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Correspondents in Bournemouth seemed to have been inundated with nameless senior Party officials, each of whom claimed personally to have warned the Prime Minister not to hold the by-election in conference week and who were now absolving themselves of responsibility for the disastrous defeat. In turn, the Prime Minister's office retaliated - unattributably, of course - that the blame was really in the organisational deficiencies of the party headquarters for which, of course. Lord Williams was responsible. The explanation, however, fell on deaf ears. The pack instinct had taken hold of the press as well as the Leader of the Opposition, as the scarcely restrained phrases of one normally pro-Government newspaper indicated.
The Prime Minister yesterday failed to quell growing doubts being expressed within his Party about his leadership with a closing speech to his party conference in Bournemouth which one Cabinet colleague described as 'inept and inappropriate'. Following this week's leaking of disastrous internal opinion polls and the humiliating by-election defeat in one of the Party's safest seats, conference representatives were looking for a realistic acknowledgement of the problems which have caused the collapse of voter support for the Government.
Instead, in the words of one representative, 'we got a stale rehash of an old election speech'.
The open disenchantment with the Prime Minister is no longer being voiced with traditional caution within Government circles, particularly amongst anxious backbenchers with marginal seats. Peter Bearstead, MP for Leicester North, said last night: The electorate gave us a warning slap across the knuckles at the election, and we should be responding with fresh initiatives and a much clearer statement of our policies. But all we got was more of the same, cliches and suffocating complacency. It may be time for the Prime Minister to think about handing over.'
In an office tower on the South Bank of the Thames, near the spot where Wat Tyler 600 years before had gathered disenchanted rebels to launch his attempt at overthrowing the Establishment, the editor of Weekend Watch, the leading current affairs programme, studied the newspapers and called a hurried conference of all his staff. Twenty minutes later, the programme planned for the following day on racketeering landlords had been shelved and the entire sixty-minute slot had been recast. Bearstead was going to be invited to participate, as were several opinion pollsters and pundits, in a new programme entitled 'Collingridge - Time To Go?' From his home in the leafy suburbs near Epsom, the senior manager of market makers Barclays de Zoete Wedd telephoned two colleagues. They agreed to be in the office very early on Monday. 'All this political nonsense is going to upset the markets, and we mustn't be caught holding on to stock when every other bastard is selling.'
The Chief Whip, at his magnificent Palladian country home in the New Forest of Hampshire, received several calls from worried Cabinet colleagues and senior backbenchers, none wishing to make a break from cover but all of them expressing concern. The chairman of the Party's grass-roots executive committee also called him from Yorkshire reporting similar worries. 'I would normally pass these on to the Party Chairman,' the bluff Yorkshire-man explained, 'but with relations between Downing Street and party headquarters so poor, I just don't want to get caught in the middle of that particular battle.'
The defeated candidate in Thursday's by-election was contacted by the Mail on Sunday just after a lunch spent drowning his sorrows, and showed no reticence in his broadside against Collingridge. He cost me my seat. Can he feel safe in his?'
At Chequers, the Prime Minister's official country residence set amidst rolling lawns and massive security in rural Buckinghamshire, Collingridge just sat, ignoring his official papers and devoid of inspiration. The rock had begun to roll down hill, and he had no idea how to stop it.
When it hit later that afternoon, the news caught almost everyone by surprise. Even Urquhart. He had expected the Observer to take at least a couple more weeks checking the bundle of papers and photostats he had sent them and obtaining their lawyers' clearance. Clearly, however, they had felt pressured by the growing political clamour and feared that a competitor might also be on the trail. 'Damned if we don't publish, damned if we do. So let's go!' the editor had shouted at his investigative reporters.
Urquhart was adjusting the triple carburettors on his 1933 Rover Speed Pilot, which he kept for touring around the lanes of the New Forest, when Miranda called from inside the house.
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