Politics
A non-manifesto
'I object to the introduction o' politics,' said the mottle-faced gentleman. 'I submit that ... that 'ere song's political; and wot's much the same, that it ain't true.'
Pickwick Papers
Mr Auberon Waugh is not mottle- faced, but I recently heard him hold forth in much the same vein as Dickens's character. The occasion was a dinner to mark the departure of my predecessor, Alexander Chancellor, and the deputy editor, Simon Courtauld. Mr Waugh was the self-appointed toastmaster and, in the course of his lengthy remarks, he raised a matter which has been worrying a number of people. He said that he dreaded the idea that the Spectator should become more political; he explained that readers hated politics, and he suggested that I should make it my first duty to allay widespread fears on the subject. I shall do my best.
One of the grimmest descriptions of a magazine is that it is 'compulsory reading'. Advertising managers tend to like it, of course, because if they can persuade people that they must buy the product their work is simplified; but I suspect that most people prefer voluntary reading. Since the Spec- tator has long been known as a partially political weekly, it would be natural for it, if it were trying to be 'compulsory', to en- force that compulsion in the political sphere. It is difficult to see how that could be done. If, for instance, there was a short article about every Member of Parliament in each issue, the paper would be assured of 650 buyers but it would be equally certain to lose the existing 20,000. Even imagining such pointless efforts is depressing. I shall not try to.
Where perhaps I differ slightly from Mr Waugh is that I do not think that politics is so entirely beyond the pale as he affects to believe. Just as, in modern times, arts graduates and science graduates have come to regard their respective studies as unrelated, so people of taste and education now tend to think of politics as being beneath them, and politicians no longer see the point of being tasteful or educated. This is a pity for all concerned since the division, once it exists, widens itself. Perhaps Mr Waugh thinks that it is now unbridgeable. He may be right, but I think that the nine years of Alexander Chancellor's Spectator, during which people like Ferdinand Mount and Timothy Garton Ash have discussed domestic and foreign politics with wisdom and elegance, suggest that he is wrong. Politics remains as essential for civilisation as ever, and a rich field for the study of human conduct. The fact that several of its practitioners are scoundrels does nothing to diminish its interest, nor to separate it from the politics of past times. Even if it might be more elevated to attend only to people — journalists, for instance — whose lives are models of asceticism, disinterestedness and intellectual rigour, it would be less broad- minded, and possibly less interesting. So the Spectator ought not to disdain politics, though it should not go on and on about it.
It is therefore unnecessary to apologise for the paper's new assistant editor, An- drew Gimson. Mr Gimson has come from the Conservative Research Department, but that does not mean that he is a political fanatic. At a comparable stage in his career, Mr Waugh was a columnist for the Catholic Herald, but no one was ever foolish enough to suppose that this made him an instru- ment of Vatican policy or a religiomaniac. Nor is there anything untoward in the fact that I, formerly the Spectator's political correspondent, intend to continue to write its political column. I do not want to force people to attend to politics, or to suggest that it is uniquely important. I merely think that it should retain its place in polite socie- ty.
But Dickens's mottle-faced gentleman raises something else about politics — that 'it ain't true'. That is a succinct way of say- ing that the partisanship of politics means that everyone involved in it tells lies. This is a well-known truth and it is what brings politics into disrepute — politicians are not hated for the things they do, so much as for the lies they tell. If a paper becomes par- tisan, it repeats the lies itself. Some people have presumed, as always seems to happen now when a new editor of anything is ap-
pointed, that the Spectator is going to start spreading the `Thatcherite' lies, throwing its .not very tremendous weight behind the Prime Minister's attempt to create a 'para- military' state, about which Mr Scargill has spoken so much. This will not be so. One of the oddest things about the Left in Britain now is its obsession with Mrs Thatcher's unique power for evil. To a lesser extent, some peo- ple on the Right attribute to her a unique power for good. To find out where anyone got such ideas is a task for a psychiatrist. It is surely obvious that, whatever Mrs That- cher's remarkable gifts, she has some almost equally remarkable limitations; and a number of unremarkable bits too. Since It is dealing neither with a demon nor a saint, the Spectator does not need to side with apes or angels. It will continue to exist, trust, long after Mrs Thatcher has been made Countess of Grantham and, in the meantime, I cannot believe that its readers want to be led to the barricades for or against her. I am afraid that I have done no more than promise a couple of negatives. I could state boldly that the Spectator is intellec- tual, or libertarian, or vegetarian or whatever, or it is nothing, but then I fear that it would very quickly become nothing. Do I not hope that it will be 'influential ? Of course, but not in the way that Mr Ed- ward du Cann is influential, nor even in the more attractive sense in which Keynes or Milton Friedman is influential; only in the sense that anything of any merit has In- fluence — that it makes people think or laugh (which can be related activities). If it can influence rather more of them to put their hands into their pockets once a wee' and draw out 75p, I shall be content. When Messrs Courtauld and Chancellor arrived at the Spectator in 1975, they fowled it sick almost unto death, partly because.it had departed from the stance implied by its ancient name and had become partisan. Theymanaged to revive it and to produce the best weekly of the present time. They created an extraordinarily happy atruc)s- phere in which to work, and so a paper tila( people enjoyed writing for. The result was that people enjoyed reading it. So my task is not to turn anything upside down, but 10 engage in a difficult, but congeniallY
servative occupation — to preserve and, 11 possible, to build on what exists.
I now intend to say nothing else about MY intentions or the wonderful people wb° work here or the brilliant contributors or in any way to indulge the incestuous tenden- cies for which the Spectator is sometimes criticised. I shall settle down to fill this col: umn with the usual reflections on the MT.F5 and the PSBR and regional industrial policYd and all the things which Mr Waugh an most of humanity understandably find s° irksome. Mr Waugh will continue to aPPa:
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on page six, accommodating, as he alreadrY does, the many refugees from page fou where my column will remain.
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