POLITICS

Who cares what Alan Duncan does under his duvet?

What the Tories need is political clout

NORMAN TEBBIT

he madness which consumed the conservative parliamentary party in 1990 when Heseltine and Howe brought down its most successful leader of the century has not yet run its course. At that time I prophesied that the party's wounds would take a decade to heal but, alas, that was too optimistic by far.

It is now ten years since the Tories won an election (and that 'victory' under John Major slashed the majority of 101 inherited from Margaret Thatcher to 21) yet they still seem unable to focus on why they lost in 1997 and 2001, or what they must do to win. Strangely enough, grass-roots Tories remain as sane and normal as ever, although thoroughly frustrated and puzzled at the antics of the rump of 165 members of Parliament who survived the massacre of '97. Even stranger, most of the MPs are individually quite rational, despite their collective detachment from reality.

Their leader, lain Duncan Smith, is certainly rational, but his parliamentary party turns itself inside out and over and over in a series of wildly arcane arguments that are remote from the concerns of its supporters — or potential supporters — outside Westminster.

The problem is tactics, not policies. Lain Duncan Smith's shadow spokesmen are hard at work on policies. On the NHS, Liam Fox wants an end to the 1945 Stalinist, bureaucratic, centralised, top-down command system. He believes the NHS should be run for patients by health professionals, not by politicians and officials for the benefit of trade unions — not even the BMA. It is the Thatcherite policy which Thatcher never quite had the nerve to pursue, and it is one that Labour (New or Old) can never match. The divisions on Europe have been set aside. Our relationship to post-Maastricht Europe is not the issue. Before the next election the Inter-Governmental Conference of 2004 will have propelled the European Union further towards its ambition of superpower status, and the issue will be whether there is a place for us in such an anti-American state. On the immediate issue of the euro, lain Duncan Smith takes a straightforward and popular line. He is in principle against giving control of monetary policy to the European Central Bank.

His reasons, although expressed with greater sophistication, are as clear as those of the Romforcl street trader who observed to me during the general election, 'Well, Norm, I reckon whoever's got hold of your wallet has got you by the balls.' Michael Ancram is sound on Gibraltar and Zimbabwe, and rightly cautious on Iraq. Michael Howard has refused to commit the Tories to match Chancellor Brown's spending spree. Rightly, he and lain Duncan Smith say tax and spending are becoming dangerously high but refuse to set levels of either for 2005. Even Oliver Letwin. if he spends enough time with the poor, the weak and the vulnerable, may conclude that they, above all, need the protection of police and judiciary against muggers, burglars, fraudsters and vandals. They may even persuade him (for he is an openminded man) that it is fear of painful retribution, not intellectual argument, which is the most powerful deterrent to crime.

It is their tactics and presentation which are plaguing the Tories and turning off the electors. Despite the ramblings and spoutings of the overexcitable and scarcely rational children in Central Office, the nation is not possessed by an overwhelming urge to fill the shadow Cabinet with 25-year-old black lesbians and homosexual, asylum-seeking Muslims. Alan Duncan's totally unsurprising announcement that he is `gay' has on them the impact of a powder puff flung at an elephant. Britain is a very tolerant country. The great mass of us have no desire to emulate Mr Duncan's activities under his duvet; we do not think it our business exactly what he does do there; we do not wish to join in; we just wish profoundly that he would not bore us with his sexual problems. We would prefer him to get on with finding answers to our problems of healthcare, crime, pensions, excessive taxation, uncontrolled mass immigration, traffic congestion, lousy schools, environmental pollution and more.

Nor did the nation surge on to the streets with excitement at the appointment of a woman chairman of the Tory party. Dear I ord, not only has there been a woman on the throne of England for the past 50 years, the Tory party elected a woman leader 27 years ago — and one who won elections at that.

Of course the Tories should he more inclusive. That was my policy as party chairman a decade and a half ago. Alongside Margaret Thatcher, I set out the policies on which we stood and invited anyone — regardless of age, sex, sexual orientation, colour or creed — to join us. In those years the canard of Tory anti-Semitism was finally dispatched. The Thatcher success came about not least because we identified that most of socio-eco nomic group C were committed to Conservative values but did not think of themselves as Conservatives. From there we set about a process of mutual recognition of shared values and mutual interest. Never did we patronise those voters, or ask them to like us.

Today our approach to other minorities — let alone that most important majority group, women — should be the same.

The politically retarded managers at Central Office — one of whom I ousted years ago as a disruptive influence — seem obsessed with the ethnic and sexual minorities, forgetting that those who share our values will come with us and those who don't will not. They forget that there are other minorities — far larger ones, too.

The elderly outnumber the young, the disabled outnumber the ethnic minorities. The victims of crime outnumber the criminals. Perhaps the largest group — often disconnected from conventional politics — is that concerned at the despoliation of our environment. Blues and Greens are closer than Greens and Reds on the political as well as the optical spectrum. At least Oliver Letwin recognises that an increasingly authoritarian, secretive and bullying state (including the Euro-state) pushes Conservatives and the civil liberties lobby on to a lot of common ground.

Non-aligned voters could not care less whether a chairman of the Tory party was sacked by mobile phone or by carrier pigeon, or whether the Tories have a 'gay' MP. Such trivia masquerade as news even in serious newspapers only because there is so little else to write about the Conservative party. The challenge for lain Duncan Smith is to raise his game, end the petal-plucking 'they love us, they love us not' introspection of a twice-defeated party, and set out the red meat of politics — the principles and policies on which he would govern.

The fate of the National (conservative) party in New Zealand should concentrate his mind. Despite a poor showing by the governing Labour party, it has just been reduced to a rump, as a clutch of centreright minor parties campaigning on what should have been its policies have taken it to the cleaners.

Lain Duncan Smith has fewer than ten weeks to his party conference. If that is all tactics and minority-chasing tomfoolery, the Tories will cease to be a grown-up party.