WHISPERS, secrets, opinions vouchsafed to journalists at receptions - they can be extremely dangerous to those who would speak them.
John Major is said to have told those who attended his press secretary's leaving dinner party last week that he would ''f...... crucify'' the right of the party for the problems they had caused by usurping his Back to Basics policy. No surprises that when the words came out in print nobody remembered hearing him say them.
I got a first-hand lesson in this not very pleasant side of journalism at the Commonwealth Conference in Kuala Lumpur in 1989. The press had been invited to a reception with the Queen from which none of her words was to be reported. In conversation with three of us she made quite clear that she was not at all happy with Malaysia's mandatory death sentence for drugs smugglers - a Briton had been hung for the same a few months earlier.
We let slip her views to a colleague in conversation and within hours the London Evening Standard had splashed on the Queen in Drugs Row with Summit hosts, to be followed by similar headlines in other tabloids later. Fortunately there was no post mortem but it hurt.
This week, amid all the still continuing furore about Back to Basics, we have had the saga of who was responsible for the ''crucify'' quote if it was made at all. Mr Major is alleged to have said on the margins of the dinner: ''I'm going to f...... crucify the right for what they have done and this time I will have the party behind me.'' Downing Street denied that John Major ever said it but nobody really believes them, especially coming from the man who called the right ''barmy'' and ''bastards'' in off-the-cuff comments last year, it seems highly likely that he did speak in this manner. A mildly spoken man he may normally be in public but John Major is a little different when amid those he believes he can trust.
BUT who blew the whistle on John Major? There were 32 guests at the dinner party to bid farewell to Gus O'Donnell, the press secretary, enjoying the gravadlax and saddle of lamb washed down with Chateau Talbot 82. Mr O'Donnell has had so much of Downing Street he now wishes to move to relative obscurity in the Treasury. Neither of the political editors of the Daily Mail or Sun were present but there was a lot of circulating at pre-dinner drinks and indeed afterwards.
Fingers are now being pointed at Michael Brunson, the charming political editor of Independent Television News, a man with whom Mr Major would normally feel at home.