The House Article | Recipes for disaster: Lord Young’s lunch with Christopher Hope

Roux restaurant, 2010 (Aardvark / Alamy)

3 min read7 min

There are few things more dangerous in politics than a self-evident truth. One of those things, though, is Christopher Hope armed with a tape recorder. The day in 2010 that Lord Young of Graffham encountered both of these phenomena at the same moment, his political fate was sealed.

Young, an entrepreneur who served in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, had been brought back as a government adviser by David Cameron, who was looking for a touch of the old Maggie magic. Hope, a reporter for the Telegraph, had known Young from his days as a business reporter, and had suggested an interview, only for No 10 to decree that the Mail should have it instead. A little miffed, Hope called Young and suggested they have lunch instead.

They went to Roux on Parliament Square, which was very much the place to take contacts you liked. It offered small, delicious courses in the modern-European style, with amuse-bouches and an excellent wine list. If the atmosphere was clinical rather than cosy, that was appropriate for what was – fundamentally – a place of business, somewhere hacks with generous expense allowances tried to turn scallops into scoops. Personally, I was a fan of the venison in port.

Hope and Young ordered, and the conversation was so friendly that the reporter had an idea. “I pulled out my Dictaphone and said: ‘How about we do an interview now?’” Hope, now political editor at GB News, recalled. “He was making quite important and interesting points.”

One of these was that, well: “For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this recession – this so-called recession – started.”

Young’s point was a straightforward one: if you keep your job in a slump, your pay is likely to drop less than your costs. You might find you have a bit more cash spare to spend on, for instance, a slow-cooked duck egg starter. At the time, he was 78, so his mind had naturally gone back to the words of Harold Macmillan – a Tory prime minister who was also admired by Cameron.

His big message to the Telegraph was that the economy would soon bounce back from the Great Financial Crisis. “I have a feeling and a hope that when this goes through, people will wonder what all the fuss was about.”

When Hope reported all this back at the office, “the political editor said that sounded like a story”. The news desk was worried that the Conservatives might deny Young had said the words, but someone had an idea. In the exciting new world of online journalism, it was possible to put video – and audio – on websites.

Which was why, the following morning, the rest of us were able to listen on the radio to Young uttering his opinions, accompanied by the gentle chink of cutlery in one of London’s finest restaurants. It’s this audio detail, as Young talks about “people who think they have a right for the state to support them”, that may have been the final blow. You could almost hear Marie Antoinette eating roast pigeon at the next table.

Cameron, as was his wont, swiftly fired the errant adviser, before bringing him back in a little later. After all, Young’s main crime was tactlessness.

Although… almost two decades on from the Great Financial Crisis, Britain’s economy still hasn’t returned to its previous levels of growth. People born as Young uttered those words are still feeling its effects. This is the problem with self-evident truths: sometimes they’re wrong.