The Wild Rover_ A Blistering Journey Along Britain_s Footpaths - Mike Parker [45]
Huge leather armchair or ship of state, the position made perfect sense; a redoubt firmly bedded in fantasy England, yet looking out, a little shyly, a little haughtily, on to the plains of the real world. It hit me suddenly that, over the last 90 years, events of probably far greater political significance had been ignited here, where the men of power gather and relax over croquet and a vintage burgundy, than ever occur in the daily hurly-burly of Westminster and Whitehall. It was from Chequers, usually after a well-lubricated dinner, that Churchill made many of his most celebrated wartime radio broadcasts. According to Margaret Thatcher’s autobiography, this was where she decided to torpedo the Belgrano, dreamt up the poll tax and first realised she ‘could do business’ with Mikhail Gorbachev. The Chilterns are our locum capital.
When Lord Lee decided to give Chequers to the nation, specifically to the prime minister of the day as a weekend retreat, there was much debate in Parliament and the country. Liberal peer Lord Haldane warned that the trappings of an English country house existence could prove far too distracting to chaps from the middle classes, for, after all, it could no longer be assumed that PMs these days would come to office with their own estate. The PM since 1916, David Lloyd George, was just such a middle-class occupier of the office, and he was passionately in favour of the idea, even if he never much took to the place as its first prime ministerial occupant.
The last Liberal PM might not have been a huge fan of Chequers, but his Labour successors most certainly have been, more so even than most of their Tory counterparts. Ramsay MacDonald delighted in playing the country gent: Harold Nicolson recorded in his diaries turning up to Chequers to find Britain’s first socialist prime minister sporting a full set of tweeds, plus-fours and a fob watch, while carrying a log in one hand and an axe in the other. The house and estate, said the Cabinet Secretary of the time, was having ‘a marvellous effect on these Labour people’.
Three Labour PMs have loved the place so much that, on leaving office, they’ve bought nearby properties to prolong the dream. Telling us all that we need to know about the progress of the Labour Party since the war, these have gone from Clement Attlee (left office 1951, bought Cherry Tree Cottage on the outskirts of nearby Great Missenden), to Harold Wilson (1976, bought Grange Farm on the other side of Great Missenden) and Tony Blair (2007, bought the stately baroque pavilion of Wotton House, just north of Thame. To complete the illusion, the Blairs even employed the housekeeper from Chequers in their new home, and completed the double by buying a London home in Connaught Square, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Number 10).
In an even more stunningly accurate metaphor for his entire premiership, Blair’s successor Gordon Brown finally creaked into office having made loud protestations that, as the fabled son of the manse and cheerleader for prudence, he would be the first prime minister since Andrew Bonar Law in 1923 to forgo the delights of Chequers. This was intended to underline the difference between himself and the Prince Regent excesses of the Blair regime, under which Chequers was regularly used for get-togethers with casts drawn from all sections of politics, the media and showbiz. Like so many other of his gruffly shouted Puritan principles, it didn’t hold for long, and Brown became a passionate convert to the place, going there