ANOTHER VOICE
Why she must go, Part II: her treatment of Mr Worsthorne and other inhuman crimes
AUBERON WAUG H In a pub near Taunton I heard rumour of a family living in Kent who had actually paid to have one of these obscene plastic objects pumping more and more lower- class rubbish into its home. If it had not been so far away, we might have hired a coach to go and stand outside the house and laugh at it. Even funnier are those who have been persuaded to accept them as gifts through flattery. They are told that as a special promotion Sky Television is pre- pared to give away a few of these precious vessels (already refused by Mrs Plopski and her friend Pishiguro) to carefully selected opinion-formers.
Not many people share my perception that this massive drive to give away satel- lite dishes is one and the same as the drive to keep Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister, at any rate until the next general election. I explained the connection last week. Enor- mous numbers of saloon bar bores throughout the country see any agitation to remove Mrs Thatcher from Downing Street as part of a left-wing plot to ensure the return of a Labour government. The country needs Maggie, they say, shaking their wise old heads. Now every saloon bar bore in the country has turned his attention to German reunification. Mark their words, a united Germany means trouble. The Germans, united, have never been defeated. That is where the danger comes from, not from Russia, which has too many problems of its own. 'The pressure on Mrs Thatcher has started to lift,' announced the Sunday Times under the headline 'Rescued by Berlin'.
Perhaps the proselytic intention is not so crude as the Sun's two-page spread last Wednesday, an unsigned `exclusive' inter- view decorated by photographs of Carol and Mark Thatcher: 'Premier Margaret Thatcher opens her heart to the Sun. WE ALL LOVE YOU MUM. "Their support helped me get through the day Nigel quit".' It was certainly not as crude as the blackguarding of Lawson which preceded it. One begins to understand the point made by the Telegraph's George Jones, discussing the possibility of a challenger at next month's leadership elections in the Conservative Party: Any challenger would face an unprecedented campaign of vilification from Mrs Thatcher's supporters and Tory Central Office — as well as intense pressure from his constituen- cy party to withdraw or risk being dropped at the next election.
Tories were looking for a 'stalking horse' without any skeletons in the cupboard, like a mistress or a drink problem, he revealed. Otherwise they would be plastered all over the Murdoch tabloids.
I have explained why the Murdoch empire is so keen to keep Thatcher in Downing Street as long as possible, but this does not begin to explain why Tories in the constituencies should join this thuggish game. It must be plain as a pikestaff to anyone with a moment to think about it that she is going to lose the next election and lose it catastrophically. From having been the Tories' greatest asset, she has become their second worst liability, after poll tax. This is not because of any hyper- bolical suggestion that she has gone mad, although she appears to be on increasingly erratic autopilot controls for much of the time. Catastrophe lies in the fact that if Thatcher leads the Conservatives into the election, her defeat will be seen as a national repudiation of all the wonderful things she has achieved in the past ten years — defeat of the unions, reduction of taxes, cuts in expenditure on 'education', etc. A Labour government will then feel it has a mandate to undo everything she has done to restore the status quo with a vengeance.
If Howe, having replaced her in Decem- ber, then proceeds to lose the election in 1992 (which he might easily not), he will then take the blame. Silly old sheepface. We should have kept Maggie. The Thatch- er years will still be a fragrant memory and Hattersley will have to tread very carefully, if he is capable of such a thing. The only certain route to disaster is to keep Thatch- er in Downing Street.
Why on earth do intelligent Tories not
see this? Although an enormous number are seriously worried about the prospects under Thatcher, any discussion of this is stifled even before the Downing Street hit-squad and Murdoch's thugs can sup- press it. Only the Independent newspaper speaks out, to cries of execration from every Tory pundit in business. How un- sophisticated to criticise Thatcher for lying, they cry. Surely it needs very little soph- istication to see the Independent's initiative as a simple stir-job. For my own part, I was proud to be associated with that newspap- er.
The most curious explanation of all came from the saintly Peregrine Worsthorne, which seemed to draw all saloon bar anxieties together into a wonderful sym- phony. The threat of German unification is going to speed up moves towards a federal Europe, he opined. The same sinister people who encouraged coloured immigra- tion are 'trying to take steps — again without consulting the British people — leading inevitably to Britain's becoming part of a federal Europe. Only one person stands in the way of this rush into federal- ism — the Prime Minister.'
This is what the anti-Thatcher campaign, in the Independent and elsewhere, is all about, he reveals. Never mind that Euro- pean unification is the only specific issue on which the British people have ever been consulted in my lifetime. 'Down that path lie strife and turmoil, leading to explosion.'
It is true that for people who take politics more seriously than I do Mrs Thatcher's single-minded determination to spoil Britain's part in a developing Euro- pean Community provides an even more cogent reason for getting rid of her than the fact that she is going to lose the next election. We all have our different approaches to the central truth that she must go. My own eyes were opened to the fact that she was no longer a fit person to run the country at the time of the Gibraltar shootings, 18 months ago. Not many peo- ple shared my perception then or share it now. Perhaps the saloon bars should con- centrate on her vile treatment of Pereg rine. This loyal and saintly man has never been•granted the knighthood which should have been his by right ten years ago. I am not sure she has even asked him to lunch. If she can treat a faithful servant like that, there is no reason for any of us to follow her.
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