I am impressed by the good humour and atmosphere of mutual respect among the comrades - not how things are in the party I have left
What does "crossing the floor" really mean? The question becomes actual when I call on Hilary Armstrong, the government's Chief Whip, in her splendid 18th-century room just around the corner from where I served as a junior minister aeons ago. She gracefully receives me into her fold, telling me that "taking the whip" means just that - being sent the weekly Labour Party list of forthcoming Commons votes. I am gratified to be able to tell her that the anonymous bronze bust on a shelf in her room is of Plato. And surely the late Plato of The Laws has his place in the office of the Chief Whip.
Saturday is "D-day", but first, the Old Berkshire Hunt is meeting that morning on Goosey village green. Having voted at every stage against the hunting ban, I go along to show solidarity. There are several hundred people there, all classes and conditions of men and women; and I find wry amusement at the government's dilemma - how to enforce unenforceable legislation foisted on it by a free vote in the Commons. I also find an awareness of the important contributions to the parliamentary resistance from Labour people such as Kate Hooey, Bernard Donoughue and Ann Mallalieu. Somehow I do not think that we have seen the last of the OBH.
Having agreed with Dominic Lawson of the Sunday Telegraph - and, by the way, it was entirely my idea to go to him - that my "defection" will be exclusive to him until Saturday evening, I must now break the news to the chairman of the Wantage Conservatives. John Griffiths is a calm and reassuring presence: when I ring him at 6.45pm, I tell him what I have done and ask whether he wants me to deliver my letter in person. He says yes.
On the way over, I reflect on what advice to give about handling the bombshell that will explode at 7.30pm. So as soon as I have apologised to him, I suggest he phones Conservative Central Office and speaks to the duty press officer. He tries. The phone is answered by a security guard, who puts us through to an answering machine with no other numbers to ring. So I contact the Labour Party press man assigned to me, and pass on to the chairman of the Wantage Conservatives the name and number of the duty Press Association political correspondent - courtesy of the Labour press office. What does this say about the state of the party I am leaving?
Sunday morning passes in a haze of broadcast media interviews. The Tories try to suggest that my timing was determined by the No 10 spinmasters, but in fact I chose it: I couldn't have left my departure until after the thank-you dinner planned by the Wantage Conservatives for 22 January. I felt I had to give them a few days to cancel it.
On Sunday afternoon, my wife and I escape, taking a walk along the Thames from the National Theatre to Tower Bridge, then back on the other side to Somerset House. It is a fine winter afternoon, with a golden glow in the sky. On display all around us is the new Britain - confident, opulent, powerful. The buildings of the 1990s have the same air of solidity and good humour as the surviving Victorians and Edwardians.
The drab slabs of the 1960s and 1970s are the odd men out, waiting in a queue for demolition.
This is an architectural image of the recovery of Britain in my political lifetime, from "sick man of Europe" to the fourth-biggest economy in the world, and the only power after the United States with a truly global reach. All around us are admiring visitors from everywhere in the world: along with New York, and ahead of it, London is once again the true Weltstadt.
Monday evening completes the journey I began in Hilary Armstrong's office: I am welcomed into the bosom of the Parliamentary Labour Party. They seem genuinely pleased to have me, and I encounter no sour looks. I am impressed by the good humour and atmosphere of mutual respect among the comrades - not how things are in the party I have left.
The evening ends rehearsing Haydn's Te Deum with the parliamentary choir. As we practise the great fugue "Non confundar in aeternum", I reflect that this might make an apt motto for today's Conservative Party. To borrow a formula I have often heard used in Tory speeches: "For the benefit of the Etonians among you, I will translate: 'Let me not be confounded for eternity'."
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