SMEAR STUDIES

I make no apology for returning to the matter of William Hague and the famous “gay rumours”. Last weekend, I was one of the bloggers to reveal that the unnamed cabinet minister, whose sexuality (according to the lead story in The Daily Telegraph) was being questioned in the blogosphere, was indeed the Foreign Secretary. In the eight days since, the story has developed in quite unforeseen ways.

The present situation first came to light because Hague recently appointed Chris Myers as his third special advisor. A number of observers recognised Myers as someone who had frequently accompanied Hague during the election campaign. On Thursday, The Guardian quoted “a source” in Hague’s constituency of Richmond, Yorkshire, to the effect that “it often seemed as though Myers was there for the ride rather than any other purpose”.

By that time, the notorious political blogger who posts under the name Guido Fawkes had sought through the Freedom of Information Act to discover whether Hague and Myers had ever shared a hotel room while on the campaign trail. I imagine someone must have tipped him off that such was a scent worth pursuing. And on Wednesday, knowing that Fawkes would be running with the information that Hague and Myers did indeed share a room on more than one occasion, Hague decided to attempt to nip the story in the bud. So he released his personal statement.

Reporting it for BBC News on Wednesday evening, political editor Nick Robinson called it the most extraordinary statement by a politician he had ever seen. He didn’t elaborate but perhaps he didn’t need to. Hague’s statement declared that “any suggestion that [Myers’] appointment was due to an improper relationship between us is utterly false, as is any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man. This speculation seems to stem from the fact that whilst campaigning before the election we occasionally shared twin hotel rooms”.

Hague and Myers last year

Well, now, who could be blamed for raising an eyebrow if a 49 year-old multi-millionaire shares a room with a 25 year-old of either the same or the other sex? Who would not imagine that a seasoned politician might think twice before doing such a thing, even if he were so tight-fisted a Yorkshireman that he resented paying Yorkshire hotel rates? Come to that, doesn’t Hague have a home in his constituency? Why would he need to stay at a hotel at all?

Hague’s statement goes on that “Christopher … has now told me that, as a result of the pressure on his family from the malicious allegations, he does not wish to continue in his position”. On Friday, The Northern Echo reported Myers’ family being “besieged” as “journalists kept vigil” even though “it was unclear … if Mr Myers … was inside the detached property”. Presumably the paper had a reporter of its own there, doing a spot of besieging. But of course this “vigil” was as a consequence of Hague’s statement, not a forerunner of it. I can find no evidence of media interest in the Myers family before Hague issued his statement, so it seems most unlikely that Myers resigned to bring “pressure” to a halt, but rather that he stepped down in order to pre-empt it.

Aside from that, which was the result of Hague electing to go public, there seems no reason at all why Myers should resign. He is not perceived to be at fault, even by Hague’s political opponents. If he was really so useful as a special advisor to the Foreign Secretary as that politician seemed to think, despite his singular lack of verifiable credentials to be so, Hague should have kept him. After all, as shadow Foreign Secretary, he flew the boy (first class at MoD expense) with him to Afghanistan, including a two-night stop over on Bahrain, and also took him more than once to Belfast. Myers seems indeed to have been indispensable.

Hague’s statement concludes with considerable detail about his wife Ffion’s history of miscarriages. This is perhaps the most perplexing part of the statement. What does it have to do with anything? Only people of very limited intelligence believe that being married and wanting children, whether or not the wish can be fulfilled, is conclusive evidence of a lack of homosexual instincts or behaviour. Oscar Wilde himself had a wife and children.

The result of Hague’s personal statement was to make the rumours a perfectly legitimate subject for the mainstream media. From this point on, the fact that Hague’s sexuality had been queried was out in the open and could not be packed away again. The story was no longer confined to blogs. Because of this, many at Westminster (not least in the wiser reaches of the Tory Party) have questioned Hague’s judgment. Those sceptics know that many will believe that smoke must mean fire. Hague will always be thought by some to be at least bisexual if not someone engaged in a lavender marriage.

