POLITICS
Meanwhile, there's a country out there just waiting to be governed
SIMON HEFFER
According to two national newspapers, the Prime Minister, at a private dinner last week, threatened to 1—ing crucify' the so- called right-wingers in his party and his Cabinet who had, he allegedly alleged, made a mess of the 'Back to Basics' policy. The story has been denied by Downing Street with more than the usual vehe- mence. However, whether the story is true or not is doubly irrelevant. First, Mr Major is on the record (thanks to ITN) as having said the Right are 'bastards'. Anything he might or might not have had to say on the subject last week was hardly new. The only interesting point about this long-felt oppro- brium is why the ministers at whom it is aimed do not resign en bloc, thereby ending Mr Major's premiership at a stroke.
Second, this pathetic quibble has no bearing on what ministers loyal to Mr Major routinely term 'the real issues facing this country'. Several of them have been at pains to ask the media to start writing about 'issues' and to stop writing about what Mr Hunt, the Employment Secretary, calls the 'Whitehall farce' of the recent scandals about sexual and financial impro- priety. Let us go along with Mr Hunt for a moment, and try as hard as we can to share his view that 'the real issues facing this country' do not include the bungling, lead- erless, venal, unprincipled, duplicitous and gutless Government that is notionally run- ning it. The 'real issues' are, if anything, even more damaging to the Conservative party than love-children, homosexuals, and various other forms of corruption. Indeed, one can envisage a time not too far off when things will be so bad that the Govern- ment will be praying for the comparatively balmy days of the last fortnight.
First, there is the Conservative Party itself. 'My patrons have been disappearing ever since the election,' one shire Tory MP told me. 'Finding anyone to go out on membership drives is simply impossible. You get the idea some of them would rather give money to the IRA.' An activist from London told me that 'we all hate Major. In fact, we all hate most of the Gov- ernment. Even the people who are sup- posed to be on our side are a dead loss.'
The party nationally is £19 million in the red, and the sales pitch to prospective cor- porate donors is, at best, unconvincing these days. Those who urge the appoint- ment of Lord Archer as the next Chairman of the party do so principally because his record as one of the Tories' main fund-rais- ers in recent years means he has the talent to tackle what will be without exception the most important part of the next Chairman's job. Also, his experience as a purveyor of fiction would be an invaluable asset.
The Conservative Party, haemorrhaging support and goodwill as it is, is in hopeless shape to confront the next most important 'issue', namely the local and European elections of May and June. As a piquant hors d'oeuvre to these elections, there are the reductions in mortgage interest tax relief, the increases in National Insurance contributions and the levying of VAT on domestic fuel and power on 1 April. This selection of 'issues' promises to achieve what one minister described to me as 'wipe- out' on both fronts. 'That's why there's no point in removing Major now,' he added. 'There's no point putting in a new leader before those disasters.'
Europe itself opens up a wide and unpleasant field of debate. The Conserva- tive Party's candidates in the European elections have allied themselves with the European Parliament's Christian Democrat group. The Christian Democrat manifesto, a draft of which has been leaked to the press this week, claims that 'only a Euro- pean Union of a federal type can guarantee respect for the diversity of national and regional identities and at the same time assure a common approach necessary for the solution of the problems of Europe.' Not content with the Final Solution, the manifesto proclaims that 'only a single European currency will consolidate the internal market and permit fair and fruitful competition'.
If that is not enough of a challenge to the Tory party, the Christian Democrats also want the social charter and the harmonisa- tion of asylum and visa policy. Central Office announces that its candidates will be fighting on their own manifesto, not one drawn up by the Christian Democrats. However, if any Tories are elected to the European Parliament (and that phe- nomenon should be believed only when it is seen) they will take their seats with the Christian Democrats, and act in concert with them. Moreover, the Government must soon confront the 'issue' of what atti- tude it is to take to the next round of Inter- Governmental Conferences. These start in less than two years time and are intended, under the terms of the Maastricht Treaty, to prosecute 'ever-closer union'.
Then there is the 'issue' of Northern Ire- land. Barely five weeks after the 'historic' 'peace' accord between Mr Major and the Irish Prime Minister, Mr Reynolds, the ini- tiative is in ruins; the ruins are the more damaging to the Government's credibility for the weight of the hyperbole that preced- ed them from the office of the late and unlamented Mr O'Donnell. The killing and bombing in the Six Counties has proceeded almost uninterrupted since Christmas. Unionists are now saying that what little remaining life the initiative has will be com- pletely extinct by the end of the month.
If these 'issues' are not enough, there is the impending argument over the new Criminal Justice Bill and, far more con- tentious, the highly centralising measures contained in the Police and Magistrates Bill. On the wider stage, as so powerfully outlined in last week's Spectator by Radek Sikorski, there is the embarrassing way in which Mr Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, has got into bed with the Russians over the future control of what was the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe.
And, aside from the deeply compromis- ing question of higher taxation, there is the related problem of the failure to control spending. The current public spending set- tlement was, for all the claims about its tightness, still above inflation. The health service and local government in particular are still spending as though these were years of boom. There is scant evidence that most departmental ministers are making the requisite strenuous efforts to bring spending under control.
'We still don't know where we're going. It's nothing to do with all these current problems. We've never known where we're going.' So a senior, disaffected backbencher put it to me earlier this week. The 'issues' some ministers are so keen to have the press address will hardly be dealt with effectively so long as the Government con- tinues to be concerned only with its own or rather its leader's — short term survival, rather than with any abiding principles. If I were Mr Major, I should not want to give the press the chance to concentrate too much on the rest of the agenda. I'd invite the lot of us to dinner as soon as possible, and let rip on what I really think.
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