POLITICS
All powerlessness corrupts, but it needn't corrupt absolutely
NOEL MALCOLM
In the Prime Minister's Guildhall speech on Monday some of the jokes were very good and some were very odd. The oddest was a reference to the Emperor Tiberius, who was described as 'the first yuppie' on the grounds that he was given to driving around in a fast chariot. This is rather like describing Nero as the first person to take action on the problem of the inner cities; and there are a few more things that could be said about Tiberius, things which would surely make him an unsuitable role-model for most aspiring Young Conservatives, even in Billericay. The good jokes were also rather odd in one respect; they in- volved humour at the Prime Minister's own expense, as in her reference to Pitt's peremptory treatment of his Cabinet, or her acknowledgement of her beatification as 'the blessed Margaret' by one of the more genuinely humorous ex-members of her own Cabinet. When Mrs Thatcher indulges in jokes of this kind, it makes her listeners feel queasy and ill at ease. If it is hard to imagine her laughing at anything it is surely impossible to conceive of her laughing at herself.
Once the speech was under way, howev- er, she seemed in her element: affirming, emphasing, exhorting and denouncing. The annual Guildhall speech is a sort of 'State of the Union' address, with the state of the world thrown in for good measure. It is therefore one of the occasions when the Prime Minister can appear at her most presidential, as she takes the burden of Britain's role in the world upon her shoul- ders and, with extensive view, surveys mankind from China to Peru. In the trade this is known as a tour d'horizon, a phrase which is at first suggestive of spaciousness and power. But the point about a tour of the horizon is that you do not actually go there: you stay in one spot with your field-glasses, and the horizon is in fact a long way away. It may consist of mountain- ranges and other natural obstacles which you will never be able to surmount. In- deed, the horizon may include important summits to which you will never be able to climb. Far from giving the Prime Minister presidential feelings of power as a free agent, her tour d'horizon should have strengthened her sense of powerlessness in the face of world events.
This must certainly be true of the one new argument, or at least new point of emphasis, contained in her speech. Up till now her statements about how to react to the world financial crash have consisted mainly of parroting the dubious but accepted wisdom of the markets — the view that if only America cuts its budget deficit all will be well again. (This is dubious partly because the budget deficit is not a unitary thing in the first place, and partly because such a cut on its own would involve the sort of contraction of liquidity which makes financial crashes worse, not better.) At the Guildhall on Monday, Mrs Thatcher turned instead to the other side of the equation and warned that the Japanese would also have to cut the surplus on their current account. 'No country', she declared, 'should seek to run its economy and society in such a way as to entrench a massive and permanent trade balance in its own favour.' This is a brave thing to have said, not least because it goes against her preferred mode of economic theory as household finance writ large. However, no sooner had she said it than one realised how powerless she was to do anything about it. A government which spent all its ammunition trying to persuade the Japanese authorities to allow one British telecommunications firm to compete for a contract in Tokyo is not going to frighten the Japanese population into swallowing its pride and spending its money. When we stare at the horizon, the Japanese socio- economic system is clearly one of the most insurmountable obstacles we can see; sad- ly, we achieve nothing by firing at it with a pea-shooter from here.
This point is worth making, perhaps, as part of the perspective in which we should look at the Opposition's complaints about their own feelings of powerlessness. Of course, in some areas of policy they share the same impotence at one remove: when the cause of major changes in this country (such as the financial crash) lie outside even the Government's control, to be in opposition is to be in a situation where criticism can only seem like carping. But there are still many areas of policy in which criticism and genuine parliamentary opposition can be powerful; and if Labour backbenchers equate their powerlessness in the division lobby with powerlessness tout court, they are doing themselves and their supporters a disservice. Mrs Thatcher can make speeches about what the Japanese prime minister should do, but she cannot bring him and his ministers to the despatch box and debate. Therein lies the difference.
In the British constitution, both the strength and the vulnerability of the execu- tive power are derived from the fact that the Government is tied to its parliamentary party, and obliged to move and defend its own policies in Parliament. The popular criticism of Mrs Thatcher as a 'presidential' Prime Minister is at best a half-truth in some superficial political sense; in the strict constitutional sense it is meaningless. This should be more obvious now than ever before, as Mr Reagan's strained and large- ly secret negotiations with Congress show just how awkwardly isolated a real Presi- dent's position can be. The American constitution is essentially that of an 18th- century elective monarchy; despite Mrs Thatcher's occasional references to 'my Government', it must be explained that she is unlikely to become a monarch, no matter how often we elect her.
Labour can harry Her Majesty's Gov- ernment in Parliament, and in the not-too- distant past it showed that it can do this well — John Smith's management of the Westland affair being a shining example. The trouble at the moment is not that Labour is powerless, but that it is simply not very good at carrying out what it has the power to do. Instead it fritters its energies on histrionic protests and acts of transcendent daring such as the clapping of hands and the non-wearing of ties. In her Guildhall speech, Mrs Thatcher summed up her defence policy with a quotation from Lord Salisbury: 'Trust not for your security to the rightness of your cause, but only to a sure defence.' Labour needs to put less trust in the rightness of its cause, and more effort into the sureness of its attack.
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