POLITICS
A depressing rush for membership of the something-for-nothing society
SIMON HEFFER
It is time to bring personalities into the campaign. The performance on British doorsteps has been typical: mean, grasping, duplicitous, ungrateful, and unreasonable. Yes, the British voters really are among the most frightful people imaginable.
Our national sport is to say how ghastly our politicians are. They lie; they cheat; they commit adultery; they make a mess of running the country. The election gives the voter a chance to rant when the candidates knock on his door. He can unleash those feelings bottled up for the last five years, or only otherwise vented in the tastelessly dec- orated privacy of the voter's own home in front of the television. Now it may come as something of a shock to these voters, but the average candidate (especially those who have done it several times before) often feel a reciprocal level of regard. At election times, many candidates so misin- terpret the duties of democracy that they try to promise the voters whatever they want. The sheer impossibility of this — the impossibility of arguing with a sick mind — leads to this mutual loathing.
The other day I followed a Tory candi- date round a smartish housing estate in Essex. Even in this recession, signs of afflu- ence were obvious. At one plush house a miserable woman gave it to the candidate straight. She had had to give her son 75p when he went to school the other day, as a contribution towards the cost of his domes- tic science lesson. This aggrieved her great- ly. One could imagine the grievance return- ing to haunt her as she swanned round one of the local boutiques during the afternoon, or when she, her husband and Cordon Bleu aspirant son went on their next holiday to Tenerife. 'I don't think I should have to fund-raise for his school,' she whined. 'That's why we pay taxes.'
In another part of Essex, on an equally salubrious estate, a young man blooming with health and fitness berated another candidate for the Tories' dreadful' record on the health service. The candidate point- ed out that the huge real increases in NHS funding over the last 16 months far exceed- ed what Labour was merely promising. The young man then complained about the trouble he had paying his mortgage (trou- ble no doubt exacerbated by the two gleam- ing his-and-hers Fords parked on the drive). It is, sadly, not an option for Tory candidates to tell such people that if only they had had a Labour government these last 13 years they would have been spared all these horrible inconveniences of pros- perity and personal freedom.
Old hands argue that the whingeing greed of voters has characterised every election since the 1832 Reform Act, so one should not make an issue of it now. Yet I have noticed a sharp, depressing difference between the doorsteps of 1992 and those I saw in 1987. Then the British public, so cor- rupted by welfarism from Attlee onwards, showed signs of being weaned off this most debilitating drug after eight years of Thatcherist treatment. The plaintive, dependent-relative voice of the something- for-nothing society, heard on almost every street in this campaign, was a little harder to find five years ago. Of course, things were not so bad then. Mr Nigel Lawson and his economic policy were booming. The gospel of self-reliance, ownership and personal liberty preached by Mrs Thatcher was just starting to permeate even the most obtuse voters. Now, though, that prosperity has taken a clout.
The voters cannot be criticised for blam- ing the Government for this. Its economic policy, particularly its lunatic adherence to fixed exchange rates, has kicked middle England in the groin. What is so depressing is the defeatism among the voters now. One might have hoped they would say to themselves: 'We've made ourselves wealthi- er before, and we'll do it again.' Instead, though, the minute it is no longer handed to them on a plate by the free market, they want it on a plate from the state. Old habits, as they say, die hard.
This, as Labour knows, is its chance with the Cls and C2s (as advertising men term the newly prosperous). Labour promises more money for education, so that the 75p sacrificed for domestic science classes could more profitably be put towards the holiday in Tenerife. It promises more for health (or at least Mr Cook, its health spokesman, promises it; Mr Smith, who thinks he will be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, seems a little guarded on the issue). There will, then, be no question of higher prescription charges eating into the repayments on the Escort XR2. The rigid demarcation in the Attlee vision, between what the individual does and what the State does will be revived. People would not have to give a second thought to health, welfare or education provision. The state would do it all for them. The higher taxes, inefficien- cies and lack of choice implicit in a return to the Brave New World of 1945 need not be mentioned here.
That working-class Tories have these atavistic longings for cradle-to-grave wel- fare is partly Mr Major's fault. His constant harping on improved public services, his bingeing on the NHS, the pride with which he has improved (at vast cost) social securi- ty provision, help to reassure potentially enterprising people about the respectability of surrendering to the state. His repeal of the poll tax, which upheld the splendid principle of no representation without taxa- tion, was the nadir of this philosophy. Some might like to think that his motto has been 'if it isn't hurting, it isn't working'. In fact, it has been 'if it is hurting, it's high time we spent some money to make it better'. His candidates are finding that welfarism (like all degenerate addictions) is insatiable, and the appetite grows with eating.
The vile and irrational behaviour of vot- ers towards candidates is yet another sin to be laid at the door of the Liberal party. Until it invented pavement politics (which principally involved sucking up to voters in the most gross fashion, and in the certain knowledge that the Liberals would never form a government), voters did not have that familiarity with their elected represen- tatives that breeds contempt. Now MPs are treated like local councillors; they are more likely to be screeched at about dog turds, or about 75p for domestic science classes, than about any great issue of public policy. Labour and the Liberals use welfarism as yet another carrot to lure people away from the mean old Tories. The Tories, who should be taking a principled lead on the matter, instead match even the Liberals' and Labour's wildest dreams of profligacy.
The result is a society that may once more prefer dependence on the state to self-reliance and self-advancement. Few voters, while making their demands for more of everything, understand how it would all be paid for. They will vote for whoever tells them that the party will be financed by somebody else. Labour will not own up to the true social and economic consequences of this degeneracy. And, sadly for the Tories, no amount of public spending will be able to re-educate the masses between now and April 9th.
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