While old-school Tories like Norman Tebbit and John Redwood publicly shook their heads in dismay and David Cameron, still on holiday/paternity leave, issued an unquestioning but oddly bloodless message of support, the Richmond Tories piled in to bolster their MP. Such warmth wouldn’t be hard to find, for Hague has the largest majority of any constituency member in Britain, which tells you quite how Tory is that part of Yorkshire. The chairman of the Richmond Conservative Association, Christopher Bourne-Arton, told The World at One that he fervently hoped those bloggers would return to the “slime-pool” from which they had arisen. He evidently was so pleased with this piece of withering scorn that he delivered himself of it again on the television news that evening.

All that being said, Hague is badly wounded. His record is already tainted by misplaced enthusiasm for such unreliable allies as milords Archer and Ashcroft. So soon after the David Laws embarrassment, he has allowed it to become widely suspected that le vice anglais is alive and well and thriving in the Con-Dem coalition. And of course the very fact that Hague takes the matter so seriously and that people talk glibly of “smears” and “slime-pools” tells you just how homophobic public discourse still is in 21st century Britain.

It’s not as if such tales are anything new. Two married ministers under Thatcher and Major were regularly rumoured to be really gay. Michael Portillo eventually declared that he had been gay as a young man, though advising that those days were now over. Peter Lilley was more apt to treat the tales with lofty disdain. I remember somebody in an Any Questions? audience raising with Lilley the matter of his sexuality and moderator Jonathan Dimbleby promptly and severely shutting down any opportunity for further comment – he seemed far more exercised about it than Lilley himself.

Around that time, a fellow journalist told me that she had heard William Hague remark: “I don’t understood all the fuss about Peter Lilley. He had my cherry long ago”. I do not disinter that detail to make more trouble for Hague. Indeed, I give it no credit: even Hague would not be so naïve as to make such a remark in the hearing of a journalist. But it says something about how Hague was viewed on Fleet Street, even at that young age.

Peter Lilley, fresh as cherry blossom

Not that the mainstream media have been so very gleeful in pouring supposed mud over Hague’s shiny head. Julian Glover, The Guardian’s young-looking specialist in gay Torydom, wrote a typically confused piece on Thursday under the title ‘The Dark Side of Gay Liberation’. Among his arguments was that “gay and lesbian politicians, and those suspected of being in this group, are now quite routinely expected to make a declaration of their sexuality, as straight ones, by and large, do not … No one rings up ministers to ask if they are secretly attracted to women”. Leave aside that, in Glover’s world, all ministers would seem to be male. What he forgets, though, is that heterosexual politicians make statements of their heterosexuality all the time. It is after all only a week ago that every front page carried carefully posed photographs of David Cameron with his new baby. MPs who are married with children – which means nearly all of them – pretty much without exception and from time immemorial have featured photographs of this reassuringly “normal” family life in their election literature. The underlying meaning of this tradition is not hard to fathom, nor does it require stating explicitly.

The Guardian re-runs such pieces as Glover’s on its website under the banner ‘Comment is Free’ and invites readers to respond in a thread. I posted a comment on Thursday afternoon, the burden of which will be familiar to those who have read the previous posting on this blog. I recast it like this:

“Well of course we all accept that Hague isn't gay because Brutus is an honourable man and it's unparliamentary to accuse a chap of being economical with the actualité. But can we agree that William has been cavalier with the appearance. Out of Oxford, his best pal was a certain Alan Duncan. They both signed up as Shell Oil trainees and they shared two successive homes, the second of which Duncan bought with his business gains and charged William a monthly rent of a case of champagne. That house was convenient for the Commons in – oh, mother – Gayfere Street.

