POLITICS
Just when Mr Portillo was looking seaworthy again, he's fallen overboard
BRUCE ANDERSON
Assuming that there was to be a replace- ment for Britannia, the question was who should pay. The PM always believed that the money should come from the Exche- quer. When he was ten years old, his father bought the family's first television set, to watch the Coronation; John Major has been a devout royalist ever since. It was the Queen who persuaded her Prime Minister that she should pay tax, not the other way round.
But one or two of Mr Major's colleagues were unhappy about the political implica- tions of paying for a new royal yacht; the decision was delayed while they were won round. With Britannia about to set off on her final voyage, however, it could not be further postponed. Hence last week's announcement, which owed nothing to elec- toral considerations. Given the sensitivity of the issues at stake, resolving them was always likely to require an elephantine pregnancy. It was mere coincidence that this one ended in the last weeks of a Parliament.
Unfortunately, much of the initial public reaction seemed to vindicate the Cabinet doubters. It was a depressing week to be British. Have we really become such a mean-spirited, small-minded, envious little people, so negligent of our traditions and our past glories: so unworthy of them? A new Britannia for a new millennium; a pre- sent from the nation to Her Majesty on the 50th anniversary of her accession: surely that should be an occasion for national rejoicing? These days, apparently not.
Some at least of those who responded in such a despicable fashion may have recov- ered their power of judgment, and their sense of shame, after Sir Edward Heath appointed himself their spokesman. The Queen gave Sir Edward his Garter, but even membership of the highest order of chivalry cannot elicit chivalry from a barren soul. He accepted this great honour from the Queen and now he is happy to add to her embarrassments. The man's middle name is swinishness.
In politics, it is almost always essential to take every opportunity to skewer one's opponents, and last week the Labour Party not only provided opportunities for skewer- ing: they deserved it. New Labour has long since ceased to base its views on instincts or principles; it is only interested in opinion polls. But when the royal yacht announce- ment was made, there were no polls, so Labour spokesmen floundered. No wonder that Mr Portillo was keen to pull his boots on and get to work. But he should have resisted the temptation. He should not have set out to wrong-foot his opponents over the royal yacht, for fear of involving the royal family in the dance. By trying to expose Labour's embarrassments, Mr Por- tillo transferred them to himself.
Mr Portillo had had a good few months. He was slowly rebuilding his political repu- tation, at least in his own party; he was also winning golden opinions from his military advisers. The night before he was appoint- ed to the MoD, I was having dinner with a couple of high-ranking servicemen, who enquired anxiously who their new boss would be: surely not Portillo. I displayed my powers of prophecy by assuring them that they had nothing to fear: it would not be Michael Portillo. `Thank God for that,' said one of them. 'All he knows about defence is how to cut it.'
Within a few weeks, however, he had won over almost all his former critics. He was invariably courteous; he seemed to understand the ethos of the services. He was good at mastering detail and at taking decisions. He never accepted service advice uncritically; there were always probing questions. But once he was convinced, he fought hard in Cabinet.
Relations were briefly disrupted by the notorious SAS speech at the party confer- ence, when Mr Portillo sounded like an overexcited football supporter being escort- ed off a cross-Channel ferry. But he apolo- gised, as he did when some of his guests made too much noise during last year's Beating the Retreat. This made the audi- ence angry, though not as angry as Princess Margaret, who was taking the salute. But this time the generals, who would never have forgiven one of their own who had caused such embarrassment, defended him. There were lots of comments along the lines of: 'Poor chap, bad luck, could have happened to anyone. Come on, he's done the decent thing and apologised: let's forget it.'
But the royal yacht has reawakened his backbench colleagues' memories of Green- wich and the MoD homes; on both occa- sions the Government landed in difficulty because Mr Portillo failed to anticipate trouble. He seems to have no early-warning system. Tory MPs also recalled the affair of the 40 telephone lines installed in a West- minster house to facilitate a Portillo leader- ship challenge which never took place. If the whole affair had been a racehorse it could have been christened Vacillation, by Hysteria out of Ambition.
It is not clear whether the problems are caused by bad luck or bad judgment, or both. But Mr Portillo does have one weak- ness which is dangerous in an aspiring politician. He seems to have an inordinate need for flattery. This does not apply to the way he operates as a minister; there is no suggestion that he discourages strong- minded advice from his civil servants and servicemen: quite the reverse. But he spends too much of his political life sur- rounded by sycophants, who are not likely to rescue him from misjudgments.
It is odd that he should have made so many of those, because he is not only a clever man; he seems worldly-wise and he is also thoughtful. At Cambridge, he was taught by Maurice Cowling, the most dis- tinguished Tory historian of 20th-century politics, and by the late Shirley Letwin; he has been thinking hard about history and Toryism ever since. Many people resent a man whose surname ends in 'o' espousing British patriotism, but it is deeply felt, even if, on occasions, ne'er so badly expressed.
Moreover, for all his mistakes, Michael Portillo has remained a big beast of the jungle; he is a large-scale politician in a way John Redwood will never be. For all that, there seems to be a recurrent tendency to political self-destruction. Over the past months, Portillo shares had at least trebled in value, and until a week ago, there was still a healthy market. Now they are right back down, almost to penny share levels. Even at that price, they may not be a good buy.
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