The Hugo Young Papers: Thirty Years of British Politics - Off the Record Edited by Ion Trewin Allen Lane, 834pp, £30

Lunchtime notes

Hugo Young, first on the Sunday Times and then on the Guardian, was a columnist of bottom (I use the word Young might have used of a politician; others may prefer "pomposity" or "self-importance") for more than 30 years, until his death in 2003. Harold Evans, the Sunday Times editor when Young began writing columns in his early thirties, remembers him, in a foreword to this volume, looking like a head prefect but writing with the authority of a high court judge. Judgementalism is an important attribute for all columnists, but Young made it into an art form.

As John Lloyd put it in a New Statesman profile in 1998, he often expressed "a near ecstasy of disgust for the squalid nature of the political process". He would excoriate politicians' failings, but then conclude they had done the best that could be expected in an imperfect world, almost exactly in the manner of a judge deciding that, given his unfortunate circumstances, a criminal should escape a prison sentence. Yet he was one of the last columnists whose individual opinion (as opposed to the collective opinion of the commentariat) was genuinely valued by politicians. This was largely because he took them seriously and was preoccupied by the issues they took seriously. Whatever politicians tell you, they are more interested in power -how it can be achieved, exercised and retained - than in what Tony Benn calls the "ishoos".

Power is the main theme of this book. When Young talked off the record to politicians at lunches, over drinks or in their offices, he didn't use a notebook or recorder, calculating they would speak more freely if not reminded he was a journalist. Instead, he returned to base - his Hampstead home in later years - and immediately typed an account of what they had said, sometimes with comments on how they had struck him. He kept these notes, leaving the archive from which this somewhat unwieldy book is selected.

It is not an easy read. Young wrote elegantly, but lacked the common touch - and these notes were, in any case, not written with publication in mind, so are inevitably staccato and unpolished in style. There is little of the diverting gossip or waspish character sketches that characterise the great political diaries by, for example, Harold Nicolson or, more recently, Alan Clark.

Young was sometimes sharp and revealing, both in making his own judgements and in recording those of others. Tony Blair, for example, is "lightweight as a butterfly, skimming along the surface . . . He does lack gravitas." Kenneth Baker, a Tory cabinet minister, "is a flesh-presser" who "touches one's elbow and arm to emphasise a point". Ian Gilmour calls Willie Whitelaw, Margaret Thatcher's deputy, "the weakest man . . . I have ever known". Robert Jackson, the donnish Tory who later defected to new Labour, tells Young that, with women, John Major makes "a lot of physical contact. . . of a faintly dubious kind". But these assessments are occasional and Young's own views of a politician usually become kinder as the politician sees him more often and feeds him more information.

He also recorded some anecdotes, of which the best involves Charles Powell, a Thatcher aide, telling his Italian wife, Carla, to get off the phone lest the prime minister ring, to which she replies that she is talking to the prime minister. But these, too, are sparse. Young was an apostle of the higher journalism, striving to enlighten rather than make mischief.

His concern was with power in the very specific sense. He talked to his contacts mainly about cabinet reshuffles, party leadership speculation, opinion polls, forthcoming elections (and their timing), party splits, hung parliaments, and so on. He is interested in the European Union - almost obsessively so - but that, you could say, is just another issue which relates to the distribution of power. Young talks to people, too, about constitutional reform and, particularly from the early 1990s, about foreign and defence policy. But there is little engagement with economic and social policies. Conversations with Gordon Brown are the solitary exception and, on several occasions, Young was clearly bored. According to Young, on the strength of one column he wrote on the subject, Brown presumed he had a keen interest in welfare-to-work. "I'm afraid this is not so," records Young. When Brown "kept coming back" to economic policy, "I fear I switched off".

Throughout the 1980s, Britain was being transformed, with unions defanged, industries privatised and education revolutionised. It was also the era when, in effect, the old working class was abolished and large numbers of Britons became owner-occupiers and (at least indirectly through private pensions) shareholders. Meanwhile, an underclass, mostly black, rioted in the streets. You wouldn't know it from this volume - which perhaps tells you as much about politicians' concerns as about Young's.

The sources featured here are not necessarily representative because a few (Peter Mandelson was one) withheld permission for their private comments to be published. But those who do appear are the sort you would expect Young to talk to. He was a liberal Catholic (which helps to explain the confidence of his moral judgements) and his Tory sources in particular were mostly from the liberal wing: William Waldegrave, James Prior, Douglas Hurd and Ian Gilmour, for example, rather than, say, Norman Tebbit, David Young or Michael Howard. This, you may think, would leave him ill-informed about what was happening at the centre of power. But journalists will get more from those who are slightly detached, occupying second-tier positions and perhaps nursing grievances, than from senior figures who have a vested interest in supporting the incumbent regime and repeating the approved line.

After new Labour took office, Young seems to have cultivated relatively few ministers and to have concentrated instead on aides such as David Miliband, Roger Liddle and Philip Gould, who were probably grateful to be taken out and taken seriously. He was certainly not above (which journalists is?) paying public tribute to his best contacts. Chris Patten, a fellow Catholic and fellow liberal - and Young's most regular source of information and judgement on the Tories (even from Hong Kong) - was described, in a column in 1996, as "civilised, educated, large-minded".

This volume is an insight not only into high politics but also into how journalism works; PhD theses will no doubt be written tracing how Young's conversations fed into his columns. Not a holiday read, perhaps, but a veritable treasure trove for historians and students of the media catching the spirit of the age.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website