ID: What is it with you and Harriet Harman?

AD: On a personal level I really like her. We joke, we spar and we tease but I think it shows something important about Parliament. Just non-stop ding dong yahoo biffing and bashing across the dispatch box is not very good box office and people think ‘just get real, get a life'. Also, the House of Commons, particularly at the moment, must have the ability to work on two levels. One is the level of political combat; but the other is of people having to discuss lots of detailed things behind the scenes. For instance, we sit on the House of Commons Commission together and that's been in the thick of it recently. You've got to have a proper working relationship. Second, I've got far more out of her by introducing a bit of wit and not being ferocious than if I'd gone hammer and tongs. So although it is humorous it is also serious, and I think it's much more effective politics than just throwing grenades across the chamber.

You're naturally quite a combative politician and I suspect if it had been somebody else in that job you might have adopted a different approach.

Well I'm capable of being combative because I don't like just backing off, and I think in politics you should fight your corner. In that sense - and in many senses - I'm a misunderstood person in politics.

You said you were misunderstood, why did you say that?

Well we can come to that later [laughs]. I am always being caricatured as a short little terrier, but those that know me know that life isn't as simple as that.

But do you think sometimes people deliberately misunderstand you?

Of course.

And do the caricatures hurt sometimes?

Yes, they do actually. I am quite easily hurt but I'm quite good at not showing it. The trouble is that as soon as you start discussing it, people start saying ‘pathetic little self-pitying wimp', which is not me either. Discussing one's inner feelings in politics is almost impossible because we live in a pretty malicious political climate and there's insufficient generosity of spirit to ever expect people to be understood. I'm sure Blair had feelings and felt that he was being ripped to bits all the time. That can't have been nice. I think it's better to be tough on people for their politics and their decisions and not their personality.

Do you feel you get far more thrown at you from your own side than you do from the opposition?

Maybe. I haven't seen it recently but maybe it's there. I suppose last January there was a lot flying around in the run up to the reshuffle, but why? If people want to have a go at me they can. I can't quite work out what their motivation might be, but that's up to them.

Do you think it's got to do with money?

I remember about 20 years ago, Peter Luff, who used to work for Peter Walker, said that the one thing Peter Walker regretted was that he got labelled rich before he ever really made any money. I really find it irksome to be labelled a multi-millionaire. I am not a multi multi-millionaire...

Just a multi...

...I suppose I am if I'm dead, but I can't just sign a cheque for a million quid or something. It's one of those modern labels where 50 years ago ‘millionaire' was like billionaire today, and still newspapers just stick it in as a label. And yes, it creates resentment. I can't escape the label and compared to lots of politicians I'm nowhere near what they're worth. I certainly would have been if I'd stayed in the oil business, so you can imagine it gets up my nose that not only have I given up being super rich but I'm accused of being super rich when I'm not. It's one of those crosses one just has to bear in this game.

If you had your time all over again would you have still made the decision to go into politics?

If I was starting now, it really saddens me that I would probably recommend to a young professional that they should not do it.

Why?

The lack of reason, the vilification - it's almost impossible now in politics to retain one's self-esteem. I'm not just talking about the allowances and expenses issue, I'm talking about in general and from my own point of view. To quote someone I have met once or twice, "I'm not a quitter and I am seeing this through".

Looking back I would have started later, but the trouble is you never know what the political cycle is going to bring. The years between 1992 and 1997 were a miserable period and we've been in opposition ever since. If I had come into politics 10 years later I'd be more secure and in a much better position in many ways, but you can never judge that - 90 per cent of success in politics is luck and timing. But funnily enough, the more we are under attack as politicians and because the country is in such a mess, the more determined I am to try and play my part as a politician.

How well do you know Gordon Brown?

Gordon Brown's blown it. The man has completely busted the country, he has spent ten years spending other people's money as if there was no tomorrow and now is hitting us all in the gob and I am actually a very angry politician because of that. I think he's blown it and it's going to hurt people for generations.

