Meeester Nik

A surprising evening. Drinks with the leader of the opposition was more impressive than drinks with the prime minister.

In fairness, my main reason for going to the Gordon Brown event two weeks ago was that I’d see inside 10 Downing Street. David Cameron’s editors’ drinks tonight, I went to because that I’m pretty sure – regardless of my own political leanings or the boost Brown’s getting from the economic meltdown – that he will be the next prime minister. So I wanted like to see what he’s like.

Turns out he’s very nice.

The drinks were in his office in Portcullis House, the enormous governmental office building opposite the Houses of Parliament. It’s an impressive construction. From the outside it is a great glass and metal hulk with a hundred redundant chimneys. Inside, as you come in through the front door, past the stern and very visibly armed security that far outweighed those guarding the prime minister (automatic rifles slung over shoulders), through the metal detectors, x-ray machines and gates where they take your photo, you walk into an airy atrium; home to shallow pools of water, neat rows of trees and an impressive glass roof that arches high above the canteen.

David Cameron’s office is in the building next door – an older building that smells like a school, connected to Portcullis House by a glass-covered walkway that cuts through a smokers’ courtyard with tables and chairs and a note of complaint from the non-smokers.

It’s modest and all the more welcoming for it, like a gently ageing hotel room with a bulky little TV stood on top of what looked like a mini bar.

At the other end of the room was his desk, bedecked with family photos. Two awards sat on the shelves among the parliamentary records and a couple of leisure books, including Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. A carefully positioned prop for tonight?

It was wonderfully low-key. Cameron himself was the most casually-dressed among us, milling around without a jacket or tie. No doubt it was carefully stage-managed, like Steve Jobs’ black top and jeans, but it gave the impression that he had just finished a long day at work and then actually chosen to spend his social time hanging around with us. He hadn’t, of course.

He worked his way through the room, and when he got to where I stood by the cucumber dip he shook my hand and looked at my badge. ‘Ah, MacUser,’ he said. ‘I know Macs’.

He didn’t use one at work (I asked). Turns out the Parliamentary computers are as tightly locked-down as those in a regular office and like everyone else there he used a standard-configuration PC.

‘So you have a Mac at home?’ I asked.

‘I used to,’ he said. ‘My first computer was a Mac.’

We didn’t speak for long, but I was impressed by the way he could chat knowledgeably and in a very relaxed manner on pretty much any subject. I was stood there with a former editor of Drapers, the fashion industry must-read, and Corrine who edits a medical journal, and he spoke to us all in turn about our specialist areas, asking questions that not only made sense but were genuinely interesting.

Within the hour he was gone, called away while talking about our clinics, Macs and fashion hot tips, but he was far more impressive than Brown, if for nothing more than the fact that he spent more time walking around the room and making an effort to talk to everyone there. Brown, of course, was pushed for time, and as we discovered the next morning he’d spent the rest of that night reshuffling the cabinet, so he’d clearly had more important things to think about than a room full of editors.

Cameron was a worthy ambassador for his party; Brown, that night, was less so. But then Cameron has more time to do that – it’s his job – while Brown’s job is to run the country, for now, and so comparing the two like-for-like is perhaps unfair. And perhaps impossible. The impression I took away with me, though, was that while Labour – as a party – is more appealing than the Tories, Cameron is a more appealing leader than Brown.

I left just after he did, to be escorted out of the building and have all evidence of the fact I’d ever even been there – lanyards, ID, name badge – confiscated at the door.

Do you know, 10 Downing Street is just a bit… ordinary. At the same time, though, it’s really very special, and I think it’s the ordinaryness that makes it that way.

Tonight’s event – drinks with the Prime Minister – was smart dress, obviously, but other than that it was very casual. I didn’t wear a tie, and that put me in the majority. The staff were very normal and not at all well-spoken or posh. Even the prime minister, who wandered around the room shaking hands and saying hello, was very off the cuff and unprepared when he did a little talk to us all. He cracked a surprising number of jokes for a man in the middle of a financial crisis, and everyone laughed. I don’t think it was out of politeness, either.

