CENTRE POINT

The PM is dead, long live the . . .

SIMON JENKINS

By the time you read this article the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will have resigned. He will have lost the will to rule. He will have been visited by men in grey suits, possibly sent by men in white coats. John Major will have lived nine lives, run out of rope, reached the end of the plank, exhausted his supporters' patience, picked up the bedside gun and, to be brief, done what is expected of a gentleman. He will have packed his bags and gone.

This is what the script says. The script says that if a party leader is 'unprecedent- edly' behind in the polls, loses by-elections, council elections and Euro-elections, then he must do something called 'go', This is not laid down in any constitution. It just sort of happens because everybody in the club says it must happen.

Some elements in the Conservative Party still behave as if new rules for electing their leader had not been introduced after 1964. In the good old days before crime and dou- ble-glazing, so the theory goes, Tory lead- ers were aristocrats and these things were handled with decorum. A nudge here, a private dinner there, a column or two in the Times or Telegraph, and the poor man read the writing on the wall. He did the neces- sary with no need for blood on the carpet.

I cannot imagine anybody less likely to take a nod and a nudge from this club com- mittee than John Major. Those claiming to want him out are mostly journalists writing for Tory newspapers and magazines. Those writing for non-Tory ones merely gloat. Few in either camp bother to make any dis- tinction between prescription and predic- tion. The wish is father to the assumption.

Thus he was to have gone by Easter last year, then by the summer, then by Christ- mas, then by Easter this year. The Times, the Telegraph, the Mail all said so. He was to have gone because after surviving each mishap 'he could not survive another'. Yet each mishap came and went and he was still there. Eastbourne and Newbury came and went. The miners and Maastricht came and went. VAT on fuel and qualified majority voting came and went. Each was a disaster presaging Mr Major's imminent demise. Last month's local elections were dooms- day. (When he weathered them I did note that the Times and Telegraph hedged their bets and suggested that 'with luck' he might survive for the time being.) Now pundits steeped in lobby wisdom say in the Sunday Times and Telegraph that if

`he' gets fewer than ten Euro-seats, he is fin- ished. Challenge the pedlars of this nonsense and they point to their fingers on the pulse of politics. They have it on good authority that Mr Major is a bit wobbly. Under pressure he will lose something called the 'will to rule'. Chaps in politics are apparently like that.

If there was a General Medical Council for journalists I would have most of these hysterical prognosticators struck off for incompetence. It is one thing for Paul Johnson, Lord Rees-Mogg or Simon Heifer to want Mr Major gone. They are paid to have opinions. I might even agree with them. It is quite another matter for political reporters, whose job is to analyse rather than advocate, to throw analysis to the winds for fear of not being in line with the prescription of the pack. They find 'senior sources', always undeclared, to confirm whatever they want confirmed.

I suppose it is conceivable that some back-bench joker will risk deselection by challenging Mr Major to a leadership con- test in November, Party leaders have always had to contend with jokers. John Major will have a new Cabinet by then. For him even to contemplate voluntary resigna- tion, a substantive majority of that Cabinet would have to rat on him. I believe this is unlikely. Morale is bad in the constituen- cies. Government party morale is always bad in the constituencies. Ask Lord Wilson, Lord Callaghan and Lady Thatcher. But constituency parties are going the way of election meetings, canvassing and mid-term opinion polls. They are the old politics. I have no doubt a prime minister could be 30 points behind in a mid-term poll and still win a general election.

So why the frenzy? I have to conclude that the cynics are probably right. The cul- ture of political journalism between elec- tions is distorted. It must have a story. Party politics become anodyne. Govern- ments try to govern but their principal enemy, as every Downing Street memoir records, is the waywardness of events and the cussedness of the governed. These are the bread of politics. Journalism needs more exciting enemies. It wants circuses. It therefore treats the Westminster stage with grotesquely exaggerated respect. It peoples it with shadows, with opposition politicians who would otherwise be nonentities between elections, with lobby gossip, poll- sters and by-elections, with crises and lead- ership challenges. The circus needs cease-

less activity. Worst offenders are the broad- casters, whose craving for controversy yields programme after programme domi- nated by the three party spokesmen — be it horror videos, Channel Tunnels or even mad cow disease. Westminster demands it give its view on each and every topic.

The Conservative Party is a long way behind in the opinion polls. It spoils a good crisis to point out that the Conservatives were in this predicament in 1981, 1985 and 1990, yet went on to win. Lady Thatcher `lost' 46 out of the 58 by-elections 'she' fought. Mr Major has never won one. Nei- ther has ever lost a general election. We are expected to take these carnivals in the political calendar as serious only because the Westminster mafia spends so much time and expense 'interpreting' them. I find it incredible that serious analysts are still paid to extrapolate from local and by-elec- tions to general elections. They might as well read a horoscope.

With the decline in political deference, most voters have two separate responses when asked to participate in democracy. One is a secret vote for the leader they believe will make the least mess of their lives. This is granted them only once every four or five years. The other is an interim comment on those in authority, whether in at a non-general election or when ques- tioned by a pollster. Last week's much- quoted British Election Study published suggested serious shortcomings in polling methodology. People do not lie to pollsters. They merely behave like politicians on tele- vision: they answer a different question from the one asked.

This does not mean polls have no use. I was intrigued to see that a majority of mid- term Liberal Democrats (and I expect a majority of Euro-election abstainers) put the Conservatives as their second preference. This must be the clearest indicator of how they would vote at a real general election. This is the best explanation of the over- whelming fact of such elections for the past 156 years, that the Tories always poll close to 14 million votes, despite the degeneracy of their mid-term poll ratings. Liberals are still Labour-averse. They are still likely to return to the Tories at any election that matters.

That is why if I had to put my fortune on 1996/7, I would still put it on the Tories. If I were Mr Major I would place the same bet. So why resign now, just because the West- minster lobby tell me to?