I think he has no leadership qualities whatsoever in the sense of those qualities that unite a country. He is the most divisive, antagonistic political figure I have ever encountered in my life. His only political motivation is to get one over the other side. He is incapable of any kind of general consensual action, and he is pathologically divisive. I think the same goes for Ed Balls. He's the little mini-me who has inherited all the qualities of the man whose boots he has licked for the last ten years or more.

He [Brown] is so tribal and so antagonistic he rarely engages any Conservative person in conversation. I used to bump into him in the street when he lived in his flat in Westminster every now and again. He only ever stopped in the street for a chat once and it was a begrudging few words as I was off to the laundry with all my shirts in a black bin liner. He said: "Oh, what's that? Your manifesto?"

You got a joke from Gordon Brown?

I thought, bugger me, he's got a sense of humour tucked away there somewhere; but it was said with a scowl. But that was it. I find him worryingly odd.

Do you think Brown will lead Labour into the election?

I think if he survives to the summer, yes he will lead them into the election, but I think the Labour Party is in a long, slow miserable decline. Everything they say they stood for, they haven't done: equipped people for old age? Helped the poor? No, they have abused their position to raise money and hide and disguise things over the last ten years. They have wasted a decade of growth and they are now going to cause great pain for some of the most vulnerable people in the country.

Despise is a strong word but I do have a lot of contempt for the deceit of their politics. They have governed by headline and propaganda for 12 years. I don't see any proper action and decency and I think that is at the root of people's disillusion with the forces of politics at the moment. They just feel completely deceived at every turn. Look at Equitable Life - no compensation; look at what it took to get the Gurkhas properly rewarded; what has happened to everybody's pensions pot? We used to have what was the biggest pension pot in all the European Union put together, and then Gordon Brown went and dynamited the whole structure. This is the man who has doubled your council tax and destroyed your pension and he thinks he's fit to govern.

Is there anything you think they have done well over the last twelve years?

Well obviously I think some of their social legislation has been alright - civil partnerships, for example.

That would have never been introduced under a Tory government would it?

No, probably not, so I think that is a definite achievement that Blair can lay claim to, but I think that it's belittled by so many of the other things that they have got wrong.

Do you still stand by the libertarian philosophy you outlined in your book, Saturn's Children?

By and large that's my philosophy. You can't take things away from people who are expecting the state to give them so I'm not suggesting a sudden big chop of government. You can't leave people beached and bereft, but in looking at what makes a free, rich and moral nation I think the principles in that book had a lot to commend them.

I think if people had looked at Britain today from the perspective of 40 years ago they would say in many respects we are a socialist country because basically half of everything you earn goes to the state and that's a massive percentage. We actually have a very centralised state in terms of public services, a very centralised media unlike America which has a much more diverse federal structure. No one newspaper is as powerful as the newspapers here and I think Britain has lost a lot of its individuality and freedom. The surveillance state is beginning to take over, I think the civil liberties agenda is growing in importance.

In a way you ought to feel vindicated by what you wrote then, because I think the Conservative Party now has adopted far more of that agenda than it ever would have done ten years ago when the authoritarian side of the party still had a grip.

Yes, there are some areas where you need authority rather than authoritarianism and in that sense I think in our criminal system people don't fear any of the sanctions that might be brought against them, particularly for younger people and near violent crime. So in that sense we need proper authority, but that's not the same as authoritarianism and I do worry that young people are getting sucked into going to court whereas it would be much better if they just feared authority to some extent.

Why should the taxpayer fund your garden?

The outburst of fury is understandable and must be understood. We've reached the absurd and vulgar state of affairs in which a lot of people can't pay their basic bills and MPs look as though they are being paid in luxury items. Public opinion says: ‘I don't care what the rules were. You should have applied a better moral code yourself.' I did. I refused to use expenses for TVs and cookers and things, and I declined ever to use the allowance to buy food. I didn't have to, but I insisted on giving receipts. That is why the Telegraph was able to say that what was pretty basic maintenance - which is what the allowance was designed for love it or hate it - was for pruning the roses which it wasn't. If you take Nick Clegg, wasn't it £800 on a rose garden, another £900 on his garden, £800 on curtains, and £1,400 on food? Where was the coverage for that?

