18 JUNE 1983, Page 6

Mature in error

Colin Welch

T ike schoolmasters, elections teach lessons, dish out rewards, punishments and whacks, have whims and favourites, set

exams, are unfair, can expel. Precisely what they teach too is sometimes obscure. What is Mrs Thatcher supposed to have learnt, for instance? One thing she knew already, surely: that she is not box-office poison. With decreasing confidence the wets have argued and mumbled that she was on a course heading straight for electoral disaster. Since the Falklands they have shut up: the election proves them wise to do so.

The election itself, however, has given them a new line of talk. They advise Mrs Thatcher not to ignore the Alliance vote, vast if unrewarded. It is hinted that she should govern in a way more acceptable to these good people, that she should learn something from them, respect their sen- timents and in no way provoke reliable allies she will supposedly need against the semi-revolutionary Left. Would this not be difficult or impossible for her? Would it not blur her character and bring her no reward?

The problems facing this country are visi- ble to all three parties, mass unemployment perhaps the gravest and saddest of all. Has Mrs Thatcher's triumph proved that the country is prepared to tolerate three or four million unemployed? I don't think so, and I hope she doesn't either. Her triumph was, for a start, not in votes but in seats; and surely she won support not because people don't care about unemployment but because we think her best qualified to deal with it without producing disaster elsewhere. It is certainly not true that the more you care about unemployment, the more your policies must approximate to the simplistic twaddle peddled by Labour and to a lesser extent the Alliance.

On the contrary a serious attack on unemployment, while perfectly possible without any inflationary spree, involves taking bold steps which would mostly be anathema to Labour and the Alliance, but which would be more in character for Mrs Thatcher. The Economist has put forward some sacrilegious suggestions. They include cutting unemployment benefits and/or restricting them to those willing to take low- paid jobs, or cutting them at least for the young; abolishing wage councils; restoring conscription, not necessarily military; cut- ting lower marginal tax rates and national insurance contributions so that job-getters are not at once faced with intolerable new burdens (the Alliance is sounder in theory about this than Sir Geoffrey has been in practice); cutting government spending drastically to balance reduced revenues; carrying on the struggle against inflation, which causes unemployment and is still far too high (four per cent inflation would raise prices 50-fold in the next 100 years, five per cent 130-fold); switching tax rebates from houses to productive investment; abolishing regional and other capital grants and all subsidies to old industries, nationalised or not; ending the anti-jobs antics of local authorities; exposing trade union restrictive practices to the Monopolies Commission; abolishing job-protection where it threatens employment. Here are things for Mrs That- cher to think about, now, while five years remain. No one expects the lot. (Objec- tionable or not, all would reduce unemploy- ment, if that's what is wanted.) In this field, Mrs Thatcher has perhaps something to learn which, if learnt, will give her something to teach. Not the least im- portant of her tasks is that once performed by Adenauer and Erhard in Germany: to educate the opposition, to rid its heads of nonsense, to show it the facts of life, to prove there is another way which works, to create a prosperity which it dare not threaten and to ensure that one day it will be fit to replace her.

This election has been monstrously un- fair, wails the Alliance. Has it been? If so, should we alter our system? The present system set the Alliance an exam, so to speak, which it failed. Not unfairly, the system tests character, perseverance and conviction as well as 'policies'. It delays its rewards, like a county cap, till they have been thoroughly earned; then it gives abun- dantly. The Alliance can sit this exam again. Already it lies second in 312 seats, just over half. A great prize is within its reach, provided it fails in its perverse quest for proportional representation. It was under our first-past-the-post system — has the Alliance forgotten? — that Labour decisively displaced the Liberals. What is to stop the Alliance reversing that defeat, par- ticularly if Mr Kinnock leads Labour?

To Labour the election has taught the bit- terest lesson of all. The only sign so far that part of it has sunk in is Mr Foot's swift, rueful and characteristically mismanaged resignation. What has followed is not en- couraging. In the unavoidable absence of Mr Benn, three potential leaders have emerged, Mr Shore, Mr Hattersley and Mr Kinnock. Others hover in the offing. Of all three front runners it must be said that they will find it terribly difficult to distance themselves from the recent debacle without damaging their character or judgment or both.

Mr Kinnock's character will suffer least, since the multi-coloured nonsense of the manifesto did not seem nonsense to him. He believed in it. Given the chance, he would doubtless lead Labour along the same lines in the next election. It would doubtless be a very different Labour that he led, purged by despair or resignation or the passing years of those 'moderates' who have shamed themselves by trying to hide Labour's shame, a Labour thus more homogeneous and committed to the Left.

He would lead it with panache, wit, flair and fire. Unless things go very ill for Mrs Thatcher or the Alliance, he would lead it into another disaster, the more swiftly because of the big impulsive mistakes to which unruly temperaments are prone. Of his philosophy and world view I hope to say more another time, should it be still rele- vant. Favourite of the Left, he is also favourite among Tories. One Tory elder statesman exulted, 'After Foot, give us yet, another amateur, and 1988's in the bagl Mr Kinnock has held no ministerial office, has little or no experience of that crafty wheeler-dealing, arm-twisting and lapel- grasping, that mixture of menace, cajolery .and intrigue by which alone the Labour Party has recently been kept tolerably in lin

e. contra

In sharp contrast is Mr Shore. 1 don't mean that he is a natural intriguer: on the contrary. But experience, not least as Wilson's back room boy in 1964, has taught him exactly what goes on and how things are done. We don't expect to find sturdy patriotism on the Left: why should we, in people who ought presumably to think the country must be transformed before it can be loved? Mr Shore is patriotic, even in- sular, chauvinistic. Attlee dislike'

foreigners; so I fancy does he. He dislikes Militants too. He has described the Labour

the Militant Tendency as a `conspiracy' which must be dealt with pro- mptly as 'sick', mptly and 'decisively'. He campaigned pas- sionately nonetheless for that sick party, with its conspirators still prominent and prospering. Whatever reputation he had for principled good sense must have suffered from this, as also from his endorsement, however quiet, of the manifesto, as ant, his economic fantasies about devalua- tion, which aroused scorn even in Mr Healey, and about government borrowing having no effect on interest rates. His Pro- spects may be enhanced by his being, though far from gaga, older than the others. If he proved a mistake, he could be sooner corrected. About Mr Hattersley, need I do more a,t, this stage than remind you of a remark recently attributed to him, to the effect that he would prefer 10 per cent more equality in society even at the expense of 20 per cene t more prosperity? A particularly perverS preference, this, when we recall that, while egalitarianism is undoubtedly hostile to prosperity, prosperity is by contrast friend ly to equality, which it fosters and renders tolerable. In other words, Mr Hattersley would rather see us a little morel equal than a lot better off, sinking equally han swan- pirefer ming unequally. No wonder people what he denounces as Mrs Thatcher's with trine of mean-minded self-interest', wit?. the country run as if it were a 'a corner

grocer's shop'. The corner grocer has more interest than Mr Hattersley in our well- being.

If Mrs Thatcher has anything to teach, on none of these three will it `take'. They

will not profit by it. They are mature in error, incorrigible. In the search for a new leader, Labour speaks of missing a genera- tion. It may have to skip more than one before it finds the midwife of its future.