ANOTHER VOICE
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Brighton
AUBERON WAUGH
This would seem to be her intention in opposing the abolition of frontiers and customs barriers within the Common Mar- ket. I think we may discount the official explanation that she is worried about the political effects of imposing VAT on chil- dren's clothes (which the European Com- mission has offered to waive) or that she is worried about the effects of a sudden increase in the price of ouzo in Greece. Both these continue to be trotted out as objections to the Cockfield plan for Euro- pean integration in 1992. Similarly, although various junior ministers like to make bullish noises about keeping drugs out of Britain, I cannot believe that Mrs Thatcher is really so stupid as to think this possible. As I never tire of pointing out, the authorities are unable to keep drugs out of prisons, so even if she turned the entire country into a prison, the enterprise is doomed.
People might decide that the only reasons Mrs Thatcher is anxious to keep our frontiers closed is to discourage French, Italian, Belgian and other citizens of the Common Market from coming over and taking pot shots at her. That would be a fairly understandable anxiety after her last Brighton experience, but even this interpretation raises the question of exactly how much money and effort the country must spend protecting her. My own reluctant conclusion is that any money spent from now on is money wasted. For an Italian to mistake her for a little songbird would be a most shocking and reprehensible mistake — if the mistake was deliberate nobody could condone it but at this stage it might be the best thing. Nothing else is going to get rid of Mrs Thatcher. The opposition has thrown in the sponge, and so long as she is there the forces of patronage and sycophancy will ensure that she gets her way.
Two months ago I registered my sad conclusion that the time had come to thank the Prime Minister from the bottom of our hearts for all she has done, to heap her with honours and stuff her with money like a London policeman until it is falling out of her ears — and send her off to make way for Mr Lawson. That suggestion assumed that Lawson, when he urged that we join•the European Monetary System in de- fiance of Thatcher's objections, was pre- pared to repudiate her ghastly Little- Englandism and lead the country into the glorious vistas of 1992, when all indirect taxes would be harmonised, border con- trols between the member states would vanish and we would all live happily ever after in a united, prosperous, intelligent, cultivated European family, keeping the `workers' in their place, with whisky at £3.50 the bottle and cigarettes at 60p the packet. On Saturday, in Crete, Lawson will reveal the extent to which he has betrayed our hopes. In last week's paper to EEC finance ministers, he ruled out the harmo- nisation of indirect tax rates, first on the grounds that it would create further bureaucracy (it wouldn't) and then that it would deprive Britain (Mrs Thatcher, Mr Lawson, Mr Hurd, Mrs Currie and Mr Bottomley) of the right to set national priorities. Never mind that the European Commission had indicated its readiness to defer to some of Thatcher's absurd priori- ties; no doubt something could be done about the Greeks' ouzo, although it is a foul drink and visitors to the isles where burning Sappho loved and sang would be well advised to stick with Metaxa's famous `Five Star' brandy. But where Britain is concerned, Lawson would 'defend its right to impose high taxes on alcohol and tobacco for health reasons'.
Health, fiddlesticks! Since when has the Chancellor of the Exchequer had anything to do with health? Lawson himself has never been averse to the occasional glass of whisky, as his fine, manly figure bears witness. Thatcher, I have been told, hits the malts like nobody's business of an evening. But now Lawson's betrayal begins to fit into a pattern which embraces so many of the Government's lies: the Depart- ment of Transport lies about an epidemic of drunk-driving; the Home Office lies about an epidemic of rural violence; Cus- toms and Excise lies about the possibility of controlling drugs. . . .
The real reason why these lies are put about by the government departments is the same as the reason why Thatcher is determined not to open the frontiers be- tween Britain and the Common Market. If it were cowardice — if Mrs Thatcher were genuinely scared of being shot by a Corsi- can, run over by a drunk driver, bonked on the head by a rural merrymaker in Weston Zoyland, or of seeing her new grandchild (in taxed garments) succumb to the dangerous pleasures of hashish and cocaine — then we might sympathise a little. But it is nothing to do with cowardice. It is bossiness. She cannot lose any opportunity for bossing us around; nor can she bear seeing this power to control and terrorise us slip from her fingers.
Someone I met at dinner the other day told me of plans for a gigantic Customs Hall at Waterloo Station (or possibly Vic- toria) into which travellers on the new ridiculous Railway Chunnel will be driven. There they will be scanned, screened, bodysearched and fed into computers for 50 minutes, which will effectively remove any time benefit from using the Channel Tunnel. If it is ever built, this Customs Hall will provide a suitable monument to the later days of Thatcher, when the nation allowed itself to be led into the insular, oppressive futility which this woman now represents. Semtex may yet prove one of the more benign inventions of the decade.
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