I don't think taxpayers' money should be used to pay an MP in things; you should just let an outside body decide what they should be paid and get rid of a lot of these allowances. MPs should not be deciding on their own pay and allowances. We are paying the price for prime ministers over the last 20 years not being able to stand up and accept the recommended pay rise and the whips hiding it under the carpet in this disguised allowance system. The world has changed and MPs should have seen this coming. I think I have set a very good example early on in this trouble by recognising the public outrage and getting out a cheque book and saying I don't care what the rules were, even if we were within the rules as all of us were, we are going to sign a cheque where it hurts to show we understand.

But some would say that's all very well for you because you can do that. There are other MPs who are in a very different financial position who are finding it incredibly difficult.

I know, it's a nightmare.

Do you feel that your own reputation has been besmirched by all of this?

Yes, and you have this standoff between politicians who are annoyed and upset that their reputation has been damaged when they don't think it should have been, and the public who say how dare you think you deserve any sort of reputation at all. This is a very corrosive period in British politics.

What would you say looking back on your career in politics so far, what do you think you have achieved?

My generation, the 1992 intake, has helped keep the party afloat through a very punishing decade. In terms of specific achievement, getting stuck into William Hague's leadership campaign and making that work was a very dramatic moment. We were working in the complete wreckage of the party after 18 years in government. There was no press apparatus to speak of in Central Office and I pretty much drove myself to the edge of a nervous breakdown for the six months after William became leader just trying to do the work of ten people in the press office.

No one appreciates what was happening behind the scenes there. When I helped William get elected I didn't ask for a job on the Shadow Cabinet or anything like that, I just got on with the real nuts and bolts stuff in Central Office and tried to build up a press capability. But it was too much. The phone would start at six and finish at one in the morning. I just couldn't do it.

There are those who think he didn't treat you particularly well.

Well he had a lot on his plate. I didn't keep a diary or anything but I think I can look back on that and say if I hadn't flogged myself to bits for that year after the election I think a lot of the apparatus would have completely fallen to bits. There were some other players in there too, such as Charles Hendry - George Osborne was in William's office later.

But in that period William kept the show on the road. He had some pretty horrid, torrid moments, but look where he is now. He's deeply respected, powerful, assured. The phrase I use is ‘combat trained', as you have got to go through the mincer sometimes to come out as a strong politician and few people in Parliament are combat trained in that way.

Do you think in retrospect it was therefore a mistake for him to do it at that point?

The argument I used with him at the time was that the postman only knocks once. Politics is about grabbing opportunities and like I said earlier, 90 per cent of success in politics is luck and timing or bad luck and bad timing [laughs].

Indeed. Going forward to the 2005 leadership campaign you famously ended up supporting David Cameron in quite a public way; do you regret how you handled that?

No, not at all.

Because you were seen by many people as rather duplicitous over it.

Quite the opposite.

How?

I was under enormous pressure from David Davis and people like Andrew Mitchell, but then journalists started coming to me to say: ‘Oh I gather you have pledged'. I said: ‘No that's not the case', so I was not at all duplicitous. Some people think I am, but when you talk about being misunderstood I'm straight down the line. At my birthday party, William [Hague] told this joke: [adopts a Hague-esque accent] ‘The thing about Alan is that you get what you see. He doesn't plot, he just comes and tells you to your face that if he thinks you're bloody useless he will tell you. He's gone and done that to two leaders. He did it to me'.

I tell it straight. In 2005, I was absolutely straight down the line and I think the absolute moment of clarity came on Radio 4 at the party conference when they said ‘Mr Duncan you've declared your support for David Cameron, why is that?' and I said: ‘Well I didn't before and then I realised the only thing that was stopping me doing so was jealously as being from an older generation.

But when you recognised the reality was there a little bit of a light that switched off because you know if somebody is younger than you they are going to be around for a long time?

You're suggesting one has to recalibrate ambition, of course, but that's a good thing so along as you come to terms with it. And I am.

So what is your ambition now?

I want to be part of a successful, restoring and reforming Conservative government under David Cameron which can put this country back on track.