It was Duncan who persuaded Hague to run for Tory leader after John Major stood down, Duncan who managed his campaign, Duncan who was appointed his parliamentary political secretary (an unprecedented, never repeated title) and who was briefly his media advisor until his advice proved crap. It was only after Hague was succeeded as leader by Iain Duncan Smith that Alan Duncan came out, fully ten years after entering the house. Why? Because had he come out while Hague was leader, awkward questions would have been asked about a man who only married at 36 when about to lead the party.

So, sure Hague is undoubtedly and securely straight. But he's certainly spent a lot of time in the company of people who may make him look a bit gay”.

Very much to my surprise, I noted next day that this comment had been removed from the thread by the moderator. Appending to it a note arguing that there was nothing offensive or libellous in the comment, I posted it again. Again it was removed. I then posted this:

“My comment on this matter has twice been removed by the moderator. I have carefully read the so-called community standards and my comment is in breach of none of them. It is grammatical, articulate, pertinent, witty and not repetitious (as far as I am aware) of any other comment in this thread. It is not abusive, homophobic, gratuitously or otherwise offensive. It does not accuse Mr Hague of being gay, untruthful, unfaithful to his wife, incompetent at his job or anything other than – or worse than – being heedless of appearances.

If it may be thought libellous, then let me point out that the facts to which I allude in the posting are contained in an article by Paul Routledge in The Independent of September 21st 1997. This may be read at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/comment-williams-clumsy-friendprofile-alan-duncan-1240267.html

No action for libel was evidently taken against that newspaper at the time it was first published or since it was placed on the internet. As a consequence, no Guardian lawyer has grounds for ordering my comment to be removed.

I bitterly resent being censored by the moderator of this thread. There seems to be no mechanism whereby his (it cannot surely be a 'her') Stalinist decisions may be either expounded or appealed. The only recourse the diligent poster has is to attempt to repeat the imagined outrage. I shall shortly post my original comment for a third time. If it and/or this present comment is/are removed, I shall be taking up the matter with the Press Council and the Scott Trust.

Comment is free? Ha”.

A little later, I posted the original comment again. Both postings were fairly swiftly expunged. I was staggered. I then posted this short note:

“Who is the moderator, to whom is he answerable and how may one address him openly?

What can there possibly be in this posting to attract removal?”

and, as far as I am aware (life is too short to keep checking), it remains on the thread. I took up the matter with the Press Complaints Commission but am not sanguine about a result because their website requires one to file the complained-of article and my complaint concerns the censorship of my own article. I am not sure that the PCC has a mechanism to satisfy me. I thought about writing separately to the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger (whom, a long time ago when he briefly became a television critic, I described in print as “another know-all who knows fuck-all about television”), and to Dame Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust (which oversees Guardian Media Group matters), but then I decided I couldn’t be bothered.



The Hagues with Alan Duncan: other than a cartoon of himself, this is the only image that appears on his profile page on his own website

I did write to the letters editor of The Guardian this letter intended for publication:

“Dear Sir,

Someone uniquely well placed to shed light on the William Hague question is Alan Duncan. He befriended Hague at Oxford and both men became Shell Oil trainees. They shared two successive homes, the second of which Duncan bought with his business gains and charged Hague a monthly rent of a case of champagne. That house was convenient for the Commons in – ahem – Gayfere Street.

It was Duncan who persuaded Hague to run for Tory leader after John Major stood down, Duncan who managed his campaign, Duncan who was appointed his parliamentary political secretary (an unprecedented, never repeated title) and who was briefly his media advisor until his advice proved unreliable. It was only after Hague was replaced as leader that Duncan came out, fully ten years after entering the house. Why? Because had he come out while Hague was leader, awkward questions would have been asked about a man who only married at 36 when about to lead the party.

Civil-partnered and with his own sexuality beyond doubt, Alan Duncan's assurance of William Hague's truthfulness in declaring as ‘utterly false ... any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man’ would clearly assist his position enormously.

