Last updated at 08:16, Friday, 23 May 2008

The lounge of the George Hotel in Penrith is where we find a changed man. David Maclean has been altered by illness, by experience, and by time. If a week is a long time in politics, how do we describe a quarter of a century?

Angry: David Maclean condemned the PO

The member for Penrith and the Border is about to notch up 25 years representing England’s largest constituency. Long enough to see 14 years in government and 11 in opposition. Long enough to be lionised and demonised, depending on whether you view him from right or left. Long enough to see politicians increasingly mistrusted, by those who can still be bothered to muster an opinion.

And long enough to see some of the cast-iron opinions he brought with him to Westminster in 1983 forged into a different shape by his contact with Cumbrians.

Maclean has never been shy to share his thoughts. He bounded into Parliament as one of Margaret Thatcher’s most loyal lieutenants, a 30-year-old Scot, a former officer in the 51st Highland Volunteers who blasted political opponents, single parents and beggars.

“Scottish beggars,” he reflects, peering at his glass of Pepsi, much less strident in person than in Parliament. “The flak and abuse I got for that...”

Maclean once commented on the number of beggars he regularly encountered at Euston Station. Scots, mostly. Did he ever give them anything? “Yes, I give them a piece of my mind!” The quote has scampered along behind him ever since, a handy distillation of his Thatcherite views.

The MP regarded former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey as soft on law and order, declaring: “I know more about the Archbishop’s views on South Africa than his views on right and wrong.”

“John Major made me apologise,” recalls Maclean. “He said ‘I don’t mind you upsetting Scottish beggars but now you’ve offended the Church of England!’”

And still Maclean seems to delight in blurting out the unsayable and championing the unfashionable and the downright unpopular. Take his latest foray into the headlines. While politicians stare enviously up at traffic wardens on the popularity ladder, the Freedom of Information Act offered MPs the chance to come clean about their expenses. Open the books, come on in, we have nothing to hide.

Some of them had plenty to sweep under their subsidised carpet – Derek Conway, anyone? – and the news that MPs can claim £23,000 of taxpayers’ money a year towards their second homes, among many other perks, did not play well among the electoral classes.

Last year Maclean proposed a private members bill that would have exempted Parliament from the act. He battled accusations of an attempted cover-up to argue that exemption would guarantee the confidentiality of MPs’ correspondence with constituents.

But shouldn’t MPs be more accountable to those who elect and fund them? “Yes, but not to that extent. It becomes grubby and salacious. People do have a right to know ‘Did I use taxpayers’ money improperly?’ but getting down to individual receipt items to see where you bought your pillowcases is just a bit silly. If we publish whether we bought pizza or fish and chips it won’t improve our standing.”

Maclean takes pride in the claim that he has always spoken his mind with little regard for the consequences. “I can’t stand politicians who are mealy-mouthed and sit on the fence. You have got to say what you think is right and be prepared to admit that you got it wrong. And it’s easier to say what you think; I’m not clever enough to keep a consistent line of lies going.

“I do think MPs are more cautious now, and I can understand that. Say the wrong word and get crucified. If you make a joke it backfires. The media will expose any little mistake. As soon as William Hague wore that baseball cap he was finished.

“Characters can’t survive these days because TV would make them look like buffoons. Lembit Opik is a character but he’s never taken seriously. Ann Widdecombe’s a character but you wouldn’t want her being Home Secretary. If someone is a character there’s no hope of ministerial advancement. You need to wear the pastel shirt and suit, and a polo shirt for shopping at the weekend.

“When I was [Conservative] Chief Whip in 2001 I said to the new intake of Tory MPs ‘Get out there and attack the Government.’ ‘Well, Chief, I might have a long career in Parliament...’ ‘If you want to be a minister, get in there and fight!’”

July 1983. David Maclean is defending the Penrith and the Border seat vacated by Willie Whitelaw’s elevation to the House of Lords. Cumbrian Tories are annoyed at being dragged out to a by-election just weeks after they voted for Whitelaw. The Conservative majority of 15,400 is slashed to a nail-biting 552. Maclean has nearly blown one of the safest Tory seats in the country.

“I hated those first few years in Parliament,” he admits. “It seemed that nearly everyone I met was saying ‘I wanted to be the candidate. I could have got a better majority than you.’ Until 1987 [when he was re-elected with a large majority] I felt like half an MP.”

