1 APRIL 1995, Page 48

Long life

Where is he coming from?

Nigel Nicolson

Tony Blair's Spectator lecture won him undeserved praise. It was so confused, so muffled, so deficient in stimulating ideas that I cannot believe that he composed it himself.

The phrase that was extracted from it most often by his puzzled admirers was, `The rights we receive should reflect the duties we owe,' as if this was a profound saying of St Thomas Aquinas instead of a rather garbled version of the oldest politi- cal platitude in the world. Mr Blair used it as a lever to widen the gap between Labour and Conservative, when all it did was to narrow it. The best comment on the lecture was Peter Brooke's cartoon in the Times which showed the lecturer mounted on an outsize TOriy-frieze sawing off one leg of the 'n' in Tony to make an 'r'.

It set me thinking, however, what are my rights and what my duties, and to what extent I have claimed the former and ful- filled the latter.

It is my right to be protected by the State against criminals and the common enemy, to be educated, healed and supported when unemployed, disabled or old if I cannot afford to pay for these benefits myself. I have the right to vote in elections, and to express any opinion that an editor thinks fit to print, including this one. That's quite a lot of rights, but nothing like the total. If I were a citizen of New York, I could claim up to 350 'entitlements', and I daresay that the homeless of London could do the same.

In return, I owe several duties. In time of war I must contribute to the nation's defence. I must pay my taxes, however onerous or unjust I consider them, strongly refuting the claim once made by Tony Benn to a vast crowd in Trafalgar Square that every man had the 'right' to refuse to pay the Poll Tax, just as I must deplore the selfishness of very rich men like Lord Vestey in avoiding their taxes, however legitimate their means. Then I have various civic duties, mostly negative. I must not break the law, nor cheat my neighbour, nor drive my car to the danger of his cat or dog.

All these obligations are the common currency of our political parties. I would have been in greater sympathy with Tony Blair if he had emphasised our non- statutory duties. I should voluntarily have surrendered payments from the State to which I was entitled but did not need, like child-allowances when my children were young. If I had served in the Gulf War, I would not have claimed compensation for the 'stress' it caused me. (Who claimed for stress after Alamein?) I should have done more to serve on charitable committees. I cannot count as a civic duty membership of the House of Commons, for it paid me a salary and fulfilled an ambition, nor my ten-year chairmanship of the Board of Governors of our local school, for I enjoyed it too much. I would have liked to serve on the Royal Commission on the Environment, but nobody asked me. Other duties which I could have performed I have not performed, like playing a more active part in our town's Choral Society, of which I am non-singing Vice President, or stand- ing for our local Council.

But by and large, I believe that I can sat- isfy Tony Blair's definition of a good citi- zen, summarised in his one good phrase, `the duties of mutual obligation'. They extend from duties to one's kin, right the way up to a share in national government. But I cannot agree with him that this in any way conflicts with the self-interest, or secu- lar materialism, that he strongly, but rather confusedly, deplores. Indeed, in order to be generous with one's time and money, one must first earn both by one's own efforts, and that is why, after a long absence in the wilderness, I once again call myself a Tory.