ANOTHER VOICE
A promise that might turn Fleet Street's head
CHARLES MOORE
The Tory press has now said almost everything that can be said against the Tory government, except one. It still does not say 'Don't vote for it'. The question will soon become relevant because of the local gov- ernment elections and the elections to the European Parliament. Will the last taboo be broken?
You would think that there would be enough reasons for doing so. In the local elections, natural Tories could protest at the reorganisation of local authorities which was announced as a restoration of the old counties but now seems to have contrived to break up Somerset and put the Yorkshire Ridings back in the wrong place. In the Euro ones, they could refuse to vote for a party which calls itself Conservative but is allied with the European People's Party, which is declaredly in favour of a United States of Europe. Mr Major was so opposed to 'federalism' that he kept it out of the Maastricht Treaty. Now we learn that any criticism of federalism is to be kept out of his Euro-manifesto. And if voters are not interested in issues directly relevant to the elections in which they are voting, they will not be short of other grouses against the Tories.
Yet I shall be surprised if many Tory papers follow the apparent logic of their position and advise their readers not to vote Tory, or, even if they do, I would still expect them to announce, at the next gen- eral election, that the party they now say is controlled by spivs and deadbeats is the one which should continue to govern the country.
An important reason for this is that Labour is still committed to raising the top rate of tax, and we editors and columnists pay a great deal of tax at the top rate. At the last election, Labour promised that the top rate (including increased National Insurance contributions) would be 59 per cent. At present it is 40 per cent. You have to be very altruistic or stupid or homosexu- al not to object to this vehemently. Here is a clear, believable, direct reason for not voting Labour, one that hits every Fleet Street editor in the land. For any father with dependent children, it is, or ought to be, decisive.
So if Labour wants to win the press over, it should stop its exhausting propaganda campaigns designed to prove its own mod- eration and respectability, and simply promise to hold the rate at 40 per cent. The cost to the Treasury would be negligible (high marginal rates earn very little rev- enue), the rewards enormous. Why doesn't Labour do it?
It cannot be because it seriously believes in punitive taxation. Most of the shadow cabinet must know that, in economic terms, it is at best pointless. It might be that Mr Smith thinks that Labour voters expect it of him, and would be dissatisfied if he did not declare his determination to injure the bet- ter off. That is a good political reason, but it is surely outweighed by the better one that if the Sun were telling its readers that Mr Smith was all right the Tories would lose the hold on the masses that they have had since 1979.
Mr Smith presumably sees that. There must be something else that restrains him. My guess is that it is a comprehensive mis- trust of Fleet Street; he fears that if he gives the jackals everything they ask for they will not be grateful, but will only ask for more. After all, most of them remain Tory, even if they do not support the Con- servative government: won't they find other reasons for saying 'Vote Conservative' even if Labour promises to protect their pock- ets?
Perhaps such reasoning is right. The Conservatives, as Kenneth Clarke recently pointed out, remain 'instinctively' the party of low taxation, Labour of high. Could you trust a Labour promise to lower tax? But one thing that usually happens to a govern- ment long in office is that it betrays the instincts of the party that put it there. The Conservative government's attitude to high taxation is like a Labour government's to the nuclear bomb — it's against it, but it keeps it. As I sat in the office of the Sunday Telegraph last Saturday afternoon the story about the growing tax burden took shape and we decided to 'splash' on it. 'We tax more than Labour, Tories admit' was the headline we devised. It seemed the epitaph on nearly 15 years in office.
Tory editors might also have other rea- sons for continuing to support the Conser- vatives at the polls. In a column I wrote just
before the last election, I mentioned two. One was schools, the other the preservation of the Union. Since then, the Tories have weakened on the first, and capitulated on the second, declaring that the Government does not have a 'selfish strategic or eco- nomic interest' in a part of the kingdom it governs. A third might be Europe, but now the only difference between the parties appears to be that Labour wants the Social Chapter. A fourth might have been 'Back to Basics', but we now learn that that wasn't intended to mean anything anyway. For me, Labour's commitment to ban fox-hunt- ing is an absolute impediment, but I don't suppose Mr Andrew Neil or Mr Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail or the new editor of the Sun feel the same, and besides, a Tory majority no longer seems to be a guarantee that this aspect of civilisation will be pre- served.
Looking at the matter as detachedly as possible, one might say that a Conservative government is better than Labour in that it works from better prejudices, but worse in that it is now so compromised by its past, whereas Labour would be fresher. As for the leaders, they seem to be the same sort of people, with Mr Smith, being steadier and more relaxed, the slightly superior. As for the argument that Labour harbours extremists, it is true, but I am not sure that they are more harmful than the Tory ones — the Temple-Morrises, Garel-Joneses and Dykeses who want to dissolve British sovereignty; and besides, the former, unlike the latter, do not have the ear of their lead- er. No, the chief remaining reason for vot- ing Tory is that you are Tory and are damned if you see why you should be forced out of the party by the shower who run it: it's yours, not theirs.
But I would not bank on that last reason swaying enough of the Fleet Street editors and columnists that the Government needs. They may be up for grabs. I think that Labour should 'go the extra mile' for them. Promising to hold the top tax rate would not be decisive because it would only equalise the two parties. Mr Gordon Brown should pluck up his courage and pledge to lower the rate. If that were to happen, we really would have to look at our loyalty to Conservatism very hard indeed. Such a switch of support would have one other effect which politicians devoutly wish: it would finally plunge the editors into the pit of public contempt.
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