My Greatest Mistake: Jeremy Vine BBC Radio 2 Presenter
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Your support makes all the difference.I was a lobby correspondent when John Major's government was in power. In 1995 there was a leadership challenge and it ended up being between John Redwood and Major. Everyone in the lobby was hunting for developments, big or small: it was the story of the summer.
Then a junior minister came up to me and said that there was a rumour going round that a minister was going to resign from Major's government to back Redwood. So I went on The One O'clock News and said: "I've just been told by a Conservative MP that there is now a rumour circulating around Westminster that a minister is about to resign to back John Redwood."
I repeated that it was a rumour: in fact, as things turned out, no minister did resign to back Redwood, so it remained just that. But the effect of my report was that Reuters flashed up a wire saying: "BBC says cabinet minister to resign to back Redwood" - which was an exaggeration of what I'd said - and the pound started to fall.
Michael Portillo, who was then in the Cabinet, was having lunch with a colleague of mine and he was bleeped by Tory Central Office with the message: "Rumours you are resigning - please deny." Another minister, Eric Forth, also suspected of being the person who was about to go, was chased down the street by cameramen shouting questions at him.
The first time I panicked was when I went back to the office and the Press Association was running a story saying that a Reuters report that a cabinet minister was about to resign had caused the pound to fall and that it was still falling. By the end of the day sterling had dropped by the greatest amount since the previous February's "Valentine's Day Massacre" of the pound.
Anyway, my mum rang me up at the end of the day and said: "Did you enjoy your day at work?" and I said: "Yes."
"What did you do?" she asked me. I said: "I drove the pound down."
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