POLITICS

Ken Clarke may think that he is a no-nonsense bloke, but he is talking nonsense about welfare

BRUCE ANDERSON

Kenneth Clarke is a paradoxical figure. Rarely bas a politician's public image been so deceptive, the more effectively so because he himself is among those deceived. Ken Clarke thinks that he is the man he projects: a no-nonsense, beef and beer, Mid- dle England sort of bloke who judges issues on their merits. This is a myth.

It is related to a second myth: that all the ideologues in the Conservative Party are to be found on the Right. If an ideologue is someone who, once his mind is made up, is impervious to counter-arguments, Mr Clarke is one of the more rigid ideologues in postwar Conservative politics; far more inflexible than Margaret Thatcher or Peter Lilley; worthy to be ranked with Ian Gilmour and Hugh Dykes.

Mr Clarke came early to his ideology. As a young man, he visited the United States. A first visit to the States often has a dra- matic impact, and thus it was with Kenneth Clarke. Though he is not an anti-American like Ted Heath or Michael Heseltine, he concluded that the USA was so formidable that only a USE could stand up to it. Thus did a John Bull Englishman fall among Europhiles, where he has remained.

At the same period, he decided that modern conservatism should embrace the modern State. Despite all the assaults which that State has suffered in recent years, this conviction too has proved immutable. All in all, the Thatcher decade had less impact on Mr Clarke than on any other long-stay member of her Cabinet.

This distinguishes him from many of the other Wets of the early Thatcher years. One of the many little-analysed develop- ments in Tory politics during the Eighties was the gradual convergence of most of the Wets and Dries. Both sides moved their ground. The Dries recognised that there were social problems which required reme- dial action by government and that the palaeo-Thatcherite approach to the State was too negative. But most of the conces- sions came from the Wets.

They acknowledged that in all their dis- agreements on macro-economics, they had been wrong and the Dries had been right. Above all, they came to accept that market forces had a vital role not only in economic policy but in social policy: that education and health needed the stimulus of market discipline just as manufacturing did.

Throughout the Eighties, it was fascinat- ing to observe the increasing intellectual rapprochement which William Waldegrave and Chris Patten had with Margaret Thatcher — to their mutual benefit. Mr Patten is an interesting case. In the late Seventies, his contempt for Thatcherism almost equalled Ian Gilmour's or Ted Heath's. George Bush described Reagan- omics as 'voodoo economics'; in those days, Mr Patten would not have been so polite about Thatcheromics.

But Mr Patten is not an ideologue. In the mid-Eighties, he began to change, for one simple reason. Thatcherism worked. Then Mr Patten went to Hong Kong. He discov- ered that, as a proportion of GDP, public spending was running at around two fifths of the UK level. He looked for the resulting deficiencies and could not find them. So in a recent speech he suggested that we in Britain should ask ourselves whether the other three fifths brings value for money.

That is not a question that would have occurred to Mr Clarke. There was recently an embarrassment in the higher reaches of politics. The PM expressed a long-term ambition of reducing public spending to 35 per cent of GDP, while the Chancellor made it clear that he regarded 40 per cent as a more realistic figure.

On Tuesday, Mr Clarke delivered a speech which was supposed to resolve the differences. It failed to do so. In this, Ken Clarke resembles one of his predecessors, Nigel Lawson. Both of them believe that the best way to resolve differences with col- leagues — and prime ministers — is to restate their own position. As usual, Mr Clarke's tone was man-of-the-world, and this helped to conceal a double flaw in his argument. In one respect, he was being disingenuous; in another, naïve. The disin- genuity arises over the issue of cutting pub- lic expenditure in absolute terms, which Mr Clarke naturally rejected. But any sensible advocate of a 35 per cent threshold would concede that it could only be achieved gradually and, as in the Eighties, by eco- nomic growth rather than spending reduc- tions.

If the economy were to grow at around 2.75 per cent a year for the next decade not impossible — while spending was only allowed to rise by 0.75 per cent a year in real terms, we would arrive at 35 per cent. The Government would also have more than £20 billion at today's prices to fund additional expenditure; if anything, unnec- essarily lavish. So on the percentage ques- tion the PM was right and the Chancellor wrong. But Mr Clarke's real error was not an economic one. It concerned welfare.

He seemed to be arguing that the fabric of British society depends on the welfare state, and that any attempt to curb it could lead to riots d la francaise. Herr Kohl threatens us with war; Mr Clarke with revo- lution. These Euro-fanatics may not be much good at constructing persuasive argu- ments, but they sure know how to use blackmail.

Ken Clarke is ignoring a basic truth which even some Labour Party thinkers now recognise: that far from sustaining social stability; the current welfare state menaces it. 'Welfare state' and 'social secu- rity' in their present form have become Orwellian misnomers. If they were renamed the ill-fare state and social insecu- rity, we would have a clearer picture of their activities.

Apart from the odd Marchioness, the Newbury protesters are all on social securi- ty, as is the Provisional IRA. So are the pimps, drug-dealers and gangsters who are destroying the quality of life in many inner cities. They may not riot all that often, but the level of chronic lawlessness is nearly as bad — and subsidised from public funds. The welfare state is paying to create a cul- ture of anarchy in our cities.

This is nothing to do with Beveridge's concept of welfare. For the able-bodied, he saw the welfare state as a casualty-clearing station, not a way of life. He wanted to help the workless to find jobs, not to pay them to become so demoralised that they lose interest in working. Many of the modern welfare state's clients are no longer unem- ployed. They are anemployed.

Mr Clarke's complacency is out of date. Over the next decade, welfare reform will be one of the biggest issues in politics, irre- spective of who is in government. Peter Lil- ley knows that the present system is unsus- tainable, as does Frank Field, as does almost everyone who has thought about it — which does not include Ken Clarke.

Perhaps he is being too rigidly Chancel- lorial. For the basic argument against wel- fare in its present form is not that it wastes money, but that it wastes people. So the great impetus behind welfare reform is not fiscal. It is moral.