Although the title of this book is a deliberate reference to the Crossman Diaries, it is more reminiscent of Chris Mullin’s recent three volumes of diaries. Like Mullin, and unlike Crossman, Spicer never reached the cabinet, but – like Mullin – he served in numerous junior ministerial positions and was also a member of a faction very much at odds with the party’s leadership (in Spicer’s case, in the aptly named PEST, and later as a ringleader of the Maastricht rebels). Like Chris Mullin, he is ruefully self-deprecating, and ready to poke fun at himself. Alan Clark, that other Conservative diarist, might be thought to be a more obvious point of comparison, but Spicer is nowhere near as flamboyant or spiky. While Clark was entertainingly vitriolic about colleagues, Spicer’s personal criticisms of other politicians are more the exception than the rule.
What particularly stands out in light of recent Tory tensions, highlighted by David Cameron’s sharp retort to Douglas Carswell in a recent session of prime minister’s questions, is Spicer’s account of how the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith also saw battles between ‘so-called modernisers (‘mods’), whose mantra seems to focus on more women candidates and welcome to minority groups’, and the ‘rockers’, who say what we want is a re-establishment of our identity/principles – choice, small state, decentralisation of decisions and appropriate policies (health insurance, low taxes etc.)’. The author portrays Duncan Smith as an isolated figure undermined by the modernisers, and estranged from his erstwhile allies on the traditional right, who thought he made too many concessions to the modernisers.
Spicer also offers insights into how the Tory civil war over Maastricht included friction not just between the rebels and the government, but also between the rebels themselves, not least between the author and Bill Cash. Some of Spicer’s revelations certainly undermine the argument made recently in The Times by Philip Collins that ‘the Tories actually behave rather nicely’. The unnamed Tory MP who Spicer describes as being dragged by his hair by a government whip through the yes lobby in one crucial Maastricht vote would probably beg to differ. What with that, and revelations of other physical violence and one Conservative MP spitting at another in the division lobbies, there are clear parallels with the accounts of those other political diarists, Chips Channon and Harold Nicholson, of the schisms in the Conservative party over appeasement some 60 years earlier.
On the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands war, Spicer’s diary entries from the period are notable for their pessimism. At one point he asserts that Mrs Thatcher is finished even if the islands are successfully retaken, because public opinion would be offended by high casualties. It is, indeed, the mirror image of Alan Clark’s concern in his diaries from the time, namely that Mrs Thatcher would be undermined in her efforts to retake the Falkland Islands by her Heathite opponents within the party.
Pleasingly free of self-regard or bombast, The Spicer Diaries offer a highly readable account of recent political history.
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The Spicer Diaries | Michael Spicer | £30 | Biteback Publishing
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Richard Briand is a freelance writer. He has a chapter in Prime Minister Boris, published recently by Biteback