03 Jul 2024
Unusually for a Friday afternoon, there is a big buzz of people gathered in The Oddfellows Arms in Harpenden’s Leyton Green, while outside a large security detail of men in suits and earpieces wait near their black Jeeps and monitor the situation.
It was upstairs at the pub that Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidate Nigel Gardner’s grandmother and her five sisters were born, so he said it seemed right that he should take his old university friend there for a pint when he was town.
Nigel and our current Foreign Secretary – and now Lord – David Cameron first met more than 30 years ago at Oxford University.
It followed what might be seen as an inauspicious first meeting. Nigel arrived at the prestigious hall of learning after catching a National Express coach from Luton.
“When I arrived I sat next to this young chap with bushy hair and said to him, ‘Where are you from?’ He said ‘Luton’, I heard Luton. I said I had just come on the National Express and I didn’t see him on the coach. ‘Did your parents bring you?’ He looked at me, and this time he said it very clearly, ‘Not Luton, Eton’. And that was David Cameron.”
Flash-forwards three decades, and Nigel is campaigning to win the new constituency of Harpenden and Berkhamsted for the Conservatives, while former Prime Minister and Tory party leader David has recently returned to government as Foreign Secretary.
Outside the pub there is quite the entourage. Apart from local Tory campaigners there are some Oxford students who have been following in David’s stead. There is a lot of blue. It’s all very Harpenden and you’d really never know right now that I was born in Salford.
All of a sudden David walks in. He gives a quick talk about how brilliant Nigel will be if he is elected as MP, all reassuring charm, calm voice, pragmatic clothing and jovial demeanour. I hear myself give a little whoop amid the clapping. Am I now a Tory?
David pulls a pint of Rebellion behind the bar – classic has-to-be-done part of any politician visits pub shenanigans. He tells a story about how when he met Chinese president Xi Jinping at The Plough in Cadsden, next to Chequers, the Chinese secret police said there was no way Xi was drinking a pint of Rebellion Beer, so they opted for a Greene King IPA instead.
We walk through the High Street, the sun is shining and a man stops to ask for a selfie with David outside Serena Hart. A foreign Big Issue vendor wishes us a good afternoon and another pub landlord invites him in for a pint which is politely declined with a “We may pop in on the way back!” Very diplomatic, but that sort of goes with the job.
Nigel and David visit Serena Hart where David compliments owner Mary Durkin on her dress, adding that his wife is a dressmaker. Hers is from M&S it turns out. They have a bit of a chat about parking issues and the worry there is locally about free parking being taken away by St Albans district council.
There’s a similar conversation at clothing boutique Oui a few doors, but I missed much of it when I was frogmarched outside by one of his team and quizzed on my motives for being there.
I told them I was a local journalist writing a colour piece on the visit, adding that “although I am NOT a Tory” they don’t need to be concerned. I’m still not sure what exactly they were worried I was going to report. Just justifying their jobs while they still have them, perhaps. Ooh scathing – oops I broke my promise!
I manage to have a proper – albeit short – chat with David in the offices of local housebuilders Jarvis. I ask him what Nigel was like back in their university days.
“He was very bright. He was quite bouncy. I remember that I was there for my interview and I think Nigel was the first person who came up and said hello. And we haven’t really looked back since then.
“He’s always been very outgoing, very intelligent, very hard-working. And these are all good qualities that you need as a Member of Parliament.”
It’s refreshing to hear a politician say something positive about another politician – you can’t always guarantee that will be the case, even when they’re from the same party!
I ask him why he thinks it is important to support small businesses and high streets like ours: “The high streets are such important parts of our community and they’re only going to survive if we help them. They’re under enormous pressure because of everyone shopping on Amazon and buying online and all the rest of it. And so we have to think what can we do to help have a varied, interesting high street.
“We can help by keeping free parking, we can help by making sure the planning authorities are creative and make sure they bring interesting people in, we can make sure have a bit of a decluttering of some of our roads and signs, which good local councils do.”
This is a big passion of Nigel’s campaign, to protect the high street, keep it local and keep parking accessible to all, and he’s obviously pleased to receive the thumbs-up from David.
So what is David personally most proud of the Conservatives achieving during the past 14 years in government?
“Well I think the biggest thing we had to do was to get the economy back on track and actually there have been 800 jobs created for every day that this government has been in office,” he says, echoing comments he first made back in 2015.
“So I know we’ve got lots of difficult things we have to do with the economy, but fundamentally today… four per cent unemployment, over two per cent annualised growth and two per cent inflation. That is a world away from the inheritance I got in 2010 when we were in real trouble. So that was the biggest thing.”
What has not gone well for the Tories, I ask him… conscious of the time.
“We’ve had the twin glaciers of Covid hitting the economy and the Ukraine war pushing up inflation. So the last two years we’ve had to spend time getting back into a strong position and that’s been painful and difficult.”
He is not wrong there is he? Painful and difficult is one way of putting it and the thing about a global pandemic is that it wasn’t in anybody’s manifesto was it? No mention of Liz Truss’ economic implosion mind.
How does he think he is going to be feeling when he wakes up next Friday morning?
“Look I don’t… I never know if these polls are right or wrong. They told me I was going to lose in 2015 and I won. This time we’re told that we’re going to do really badly but who knows?
“The only thing I do know is if you vote for Nigel Gardner here in Harpenden and Berkhamsted you’ll get a hard-working Conservative MP standing up for high streets and small towns and villages and rural areas in Parliament and if the polls are right it’ll be even more important to do so.”
He says that he has found the reception in Harpenden “pretty good, actually”, adding that if the whole country was like one particular hairdressers he’d just been into, the General Election would be a Tory landslide: “Brilliant…very friendly people!”
Unlike some of his peers, he says he has never placed a bet on himself to win or lose an election, but adds: “In 2005 when I stood for leadership of the Conservative Party there was someone who ran our party up in the north-east and he got odds on me at 66:1. Every time I went up to the north-east, which is sometimes quite a tricky area for the Conservatives, as I got off the train he used to give me an enormous bear hug.”
The man won enough to take his whole family on a world cruise, he jokes. Nigel laughs. Genuinely. They’re definitely good pals.
He clarifies his views on the gambling scandal: “Obviously what’s happened is very, very wrong, and it’s right that there’s an independent investigation and also one by the Gambling Commission. If people have used inside information, that is completely wrong.”
How would he convince me to vote for Nigel then? “You should vote Blue because you’re getting a hard-working Conservative MP. He’s built businesses. You’ve got a hard-working Conservative MP who was born here, brought up here, and knows the area like the back of his hand.”
I mention that our childhood dog was called Maggie, and he laughs: “That’s a good start!”
My session with the Foreign Secretary draws to a close, with just enough time for some photos taken by local snapper Penny Bird, before David heads off with his team back to running the country..
So what did Nigel make of the experience? I caught up with him later to find out: “It was quite a surreal afternoon, taking the Foreign Secretary and former PM to pull a pint behind the bar in the pub where my granny was born upstairs!
“I saw on the High Street he has the same charm and ease with people I remember from 30 years ago – he was literally the first person I talked to at Oxford. Life moves in strange circles.”
Whether David Cameron is still Foreign Secretary come Friday remains to be seen, but none of that takes away from the rather fun experience of meeting him in Harpenden last week.
Will I be voting Tory now? Well dear reader, that’s between me and my ballot paper!
All photos by Penny Bird.
