POLITICS
A welcome pause for breath on Mrs Thatcher's long march
NOEL MALCOLM
No sooner had Mrs Thatcher sat down' again last Friday than the pundits were poring over the text of her speech and shaking their heads. 'Where's the New Agenda?' they asked, as shocked as if she had been strolling up and down the catwalk at a Parisian fashion house in last year's clothes. 'Where's the new Big Idea?'
It is a tribute, I suppose, to the Prime Minister's energy that so many commenta- tors and politicians should have become conditioned by now into believing in the necessity (or at least the unstoppability) of a sort of Tory Maoism. Permanent revolu- tion is not the most natural goal for a conservative party to aim at, and a helter- skelter succession of big ideas must be off-putting to the ordinary party member who believes, in his heart of hearts, that ideas are what socialists have.
Wide though the difference may be between the radical new Conservatives and the traditionalist old Tories, they can all agree on this: that what they are defend- ing, be it tradition or capitalism, is what happens naturally when individuals and societies are allowed to go about their own business. Socialism, therefore, is what you get when people with ideas about how things ought to be gain enough power to interfere with the things which happen naturally.
Theoreticians may enjoy themselves de- monstrating how philosophically naive this point of view is. But the fact remains that, in practical political terms, the most con- vincing parts of the Thatcherite program- me so far have always been those parts which were concerned with the purely negative task of undoing socialism. It is only when this Government starts bran- ching out into positive little ideological excursions of its own that it gets into real trouble.
One such excursion, much predicted before last week but little in evidence in the main conference speeches, was the theory of `active citizenship'. Mr Hurd made a few gestures in this direction in his speech on Wednesday, but placed his main emphasis on the phrase `responsible citizenship' instead. Once again, this was a welcome retreat from Maoism. The idea that there is some special sort of `activity' which we should all be bustling to take part in can look like socialism at one remove. If litter on the streets is a problem, `active citizens' will fill their spare time with litter patrols, litter watch committees and in- numerable other forms of human associa- tion. As Oscar Wilde remarked, the trou- ble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings. Responsible citizens, on the other hand, are the ones who do not drop litter in the first place. Most people, I imagine, would rather live in a society composed of responsible citizens. And it would be reassuring to know that this Government understands that the essence of citizenship, in a civilised democracy, lies not in forming committees but in electing governments and obeying laws.
If the Prime Minister's instinctual Mao- ism is winding down a little, that does not necessarily mean that the Government is, in the favourite phrase of political com- mentators, `running out of steam'. One reason for not wanting a new Big Idea is that the old big idea still has a long way to go: witness Mr Channon's plans to bring private capital into the road and rail systems, and Mr Parkinson's promise to denationalise coal. If these measures seem less revolutionarily exciting than they would have done five or ten years ago, that is because the public, not the Government, is running out of steam. We have come to accept the steady march of de- nationalisation as normality itself, and are less and less inclined to get steamed up about it. Far from being politically red-hot, these decisions are beginning to seem merely technical, managerial — almost unpolitical.
As minister after minister got up to perform at the lectern, it was as if each one somehow had to remind himself to be political. You could tell when they were being political by the fact that they made jokes about Ron Todd. Occasionally, for the sake of variety, they made jokes about Neil Kinnock, or the Labour Party, or the TUC. None of this gave the impression that politics was the life-blood of these speakers, their be-all and en,d-all, the reason why they were sitting up there on the platform in the first place. Hearing them talk about the Labour Party was like hearing an astronomer or a geologist en-
'It's a cell-phone.' liven his lecture every now and then with a joke about flat-earthers.
Whether this state of affairs is bad for democracy it is a little too early to say. Labour's front-bench team does at least contain sufficient talent to redress the balance of argument in the next Parliament and put Mrs Thatcher's administration on the defensive (where all administrations naturally belong). Some will argue that the gradual depoliticising of politics is bad for Mrs Thatcher, because `conviction politics' is the oxygen she breathes. But on the other hand it becomes harder and harder to imagine anyone displacing her in the Conservative Party: all hopes of getting rid of her must be pinned on the possibility that one day her convictions will drive her to some crisis-point from which the rest of the party prefers to back away. There have been one or two signs at Brighton that the ministers are getting restless: Mr Lawson talked about the Soviet Union to let us know that he has not given up the idea of being Foreign Secretary, and Mr Baker talked about the Soviet Union and moral values in society as well, to let us know that he would not mind being Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary. But these were just the usual telegraph traffic from governors and viceroys to the Queen-Empress.
If the complacency and unpolitical-ness which I have tried to describe are bad for anyone, they are bad for the Conservative Party, which seems to be losing its ability to judge its representatives except as stage performers in a game of political knock- about. Mr Kenneth, for example, was so well received for his attack on the grasping unions that he was also well received when he said he would give them more of what they were grasping for. The Chancellor devoted most of his speech to attacking the state of the economy in 1978; the audience liked this so much that they did not seem to mind his complete lack of attention to the state of the economy in 1989.
On the biggest problem facing the eco- nomy at present, the balance of trade deficit, his only remark was: 'I tell you we will overcome that.' He couldn't be bothered to say how. When the Govern- ment eases off on its production of big ideas, we can all share a sigh of relief. But it would be comforting to know that they still have a few medium-sized or even smallish ideas to be getting on with.
Previous page
