Moving stationery tales

A new prime minister's first decisions are decidedly analogue and paper-based. PLUS: What I will be doing on election night, book news, and Ken Bruce.

Less than five years ago I made a behind-the-scenes documentary for the Red Box podcast, What Happens When You Become Prime Minister, which also led to a write-up for the Times magazine.

Notably, it has already been dusted off, updated and reshared twice since 2019, and this week I have been doing the same. What with the slim possibility of a new arrival in No10 shortly.

So the version now available on the Politics Without The Boring Bits podcast includes added Sir Alex Allan (former principal private secretary to Major and Blair), Peter Mandelson (prince of darkness turned podcaster) and revelations about Liz Truss’s demands for high office supplies.

Far from being the victim of an uncooperative Deep State, when she flew to Balmoral to see the Queen, Truss travelled with a pesky member of The Blob who was carrying not one but two mobile printers to keep churning out her big speech.

According to her speechwriter, Asa Bennett, officials were at pains for everything to be just so. “Would there be spare types of paper? What type? How big should the folder for the speech be? Because Boris had a particular type that was more of a thin sleeve for his papers. Liz felt that was a bit flimsy. You know, how do you make sure you open the speech up with a real THWACK on the lectern?” And a real thwack on the economy, it turned out.

Which got me thinking – because I am a bit odd - about politicians and their relationship with paper. Despite so much of modern life being digital, the biggest decisions a new prime minister has to make in those early hours and days are decidedly analogue and paper-based.

I have rounded up as many tales as I could for my Times column this week. There is Margaret Thatcher’s Tory blue pens, Tony Blair’s folders, Rishi Sunak’s erasable ink and Theresa May’s hole-punch desperately labelled “DO NOT REMOVE FROM OFFICE”.

But I wanted to share an alarming story that David Cameron once told me about what happened when he first became prime minister in 2010:

“You have to write what are called the letters of last resort because we have a nuclear submarine with our deterrent on board continuously at sea all the time. In the ghastly event that Britain was attacked and communications were down between the United Kingdom and the submarine, the commander of that submarine needs to know what to do in the last resort. So you’re briefed by a senior naval figure. They wheel this giant shredder into your office and then run through what the options potentially are, or you could make up some of your own. They leave you with a whole set of different letters that you can adapt as you see fit and then you shred all the ones you don’t use so that nobody knows what you chose. It is a moment where you just feel the full weight of responsibility that you’ve taken on. I shredded everything and sealed up my letter. But there was a rather comic moment where, as I handed it over to the naval attaché, the envelope pinged open and so there’s a sort of sudden call for Sellotape and Pritt stick.”

That’s what you call a sticky situation.

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What I’ll be doing on election night

The full details of what I will be doing on election night have been released.

I will be live on Times Radio from 9.55pm on Thursday, just in time for the exit poll at 10pm, and will be on air right through until 6am.

Joining me on the overnight show will be an amazing roster including Andrew Neil, William Hague, Kate McCann, James Johnson, Calum Macdonald, Ayesha Hazarika, Ed Vaizey, John Pienaar, Jane Garvey, Fi Glover, Patrick Maguire, Kait Borsay, Carole Walker, Rosie Wright, Darryl Morris, James Hanson, Steven Swinford, Tim Shipman, Caroline Wheeler, Harry Yorke and Lara Spirit plus How To Win An Election’s Peter Mandelson, Daniel Finkelstein and Polly Mackenzie.

Then I will be back on Friday from 10am-1pm as usual, with a second live episode of How To Win An Election. And then I will go to bed/the pub.

Interestingly this week also marks four years since I launched my show on Times Radio, and fronting election night feels like a fitting way to bow out before I go to BBC Radio 5 Live in the autumn. And I’m thrilled to be doing my bowing out with my brilliant Times Radio team, Andrew Alexander, Lewis Decker, Erin Carney, Kea Browning, Tom Vigar, Ollie Lewis and Ryan Boydon. A potentially record-breaking, history-making election result is certainly going out with a bang.

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51 places

A general election, a new job… oh and a book. Or at least a paperback edition. I am currently working on a Starmer chapter to add to Planes, Trains and Toilet Doors: 50 Places That Changed British Politics. So far this has mainly involved trying to track down a man who knows a man who knows a man who bought a blimp. For reasons that will become clear, if you pre-order the paperback on Bookshop.org

It is due out on October 10.

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This week I have enjoyed

• Meeting Ken Bruce at the TRIC Awards – where I lost in the News Presenter category to Nigel Farage, but we don’t need to talk about that.

• Rediscovering the days when a new prime minister entered Number 10 without uttering a word, and just doing a bit of waving.

• Reading Tom McTague’s essay for The Atlantic on the culture differences between American and British journalists, which includes this magnificent passage: “As a trainee at the tabloid Daily Mirror, I dressed up in a giant yellow chicken outfit to chase Conservative politicians around London as an election stunt. I would often think of this with a wry smile when, years later, I was subjected to an Atlantic fact-checker asking whether I was sure the painting in Boris Johnson’s office was hanging over the fireplace rather than above his desk.”

• Finally understanding why drinking a bottle of Diet Coke has become such an ordeal. You’ll have noticed not a single manifesto has addressed the source of the nation’s simmering anger: tethered bottle caps. The Sunday Times’ Stephen Bleach does a good job of explaining why it’s happened, how drinks companies were caught off guard by the backlash (surely someone during testing scratched their nose and got splattered with fizz?) and why ditching them isn’t a Brexit freedom we will be taking advantage of.

And that’s your lot for now. Until next time, tell your friends.