A touch of the itch
MR CLARKE'S job carries-with it an occu- pational health hazard: Chancellor's Itch. I have seen it all happen before. The new man bowls into the Treasury, knowing what he wants to do and wanting to get on and do it. Anything else is a distraction. Flying off to listen to foreigners is a major distrac- tion. Like the heroine in The Pursuit of Love, he asks: `Why do I have to come to this bloody abroad?' Then the domestic economy somehow misfires, and abroad begins to show its charms. Abroad does not pose all those difficult choices about inter- est rates and the public finances. People abroad do not push microphones under your nose and ask you embarrassing ques- tions about the pound sterling. Safe in your ministerial Rover heading for the airport, safe in the airless calm of the conference room, you start to incubate the Itch. Fre- quent travel abroad, so you feel, lets you build up alliances and even friendships. You and Lloyd and Theo and Lambert° and whatever the current Japanese is called — between you, you could set the world to rights. In extreme cases, the sufferer itches to be chairman of the IMF's interim comit- tee. This is terminal. I had hoped that Mr Clarke would be saved from the Itch by an early inoculation — in a previous job, he had to attend the meetings in Geneva, of the International Labour Organisation, that great contradiction in terms. Nonetheless, I find his symptoms disturbing. Tied up in Notts, he should resolve to cut back on trips to meetings, just the easy ones at first, let someone else take the air ticket. . . Chancel- lors have enough to do without trying to do it by remote control. Beware of the Itch.
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