57 page)

A
FTER HANDING OVER
the leadership of the Lib Dems I was hit by severe withdrawal symptoms and took it out on my back garden. We bought a strip of adjoining land from our neighbours, which more or less doubled the size of the small garden behind our cottage. In this I created a new vegetable plot, complete with compost heap, greenhouse, shed, fruit cage and a small orchard. I then redesigned our old garden, laying a herring-bone brick path and building over it a wooden pergola, which is now covered with honeysuckle, wisteria and roses. Next, I rearranged Jane’s flower garden and laid a paved hard standing, over which I built a vine covered lean-to, in whose shade I am writing this. So deep was my boredom that I even threatened to learn to cook – until Jane put her foot down and said she would leave me if I didn’t get out of her kitchen. I also, with more self-discipline than I knew I possessed, restrained myself when I found my fingers itching to get back into the action and tried to be as good an ex-Leader for Charles Kennedy as David Steel had been for me.

There are, I observe, three kinds of ex-Leader in politics, and, I suspect, in wider life, too. The first believes no one can be as good a general as they were, and, to prove it, they wreck the place before they go and seize every opportunity to lob in a hand grenade afterwards. What they are trying to do is enhance their own reputation, but they almost always end up doing exactly the opposite. Both Margaret Thatcher and her predecessor Ted Heath were this kind of ex-Leader. Those in the second category leave the battlefield and never return, even when they are needed.

The third kind retire to a place nearby where they keep quiet and stay out of the way unless asked for, when they do all they can to help. I aimed to be in this category and, when I resigned, said my motto would be the words Mark Twain relates were posted in the wheel-houses of the old Mississippi steamboats: ‘Don’t speak to the helmsman; don’t spit on the floor.’

Before long I found that this actually suited me rather well too. For as soon as the withdrawal symptoms passed I found I had plenty of other things to do. I could be present for the first days in the life of my new granddaughter, Lois, and began to teach my grandson Matthias to ski. I turned back to writing again, too, publishing two volumes of my diaries in February 2000 and September 2001.

I also began to prepare for retirement by getting back into private enterprise, joining the International Advisory Board of
The Independent
newspaper, which I loved. I especially enjoyed working with its mercurial and engaging proprietor, Tony O’Reilly. On one occasion, our Board meeting was at his home in Ireland, Castle Martin House in Kilcullen, Co Kildare. This is a splendid eighteenth-century mansion once occupied by the Rolling Stones. Shortly before we arrived for the meeting, Tony had managed to purchase an original Monet painting – and not any old Monet either, but one of the very few of his iconic thirty or so canvases of Rouen Cathedral in different lights to have remained in private hands. For this he was rumoured to have paid $22 million. The painting was duly delivered under the strictest security to Dublin airport, whence it travelled to Castle Martin House in the back of a local taxi, which Tony had despatched from Kilcullen for the purpose. When it was finally safely unpacked and hung on the wall, Tony invited the cab driver in for a viewing. The little Irishman, cocked his head to one side, squinted at it through one eye and declared, ‘Bejaisus, for 22 million dollars, don’t you think it’s a little smudged?’

I got involved with a couple of other commercial enterprises, too. But since I have always believed that MPs should not receive incomes beyond their Parliamentary salaries, my earnings from these activities were paid into a special fund I set up in my Constituency for the use of my successor when he was adopted as the new Lib Dem Candidate.

My involvement with the Balkans did not finish when I stood down as Lib Dem Leader, either. I paid several visits there in 2000 and 2001, mainly to Montenegro, which at the time looked as though it might go the way of Bosnia and Kosovo and become a cockpit for conflict. I had retained one member of my old Leadership staff, Ian Patrick, who had joined me as a temporary employee aged 19. Ian, a young man of exceptional ability, soon proved himself indispensable for his good judgement, his ability to make organisations work and his skill at bringing order to my otherwise turbulent and chaotic life. I took him with me on these Balkan trips, and he went on to become one of the key pillars of my staff when, a year later, I went to Bosnia.

In March 2001 Ian and I happened to be on a tour which included Kosovo and Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, when the western Macedonian cities of Tetovo and Gostivar, where the Albanian minority in the country was concentrated and where the Kosovo Liberation Army had been born, suddenly burst into flames. Albanian rebels took to the mountains, and there were sporadic clashes and some deaths. On 21 March the Macedonian army started to mass for a full-scale assault on the rebels. Many (including me) believed there was a real danger that the situation would ignite a general war in Macedonia, into which Greece and Turkey (both NATO members) would be drawn on opposite sides, so launching the third and potentially most dangerous act of the Balkan tragedy. I was visiting the British Ambassador in Skopje when we suddenly received a call from Downing Street. The Prime Minister was at a crisis summit of EU and NATO leaders trying to find a way back to peace. He asked if I would do what I could to broker a ceasefire on the ground and prevent the Macedonian army assault on the rebel positions, which was planned for dawn the following morning. So I visited the leaders of the Albanian rebels in the hills above Tetovo and got them to agree to a ceasefire and negotiations with the Macedonian government and then drove back to Skopje to try to persuade the Macedonians not to launch their assault. The Macedonian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister were prepared to consider the proposition, but only on condition that I could obtain the agreement of the Speaker of the Macedonian Parliament, a granite-faced hard man called Stojan Andov.

