POLITICS
The Cabinet reshuffle: who's a pretty boy then?
FERDINAND MOUNT
At about six o'clock on Monday night, a sound of relief was audible from the majority of Tory MPs — not a very loud sound, more of an `out' than a full-throated gasp or sigh, the sort of sound made by impatient fat men in restaurants when they see the waiter heading in their direction with the hors d'oeuvre trolley. The mayon- naise may yet turn out to be ersatz, the salami to have seen better days, but they are at last receiving some attention.
The trouble about Parliament being on holiday is that MPs begin to believe what they read in the newspapers and start thinking that Mrs Thatcher has lost all interest in winning elections. When they have to listen to her answering questions on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, no such belief is possible; at her most effec- tive, she is vulgarity rampant. However, with the House down (or is it up?) and Salzburg en fete, with Denis beside one in the gardens of Mirabell, who knows what faerie fancies may not flit through a per- son's head . . . Gummer for Northern Ire- land, Sir Alfred Sherman for the Foreign Office?
Any such fancies clearly vanished after ten minutes with Mr John Wakeham, the Chief Whip. For this is a Chief Whip's reconstruction, with no higher aim in view than to keep the other ranks happy with thoughts of promotion and to put a slightly prettier face on the Cabinet. The latter is not an aim to be sneezed at, since we now see and hear so much of politicians; other things being equal, the less they irritate us, the better.
The belief that Mrs Thatcher is an unremitting fanatic, indifferent to the sor- did arts of party management, is oddly persistent, surviving every jink and kink in her spoor. You might think that politicians cannot help recognising what their rivals are up to; yet sometimes, they seem to share a childish faith in one another's self-images. Just because Mrs Thatcher goes on about being a `conviction politi- cian' and retains a certain distaste for talking about low politics, she is assumed to neglect that side of life. It is as though Lord Curzon's colleagues had deduced from his glacial facade that he did not much care for sex and that he merely discussed tiger shooting with Elinor Glyn.
Mrs Thatcher has recognised the truth, scarcely mentioned in the public prints but a commonplace elsewhere, that Mr Leon Brittan was too plain to go on being Home Secretary — or, as we say in the trade, that `he is not high-profile material'. You may argue that, feature for feature, he is no further from the Greek ideal of beauty than, say, Mr Whitelaw or Mr Merlyn Rees. But there is a world of difference. Think of Willie's oyster eyes, Merlyn's melting gaze and enticing syntactical me- anders. Alas, in public debate Mr Brittan's voice complements his profile in a peculiar- ly unfortunate way, suggesting that he is being questioned by someone both com- moner and stupider than himself. His appointment to the Home Office was an example of what really is Mrs Thatcher's blind spot — the belief that a first-class mind will go down well anywhere. Mr Brittan was a brilliant Chief Secretary to the Treasury, one of the best ever to fill that fascinating post. But being Chief Secretary mostly involves pointing out the flaws in other Ministers' spending plans; it is a cross-examiner's job and one which poor Peter Rees was not up to. John MacGregor, the new Chief Secretary, will probably perform somewhere in between; he is not very pretty either, but he is tenacious and Scotch.
A good Home Secretary, on the other hand, needs to appear slow-spoken with a hint of cuddliness, the sort of chap who might in the last resort be on your side if you're in trouble. Despite a lingering FO plumminess, Mr Hurd is quite good at this. Mr Brittan will probably do all right at the Department of Trade and Industry which, I suspect, is less of a monster to manage than it sounds. Mr Luce sounds like a slightly pedestrian successor to Lord Gow- tie who, for all the barracking, did succeed in keeping in order two of Britain's most over-flattered bodies — the arts lobby and the House of Lords. Mr Jeffrey Archer scarcely raises the cultural tone either, but then cultural tone is not the problem.
On Monday night, I heard some instant reaction from Labour on the Tebbit front, claiming to be delighted that Mrs Thatcher should so nakedly have presented the harder face of Toryism. How much better for the Conservatives' prospects, so the line goes, if some more emollient character like Mr Peter Walker had been preferred. Nothing wrong with Mr Walker in that role, except that Mrs Thatcher would not have dreamed of letting him get within a mile of it. But the principal function of a party chairman is not to present a face bland, snarling or otherwise — but rather to zap the enemy with the best weapons available. A certain finesse, a pleasant light tenor voice and a wry command of the put-down — I recommend `Well, that's a rum one, I must say', the late Reggie Maudling's response to almost any difficult question — all these are useful. But the essential thing is to penetrate the opposing armour, Mr Tebbit's forte. By the way, I have seen no comment on the whispering campaign which has surfaced in too many quarters in too similar phrasing to be coincidental: `Poor Tebbit is not the same man since the bombing. It's not just that his injuries are much worse than they'll admit; it's that he's become so bitter; suffering hasn't softened him at all' — which is a curious sort of accusation since it implies that he really is much the same man, whether that is the sort of man you like or not. I wonder who's behind this campaign; well, I don't wonder very much. Anyway, far from being a risky choice as Chairman, Mr Tebbit seems to me to be the obvious, almost safe selection.
The same cannot be said for giving David Young the whole of the Department of Employment. True, he has run three- quarters of it before, at the Manpower Services Commission. He has made a dramatic impact on Whitehall. But then, as one sour Cabinet minister remarked, 'give me £2 or £3 billion, and I could make quite an impact too.' Not much harm him being in the Lords; Kenneth Clarke, who is to be his Commons deputy, is a bustling, comba- tive performer with a slightly aggrieved style which I don't much care for, but others do. The danger is the old one with incomers, even someone with a sensitive ear, of just hitting the wrong note at the crucial moment.
All the same, there is a lot to be said for appointing people who already know something about the job. I know that sounds banal; only in British politics does it remain worth saying. It is an advantage that Mr Hurd and Mr Baker have each already done stints as No. 2 in their new ministries, even if, to the passing eye, the reshuffle looks much like one 51-year-old smoothface with hornrims and Brylcreem succeeding another ditto.
Which brings us to the poignant gap. Alas poor Cecil. One wishes desperately that he could come back, but you do see, don't you? You don't see, you say bring him back and be damned to British hypo- crisy? Would you really — if you were doing the bringing? You would — ah but then, dear reader, you aren't are you? Who said anything about fairness?
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