ANOTHER VOICE
I cannot bring myself to attack the new Prime Minister — at least not for for a while
MATTHEW PARRIS
In a spirit of fair play,' said a wonderfully mischievous colleague to me, 'I think we should acknowledge the huge democratic mandate Britain has just handed Mr Blair, and lay off him for a while.' My brow fur- rowed; this seemed uncharacteristic. 'I pro- pose', he continued, 'to give him a honey- moon. I shall write no ill of him until Tuesday lunch.' He paused. 'My next col- umn is due on Wednesday morning.'
My friend's approach is — for him — the right one. He is one of nature's bull-terri- ers. The Tory party are going to need his teeth and killer instinct from the word go, and for him the word go came on 2 May. Were he now to cramp his style — were the salt to lose its savour — we should be the losers, for the quality of mercy, in Bruce, would be strained. I am a Tory too and had planned to adopt the same attitude.
But somehow I cannot. I am abashed by the result of the general election last week. Though for years I had expected a comfort- able Labour win, the size of their majority stunned me. The sheer scale of the nation's loathing for the Conservative party — though I had sniffed it — humbles me. To start railing away at Mr Blair again, as though a huge national thumbs-down for the alternative had not intervened, goes against the wain. Then what? I am in a quandary. I have never reconciled to my own satisfaction the four competing pulls upon a columnist: conviction, tribal affilia- tion, professional duty and human pride. All are strong with me. Personal conviction is always there. One does see moral differences between politi- cians; one does assess differently the wis- dom of competing policies. One's head and one's heart urge support for some, opposi- tion to others. Advice to readers as to what will happen can become horribly tangled with advice as to what should happen. There are a couple of contenders for the Tory leadership — John Redwood and Michael Howard — whose influence in our politics I believe to have been degrading, and it is damned difficult to separate that out from my assessment of their chances. Perhaps it is better to stop 'assessing' and simply state that between a right-winger like William Hague and right-wingers like Howard and Redwood I see all the differ- ence in the world: the difference between a man in whose party I could stay, and two who would assist me greatly in my career by driving me out. Few readers would wish a columnist to bring no values of his own to his writing, but they do prefer such interests to be declared. I declare them. More problematic is the question of tribal affiliation.
This must be distinguished from belief. Quite apart from my conviction that the Tories have usually been right, I am tugged by team loyalty. I came up through their ranks and many of them are my friends. I may want the Tories to win for the nation's sake, but also for my pals' sake, and that is different. Commenting for the BBC World Service on election night, I shared the whoops of amazement as Tory after Tory went under, but also thought: 'Those are my friends out there, drowning.' One tries to resist it, but surely tribal loyalties do sometimes incline a columnist at least to give (or withhold) the benefit of the doubt? I think they do.
I suspect that readers are readier to indulge their columnist in his convictions than his affiliations. More journalists have these than confess to them. They are easily and habitually concealed. Some colleagues do not admit, even to themselves, that they have become half-affiliated to a political team. But, there we are, I am.
Then there is the question of profession- al duty. What is 'professional duty' in a columnist? The concept is at best confused. Plainly one should not take bribes or make things up, but, beyond that, how does the ideal of 'disinterest' in a journalist translate into words on the page? When partisan- ship, enthusiasm, affection and spite are removed, what is left? The world would be poorer without the Pauls Johnson and Foot, and as a reader I think I prefer the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave to the ideal. There remains, I concede, a strong if unfocused feeling for what may be sum- marised as fair play. But if you are a bull- terrier, fair play is pretty rough play, and your readers want and expect this. Poodles like me are supposed to be a bit more fas- tidious.
These three, then — conviction, affilia- tion and professional fair play — tussle with each other, and find no final balance. But the tussle itself is entertaining and per- haps healthy. It is the fourth — human pride — which I have the most difficulty either justifying or honestly disowning.
I always said Tony Blair was a sanctimo- nious control freak. I said it from the start. I always said he would come to irritate the nation greatly. I predicted it as early as two years ago and as lately as last week. So come on, let's be honest: part of me wants him to mess up. Part of me wants to say, 'I told you so.' Part of me, though affecting to stand back and let him do his best, will find disappointment not unmixed with sour sat- isfaction if he fails.
And now let's be even more honest: this has nothing to do with the good of the country, nothing to do with professional self-respect, nothing — even — to do with loyalty to my Tory pals. All those can be creditable qualities. But this is sheer, ruddy vanity. It's wanting to be proved right as every little boy wants to be proved right, and it is not a nice, or useful, or even enter- taining quality, but I can't purge myself of it and that is all there is to be said.
Except, perhaps, one thing. There was something moving about the feeling of a huge, national desire for change which gathered around the person of Mr Blair as he made that magnanimous response in Sedgefield, and as he spoke on the steps of Downing Street. It was possible to sense in the air a wish for good, and for human co- operation. Intangible? Maybe. Ephemeral? Sometimes. But these are not negligible things, and if Tony Blair can harness them and keep them and not betray them, and I think he means to try, then let me for a moment lay aside my pride and wish him well.
Matthew Parris is a columnist and parlia- mentary sketchwriter of the Times.
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