Together with the British Ambassador, I spent most of the night trying to persuade Andov, over considerable quantities of Macedonian beer and Scotch whisky, of which he seemed to be able to drink prodigious quantities without visible effect. I threatened him; I cajoled him; I told him that the Macedonian army assault was doomed to failure, all of which had not the slightest effect. The only time he wavered was when the Ambassador, a very good man who loved Macedonia deeply, got so emotional about the bad things that would happen if the attack went ahead that the tears started rolling down his face uncontrollably. Andov was used to threats – they come two a penny in Macedonia. He was completely immune to international pressure – he had seen that all before, too. But the British Ambassador weeping was something he was not used to. It checked him for a moment, before the old obduracy returned. Eventually, in the small hours of the morning and much the worse for too much beer and whisky, we gave up. The Macedonian army attacked next morning, and it was, as
we predicted, a disaster. They were easily beaten back by the rebels. I was now sure that Macedonia would descend into civil war. But as a result of some very skilful diplomacy, George Robertson, then Secretary General of NATO, and Javier Solana of the EU, backed by Chris Patten, then a European Commissioner, succeeded in negotiating an agreement which pulled the country back from the brink at the very last minute and which has, in essence, lasted and kept the peace in Macedonia ever since.

Meanwhile, back in Parliament, I discovered to my surprise that I was now suddenly regarded as an elder statesman and accorded a respect in the House of Commons that I was not used to, having never experienced it before. This I found perplexing and amusing in equal measure, because nothing had changed in my opinions or behaviour, except, of course that I was now safely part of the past, rather than a potential threat for the future. The House of Commons can be a generous place from time to time, but only to the politically dead or those regarded as irretrievably moribund.

My occasional Downing Street meetings with Blair also continued. At one, on 6 March, he asked me if I was prepared to allow my name put to be put forward for the post of international community High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was shortly to become vacant. The Government had previously put forward my name to be the international supremo in Kosovo. At that time I had made it clear that, although I would prefer to finish my time as an MP, since Kosovo was an emergency, I would do the job if asked. I subsequently had a meeting with Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, to discuss the post, but in the event he appointed Bernard Kouchner.
*
Blair went on to explain that this offer was different, since the Bosnia post would not become vacant until after the general election, so I could do it after I had finished as MP for Yeovil.

I went home to discuss the suggestion with Jane, who said that she was really looking forward to settling down, but thought, nevertheless, that I should do it and that, if I did, she would come with me. On this basis, I wrote to Blair saying that I would accept the job, provided the Government could get the necessary support from the international community.

In December I met him again to outline how I planned to undertake my Bosnia mandate and to warn him that, if I was to make
progress there, I was going to have to make some quite big waves, both in Bosnia and possibly in the wider international community too. I would then need his support. He readily gave it and was as good as his word later when I needed him. But his mind was chiefly on the aftermath of 9/11, and especially on Afghanistan and the coming invasion. He insisted: ‘We will have a very limited operation you know. It will be confined to Kabul, and then we will get out early. I don’t mind a deal that has us going in early providing we can get out early.’ I said I thought this very wise – Afghanistan was a country in which it was very easy to get bogged down.

My last major project, before standing down as MP for Yeovil, was to get my Lib Dem successor elected. MPs get very proprietorial about their constituencies, which they tend to regard as a cross between a unique fiefdom whose complexities only they understand and a personal possession which cannot safely be entrusted to anyone else. So handing them over is always a very tricky moment, involving a wide gamut of usually base emotions, ranging from the pain of giving up a much-loved possession, to jealousy of the youngster whose beginning is your ending. I was spared all this. Whilst I scrupulously took no part in the selection of my successor, my constituency party was wise enough to choose someone quite exceptional. David Laws had been a close adviser and a safe pair of hands to whom I could leave even the most difficult tasks during my leadership, so I never doubted he would be a skilled Westminster MP. But what I hadn’t realised was that he would also be one of those rare MPs who can combine ability at Westminster with genuine dedication to his constituency. I had not a moment’s hesitation or discomfort in handing my precious Yeovil over to him, and I felt real pride when he won the seat in the general election of 7 June 2001 with a majority greater than mine had been when I was first elected in 1983.

Before I left the Leadership of the Lib Dems, Blair had asked me if I would like to go to the Lords. I said that I didn’t much believe in the place, but would go there when the time came so that I could argue for, and cast my vote in favour of, replacing it with an elected second chamber. In July that year I was duly introduced into the House of Lords, with Roy Jenkins and Richard Holme as my proposers, in a ceremony which involved getting dressed up in ridiculous robes, swearing ancient oaths of loyalty to the Queen and doing a great deal of bowing. They asked me afterwards if I
would like a photograph of myself in my peer’s robes. I replied that I certainly would not and would much prefer it if they burnt the negatives, so none of my friends could blackmail me with one afterwards. The best part of the ceremony was that my daughter, who happened to be over from France with our two grandchildren, was able to attend and watch the performance. According to House of Lords tradition at the time, the eldest son (but significantly
not
the eldest daughter) of a Peer was allowed to sit on the steps of the Queen’s throne in the Lords Chamber, to watch the ceremony. I was shocked at this piece of sex discrimination and asked why my daughter could not do the same. It was finally agreed that peers’ eldest daughters could be accorded this ‘privilege’, too. Kate was, I believe, the first peer’s daughter ever to be able to do this, while Jane and our grandchildren watched from the public gallery above the Lords chamber. Unfortunately the Lords’ authorities had not reckoned with the republican tendencies of my two-year-old French granddaughter Lois, who, completely unfazed by all the monarchist mumbo jumbo, pantomime costumes and medieval pomp going on below her, spotted her mother sitting amongst the gilt, gold and crimson of the royal throne and started shouting in a voice which rose to a climax loud enough to drown out the ancient oaths: ‘Maman! Maman! Maman! – JE VEUX FAIRE PIPI!’ It was all I could do to suppress a fit of giggles, and I noticed some of my fellow peers watching from the Lords benches didn’t even try.