In 1987 Margaret Thatcher made Maclean a government whip, a job he held for three years before taking ministerial positions with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Department of the Environment and the Home Office. Working with Thatcher was “a privilege”.

“You had to be so on the ball. In meetings at number 10 she knew everything the cabinet ministers were working on. I’m sitting there as a junior thinking ‘She won’t know the details of mine.’

“’Now, David. Have you read Professor So-and-So’s report?’ ‘It has crossed my desk, Prime Minister.’ ‘That’s not good enough.’ You made sure next time you knew what you were doing.”

In 1996 Maclean took the unprecedented step of turning down an offer from John Major to join his cabinet. “Major said ‘You’re the first person who’s asked not to be promoted.’ I knew I was doing a good job at the Home Office and I didn’t want to give that up.”

But it was wrenched from his hands the following year by a Labour landslide. Eleven years, and counting, of opposition had begun. “Opposition is so frustrating. A constituent will say ‘Why haven’t you stopped this windfarm policy?’ ‘We can’t!’”

He certainly tried, though. Maclean and fellow Tory MP Eric Forth became known as “The Awkward Squad” for their use of Parliamentary procedures to obstruct Labour’s barnstorming progress. “Eric and I formed a guerilla group. We’d spring surprises and force votes at one or two in the morning.

“We would block bills that people thought were really good and important. Not because we were opposed but our view was, if it’s an important bill, don’t sneak it through on a Friday night.

“Eric once spoke all night and through into the next morning. Under Parliamentary rules they had to cancel Prime Minister’s Questions. Well, was that so bad? Questions would happen again next week. It’s held up as this great example of political theatre. That theatre happens all the time but the media doesn’t cover it.

“People say ‘Isn’t this silly boys’ games?’ It was a morale-boosting thing. Two of us were able to defeat the Prime Minister that day.” Another peer at the Pepsi glass. “They changed the rules after that.”

Back in Penrith and the Border the most pressing matters tend to concern tax credits, windfarms and parents calling for their children to attend the school of their choice. Maclean’s patch covers roughly half of Cumbria and includes Penrith, Wigton, Brampton, Longtown, Appleby and Alston. About 140 days a year are spent in London. He and his wife Jay separated six years ago, citing pressure of work.

The challenge of representing such a vast area increased when the MP was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He struggles to walk further than a few yards and uses a shepherd's crook, and a quad bike for traversing his constituency’s rougher terrain. An electric-powered chair allows him to belt down the corridors at Westminster. “I reversed over the party chairman’s toe in the lift. By God she squealed.”

Highs and lows of his first 25 years? “Foot and mouth was the worst and best. I felt all the training I’d done as an MP was for this moment. Very few politicians get a single memorable achievement. If I’ve achieved anything it’s being able to sort out people’s problems and make their lives better. It’s a collection of thousands of people over many years.”

Maclean may not feel he has transformed politics but representing thousands of Cumbrians has made him a changed man. “Before being in Parliament there were certain black and white issues. You become an MP and you realise nothing is like that – it’s a huge grey area in the middle. I used to disapprove of single parents. Now I realise many single parents are doing a magnificent job.”

Conservative on economic policy and liberal in terms of individual choice is Maclean’s unofficial manifesto. He feels our freedoms are being curtailed and laments a state which not only lectures but bans. If people want to eat themselves to death, he says, it’s their choice. But he’d resent having to pay for their decision.

“The only time I put on weight is not because of Mr McDonald. It’s because I’ve sat on my backside and eaten too much. I will probably die in hospital and around me will be grossly overweight people dying because of gluttony, not illness.”

Scottish beggars, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and now the dangerously overweight. In today’s climate of spin doctors and image consultants Maclean’s insistence on saying what he thinks puts him firmly in the “characters” box. As he says, such people are charismatic, refreshing, and have little or no prospect of high office.

Willie Whitelaw served Penrith and the Border for 28 years. Now 55, if David Maclean retains the seat at the next election he should go on to surpass this landmark. It’s a prospect he relishes. “The legs are getting more and more crippled but I feel at the height of my power. What keeps you going is not a sense of achievement but a sense of ‘This is not right – why don’t they change it?’ Then it hits me. ‘Oh God – I’m ‘they’.”

First published at 05:29, Friday, 23 May 2008
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk