POLITICS
Even Mr Patten couldn't make the long grass work this time
BRUCE ANDERSON
But the Hagueites were justified as well as tactically astute in segregating Mr Pat- ten. Chris Patten has never been a federal- ist. Although he has always been in favour of wholehearted British participation in Europe, Europe has never possessed his soul. Whereas most of the other signatories would go weak at the knees every time they entered the Commission's headquarters, Mr Patten's actual experience of Europe often exasperated him. He would often say that he defied anyone to attend ministerial meetings in Brussels without losing some of their enthusiasm for the European process. Nor is he an uncritical admirer of the euro. He is happy to acknowledge that it is pri- marily a political project rather than an economic one and equally happy to agree that most British advocates of a single cur- rency have been guilty of systematic intel- lectual dishonesty. He does not exempt his co-signatories; he thinks that it was absurd of Ken Clarke to claim that a single curren- cy would have no constitutional signifi- cance. So his motives for signing the letter were an interesting mixture; personal loyal- ties, pragmatic calculation, political miscal- culation and pessimism.
In sentimental terms even more than intellectual ones, Chris Patten has always been a man of the Tory Left. In recent months, he has received a number of letters from despairing Tory leftists and Europhiles wondering whether there was any point in staying in the party. When Geoffrey Howe, that master of diffident persistence, telephoned him saying that he supposed Chris would not be interested in signing this letter, Mr Patten decided to disregard argumentative niceties and to apply a simple loyalty test. He likes Michael Howard, but he would rather share a trench with Kenneth Clarke.
Then there is pragmatism. Mr Patten insists that it is not only the Europhiles who are intellectually dishonest, and that most Eurosceptics are equally to blame. Some of them are closet withdrawers who are just as reluctant as the federalists to acknowledge their real beliefs. Others have not thought through the consequences of British refusal to join a single currency. What will happen when many large firms start billing their customers in euros, thus for the first time exposing much of the small business sector to exchange rate fluctuations? Mr Patten concedes that a single currency could impose enormous strains on the poorer regions of Europe. As such tensions would fmd no domestic political outlet, there might be widespread disorder: the euro could collapse in chaos. But he would make a double riposte to that argument. First, that it would be folly to welcome the prospect of chaos: political and economic instability in Europe would damage Britain too. Second, that the trouble would come — if at all — after several years. During the euro's first phase, the attractions would be manifest as would the disadvantages in Britain's remaining outside. That is when the Tory party would come under maxi- mum pressure from many of its own natural supporters, and when Mr Hague's ten-year rule could well prove unsustainable.
Last autumn's policy change, discarding `for the foreseeable future' in favour of ten years/two Parliaments, annoyed Chris Pat- ten, as well as provoking David Curry's res- ignation. Mr Patten believed that it was crazy to unpick the 'foreseeable future' for- mula which could have enabled the Conser- vatives to fight the next election as a united party. That is where he is miscalculating.
Throughout his career, Mr Patten has been an exponent of the long grass. When a political problem arises at an inconvenient moment, any quick response is likely to be based not on rational calculation but on panic in the face of public opinion. So, in Mr Patten's view, a sensible politician should always pre-empt panic, by sending the matter in question a long way into deep grass by, say, appointing a Royal Commis- sion. By the time the matter re-emerged from the Commission, or the grass, every- one would have calmed down.
There is much wisdom in this. All mod- ern governments legislate in haste and repent at leisure (Mrs Thatcher's danger- ous dogs bill was probably the worst single example). But long grass is not an infallible remedy; some questions are too big to be hidden. A Tory in 1998 looking for grass long enough to conceal Europe would be like a botanist looking for an unspoiled poppy field on the Somme in August 1916. All he would find would be the whitening bones of those who had gone that way before, including John Major. Chris Pat- ten's political antennae rarely fail him, nor would they have this time had he been in Britain from 1992 to 1997.
But Mr Patten has never relied only on antennae. To a greater extent than most contemporary politicians, he has an intel- lectual hinterland. This can, however, be a liability as well as an asset. Mr Chris Pat- ten's personality is a complex blend of robustness and melancholy. As a youth he enjoyed a hard game of coarse rugger, and showed some of the same leanings when he was chairman of the Conservative party before the last election. Some of his intel- lectual friends were horrified, though oth- ers where vastly amused — as he declared himself gobsmacked by the way Labour was telling porkies, and so on.
The melancholy is never far away, how- ever. Traditional Tory pessimism — the vanity of human wishes, the transience of earthly glory, the inevitability of original sin — seems to have a personal resonance for him. He has never believed that vox populi equates with vox dei, can summon a sur- prising amount of scorn to his lips when discussing the concept of progress and has always been aware of the weaknesses in the Whig view of history.
But he also seems to believe that the Tory party, and Britain, are on the wrong side of history. He does not appear to think that it is possible for the Tory party to sound patri- otic, but not jingoist; to be on the Centre- Right, without being narrowly right-wing; to be positive about Europe without being subservient to Europe; to make the case against the single currency, without fright- ening off the City and industry.
Mr Hague has made it clear that he wants to keep Mr Patten on board, and it is politically vital for the Tories that he suc- ceeds. But there is a simple way of doing so. He only has to prove that Chris Patten's doubts are unfounded.
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