Yours faithfully”

It wasn’t published. As a regular contributor to the paper’s correspondence columns, I have an email relationship with the letters editor, Nigel Willmott, so I sent him a personal note:

“Dear Nigel,

Is there some agreement between the government and the media generally and/or The Guardian specifically that the Hague history contained in my email of 12.33 pm yesterday – highly pertinent and accurate though it was – will not be aired? I think we should be told.

Oh, and I'm not letting this rest.

Yours sincerely”

Willmott replied thus:

“Hi Stephen

I can't speak for the whole of the Guardian ... on the Letters page we have (that is, I as editor enforce) a guideline that we do not get involved in gossip and speculation about people's private lives. We are old-fashioned enough to believe there is such a thing.

I am not a great fan of William Hague as a politician, but I fail to see what his sexuality has do with his public role - except as in that this innuendo is affecting his ability to do that job. I think the invasion of public figures' private life for its own sake demeans our public culture.

I don't know or care whether he is gay - but if so, whether he chooses to make his sexuality public or not is up to him (or perhaps him and his wife).

There may be issues that stem from the affair - perhaps his judgment and the process for appointing his adviser, or in making his statement – that may be fair for debate on our page at some stage. But we will remain uninterested in speculation about his private life per se.

None of our guidelines is written in stone and we accept as the affair goes on (if it does) areas of his private life may become legitimate areas for debate as they become a public issue, but for the moment, I am not interested in your letter, which as far as I can tell is interested only in establishing his sexuality.

Otherwise, we will continue to look forward to receiving your usually excellent letters.

bst Nigel”

My response to that – the proper one, I think – was to write him a better letter, in the light of a collation of views published in the feature section, G2, under the heading ‘Does it matter who William Hague shares a hotel room with?’:

Dear Sir,

It matters (G2 cover story September 3) because, as party leader, William Hague vehemently opposed the repeal of the cruel and oppressive Section 28, introduced by the previous Tory government to outlaw an even-handed attitude to sexuality by teachers and others answerable to local authorities. Hague even sacked one of his frontbenchers, specifically for voicing support for Labour's decision to repeal the clause.

At that time, Hague's closest political ally was Alan Duncan. Indeed, the pair shared two successive homes, so Duncan was clearly also Hague's closest personal friend. It doesn't signify whether such friendship was platonic or not and, speaking for myself, I would not care to know. It does signify that Hague was so ideologically blinkered that he could overlook his good friend's self-declared homosexuality and punish that of everyone else. I leave to others their opinions as to how far this might suggest that Hague is conflicted about sexuality.

Yours faithfully

Willmott replied:

“Hi Stephen

thanx ... this is maybe something we could go with ...

bst Nigel”

I make no remark on a man who, from his photograph, looks to be not significantly younger than me using the modes of the texting generation. At any rate, my letter did not appear and I sent him a brief note:

“Nigel –

Ach, you're such a tease ...

Regards”

On Any Questions? this weekend, who should fetch up but the aforementioned Alan Duncan. Would he speak as unguardedly as he usually does? Would he hell! Holiday relief moderator Martha Kearney very properly introduced Duncan as one who had befriended Hague at Oxford and who had been the first sitting Tory MP to come out. In answer to the opening question about a “brilliant” politician being undermined by rumour, Duncan said: “First of all, you’re quite right to use the adjective ‘brilliant’. We’re dealing with a very special politician here and I think the way he has been pilloried this week has been contemptible. I think that, based on rumour, innuendo with no foundation in fact, bloggers and the press have got completely out of control. I know William, I know Ffion and I don’t like the way they have been treated. I think the way he has behaved and the way Ffion has behaved have been admirable – composed, calm, dignified – and I think it’s wrong for British politics that a couple like this should have been subjected to what they’ve been subjected this week”.

Duncan guys Hague in a House of Lords entertainment, February 2009: don't, whatever you do, imagine that this is camp

This had my lower jaw sagging. How has his pal been “pilloried”, pray? Who has treated Mrs Hague in any way other than at a very long arm’s length and without spin of any kind? What is the history of Hague lodging with the gay Duncan if it is not a foundation in fact?

