POLITICS
The perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten the Tories' last success
MATTHEW PARRIS
How delicious it is to see the Thatchi- ans now taking fright at the consequences of what they have done to John Major, and scampering back in an unseemly rush to support him in the face of an alarming rise of Kenneth Clarke's stock. Thatchianity under threat! Suddenly the devout remem- ber why it was they installed Major in the first place — to confound the Evil One himself, Heseltine, the Anti-Thatch. Ken- neth Clarke was only a minor demon in that Great Betrayal, but her church has a long, long memory.
Well, my pious friends, I have news for you. It may be too late. You have damaged him grievously. Probably he will limp on, but never with the authority she once thought she wanted him to carry: Thatchi- ans have committed a great folly.
Poor things. They are not, most of them, terribly bright, and you can see how it hap- pened. They all became enormously worked up about Europe. It was something to do with a treaty called — oh, it escapes us; name of a Dutch town, I think; already the details blur — but it just seemed terrifi- cally important at the time, can't think why now, with the EEC bogged down as ever. To be honest, Thatchians felt a bit prickly about Europe, having slightly overlooked it while she was on earth. John Major, who was trying to hedge on Europe, as every British prime minister will always have to, seemed the obvious target.
And look what they've done now. This happens when you forget to mind the shop, as she once knew. The shop is seriously in the red and the ambitious young under- manager, Mr Clarke, just appointed, is sus- pected of unsound attitudes to the business plan, and Euro-heresy to boot. A new mania — Cutters vs Taxers — grips the party.
This, too, will pass. Indeed I have seldom heard of a sillier controversy, got up for the most part by the newspapers, to whom nothing is easier than telephoning a few MPs and asking which they prefer, tax increases or spending cuts? Stupid ques- tion. Both, of course, are in store for the autumn. There will not be swingeing increases in income tax or a higher basic rate, but then there was never going to be. There will be a freezing of ceilings or a low- ering of bands, or both; and perhaps a little nibbling extension of VAT here or there.
There will not be swingeing cuts in wel- fare provision for the poor or sick, but then there was never going to be. Longer-term reviews of a radical nature continue apace, but in the meantime expect half a dozen mean-minded little savings of the cheese- paring kind: the candle-end economies which, as Gladstone pointed out, are what a good Chancellor is really for. Watch the Cutters' radicalism fade, after Christchurch and with the party conference approaching, as real, big, cuts are aired, excoriated and dropped in panic. Watch the Taxers' reso- lution crumble as the economy stumbles and the Tory whips tap-tap on their pocket calculators.
Soundings at Westminster suggest that the moment the argument proceeds from theory to practise, ministers go fuzzy. Clarke will use threats of tax increases both to reassure the City and to frighten minis- ters in spending departments into volun- teering cuts. It is a pleasing irony that these include Peter Lilley and Michael Howard — both of them professed Cutters. Howard will probably go soggy, for he really cannot surrender both to the Police Federation and the Chief Secretary at once. He will choose the Police Federation. Lilley, who is more ideological, may well proffer cuts.
And in the end there will be cuts which the Taxers will say are too many and taxes which the Cutters will say are too high; and a somewhat reduced borrowing require- ment which everybody will say is too big but the Chancellor will say is moving in the right direction . . . and the world will con- `Lifeguard nothing, I'm a conservationist!' tinue in its orbit. The Cutters vs Taxers farce has a little longer yet to play; it is a necessary pantomime and there's little else of note on in the West End. But it is the Trimmers who will win. They always do.
So why this sudden spasm in the party? Why this violent seesawing in the Tory press? Why, with economic confidence in intensive care, the Labour Party in the most dreadful mess, Liberalism sniffing the dawn, Europe no threat at all and a fragile parliamentary majority, has the Conserva- tive Party in government suddenly risen up like this and tried to tear itself apart? One day, Major is `finished'; the next, he is `fighting back strongly'. One day, the Lady loathes him; the next, she pleads for mercy towards him. The tabloid press roller-coasts up and down, while the more sedate com- mentators hedge and haver in a more digni- fied attempt to keep their hats on as the bandwagons lurch. Why? Search through treatises on political science though you may, you will not find the answer.
You should read Jung: 'That part of our- self which we suppress in youth, for the achievement of some given ambition, will return many years later, knife in hand, determined to destroy its destroyer.' The Tories know very well what they have done. They have killed their saviour. Her blood was upon them, and remains upon them. They know very well how this was to be atoned for. It was by losing the 1992 gener- al election that she, and honour, were to be satisfied. They were prepared to lose, aim- ing to lose, and secretly rather looking for- ward to it. So was she. They failed: they won.
And now the nightmares, the sleep-walk- ing, the sudden wakings in a febrile sweat, as over these last weeks. None of this has anything to do with John Major, or Europe, or tax increases, welfare cuts or the public sector borrowing requirement. Out, out, damned spot: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten that little hand. The Con- servative Party has not forgiven itself for winning the last election. It will return again and again to mutilate itself, every sui- cide bid followed, as now, by a bout of remorse, until it gets from the electorate the punishment which, in its strange black heart, it still seeks.
Simon Hejfer's political column returns next week
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