POLITICS
Mr Portillo sh )11i d yet up earlier in the morning if he wants to defvai the **** Dixons of Brussels
Br,R S JOHNSON
It is not just a desire to be different which tempts me to sympathise with Mr Michael Portillo over at least one aspect of the wretched affair of the disabled workers. The tale shows what happens even to the proudest British politicians when they trade blows with anonymous EC officials.
Actually, in this case, the voice of Brus- sels has been named. Somewhere in the EC Commission's London office in Storey's Gate — a fine Queen Anne building — is a man called Dixon. His first name is, so far, a mystery. All the resources of Mr Portillo's unofficial secret intelligence officers, such as Mr David Hart, are currently engaged in trying to establish this detail, with a view, perhaps, to some kind of public retribution.
But what is beyond doubt is that it was Mr * * * * Dixon who this week was the nemesis of the recently promoted Secretary of State for Employment, one of the most interesting politicians of his generation and touted as a future leader of the Conserva- tive Party. Mr ***Dixon said on 12 August that Mr Portillo's justification for scrapping a scheme to help disabled workers secure contracts — that Brussels had forced him to do it — was a `travesty'. Portillo has not recovered.
Now, I yield to no man in my willingness to rough up the EC institutions for their kaleidoscopic failings. But Mr Portillo made a mistake. This did not lie in the deci- sion to cancel the scheme. Let us be clear about what was at issue. Never, at any point, was there any question of removing the £80 million subsidy for disabled work- ers, administered at a rate of £10,000 per head of the 8,000 workers on the books of Remploy.
The sole advantage the disabled will have lost by the cancellation of the Priority Sup- pliers Scheme is the right to have a second bite at the cherry if they fail to make the lowest tender for a contract to supply what- ever it happens to be; say, surveillance equipment to the ministry of agriculture. Remploy has only used its second chance two or three times in the history of the scheme. As the Portillo camp now says, with some bemusement, Remploy had ini- tially said that the scheme was `marginal'; though the organisation has not hesitated to join in the mobbing of the quiffed right- winger when he found himself in difficul- ties.
Nor did Mr Portillo's error concern the legal facts of the case, in spite of what m icarned friends have been telling the C:1;qty-ian all week. It is true that the fa–loos `Bangemann Letter' to Mr Hurd of than Fame Friday, 12 August, does not quite prisve the point that Mr Portillo and his alh.-F want it to prove, namely that the scheme was in breach of a new EC directive on competitive tendering for pub- lic Fector contracts, promulgated last 14 June, and therefore had to go. But Herr Banrmann, an EC commissioner, makes plain that the commission does not rule out the possibility that the two are in conflict. The Government's lawyers can hardly be ei1!".d infallible over Europe — one thinks of il■C ludicrous tergiversations over the tc; ,i of Labour's Social Chapter amend- r?---!it to Maastricht — but in this case their pn seems at least arguable.
NP Mr Portillo's error, and it was a seri- oi.n one, was to be seen to be blaming `Brussels' for what was indisputably the decision of the British government. Per- haps, in his initial letter to Remploy, announcing that the scheme was dead, he did not use the words, 'I blame Brussels'. But that was how it was read; and I refuse to believe that a Brussels-bashing instinct was far from Mr Portillo's thoughts as he signed it.
If I had an ecu for every time the British Government, and other EC governments, have blamed these wizards of Brussels for `forcing' them to an unpopular or ridicu- lous measure which, secretly, those govern- ments are perfectly happy to impose, I wei I'd be, if not a rich man, then at least Housing for redundant lighthouse keepers.' the possessor of a large collection of ecus. I think, paradigmatically, of the directive on lawnmower noise, held up by successive British ministers at Tory party conference as the supreme example of idiotic EC inter- ference, and yet which was in fact demand- ed by London on the insistence of two struggling British lawnmower firms.
The Government must have known the effect of the directive on the Priority Sup- pliers Scheme. After all, Britain used to have an opt-out from a previous version of the directive, specifically to protect this small indulgence of the disabled. And if it did not know, then the fault was with British officials, not the EC Commission. One Government minister told me, 'You know the Commission's a pro-active department. Its officials should have fore- seen the problem.' I hope the breath-tak- ing, skull-exploding hypocrisy of that state- ment is apparent to everyone. Can it really be these same government ministers, searching for ways to minimise EC interfer- ence, who want to hand over the entire responsibilities of the British civil service to Brussels?
On those grounds alone, Mr Portillo's handling of the affair was culpable. His position has been made worse, though, as he tries to extricate himself from his hole, by his adoption of positions which simply do not fit with his known political persona. No one believes (a) that he now in fact pas- sionately wants to keep the scheme alive, which those close to him have privately indicated they regard as footling; and (b) that he never intended to 'blame' Brussels.
Everything, though, might have passed off more or less as he intended, had it not been for Mr **** Dixon. As I say, this fear- less official may have been wrong on the legalities. But Mr Portillo fatally under- estimated the continuing willingness of large sections of the British press and pub- lic to take the pronouncements of Brussels, or 'Europe', as somehow untainted, above normal British political discourse; impar- tial, without side, and scientifically pure.
In reality, these people, these **** Dixons, are engaged on the most ambitious political crusade of our time. I well remem- ber how other Brussels officials, by means of judicious off-the-record quotation, took part in the assault on Mrs Thatcher in Rome in 1990. Mr Portillo should beware. They have her heir in their sights.
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