After a depressingly conventional discussion among the rest of the panel, Kearney put it to Duncan that “one paper even suggested that the rumours date back to the time you shared a flat with him”, to which Duncan replied: “I don’t think that’s true at all but here you go, you’re off again and I don’t like the nature of your question. You’re starting once again just the kind of tittle-tattle which has been the foundation of this and is unjustified”. Kearney should never have let him get away with this, should have raised the Section 28 issue that I alluded to in my letter, but the mood of the whole panel was against her.

I sent an email to Any Answers?: “Alan Duncan was William Hague's closest political ally before and during the latter's leadership of the Tory Party. Indeed, as Martha Kearney pointed out, the pair shared a house (indeed, two successive homes), so Duncan was clearly also Hague's closest personal friend. It doesn't signify whether such friendship was platonic or not and, speaking for myself, I do not care to know. It does signify that Hague was so ideologically blinkered that he could overlook his good friend's self-declared homosexuality and punish that of everyone else by, as leader, vehemently opposing the repeal of the cruel and oppressive Section 28, introduced by the previous Tory government to outlaw an even-handed attitude to sexuality by teachers and others answerable to local authorities. Hague even sacked one of his frontbenchers, specifically for voicing support for Labour's decision to repeal the clause.

I leave to others their opinions as to how far this might suggest that Hague is conflicted about sexuality. But in the political sense I have indicated – and only in this sense – whether or not Hague has had relationships with men is important.

Yours faithfully”.

I didn’t expect my email to be read but the selection of phone callers chosen – no emails – infuriated me. I wrote again, before the end of the broadcast: “What is the point of Any Answers? if all the callers you choose make the same point and the moderator doesn't deal with it? Your callers repeated and repeated the argument that two people of the same sex ought to be able to room together to save money without raising suspicion of an ‘improper’ relationship or, as one caller preposterously put it, ‘being criminalised’.

But how many of these callers who volunteered that they had shared with ‘a friend’ are multi-millionaires? And how many of them shared with someone young enough to be their child? And how many of them would presume nothing ‘improper’ if a 49 year-old man shared a room with a 25 year-old woman? Would they say ‘oh, I expect they were saving money’?

Yours faithfully”. Both emails received automated replies.

The Telegraph columnist Mary Riddell, also on the Any Questions? panel, reckoned that, once the issue escaped the blogosphere, the BBC and The Guardian “were the most vociferous or covered it most extensively”. I thought this was pretty rich, given that it was The Telegraph that first aired the matter last Saturday and this Saturday was still running with it (we only see the paper that day because it then has much the best of all colour magazines). Yesterday, the paper’s chief keeper of the Thatcherite flame, Simon Heffer, weighed in against the hapless Hague. The man I call Siphon Effluent vouchsafed that “the statement about Mrs Hague’s miscarriages was a abominable abuse of her in the interests of his political career” and “[Hague] raises questions, by his conduct, of whether he has the credibility to stay in office”. Effluent is no supporter of the Cameron project and, since the former Thatcher protégé Hague threw in his lot with what Effluent would deem the wets, he could not be expected to extend to Hague any benefit of any doubts.



Damian Thompson; Andrew Sullivan

Elsewhere, the paper’s blogger Damian Thompson revealed himself to have been a contemporary of Hague’s at Oxford. On his blog, he reports that everyone at Oxford noted Hague’s lack of interest in having a girlfriend. In his newspaper article, he notes that the enormously articulate Andrew Sullivan, long resident in the States and recently an eloquent supporter of President Obama (though still fundamentally a Republican), was once a protégé of Hague’s. Sullivan is famously, noisily gay.

So it remains plangent that Hague can insist that “any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man” is false and make that vicious and unforgiveable stand he took over Section 28 and yet have his personal life interthreaded with queens. Let’s face it, he is never going to be free of this.