POLITICS
The embarrassing qualities of Jeffrey Archer
FERDINAND MOUNT
hings do not look too good at the moment. As John Evelyn wrote in his diary one such autumn: 'Horrible roberys, high- way men, and murders committed such as never was known in this Nation since Christian reformed: Atheism, Dissension, Prophanenesse, Blasphemy among all sorts: portending some signal judgement, if not amended.' Exactly what the opinion polls are saying now. But then that is what opinion polls tend to say halfway through a parliament, the only novelty being that there are three parties in it now. The Government is in trouble, has been in trouble for a year or so, and is unlikely to clamber out of the hole immediately. This does not mean that `Thatcherism' or `monetarism' has fallen out of popular favour. On the contrary, the other parties have, if anything, snuggled closer to nurse. When Mr Peter Shore was Labour's econ- omic spokesman, he used to tell us he was going to borrow, oh trillions, he couldn't even be bothered to put a figure to it sometimes; Mr Hattersley, by contrast, says that when he is Chancellor the Gov- ernment will not be borrowing that much more than at present, he will be squeezing extra money he wishes to spend out of the rich and the pension funds (I know the sums do not add up, but it is the fear of being thought profligate which is worth noting). Parts of Mr Kinnock's speech, about the State being servant not master, might have been pinched from the works of Prof. Hayek, although they did not seem to have much connection with other parts of that now legendary oration. And as the riots become nastier, so Mr Kinnock's condemnations of lawlessness have be- come noticeably more severe.
The interest this week is more human than doctrinal — more to do with politicians than with policy and with their legitimacy, their authority and all the other words that used to crop up in treatises on princes and their fitness to rule. And the most conspi- cuous persons to be put under the scrutiny of events this autumn are four of the most conspicuous gainers from Mrs Thatcher's reshuffle — Mr Tebbit, Mr Archer, Mr Hurd and Mr Baker.
Jeffrey Archer has surfaced instantly as the most wince-provoking, hot-making mistake. Having alloted himself a role somewhat more prominent than others including, I suspect, Mr Tebbit envisaged, he apparently cannot pose for a camera or answer a question without filling the room with almost palpable clouds of embarrass- ment (I imagine the clouds as whitish and viscous, rather like the ectoplasm conjured up at old-fashioned seances). What he said about 'the workshy young' was not just the kind of thing any politician might say so long as he was nowhere near a micro- phone. His comparison between the plight of unemployed teenagers and the way he himself had triumphed over his own finan- cial difficulties was deeply bogus — as bogus as Mrs Shirley Williams's comparison be- tween 'the unwanted angry kids from Handsworth' and the black demonstrators in South Africa. I leave aside — with herculean restraint — the thought of the forests that might have been left standing, the minds left unclogged if Mr Archer had remained a decent, downstanding failure and had not taken to authorship. He has the integrity of the wholly plastic, seeming ultimately indifferent to all questions save whether the Perrier is properly chilled and why he failed to spot the chicken-sexer on What's My Line?
Norman Tebbit, on the other hand, has cruised out of the shadows looking pretty much as formidable as ever. Although his first speech from the platform was a little flat and his hero's welcome sprang more from what he was than from what he said, his retorts remain sharp enough; two sent- ences will serve as a reminder: 'I do not think one can say unemployment is the cause of a gang of 100 people falling upon a single policeman and murdering him. If so, we could have been singularly short of policemen during the 1930s.' True, that is not a sufficient, multi-causal, socio- economic explanation of the recent tragic disorders in our cities; but it will do for a party chairman.
The moment he got the job, Mr Tebbit said that law and order was the biggest political issue of the day — which I think is true, if you take that battered old phrase in its widest sense. No doubt it will be the level of unemployment which will appear to loom largest as the next general election approaches, but even unemployment may only form part of a larger question: is the Labour Party still too frightening to be allowed to govern, even if its remedies for unemployment might be worth consider- ing? Have Labour's leaders enough sym- pathy with the police, for example, to ensure that the streets are safe? Or is the chaos of life in Liverpool a foretaste of life under Labour? What about the hair-raising reaction to the Tottenham riots from Ber- nie Grant, the black Labour leader of Haringey council? What attitudes towards authority would a Labour government attempt to foster in schools?
These are all questions which Mr Kinnock's soft-left coalition so far seems ill-equipped to answer. Merely promising to refrain from renationalising everything is not enough.
In the euphoria of Bournemouth last week, it was widely assumed that, from now on, the Left — hard, soft and silly alike — would have enough sense to keep their mouths shut until after the election. But will they? After all, they continue to regard themselves as 'in struggle' — there must be some obstetrical metaphor hidden here, something about breaking the waters of late capitalism, I should think. And the struggle is essentially with their own side. Mrs Thatcher is not much mentioned, the real world of events and feelings still less so. As.Herzen wrote of the French revolu- tionaries of 1848: 'It was easier to for them to snatch up a musket and to go to die on a barricade than to look events boldly in the face; on the whole, they wanted not to understand things but to triumph over their opponents; they wanted to have their own way.'
But it is not enough either for Mr Tebbit to keep the frighteners on. He has to demonstrate that more of Mrs Thatcher does not mean worse; and that ministers know what is to be done about the riots and about unemployment. Here, the Prime Minister, whether by luck or judgment, does seem to have stumbled on a couple of distinct improvements on the last lot. Mr Hurd has done pretty well during his baptism of fire; he may look and sound like a frog with a cold, but he seems like a decent frog who knows more or less what he is doing. And Mr Baker has already appeared altogether more agile than Mr Jenkin — as he will need to be to convince people that the Government is not indiffer- ent to the inner cities.
This is an anxious Tory Conference, scared even more of public disorder than of electoral defeat, and worried less about what Miss Keays will say next than about whether Mrs Thatcher will catch the mood of the times. All the same, at least it could have been worse. Thank goodness Leon is out of the firing line, while as for Cecil. . . Which of the following has made the greatest contribution to English literature: Sara Keays, Jeffrey Archer, Capt. R. Maxwell? Discuss.
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