POLITICS
Normal disservice will be resumed as soon as possible
SIMON HEFFER
After last week's sad events it was inevitable someone would seek to yank out the plug of the ensuing warm bath of senti- mentality and emotion. It was equally inevitable that it should be Lord Tebbit. However partisan one is, though, it did seem a breach of taste of the worst sort that Lord Tebbit should tell home truths aimed at wrecking a sacred reputation before the body was cold in the grave. It was no way to treat poor old Michael Heseltine.
About John Smith, too, Lord Tebbit was unequivocal. He steeled his soul against the decencies an opponent can normally expect at the time of the last defeat of all. Howev- er, compared with Mr Heseltine (whom Lord Tebbit described as mentally unfit to be prime minister and, as a dyslexic, hope- lessly ill-equipped for the burdens of office), Mr Smith got off lightly. He was, in Lord Tebbit's view, merely a man who had made many political mistakes and who would, had he lived to obtain the highest office, have made a mess of that too. To be fair to Lord Tebbit, he was simply following the letter and the spirit of the Conserva- tives' Campaign Guide, published a few days earlier:
Mr Smith's commitment to full employment is not worth the paper it is written on, when he supports a raft of policies which would actually destroy jobs. (p.678) His judgment has been entirely wrong on all the key decisions he has had to make in the last decade. (p.662) Mr Smith has failed to live up to his promise . .. fresh thinking has been sorely lacking, (p.661) Mr Smith's first eighteen months in office have been characterised by ineffectual and visionless leadership. (p.662)
Mr Smith has been evasive . . . [his] first eighteen months have managed to make Mr Kinnock look like a first-rate leader. (p.663) Unaccountably, none of this newly authorised Conservative research was used in Mr Major's otherwise admirable eulogy to his opponent in the Commons last week. Perhaps it was the sort of thing he saved to share with Mr Smith in the privacy of his office of an evening over a tumbler of Glenmorangie, once the theatre was done.
Lord Tebbit was shrewd, if naughty, to denounce Mr Heseltine in the same breath as he denounced Mr Smith. Like Mr Smith, Mr Heseltine once had a heart attack. Like Mr Smith, he received extensive sympathy — even Lady Thatcher was said to be solic- itous. Like Mr Smith, the President appeared to have recovered. Unlike Mr Smith, though, he did not come — at least not yet — to lead his party.
With exquisite morbidity, the first thought that entered Tory minds on hear- ing of Mr Smith's death was what it meant for the President. So distressed, it seemed, was Mr Heseltine at suggestions that he would find the strains of the leadership as fatal as Mr Smith had that he took immedi- ate evasive action. In its sorrow, the nation was unintentionally cheered last Friday by the sound of the President on the Today programme protesting, in effect, that his doctors had told him he would have a heart attack if he didn't become leader.
The last week has seen many examples of the silly things human beings do and say when their judgment is warped by shock. The next week or so, once the obsequies are said over poor Mr Smith, will see a return to normal, rather than abnormal, bad judgment. There is a European elec- tion to fight. There are no fewer than six by-elections pending. There is also the Labour Party's need to elect a new leader.
In discussing that last point, the press has fought the battle of good taste and lost. Since there was said, at far greater length than necessary, all that needed to be said about Mr Smith on the day after his death, new angles had to be found for this signifi- cant story. Ignoring the sensible and proper request by the Labour Party that the suc- cession should not be discussed until a more appropriate time, the press has dis- cussed little else. It has done so in comic terms. First, Mr Blair is said to be certain to succeed, not least because almost the entire corps of political columnists says he is the best man to do so. With customary good sense, shadowy senior Labour MPs are said to have observed that the support of these columnists is the kiss of death for Mr Blair. As many in the Tory press endorse Mr Blair principally because he is the best equipped to remove Mr Major, this may be short-sighted of Labour.
So, within a couple of days of Mr Blair's rise without trace, we have the 'Blair back- lash'. Mr Alan Massie, deeply affected no doubt by that veritable Aberdeen Angus John Major, asks of Mr Blair in the Daily Mail, 'Where's the beef?' Other candidates do little better. Mr Robin Cook, the pun- dits hint heavily, will not prosper because he looks like a garden gnome, and makes children and certain adults laugh when he appears on television. (In fact, the main problem with him is that he is felt to be a bit left-wing, something that goes down badly in the modern Labour Party.) Mr John Prescott claims to have had a Dama- scene conversion, no longer being interest- ed in labels like 'left and right' but instead concerned about ideas like 'trust'. The 'modernisers' (those, personified by Messrs Blair, Brown and Mandelson, who wear Suits and claim to believe in low taxation and markets) feel the only thing they can trust Mr Prescott to be is the sort of old- fashioned socialist against whom the public voted in large numbers at the last four gen- eral elections. Mrs Beckett, the acting lead- er, has not been taken seriously for a long time, and no one is starting now.
In the medium term, the question of who succeeds Mr Smith will be significant, par- ticularly if the new leader is Mr Blair, the very thought of whom has Tories in marginal seats running for the lifeboats. In the short term, though, the party will follow Lord Tebbit's lead, and ugly reality will take over. If the Tories do as badly in next month's European elections as the polls predict, attention will shift back from the private grief of the Labour Party to the internal struggles of the Government. Moreover, the debate about Mr Major's leadership will be resurrected; interest in who leads the Tory party still far outweighs interest in who leads Labour. When Mr Smith himself stood for the leadership in the summer of 1992 the press soon lost interest. This was partly because he was as obvious a winner as Mr Blair seems now, and partly because the much more impor- tant story of how the wheels were falling off Conservative economic policy was grabbing all the attention.
If Labour do well on 9 June the Conser- vative Party will, once more, be under intol- erable pressure. Indeed, it might happen even before then, once normal politics resumes in the days ahead. Labour can then have its own election in relative peace and dignity, a far gorier performance being staged by embittered and angry Tories. In this time of grief and sadness such unpleas- antries may be beyond our imagination, but they will not stay there for long.
Previous page
