Political commentary

Carry on regardless

Ferdinand Mount

So what are you going to do?

Do? Well, as you can see, the Government has a crowded programme this week. Take Thursday, for example. There's a vital Motion on the Bread Prices (Amendment No. 5) Order. And before that, there's an important debate on industrial relations in the newspaper industry which I imagine will give you chaps something to write about, ha, ha. And then on Friday there's the crucial second reading of the Homes Insulation Bill and of the Solomon Islands Bill they're holding their breath down there in the Solomon Islands about this one, I can tell you. And we've also got to fit in the remaining stages of the Independent Broadcasting Authority Bill and of the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates Courts Bill. So you see we shall be kept pretty busy.

/ was really thinking more of when you were going to have, well, you know, a general election type of thing.

General election, what general election? You don't want to believe all this fevered speculation you read in the newspapers, laddie. Let me tell you something, I've had it up to here with these wiseacres who say the Government is racking its brains to think what to do next. We aren't racking our brains at all. In fact, we've already got a jolly full programme for the next session.

I say, that's interesting. Could you hang on a moment while I get out my notebook. I wonder if you could tell me, you know, just a few of the items you have in mind for the next session.

There's the Merchant Shipping Bill for a start. That's very important. It is, as you know, a Bill to reform the law of merchant shipping and it will be very popular with people who want to see the law of merchant shipping reformed. And then there's going to be the Housing Bill.

Excuse my ignorance, but what would the Housing Bill do exactly?

The Housing Bill will be a Bill to impure housing, or, to put it another way, to see that our people are better housed. It is of course vital that the Government should stay in office to carry through this vital piece of legislation because otherwise there would be a Tory government, which would not pass vital Bills like this. In fact, they might well introduce a Bill to make housing worse. And there's the Education Bill. Now Shirley's very anxious to get this Education Bill through, because this is the vital Bill which will implement the Taylor Report. As you may be aware, the Taylor Report is the vital report submitted by the Taylor Committee to the Government and we are very anxious to get that through too. So there you are, you see, we have a full programme of social reform which could carry us on well into 1979.

And those know-alls who keep asking why we don't introduce the Bill to give Northern Ireland those extra four or five MPs to which they are entitled just have no idea how short of time we are. After all, this Northern Ireland caper is a highly controversial proposal. It is supported only by the Government, the Tories, the Liberals and the Ulster Unionists. It might be passed by a majority as low as 350-400 and it might take at least two or even three days to get through the Commons. We just haven't got that sort of time to spare, not until the autumn anyway. And there is absolutely no truth in the malicious smear being put about that we are just delaying so as to have something to bargain with when we talk to the Ulster Unionists.

Isn't there a possibility that the Liberals may be, well, not quite supporting you so much in the autumn?

Listen, old son, you don't want to believe everything you hear. We shall carry on doing what we believe to be best for this country, whatever the Liberals may get up to. Honestly, I believe Lloyd George would be turning in his grave at some of the things the Liberals have been voting for this last fortnight. You expect the Tories to vote for tax cuts for their rich friends, but I thought the Liberals had mote sense. The trendies may knock Karl Marx these days, but the old boy certainly had a point about class interest.

I'm afraid I'm a bit muddled about all this, because I have been reading a lot of speeches by Mr Healey and Mr Barnett and Mr Lever saying that income tax is too high.

When you've been in politics as long as I have, my friend, you'll learn that you've got to take things in context. And whoever it was said that a week was a long time in politics was not far wrong about that, anyway. In the present situation, the Opposition has behaved in a dangerous and highly irresponsible manner by voting to reduce income tax.

/'m sorry, I probably shouldn't be saying this, but there's a letter in 'The Times' from Professor Nevil Johnson saying that, when a government is defeated on major issues including its tax proposals, this is evidence that the government has lost the confidence of the House of Commons and it ought to think about resigning or calling a general election. And he says that Professor Dicey thought so too.

Steady on laddie, you don't want to be too hasty in this business. You win some, you lose some in this game. And you don't take The ball home every time the referee's verdict goes against you. Anyway, you're probably too young to remember that Professor Dicey was a diehard Tory and you probably don't know either that Professor Johnson advises the Tory Party.

But/ looked it up in the library and Sir Ivor Jennings also says that 'a defeat on an important part of the Budget, as in 1852 and 1885, is obviously too important to be passed over.'

Ah, but Sir Ivor also says that 'what the Government will treat as a matter of sufficient importance to demand resignation or dissolution is primarily a question for the Government.' And Professor Dicey said in 1885, mark you that 'when you come to inquire what are the signs by which you are to know that the House has withdrawn its confidence from a ministry whether, for example, the defeat of an important ministerial measure or the smallness of a ministerial majority is a certain proof that a ministry ought to retire -you ask a question which admits of no absolute reply.' SO there's nowt new under the sun.

I take this constitutional mullarkey with a grain of salt. Dicey by name and Dicey bY nature, if you ask me. It's all very well for these book-writers to spout these firte theories, but we have a job of work to do. And when you've got a country to run, you simply haven't got the time to go monkeying around with votes of confidence and suchlike high-faluting fiddle-faddle. YOU see, we in the Labour Party believe in per'. ple. We believe in the good things of life, the basic things like patriotism, and decencY and the family.

Is socialism one of the basic things? I onlY ask because just the other day Mr Healey was telling the Labour Party, in Burnley, I think it was, that as soon as they got a decent majority he would offer them 'proper socialism'. Burnley is as Burnley does. One thing at time, laddie. The point is that we in the Labour Party are against things like filth and crime and violence and also child Por" nography.

Are the Tories in favour of child pornography and against the family then? 1 thought Mr Whitelaw said that he was againSi filth and crime too, and that for every law this government passes against child pornography, he's going to pass two more in na trumps, doubled. And! believe Mr WhitelaW is in favour of motherhood too. Don't you worry your pretty little head about what Mr Whitelaw said. He's not the government, is he? Any time you want a law passed in favour of motherhood, you just come along to us. We can pass you moll motherhood laws than your precious Po3" lessor Dicey has had hot dinners. Of course If the Liberals want to vote against motherhood, if the Ulster Unionists want to vote against motherhood, we11' that's up to them. But I wouldn't care to be at. their shoes when they go down the west: country lanes or up the Shankill Road anui tell the good people of Ulster and CornWall that they voted against motherhood.