POLITICS
A faraway island of which we know nothing is a guide to events at home
BRUCE ANDERSON
Montserrat is a faraway island of which we know nothing. Yet it may now have entered the vocabulary of British poli- tics. There are parallels with another West Indian island, Anguilla. For a brief moment in 1969 Anguilla was thought to be men- aced by insurrectionary chaos. Harold Wil- son became frightfully excited. He wanted to send half the Navy; he had virtually designed the campaign medal. But calmer counsels prevailed. A few bobbies were dis- patched. They were greeted with smiles and rum. They had such a pleasant stay on the island that they ought to remember Lord Wilson with gratitude. To the rest of the public, however, the incident seemed to summarise the grandiloquent absurdity of the Wilson regime.
Montserrat has now provided a useful insight into the Blair regime. It tells us that the Prime Minister and his team do not understand the nature of government. In one respect, this is odd, for Mr Blair, Mr Mandelson and others spent a lot of time talking to civil servants — and senior ser- vicemen — in the months before the elec- tion. This has helped to ensure that the new government made sensible personnel decisions, which reflected conventional wis- dom. George Robertson became Defence Secretary rather than David Clark, who would have been clay in the hands of his officials, civil and military, but who would have been brushed aside by the Treasury. Richard Wilson, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, is to be the new Head of the Civil Service. He was the candidate of the retiring head, Robin Butler; he is also the man whom John Major would have chosen.
When it came to the Washington embassy, the new government has not appointed the man its predecessors would have selected. Malcolm Rifkind would have picked Jeremy Greenstock, currently the political director of the Foreign Office, rather than Christopher Meyer, Robin Cook's choice. But before he went to Bonn as ambassador, Chris Meyer was Mr Major's press secretary in No. 10; a Tory government's main reason for not sending him to the United States would have been that he was doing such an outstanding job in Germany. No one doubts that he has all the qualities necessary for his new post.
Yet a few weeks ago, there were rumours that Washington might go to Tessa Black- stone; one can understand why her senior colleagues might want to export her. Like all senior civil servants, Sir Robin Butler, Sir John Kerr and others who advised the incoming ministry place a high value on continuity. At least in personnel terms, they have secured it Mr Mandelson spent part of his child- hood in Hampstead Garden Suburb, the Islington of the early Sixties, where several senior Labour politicians lived, including Mr Wilson, as well as a number of senior civil servants. There was a commonality of world-view, which helped to give the Labour party an aura of bureaucratic com- petence. Messrs Mandelson and Blair hoped to secure the same reputation, and largely succeeded.
But it is as undeserved now as it was then. Conversations with Robin Butler, however illuminating, are not an adequate preparation for government. Up until 1979, Tory shadow opposition spokesmen spent a great deal of time on policy work. Much of it bore little relation to what the Thatcher government actually did, but the shadow ministers all knew that their work would go up to the headmistress for scrutiny minute scrutiny — so they took it seriously; if they wanted to become real ministers there was no alternative. That forced them to think about the pressures they would face once they were in government; the choices they would have to make, the prior- ities which they would need to assert. An opposition will have to devote a lot of its time to attacking the government, but that is not a good training for ministerial life; policy work is a useful antidote to the theatre of the adverse.
But in the Labour opposition, front- bench spokesmen were not allowed to have anything to do with policy work, partly because there were no policies. In old Labour's history, policies had led to punch- ups; under Blairism, they were banned. This means, however, that the new minis- ters have come into office without any ideo- logical compass. Instead, they are issued with the soundbite of the day. But that does not help them to deal with the complex problems which are the staple of ministerial life.
In their arrogant naivety, Mr Blair and Mr Mandelson thought that they could cre- ate a government in which, themselves apart, only about six people would have any degree of autonomy: Messrs Brown, Cook, Dewar, Prescott, Straw — on probation and Lord Irvine. Behind them, there would be 100 ministerial automata, doing exactly what they were told. Behind them, there would be 300 back-bench sheep, ready whenever they were told to baa in chorus `four legs good, two legs bad' or whatever the current slogan happened to be. Any automaton or sheep which stepped out of line or was excessively Glaswegian in its political demeanour would instantly be sacked or deselected.
So the Labour hierarchy assumed that it would be safe to appoint anyone as a minis- ter, whatever their lack of ability, because they would all be on leading strings. But this will not work; too much is happening, and even Peter Mandelson cannot slow events down to a pace at which he can con- trol them. Other ministers have to take decisions.
It was absurd of the government to get in a flap about Montserrat. If ever there was an issue requiring sonorous platitudes, this was it: 'grave concern', 'HMG in constant touch with the local authorities', 'consulta- tions with leading vulcanologists all over the world' — this government has kicked almost every other contentious issue into the long grass by announcing a review, so why not declare that the Montserrat ques- tion was also under constant review?
But in Clare Short, Labour has a minister whose heart is larger than her head, while in George Foulkes, she has a deputy whose mouth is bigger than his judgment. Mr Foulkes should never have been a minister, and Miss Short was never likely to prosper as a minister; she is too erratic, as Robin Cook seems to agree.
It is piquant that after a month of erup- tions from Mount Mandelson, a real vol- cano should have taken over from him in the headlines. Montserrat has been a saga of incompetence, and given the way that this government is organised, there will be more Montserrats, nearer home.
`Policy was constructed from a wholesale borrowing of ideas, the intention being to make the regime look progressive and yet sound. Measures and ideas did not need to be consistent, so long as they were popular, showy, easy to administer, preferably non- committal, and pre-digested enough to need no extra thought.' That was Denis Mack Smith's assessment of Mussolini's polity. It may soon be appropriate to recycle it.
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