Any part?

Well... [smiles enigmatically]

It seems to me in all seriousness you are enjoying your current job in a way I don't think you enjoyed your previous job.

Well I did enjoy my previous job but there were a lot of frustrations about getting heard. But yes I am enjoying my current job. I like the theatre of the House of Commons; I think there's a very important agenda ahead that needs to be approached with real sanity and I think a lot of the trouble with politics is about the collapse of the House of Commons as a functioning institution. I think that the Blair/Brown destruction of the House of Commons with the timetabling and different timings, the itsy bitsy holidays have just stopped it. It's ceased working as an institution capable of playing its proper part in the government of the country.

How would you reform it then and don't you fear the forces of conservatism who will try to stop reform?

I would like to see select committees elected. It's not forces of conservatism that are the problem, as much as the forces of inadequacy which have been elected and the way individuals behave in the House of Commons. Nothing makes me wince more than someone standing up and saying ‘does the Prime Minister agree with me that he is the most wonderful PM since Winston Churchill'. You get some lick spittle, ghastly sort of slurp slurp question and what purpose does that serve for anybody?

I just think the collapse of competence amongst so many of the characters that are now elected is desperate. I am all for having lots of different fields of life represented. That's what a healthy House of Commons should contain, but not people who have no understanding of the bigger impact of economics or global affairs. I would love to do a survey of Labour backbenchers and fi nd out how many of them have not ever moved an amendment to a piece of legislation. It's probably about 80 per cent.

Why do you think the new intake of Conservative MPs would be any different?

I hope they will be [laughs]. We should encourage them to be so. If we encourage them to be automatons it will come back and harm us. We all need a bit of grit in the oyster, we need people who are characterful and occasionally awkward because without them people at the top become detached and deluded actually.

How conscious are you of being a bit of a role model for gay people in politics?

It cuts both ways. I probably get about three or four letters a week quietly saying thank you. I have never been anyone who parades this and I regard it as something that ought to be matter of fact. But I do regularly get letters saying ‘you have really made a difference to my life' and that's very heartening even though I don't like to go and jump up and down about it. In a way I would just rather be shot of the ‘gay' label. I've done my bit. I hope it's helped, but the trouble is over the past few weeks exactly the opposite has happened. I've had letters that I know come for BNP-type people and some older people which are vicious. I know exactly what they are saying. You can read between the lines.

There's a lot of hatred and nastiness tucked away beneath the surface and I think that actually political leadership had been very important on this and on racism and on other kinds of religious discriminations be it anti-Islamic or anti-Semitism. It's very important for political leadership to have consensual dominance of this issue so that it doesn't go wrong, but when there is an eruption such as we've seen recently, it becomes a pretext for some really nasty stuff. I can never un-derstand why, but people quite often want to have a go at me. It's probably one of the subliminal reasons why, but I have never complained. It's better not too.

I have always thought that this is the reason why that in some ways you have been held back in the Conservative Party and I think your reputation has been affected by this issue.

People accuse me of certain things which are not true because what they are really doing is getting at me because of that. Do I care? No, should I care? I don't know. I once joked with a friend that in politics you should never fall prey to jealously or self-pity. Sheer hatred on the other hand... [laughs]

The fact that the party is now openly encouraging gay people to get involved in politics and there are two people who have had civil partnerships in the shadow cabinet, what better signal could that send? You couldn't have foreseen that 10 years ago.

I could never have foreseen my role in it and the way that it turned out. I have no regrets about what I have done and I hope in a way it's helped others as that's what politics is all about. I only have one serious regret though, which is that it is seen as my main label, whereas it should be my secondary label. For 30 years through Oxford and business I have learnt about global economics and politics.

I have strong views about the economy and the way the state ought to be structured and I have built up a reputation of being media friendly, let's say. And I have played my part in helping the Conservative Party survive with William's election and all that kind of stuff. I was very slow to get into the shadow cabinet but that never bothered me at all, but what does irk me is that I am sometimes not taken seriously on these bigger issues because of my prominence on other issues and I have been there, done that and got the t-shirt. The big picture of what this country ought to be about drives me more than anything else.

