12 A Young Country 1990—2000

1. The poll tax may posthumously have lived up to its nickname, in deterring some potential voters. It was often said that efforts to evade registration for the tax in 1990 kept up to a million names off the electoral register in 1992; but the actual impact seems to have been more limited.

1. Sudden, but also his second; his first attack had put him out of action as Shadow Chancellor in 1988, though he apparently made a full recovery. While on a visit to Venice in June 1993, Michael Heseltine had also had a heart attack; but his efforts to make light of it seemed less convincing after Smith’s death, which thus tolled the bell for any lingering hopes of Heseltine succeeding John Major.

1. It was not known that Major himself had had an affair in the 1980s with the Conservative junior minister Edwina Currie until the publication in 2002 of Currie’s memoirs, which in this respect cast a new light on the causes of Major’s embarrassments as prime minister.

1. Neil Hamilton, a former junior minister, accused by the Guardian, failed in a high-profile attempt to clear his name and was later bankrupted. Jonathan Aitken left the cabinet, likewise to fight the Guardian, and was ultimately gaoled for perjury. The popular-fiction writer Jeffrey Archer (Lord Archer), a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party and its prospective candidate as mayor of London, was also later sent to prison for perjury,

1. Brought into the cabinet at the Department of Trade and Industry in July 1993, Mandelson was back in the headlines five months later when it was revealed that his expensive house had been financed by a secret loan from another minister; his resignation was only accepted after a delay of several days. Forgiven, he was back in the cabinet π October 1999 – for fifteen months this time. Again in January 2001 there were headline allegations; again Mandelson departed, this time forced out quickly by Blair. The actual evidence of any ministerial malpractice was thin, but the incident was enough to sink an accident-prone politician with Mandelson’s record.