CITY AND SUBURBAN
Poor, nasty, brutish and not even solitary it's a dog's life for Theo
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Afinance minister's life, said Ronnie de Mel of Sri Lanka, who tried it, is poor, nasty, brutish and short, but not solitary. Theo Waigel has had enough of it. His has not even been short. He has seen off four British Chancellors and any number of Japanese, and now he thinks it would be nice to be Foreign Minister instead. James Callaghan recommended this to Nigel Law- son: 'It's a doddle.' First, though, Mr Waigel must demonstrate his powers of diplomacy by persuading his imperious master, Helmut Kohl, to let him move over — and Mr Kohl, as usual, will take all the budging there is. Like the rest of us, he has got used to having Mr Waigel around and would miss those distinctive eyebrows and dogged expression, for all the world like a fox-terrier with a bone behind the sofa. This year he tried to dig up the Bundes- bank's special golden bone and got a tremendous chewing-up from Hans Tiet- meyer, the resident mastiff. Mr Kohl watched this dogfight benevolently. 'Clever Theo,' he said, and then, 'What's all the fuss about?' and then, 'Bad Theo, drop it, Theo, put it down!' I can see that this rela- tionship might suit the master better than the terrier. Mr Kohl has been master in his own house for a long time and does not expect to be contradicted. Now he wants to build what he calls the common house of Europe, with a single currency as its cement, and (in a phrase he picked up somewhere) says that there is no alterna- tive. For this purpose he wants to retain a finance minister who is audibly disaffected and visibly sulking. It must make the house more likely to fall down.
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