On a different track

Ahead of his visit to Cork, Dan Buckley spoke to broadcaster and former politician Michael Portillo about Anglo-Irish relations, Britain’s Conservative Party, bailouts, and a love of trains

NOT a lot of people know this, but Michael Portillo, darling of Britain’s Conservative Party for decades, has a thing about trains.

The former, future British Prime Minister loves to chat about his BBC television documentary series in which he travels through Britain and Ireland.

“Did you know that Ireland has a slightly eccentric, different track gauge than we have in Britain?”

I didn’t.

“Yes,” he explains. “It’s 5’3” and do you know why that is?”

Haven’t a clue.

“It’s because in Victorian times the various railway companies in Ireland each used a different track. Then along came the Inspector of Railways to put things right and he decided to add all the different gauges together and divide the result by the number of companies. Hence, it became 5’3” whereas it is 4’8” in Great Britain.”

Not a lot of people know that.

“Do you know what the Russian word for railway station is?” he asks.

I don’t.

“It’s vokzal.”

Really? Fascinating.

“Indeed,” he agrees, “and do you know why that is?

Not a notion.

“In the 19th century, the Russians didn’t have railways and they sent a delegation over to London to see ours. We didn’t have a Waterloo or Victoria station then, and the railway stopped at Vauxhall. The Russians asked ‘what do you call this?’ and the answer was ‘Vauxhall’: hence the Russian for railway station is vokzal!”

In the TV series, Great British Railway Journeys, Portillo follows in the footsteps of the legendary carto- grapher George Bradshaw, who first developed the most comprehensive railway timetables for Britain and Ireland in the mid-1800s.

They gained iconic status and became part of folklore and literary fiction. A “Bradshaw” was essential reading for characters created by many writers, including Agatha Christie, Lewis Carroll, Bram Stoker, GK Chesterton, Erskine Childers and, most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“I’d only heard of Bradshaw from Sherlock Holmes,” says Portillo. “When Holmes gets a new case which involves him taking the train, he says to Watson, ‘get the Bradshaw’. It was absolutely essential reading for Victorians.”

First broadcast last year, the show has proven such a success that a third series will be broadcast early in the New Year, and this time it will include an Irish leg to Portillo’s railway odyssey.

“We have just done a railway journey from the Republic to Northern Ireland. We started in Wicklow, went through Dublin, Dundalk, into Northern Ireland, ending in Londonderry — Derry,” he corrects, diplomatically.

“It has been one of my favourite journeys so far and it is amazing the welcome you get from Irish people on both sides of the border. In England, we tended to get shouted off the platform but here we had wonderful access and the station master would turn out in full uniform. It was quite different to be treated in such a friendly manner.”

It was different in other ways, too. As defence secretary in the mid 1990s under prime minister John Major, he had grown used to a hotter reception when venturing into Northern Ireland.

“I used to have to travel by helicopter where the pilot would make a corkscrew landing to avoid anti-aircraft missiles. On the ground I would travel under armed guard.

“It is such a different experience now to be able to wander around unguarded, moving through Republican areas and having people come up to you to chat about the TV series. It was quite an emotional journey for me, crossing the border from the south and ending up at the Peace Bridge. It is a different world.”

Portillo is sure to find as warm a welcome when he travels to Cork, where he is the guest speaker at a dinner to be held at the Imperial Hotel tomorrow. Organised by Michael Mulcahy, publisher of Business Cork magazine, the gathering of 200 business leaders will hear him address opportunities for Cork and give his views on how Britain sees Ireland, through bailouts, government changes and the recent royal visit.

“The Queen’s visit was the culmination of a lot of hard work between the two countries and we are pinching ourselves at how good relations between us have become,” he says.

“As for Ireland’s economic straits, you are not alone. We are also extremely worried in the UK as well and, remember, our banks are heavily involved in Ireland. There is, of course, immense goodwill towards Ireland in Britain. Even during the decades of terrible violence in Northern Ireland it is remarkable the extent to which Irish and British people continued to love each other while all that horror was going on around them.”

While he now describes himself variously as a broadcaster, entertainer and after-dinner speaker, the world of politics is never far from his mind. “I am a great fan of David Cameron and believe that the coalition is doing what it must. If we did not cut our deficit in Britain the markets would turn against us. In that respect, Ireland stands out among the economies that got into trouble by the manner in which it has addressed the deficit problem.”

Of Portuguese extraction, Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo was born on May 23, 1953. He was first elected to the House of Commons in a by-election in 1984 and served as a junior minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, before entering the cabinet in 1992.

Seen as a likely challenger to Major during the 1995 Conservative leadership election, he decided to remain loyal and lost his seat at the 1997 general election. Indeed, his defeat has become so synonymous with Tony Blair and New Labour’s victory that a “Portillo moment” now means the defining event of a political defeat.

He has, he says, no regrets. “It might have happened that I became leader but I did not pin my hopes on it happening and I concentrated on enjoying it all.”

Returning to the Commons through a by-election in 1999, Portillo rejoined the front bench as shadow chancellor, although his relationship with Conservative Party leader William Hague was strained.

Standing for the leadership of the party in 2001, he came a narrow third place behind Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke and retired from active politics in 2005.

Since then, he has embarked on both a broader career in the media and loves the change of pace. “My life is certainly far less stressful than it used to be. While I enjoyed being in government very much, it was hugely stressful but the compensation for that was great privilege and the knowledge that what you did seemed to matter.”

Even as a young turk in the late 1970s he seemed to matter, and he quickly became a close confidante of Margaret Thatcher: “She was elected in 1975 and I joined the Conservatives the following year. I was inspired by her election and, at the time, the Conservatives were seen as being at the cutting edge of politics in Britain.

“It was an exciting time. At the age of 25, I was briefing her and it was an amazing experience — both exciting and intimidating. I always seemed to be the harbinger of bad news to Margaret Thatcher and occasionally there would be outbursts of emotion and temper from her.

“When she was only a week from being prime minister she turned to me and said she had had enough of bad news and needed a bit of bucking up. That gave me an insight into the loneliness and vulnerability of people in high office.”

So the Iron Lady wasn’t made of steel? “No. In the end, she turned out to be the opposite.”

Not a lot of people know that.

Picture: Michael Portillo peers from a train window during filming of his BBC TV series Great British Railway Journeys.