You had 10 years as an MP before you formally came out, why did you wait?

I would have fired a blank if I had done it earlier because the age was different. There was a bit of ‘why should I, it's private', but then my view on all that changed because if you are in public life you get forced into these things. People say ‘you have to' and then say ‘why did you - why didn't you keep quiet?'. The truth is that in public life, honesty is the best policy. I didn't want to do it too early because I would just be a junior MP who said he was gay and that would be it forever, end of story. It was much better to do it when I was more senior and therefore able to say there's more to me than just this but it is an important issue and it is part of the apparatus of the Conservative Party that is endorsing and embracing this as something they understand and support - not just some irrelevant little backbencher. So I think I got the timing absolutely right.

You got civil partnered last July; do you regard yourself as married?

I don't use the word because, exactly as I said in the Civil Partnership Bill, we must respect the distinctive faith and belief of churchgoers and other religious believers who feel that the word ‘marriage' is owned by them really, and that's fi ne by me. So although people use it as shorthand, I don't. It would be useful if we could fi nd another word for it. But as I said in the debate these are two parallel lines - very similar, but distinctive. Parallel lines do not meet, yet nor do they collide, and we must respect the church in my view. There's room for both and no need for friction between the two.

Is being media friendly a double edge sword? Would you say your most recent experience on Have I Got News For You rebounded on you?

I try to be media friendly rather than a media tart, I'm not just rent-a-quote, I try to lift a discussion to more thoughtful territory

Like shooting beauty queens?

We will come on to that in a second. One of the deepest frustrations of modern politics is where interviewers think ‘how can I trip up a politician today' rather than get them to say what they think. I have been on Have I got News for you four times. Two were great, one was an absolute classic triumph with Brian Blessed and the fourth was a complete almighty disaster because when it was recorded no-one could have foreseen the fury that was about to burst.

They recorded longer than ever before, over two hours, and I was knackered by the end of it and it was in the last five minutes that I goofed. I had faith in the editing and they edited it in instead of editing it out. Then of course all the blogs completely distort what happened and you get attacked for what was never said. I think it's a pretty sad world that doesn't any longer know how to distinguish between a comedy programme and really political comment.

But as a politician you aren't allowed to have a sense of humour are you?

We must be allowed to have a sense of humour, although I think there would have been a better occasion than that programme [laughs]. I admit it, it was a disaster but it's all in the editing.

You had a double whammy with making light of all the expenses stuff and murdering this beauty queen.

There's no point in going through this [laughs]. I did not say she should be murdered and, funnily enough, blog and media outrage can sometimes head up to the stratosphere and it doesn't actually bear that much relation to what most people in their daily life think.

I watched that and I thought you were pissed!

At the end I had a headache coming on.

No, at the beginning...

At the beginning, I hadn't had a drop; I'd been sat around the studio for two hours drinking water.

So you would do it again?

I doubt it [laughs].

Quick Fire

Jack Bauer or James Bond?

Definitely Bond

Abba or Kylie?

Oh, Abba

What makes you laugh?

Being interviewed by you [laughs]

What's on your iPod?

So much, but I am hopeless at remembering names, James Blunt and all that lot

Favourite meal?

Tagliatelle carbonara

Sarah Palin or Bree Van de Kamp?

Who's Bree Van de Kamp?

You know the one from Desperate Housewives

Oh God, anyone but Sarah Palin

Who's your favourite superhero?

Superman probably

Favourite Labour politician?

Alan Johnson

Most hated Labour politician?

Sorry Gordon, but you're it

Most formidable opponent?

In terms of me being up against them, it was Alan Millburn when I was shadow health spokesman

Thing you most like about Harriet Harman?

Her cheerful dippyness

Most romantic thing you have ever done?

It's a secret

Last concert you went to?

My brother, playing in a charity band

What are you reading at the moment?

A book on the Middle East by Alastair Crooke

Favourite view?

From the top of a Scottish mountain

Favourite comedian?

It's got to be Rory Bremner

Tags: Alan Duncan, In conversation