Political commentary

The squires' return

Ferdinand Mount

Visibility is not good. Reports from the Metaphorical Office forecast prolonged snow showers from the government information machine, turning rapidly to slush. 'White-outs' of large areas of Whitehall are expected. Several heavy policies have jack-knifed; M3 hA been closed to serious traffic. An industrial strategy has overturned in South Wales, causing a long tail-back. On the Biffen Watershed, near the eye of the storm, a party of university climbers has been rescued, suffering from exposure. 'It's hairy up there on Hayek Fell', said burly local guide, Willie Whitelaw, they ought never to have gone out without an experienced guide; these academic types never think of the trouble and expense they cause.'

Do you ever feel you are drowning in simile, or perhaps experiencing that delicious drowsiness to which people are said to succumb in Alpine snows? Apparently indifference to everything sets in — personal safety, loved ones, rational thought . .

Perhaps we ought to make one last effort to break free of that shadow world into which politicians and press seem to have drifted. A few plain, mildly shocking statements may provide a jolt.

Mrs Thatcher is lucky. Always has been, still is. (Extraordinary what fools will attribute to luck — Goethe). The government, through no brilliance of its own, continues to be in an extremely strong position. Foreigners see this better than we do.

Running a sound money policy is relatively easy. At any rate, it is much easier to run than pseudo-Keynesian expansionism, with or without an incomes policy. With Ted Heath, when you boob, you go bust. Every dispute risks disaster. Permanent wages policies, like Rousseau's blueprint, needs gods for legislators.

On the other hand, sound money, or something near it, can be achieved by a bunch of stumblebums and butterfingers — in other words, by the average British Cabinet. With what-we-are-now-told-wemust-not-call-monetarism, when a government drops the odd billion of taxpayers' money, it merely claws it back from somewhere else.

This has happened on average every six months since Mrs Thatcher has been in power. First, Sir Geoffrey's 1979 Budget was too slack — the money was partly clawed back in his 1980 Budget. Then Mrs Thatch er interfered to delay putting interest rates up to their market level — which has meant they have had to stay up longer. Then the government 'failed to control its own wage bills, only partly as a result of the Clegg heritage — an error repaired this winter. And now the finances of the nationalised industries have slipped out of control.

Having sharply criticised the first three errors at the time, we are, I think, entitled to take a slightly more charitable view of the fourth. Steel, motor-cars and the coalmines have all shed a huge number of men in the past few years. Far from being• committed to radical solutions for these industries, including breaking them up and selling them off if need be, the Tories came to power implicitly committed to pulling them through, explicitly so in the case of British Leyland. What Sir Keith Joseph is to blame for mostly is the wishful thinking that led him to underestimate so wildly the cost of achieving all this during a slump.

The surrender to the miners may be highly embarrassing, but that money too can be recouped in the Budget next month. Even the House of Commons found it hard to work up much excitement about the whole business; Mr Foot raised a couple of laughs; Mrs Thatcher got into a verbal tangle in trying to riposte; and a good time was had by all. The point is that when government restricts its ambitions to sound money, it can afford to compromise, climb down and turn backward somersaults without permanent damage.

The real news is more humdrum. Inflation obediently continues to trot on downwards. Almost everyone now agrees that, however you measure the money supply, it is at last under control; I don't know what's so wrong with dear old M3, which is now telling much the same story. Professor Alan Walters is reported to be performing his first practical task as the Prime Minister's new economic adviser by telling her that it's legitimate to lean a little on interest rates, which are falling anyway; the pound is still higher than need be; the balance of payments is so much in surplus that we have little to fear from those constraints of our youth., so long as the government goes on trying to restrain its own borrowings. And even that should become easier as we come out of the recession and more revenue begins to flow into the Exchequer and eventually, though not this year, rather less flows out as the number of unemployed declines.

Not much of a story. Not brilliant, but not pathetic either. The material needs livening up. That is why we are now reading stories of how the Cabinet moderates are bearing down on the embattled Prime Minister to force a massive change of direction in favour of a pragmatic and gradualist approach. Mr Biffen tries to persuade Brian Walden that the government has been pragmatic and gradualist all along. Mr Walden ripostes exactly: 'that's not what you said.'

Which is the real point. What is happening is a change in rhetoric, • style, tone, timbre — anything you like, but not so far a change in economic substance. It is a matter of taste whether you prefer Mr Biffen promising 'three years of unparalleled austerity' or Mr Biffen consensualising.

But politically, there is a change. For now that the unpleasant business is at least partly out of the way, we observe the Cabinet 'heavyweights' shambling forward to lend a hand.

This resembles, at least superficially, the kind of Conservatism they know and love — interest rates tumbling, Budgets which do easy-to-understand things to beer and smokes, government stepping in to saving the jobs of decent working men, nothing foreign, nothing nasty.

The Olympian bonhomie of the squires' appearance on the scene is somewhat reminiscent of the visits their fathers used to pay to the children's quarters after nanny had cleared away the seamy side of nursery life — nappies and soggy rusks. The paternal geniality might be rather forced, but the visits did help to give some feeling of household harmony.

From now on, Mrs Thatcher has for the first time the possibility of a united Cabinet. Such benefits do not come tree. She may have to endure the praise of the better class of Sunday paper. 'For months we have been saying that Mrs Thatcher should .

which ignores the fact that months ago things were not as they are now. Mr Norman St John Stevas too, may say 'I told you so'; Mr Geoffrey Rippon may — but these are indignities too awtul to contem plate. There will also be much misleading waffle about 'a return to the traditional Toryism of Rab Butler and Harold Macmillan.' Well, I hope it will be misleading waffle.

But these are indignities to be gladly borne for the point about 'the traditional Toryism of etc.' — however unsound and disastrous it was — is that it was quite popular. That kind of election appeal should be more than a match for the eternally perambulating Mr Michael Foot (memo: if you are walking and carrying 3 big stick, don't wave it at the cameras). And it should help to stem the losses to the social democrats.

Nothing in the foregoing should be taken to imply a prophecy that, come 1984, the government will have cured inflation or that production will be booming or that unern' ployment will have sunk back to familiar post-war levels below two million. A mediocre but not disgraceful combination of achievements on these three fronts is more likely; the permanent gains are most likely to be in & consistently lower rate a inflation and an improvement in the el' ciency of manufacturing industry — both still menaced by a swollen public sector. Such mediocrity is not to be sneezed at.