POLITICAL COMMENTARY
Margarine is nicer
AUBERON WAUGH
Eels are a familiar delicacy in Sweden. They drift slowly along the Gulf Stream often taking three years to reach Europe from their spawning ground in the Sar- gasso Sea, only to end up as a minor ingre- dient in some contraceptive lady's smorgas- bord. But even the greediest Swede can seldom have seen anything so slippery, or wriggling so energetically, as our Prime Minister on his visit to Sweden when asked about Britain's prospects for joining the Common Market. Commenting on press re- ports that the cost of our joining had been officially estimated (admittedly on the basis of certain somewhat academic assumptions) at £500 million a year in foreign exchange, Mr Wilson replied that no such official estimate had ever been presented to him. Our application, believe it or not, was on the table. Any future initiative must come from the Six.
The great dead duck of politics, as it has been called, is beginning to smell a little. Mr Jenkins, whose political career only really began when he espoused the Euro- pean cause, is to be seen looking distinctly gloomy as he juggles around with the figures trying to convice himself that pros- pects are rosy. With shortish term debts of some £3,000 million, and an estimated sur- plus—which most find wildly optimistic—of £300 million for this year, it begins to look as if he may have been entertaining ideas above his station when he applied for membership of such an exclusive circle.
On 22 July the foreign ministers of the Six meet in Brussels, at which meeting Dr Luns of Holland intends to raise the question of Britain's entry. However, it will not be until the end of the year that we know the changes, if any, to be made in the Common Agricultural Policy, and these may depend in turn on the results of the German elections in the autumn. The British government has convinced itself that Dr Strauss will press most strongly for some adjustment to the system whereby we would have to give French farmers a present of over four shillings every time we ate a pound of butter, and this is the focal point for all its abundant optimism at present. It is also felt that President Pompidou will be less anxious to featherbed France's millions of farmers than his predecessor was, but when one enquires into the Foreign Office's reasons for supposing that President Pompi- dou will be any different in this respect, one finds that everything rests upon a psycho- logical analysis of his class background. Finally, it is thought that the Germans will be braver now that the General has gone, and France's technocrats will be able to persuade the nation that it would really be in France's interests to pay more attention to industry, less to agriculture. As exercises in optimism go, this is no doubt rather less culpable than our last application, when, against all the evidence, both Mr Wilson and Mr Brown managed to convince themselves that we would be successful. So long as the Government can sustain itself by imagining that the figures are somehow wrong, or variable—we might suddenly decide to eat half as much butter next year—or that the French might decide to disenfranchise agricultural workers, then there is no need for any of us to worry about its physical, moral or mental health.
Only the political implications make the mind boggle. Nobody can imagine Mr Wilson facing the Labour party with a firm proposal to put the price of butter up by four shillings. Mr Alistair Macdonald, the Labour member for Chislehurst who unsuc- cessfully tried to move an emergency debate on the price of Common Market entry be- fore Monday's debate on false teeth and spectacles, almost broke down when con- templating a situation in which 'poorer people must subsist on margarine'. He had to apologise to the Speaker: 'I am sorry if I let my feelings run away with me'. So the stage might seem set for another dramatic Wilsonian climb-down. It would complete the pattern of his decision-making most neatly. It is often said—at least I say it often enough—that the present government has only voluntarily made four major decisions: not to devalue the pound; to retain a milit- ary presence East of Suez; to apply for membership of the Common Market; to re- form the trade unions. A reversal of the Common Market decision (which itself re- versed the anti-Market platform on which Mr Wilson won the 1966 election) would nicely complete the picture.
Incidentally, we may possibly see another climb-down, although of a somewhat minor nature, in the weeks ahead. Nobody could describe the creation of the Department of Economic Affairs as a major decision, and since the abandonment of the National Plan it has been little more than a picturesque sinecure for the Prime Minister's blue-eyed boy, Mr Peter Shore. Nobody has ever been able to see much point to Mr Peter Shore outside his dog-like devotion to Mr Wilson, and a few people were even unkind enough to say so. Perhaps as a result of this, Mr Shore decided to show his mettle during the Cabinet deliberations on Mrs Castle's Bill to clobber the unions. Just as everyone was deserting the Prime Minister, so did he. The result of that piece of daring is that there is now no point whatever to Mr Shore, just as there will not be even the pretence of a point to the DEA when the Government has abandoned its prices and incomes policy in favour of Vic Feather's solemn and binding pledge. Nobody would much notice the disappearance of either Mr Shore or the DEA, but it makes one weep slightly to remember the white-hot optimism in which they were both forged.
Abolition of the DEA would also go some way to appeasing the Prime Minister's political kleptomania, another characteristic on which I have previously commented. The Tories have very few policies, really, if you exclude things like agricultural levies and the value added tax, which nobody under- stands. One of them is to join the Com- mon Market, another to stay East of Suez. another not to devalue, another to clobber the unions—Mr Wilson has tried all those —and the fifth is to cut down on civil ser- vants, which, on closer scrutiny, means to abolish the DEA.
However, the initiative over the Common Market now lies with the Opposition. If Mr Heath looks like cooling off, Mr Wilson will undoubtedly drop it like a ton of bricks. An unknown quantity here is Mr Enoch Powell, who has been making increasingly rude noises about the Common Market of late. There is a whole parliamentary army of anti-Marketeers, including Mr Hugh Fraser, Mr Edward Du Cann and Sir Derek Walker-Smith, who only need a general. And, in parliamentary terms, Mr Powell has always been a general without an army.
The inner Cabinet is basically agreed on the principle of entry—I don't know where Mr Callaghan stands these days, but he has not yet started to make any noise on the subject—and is also agreed that entry is not something to be hurried. This makes the question of timing rather embarrassing. The Foreign Office feels that if we let the oppor- tunity presented by this month's meeting of the EEC's Council of Ministers slip the friendly Five will despair of us for ever. Of course, the Foreign Office has been wrong on nearly everything, so it may well be wrong on this. On the other hand, what happens if the French ask us to produce
proposals immediately — before the Six's Common Agricultural Policy review is finished? Mr Wilson's problem would then be how to reconcile the domestic political requirement of telling us that there is no question of our ever having to pay seven shillings and threepence for a pound of butter with the diplomatic requirement of appearing an eager European. Perhaps he is up to it, but one may doubt whether he is capable of resisting the temptation to score off the Tories for their readiness to con- demn the poor to a diet of margarine.
Even now, Mr Wilson is capable of per- suading himself that Europe is still attain- able, but my own money would be on the proposition that he is desperately looking for a different sort of initiative—probably something to do with a lightning dash to Russia with the Krogers on his lap, to be photographed with Gerald Brooke. If, how- ever, he were to make a serious European effort, he would almost certainly have to find himself a new foreign secretary. But Mr Wilson promised to keep Mr Stewart for the duration, and feeling in the Cabinet is that he will stay for as long as his health lasts. No doubt there are more pressing reasons than the Common Market why Mr Stewart should be removed to some home of retirement: not content with helping to murder and starve the Biafrans, he has al- ready started arming the Malays for a massacre of the Chinese in Malaysia, and in two shakes of a duck's tail he will be arm- ing the Kikuyu for a massacre of the Luo in Kenya. Well, if Mr Stewart is put away before the next round of murder and arson begins, at least our European initiative will have served some purpose.
Previous page
