(For those coming from Tat For Tit: P1=Parris, P2=Mandelson, T=P1 saying P2 was gay live on BBC2)

We all knew Mandelson was gay

Matthew Parris - An Outsider In Politics

Interviewed for Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman asked me about homosexuality and politics. Making the point that being gay was no longer a bar to office, I said: “There are at least two gay members of the Cabinet.”

Paxman: “Are there two gay members of the Cabinet?” Myself: “Well, Chris Smith is openly gay and I think Peter Mandelson is certainly gay.”

Paxman: “I think we will just move on from there. I am not quite sure where he is on this.”

Jeremy Paxman’s jaw dropping was my first warning of the row that was to follow.

For all the regret for saying what I did, when I did, where I did and in the way I did, I must say too that I think that the whole fuss was perfectly absurd. For as long as I had known him, Mandelson had scolded people who discussed his homosexuality — but in the way we might scold someone for talking about politics or religion in the pub. I had absolutely no idea that anybody would seriously maintain that his homosexuality was a secret. It never occurred to me.

I had smiled at Rory Bremner’s “You can come out now sketch” of Mandelson. I knew that Edwina Currie had said that he was gay on her radio programme. I had read quite recently a leading article in The Independent saying so, and I knew that the same paper had published an article by its gay columnist John Lyttle mentioning Mandelson’s homosexuality. The Lyttle column had revealed that if you typed “gay” and “Mandelson” into a database, 111 newspaper stories were referenced. I had seen the fact reported so often and heard it discussed so regularly and in such a matter-of-fact way that I assumed that Mandelson’s homosexuality was a matter of public record, often alluded to, uncontested and beyond contention. What I thought I was doing in including Mandelson in my list of gay MPs was twitting him, in a not entirely unaffectionate way, with something he rather grandly thought he could banish from conversation.

But Paxman looked stunned. At the end of the interview, he shook my hand — odd, I thought — and disappeared. I now know that he headed off to compose a handwritten letter of apology to Mandelson, which he personally delivered at dawn the following day.

After the BBC car ferried me, tired and only slightly unsettled, back to Narrow Street, my friend and assistant, Julian Glover, rang. He sounded terrified. He had only one question: “Did you mean to say that about Mandelson?” “Yes, I did. No secret, is it?” “Don’t say anything more. We’ll talk tomorrow. Unplug your telephone and get some sleep.” Deluged by calls, he had had to unplug his.

I left my telephone plugged in. Within minutes, newspapers were ringing. I took Julian’s advice. When I reconnected the phone early the next morning, the calls resumed at once. The Daily Mail offered me £10,000 for a single column.

I disconnected the telephone again, and realised fully and for the first time the enormity of my error on Newsnight. Half the world, it seemed, didn’t know anybody who didn’t know Mandelson was gay. Half the world didn’t know anybody who did. I had breached the wall between those two halves.

There followed a pretty bloody week. It was hard to know who dismayed me more: gay campaigners on the Left who tore into me for betraying a fellow-homosexual or Tory stalwarts who congratulated me for “telling the truth about that furtive little . . . ” and then they would stop, embarrassed at the realisation that “queer” would not be my favourite word. In retrospect, I have no doubt that it was at this point — this quiet, sickening realisation that I had behaved in a way that would be seen as unprofessional and dishonourable — and not in the thick of battle as I was attacked later, that my career came closest to being knocked totally off course.

Unwittingly, Mandelson rescued me, I have no doubt of that. He should have retreated hurt. This would have been the best means of attack. Few in Britain can resist an injured party. And if he had expressed his sense of offence once and in a clear and dignified way, and then accepted in a generous though wounded way the apologies that had already started coming, the chapter would have closed.

I would have been the aggressor. I would have been judged to have spoken in a way that was uncalled for, ungentlemanly, uncivilised, unprovoked, attention-seeking and cheap. To rub my face in it, people could have replayed time and again that Eighties interview with Vincent Hanna in which, to his question about my sexuality, I had cordially told him to mind his own business. Instead, what happened was that the BBC banned all mention of Mandelson’s private life. The memo, issued hard on the heels of the Newsnight interview, could not be couched in general terms, banning mention of any public figure’s private life, because that would have ruled out much of the media report and commentary on the previous 18 years of Tory misdemeanours, not to mention the story of the hour — Ron Davies. So the memo said this: “Please will all programmes note that under no circumstances whatsoever should allegations about the private life of Peter Mandelson be repeated on any broadcast.”

Some said Mandelson had himself demanded it, having made a direct or indirect approach at a high level in the corporation. He was a friend of, among others, the Director-General, John Birt. Others said a twitch of his eyebrow was enough. Middle-ranking BBC executives had reacted as they supposed Mandelson would have wished. I have never bothered to find out, because it is immaterial who initiated the ban. As soon as Mandelson got wind of it he could have had it rescinded. A 30-second telephone call would have sufficed.

Much to my good fortune, he cannot have made it. The impact was immediate. The ban at once became a bigger story than the Newsnight interview. Panellists on Any Questions? were warned beforehand by their chairman, Jonathan Dimbleby, not to mention Mandelson — prompting one of his Cabinet colleagues, Mo Mowlam, to say, on air, that it was insulting to be gagged in this way. There was a tremendous fuss in the newspapers, which dragged out the story for weeks.

If I could re-run that Newsnight interview, knowing what I know now, I would not do it again. But I must add this. While no journalist conspired with any other to talk up my Newsnight remarks, it may well be that the appeal of mischief as a good news story for those looking for mischief occurred simultaneously to many. Mandelson’s furious overreaction to the story then played into their hands, and it took off. Thus was a tempest whipped up from the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing in the forest. I was the butterfly. I had learned at least this: that once the press decides to call something a revelation, there is no point in arguing.

I saw Mandelson some months later standing, surrounded by networkers, at a large reception given by the Canadian newspaper proprietor, Conrad Black, and his wife, Barbara Amiel. He saw me. We both looked away.

This is silly, I thought, one must not shrink from these things. So steeling myself, I walked up, drink in hand. People talking to him melted away, receding into a ragged circle, hushed, as around a brewing street fight.

“I would never have said what I did on Newsnight if I had known the trouble it would cause you,” I said. “I’m sorry.” There was a silence among the spectators.

In a friendly way, Mandelson replied that there was nothing to apologise for. He said that this had forced him to deal with something he should already have dealt with. In doing so, it had done him some service. I do not know whether he really believes this but it was a generous thing to say.

Mandelson finally managed publically to Say Something Good about the incident and the person who had triggered it. It did him considerable credit. Somehow, on Why, we aim to follow his example.