Raymond and Joyce remained in Leeds overnight while Simon and Elizabeth returned to London to follow the outcome at Central Office in Smith Square. Raymond couldn’t remember when he had last watched television for three hours without a break. The first result came from Guildford at eleven-twenty-one, and showed a two percent swing to the Conservatives.
“Not enough,” said Simon from the party chairman’s room at Central Office.
“It may not be enough,” said Raymond when the next two seats delivered their verdict, and the swing remained the same. The first shock came a few minutes after midnight when the Social Democrats captured the Labour seat of Rugby, and less than thirty minutes later followed it by taking Billericay from the Conservatives. When the first hundred seats had been declared the pundits were certain of only one thing: they were uncertain what the final outcome would be. Opinions, expert and amateur, were still fluid at one o’clock that morning, by which time 200 results were in, and remained so at two o’clock when over 300 constituencies had selected their member.
Raymond went to bed with a lead of 236–191 over Simon, knowing it would be offset by the county shires the next day. Andrew had gained four seats and lost one, to give the Alliance thirty-two seats overnight.
The next morning pundits were back on radio and television by six o’clock, all agreeing with the Daily Mail’s headline “Stalemate.” Raymond and Joyce returned to London on the early morning train while the rural seats were proving their traditional loyalty to the Conservatives. Simon traveled down to Pucklebridge to acknowledge a record majority. He wished he could have sacrificed a couple of thousand for the marginals that weren’t going his way. By twelve-thirty-three when Raymond had reached No. 11 Downing Street, the Labour lead had fallen to 287–276 while the Alliance had captured forty-four seats.
At twelve o’clock that Friday morning, the cameras from all four channels swung over to Edinburgh where the Sheriff was declaring that Andrew Fraser had been returned to the House with a majority of over 7,000. The cameras moved on to show the victor, hands high above his head. The number on the SDP chart flicked up to forty-five. By one o’clock the Social Democrats had notched up their forty-sixth victory by a mere seventy-two votes, a result which saddened Simon.
“The House won’t be quite the same without Alec Pimkin,” he told Elizabeth.
At two-twenty-three that Friday afternoon both the major parties had 292 seats with only two safe Tory-held seats still to be declared. Simon retained the first but Andrew picked up the last after three recounts.
At four o’clock Lord Day of Langham announced from the BBC studios the final result of the 1991 election:
Conservative 293
Labour 292
SDP/Liberal 47
Irish 17
Speaker 1
Lord Day went on to point out that the popular vote made the outcome even more finely balanced with Labour taking 12,246,341 (35.2 percent), Conservatives 12,211,907 (35.1 percent) and the Alliance 8,649,881 (25.4 percent). He told viewers that he had never experienced a result like it in his thirty-six years as a political journalist. He apologized for his failure to get an interview with Andrew Fraser who now held the key as to who would form the next Government.
Andrew phoned Simon first, then Raymond. He listened intently to both men and what they were willing to offer before telling them that he intended to hold a meeting of his members in London on Sunday and relay their comments. He would report back with their decision in the hope that a Government could be formed by Monday.
Andrew and Louise flew down from Edinburgh on the Saturday morning together with a planeload of journalists but by the time Andrew disappeared outside Terminal One into a waiting car the press had nothing new to report.
Sir Duncan had already told the Scotsman that his son would naturally back the Conservatives, while the former Prime Minister announced from his bedside that Andrew had always been a good Socialist at heart and would have nothing to do with the capitalist cause.
On the Saturday Andrew held several informal meetings in Pelham Crescent with senior members of the Alliance to ascertain the views of his colleagues, old and new. By the time he went to bed he still had no clear mandate and when a newscaster said no one was sure how the SDP/Liberal Alliance would vote the following day in their private meeting Andrew added out loud, “Me included.” Even so he had decided after much deliberation on the qualities of the two men and what they stood for and that helped him make up his mind which party he thought should form the next Government.
At the Commons the next morning he and every other SDP and Liberal member had to run the gauntlet of journalists and photographers on the way to a closely guarded committee room on the third floor. The Whip had deliberately selected one of the less accessible rooms and had asked the Serjeant-at-Arms to be certain the recording machines were disconnected.
Andrew opened the meeting by congratulating his colleagues on their election to the House of Commons. “But it is important to remember,” he continued, “that the nation will never forgive us if we are irresponsible with our new power. We cannot afford to say we will support one party, then change our minds after only a few weeks, causing another general election. We must be seen to be responsible. Or you can be sure that when the next election comes every one of us will forfeit our seats.”
He went on to describe in detail how both the major party leaders had accepted the general direction in which he felt the new Government should be moving. He reported that they had both accepted that two members of the Alliance should have seats in the Cabinet. Both had also agreed to back a motion in the Commons for a referendum on proportional representation. For three hours the SDP/Liberal members gave their views, but by the end of that time Andrew was still unable to steer them to a consensus and had to call for a ballot. Andrew did not vote himself and left the SDP Liberal and Chief Whips to count the votes and announce the result.
Twenty-three votes each was the decision of his members.
The Chief Whip informed the parliamentary party that they would have to allow their elected leader to make the final decision. He, after all, was the biggest single reason they had been returned to the House in such relatively large numbers. After twenty-seven years in the Commons he must have the clearest view of which man and which party was most capable of governing the country.
When the Chief Whip sat down, the word “Agreed” came over clearly from the lips of the members sitting round the long table, and the meeting broke up.
Andrew returned to Pelham Crescent and told Louise which man he had decided to support. She seemed surprised. Later that night he left for a quiet dinner at the Atheneum with the sovereign’s private secretary. The equerry returned to Buckingham Palace a little after eleven o’clock and briefed the monarch on the salient points of their discussion.
“Mr. Fraser,” the private secretary said, “is not in favor of another quick election and has made it quite clear which party the Social Democrats are willing to support in the Commons.”
The monarch nodded thoughtfully, thanked his private secretary, and retired to bed.
Chapter thirty-six
King Charles III made the final decision.
As Big Ben struck ten o’clock on that Saturday morning, a private secretary to the Royal household phoned the Right Honorable Simon Kerslake and asked if he would be kind enough to attend His Majesty at the palace.
Simon stepped out of the Conservative party headquarters on the corner of Smith Square and into the clear morning sunlight to be greeted by crowds of well-wishers, television cameras, and journalists. He only smiled and waved as this was not the occasion to make a statement. He slipped quickly through the police cordon and into the back of his black Rover. Motorcycle outriders guided the chauffeur-driven car through the dense crowds slowly past Transport House. Simon wondered what would be going through Raymond Gould’s mind at that moment as he considered the decision Andrew Fraser must have made.