Political commentary

A ripeness man

Colin Welch

few post-Franks reflections. One is that Michael Foot, though Leader of the Opposition, can't lead the Opposition in the House. In a debate like Franks, for in- stance, he is supposed to master the material, sort out important from unimpor- tant, and forge from it a logical, persuasive and forceful indictment of the Govern- ment. Instead he goes waffling on about ad- ministrative details. Did this committee or that meet often, sometimes or never? Was this paper or that presented to it? If so, was it discussed?

Ordinary people ask, did the Govern- ment get it right? If it did, then it doesn't matter a farthing whether committees met to discuss things once an hour, once a day, once a year or never. If it didn't, why it didn't is interesting but subordinate, not the main substance of any indictment.

Even the supposed collapse of cabinet government, to which Mr Foot returned repeatedly as a bluebottle to a cowpat, though it sounds impressive is also a side issue. Churchill's cabinet was in a more or less permanent state of collapse, borne down by the weight of his rumbustious or reflective monologues. But history has on the whole smiled on Churchill and by im- plication on his eccentric administrative ar- rangements. Nor does the present Shadow Cabinet set any shining example of orderly, coherent administration. Watching it trying to get rid of the Militants is like watching an incompetent surgeon trying to remove his own appendix. In a bad hotel, where we would roar against filthy food, fleas and damp beds, Mr Foot would bleat about the management structure.

A friend reminded me how marvellous Mr Foot was at uproariously winding up debates. On one occasion I missed he was ranting on — 'The workers don't support the Government's economic policy — the unemployed don't support it — even the Ci- ty doesn't support it — even the CBI doesn't support it' (I quote from memory, second hand) `— and how many Honour- able Members opposite support it? Come on, let's have a show of hands!' And a few Tory hands, one of Sir Keith Joseph's among them, wavered sheepishly heaven- wards. It brought the House down. But alas, the Leader has to lead from the front not the back. He can't be the funny little man with a shovel walking behind the horse.

What's it matter, some may ask: how many electors can know how deficient he is? The classical answer is that parties are led from the House, as is in fact the whole country. What happens there is thus of

supreme importance. If there is no leader- ship, a shambles at the top, it percolates down through numberless creeks and inlets, demoralising first MPs and then party workers and then the hungry sheep who look up and are not fed. A poor speech by Mr Foot will indirectly lose the efforts and votes of folk who never heard it or read about it. So traditional wisdom has it. 1 have always thought it right, and I'm sure it is still right about the Tory party, for all its new ideological turbulence.

As for Labour, I'm not so sure. So much of its present momentum comes from the nether regions, from outside and below, that the leadership may have become for a time no more significant than the severed head or dead cat carried on a revolu- tionary's pike. Mr Foot's leadership re- minds me of Heine on Lafayette's relation- ship with the mob: 'He resembles the tutor who accompanied his pupil to brothels lest he get drunk, to pubs lest he gamble, to gambling dens lest he should duel — but when it comes to a duel good and proper, the old fellow acts as his second.' Weak leadership normally produces nothing worse than fissiparous demoralisation and despair. But where there is a revolutionary mob at hand to make good its deficient energies, and finally to replace it with something far stronger and worse, we should tremble rather than snigger.

Another point from the Franks debate: of all I heard, by far the most impressive contributions were made by Enoch Powell and David Owen, both delivered effortless- ly without notes, both presenting a lucid, courageous and powerful case. What a malign fate, I thought, which has shunted both of these remarkable men into sidings. Will their formidable powers of exposition and reasoning survive the disappointments, isolation and (relative) ineffectiveness already experienced or seemingly in store for them? It is difficult to keep your judg- ment and balance in a void.

When Mr Powell earnestly asserted that, though it wasn't meant to be, this debate was inescapably about Northern Ireland too, some tittered. But his point was serious: that any conditional or qualified assertion of sovereignty, dependent, say, on the wishes or presumed interests of the in- habitants, or on any other mutable cir- cumstances, could lead in the Falklands, as it has in Northern Ireland, to prolonged and bitter hostilities. A just and ominous connection: but can it be made without risk in the presenee of people already inclined to regard Northern Ireland not as an adjacent, populous and loyal part of the United

Kingdom but as a sort of remote and vex- atious Falklands anyway? It is almost as dangerous to link big and little as to con- fuse the two. Enoch, beware!

Soon afterwards I saw Mr Pym cross- examined by Sir Robin Day and Co. on Question Time. He was asked about the or- dination of women. He appeared to be neither for it nor against it. It would come when the time was ripe. A safe man here, I thought, a man for all seasons, a good MP for Bray. You wouldn't catch him falling into possible error (as Dr Owen may have done about firing on the Argentines in 1977) by thinking fearlessly on his feet and relying boldly on his memory.

As I listened to this politely, cautiously and resolutely reserved statesman, some words of Peacock's Revd Dr Folliott crept slily into my mind: 'Education is well finished, for all worldly purposes, when the head is brought into the state whereunto I am accustomed to bring a marrowbone, when it ITas been set before me on a toast, with a white napkin wrapped round it. Nothing trundles along the high road of preferment so trimly as a well biassed sconce, picked clean within and polished without.'

Grossly unfair? I would bet so: Mr Pym is surely clever enough to seem less clever than he is. Nor should we despise the wisdom enshrined in 'ripeness is all'. What is done prematurely may be soon undone; what is deferred too long may produce ex- plosions; only the right thing done at the right time can prosper and bear fruit. But ripeness, though a necessary condition in statecraft, is not a sufficient condition. It offers guidance only on timing, not on what is right and what is not. The ripeness man, streaming like seaweed now outwards, now inwards, with the tide, has no protection against timely error.

In fact on the same programme, as he has since at Cambridge, Mr Pym offered a firm, lucid and reasoned answer to the unilateral ladies of Greenham Common. Good for him. But what will a ripeness man think tomorrow? That the deterrent offers still our only hope for peace and security in the foreseeable future? We must hope so. Or might he conceivably one day think the time ripe for other and riskier courses, and that we are ready not only for lady priests but for the Grecnham ladies as well? He would now regard the idea as preposterous. Yet already he gives frequent signs, for stance, that the time for Israel is running out, that the hour for the PLO has struck and that we are ready for a Palestinian homeland He hints even that a certain ripeness may, like sunset on a slaughterhouse, render the blood-sodden Andropov tolerable if not charming.

There is something canny, foxy and shrewd about Mr Pym which suggests that he would in some ways make a better Flurry Knox than the present over-genial incum- bent on the box. But Flurry knew that if a bad horse was a bad horse there was no good time to be buying him.