So what’s it like? Well, getting onto Downing Street itself was a lot easier than I’d expected. I took my passport as proof of identity, and I was on a list that had been finalised well in advance, so no doubt there had been some kind of secret service checking up going on beforehand, but it took less time to get through all the checks and scans than it does to get onto a plane.

Speaking to the other people there (all members of the British Society of Magazine Editors), everyone had been a bit nervous beforehand, and there was some excitement as we walked up the famous street, past number 9 – the first address on the street – to number 10, the most famous (number 11 is the last address on Downing Street). The policeman who stands outside said there was once a very rough pub on the corner – one of the worst in London – but he didn’t know where numbers 1 to 7 had disappeared to. Neither did he know what it was like inside Number 10, despite working there. He asked us what it was like when we came out and explained that there was a definite divide between the staff on his side of the door and the other. He was police; the ones inside were government security (yes, it was a real gun, yes they were real bullets and no he hadn’t shot anyone yet).

I’d been led to believe that once you get through the door you’re up against a wall of steel bars and that the door is only ceremonial, but it’s nothing like that at all. You actually find yourself in an airy hallway with a fire to either side (unlit), a disabled toilet to the left (the window above what looks like the next door down the street is actually the window of that loo), a long corridor down to Number 11 and another leading straight ahead. That goes to the Cabinet Room, apparently, but although Gordon Brown invited us to pop down and have a sit at the table we couldn’t; he’d forgotten that he was supposed to be having a cabinet meeting in there, and as soon as he was done chatting with us he was sucked straight into it.

Number 10 has often been described as warren-like, and that’s very apt. It really is huge, with a little garden in the middle decked out with tables and umbrellas.

We walked up the famous staircase lined with the black and white portraits of former prime ministers (they’re running out of space – Tony Blair is already lined up with the top step) and into the Pillared Drawing Room. The photographer, merrily running around snapping pictures of us in front of exhibits from the Government Art Collection, told us to go wherever we wanted so long as we didn’t open any closed doors, and so we walked through to the State Banqueting Rooms (tall ceilings, Trusthouse Forte-style panelling, lots of candelabras and rather impersonal), and the White Room, where the Prime Minister meets visiting dignitaries. Whenever you see him (or her) photographed meeting with another prime minister or president by the fire, it’s been taken there.

We (two of us) got chatting to one of the Downing Street staff, who was quite happy to natter about all sorts of things. We were on the first floor, he said; below us were offices, and above us was the Prime Minister’s flat. I asked him if there was a bunker beneath Number 10, and it turns out there isn’t; it’s under Number 11. Someone else asked if there was a special toilet just for the Queen and he said there was, kind of. Did we want to see it, he asked. Of course we did.

So he walked us down a corridor to a rather ordinary looking little bathroom which we used, just so we could say we’d been in the Queen’s toilet. It was two rooms, with the loo in the inner room, its walls floor-to-ceiling gold mirrors, and three orange lights up through the extractor fan. Very strange; it felt like a very posh airline toilet. The soap was Carex (although I opened a drawer and found some Moulton Brown) and one of the taps was missing its turner. Mrs Thatcher apparently had it jazzed up when she lived there, and it was certainly very 80s.

He was quite happy to talk about the people that worked there. Gordon Brown did a lot of work; Tony Blair went to Chequers every weekend; John Major always worked sitting at the cabinet table, which sounded too much like working at the dining table for my liking.

You really couldn’t fault any of the staff: they were friendly and approachable and put everyone at ease, and the food was good enough to forgive the rather abrupt half eight drying-up of the wine.

I wish I could have taken in a camera or a phone, but they all had to be left at the door, which perhaps explains why you never really see pictures from inside 10 Downing Street. As we all traipsed out at the end of the night, though, we stood by the famous door in front of the inscribed letter box (‘First Lord of the Treasury’, as if anyone needed to know you lived there) and had our pictures taken for posterity. Everyone was a bit self-conscious about it, of course, but as the policeman said everyone did it we soon got over the embarrassment.

All in all, an excellent – and very unusual – unusually ordinary night out.