POLITICS
Mr Heseltine ponders the difficulties of a no-lose situation
SIMON HEFFER
The main achievement of the election campaign has been to confirm that the Tory party cannot go on like this. It is hard to find a candidate who does not protest that, win or lose the election, there must be changes, both of people and of policy. The more reliable lobby correspondents — or at least those with whom Downing Street remains on speaking terms — have been briefed to expect a huge ministerial reshuf- fle in the event of the Government surviv- ing. If the Tories win an overall majority, the Prime Minister would have a mandate allowing him to do what he liked with the team inherited from Mrs Thatcher. If the Tories govern as a minority, the only hope of winning the second election that must soon follow would be to present a team free of the liabilities and handicaps of this unimpressive campaign. If the Tories can- not govern at all, the carnage will be spec- tacular. It will differ from the first two forms of slaughter only in that Mr Major may find he does not have sole control of it.
The winners — or rather winner — and losers of the Tory campaign have already been chosen by a selection committee of the press, acting on the indiscriminately given advice of peeved ministers and other hangers-on. Despite having behaved no more ingloriously than most, Messrs Lam- ont and Waldegrave are being directed to the departure lounge. Despite being no more invisible than the likes of Messrs Gummer, MacGregor and (until a renais- sance last week) Clarke, Mr LiIley can read in the newspapers that he is too low pro- file' to hope for a future in this Govern- ment. Political death, in one form or anoth- er, seems set to come to Mr Patten.
, On the performance of the Prime Minis- ter there is, so far, public charity. The fury the Tory party's supporters in Fleet Street have wanted to pour out on the Govern- ment has so far drenched his subordinates instead. The attitude of the vultures after this Friday may not be so kind. If Mr Major seeks a sign of what is to come, he should note the undisguised ferocity towards him and his party displayed in a leading article in the hitherto arch-loyalist Daily Mail last week. There is, though, one obvious name missing from the lists of the damned. One minister alone appears to have had a good war, and that is Michael Heseltine.
This is a superb irony. A large con- stituency in the Tory party regards Mr Hes- eltine as the instigator of all the Tory party's woe. The right of the party, espe- cially, is already apportioning blame for the Tories' poor performance. They are angry with Mr Major for the conviction with which he has followed his deutschmark- driven economic policy, and for his lack of conviction on everything else. However, they recall it was Mr Heseltine's vanity that motivated the removal of the woman who, they feel sure, would have led them more certainly in these last few weeks.
The criticism of Mr Major from within the Tory party is perfectly fair. His own performance has been mostly lacklustre. Only in recent days, notably at his rally last Sunday, has there been the odd sighting of the killer instinct, promoted no doubt by the imminent threat of defeat, and of Pick- ford's van arriving at Downing Street after lunch on Friday. Mr Major also appointed a party chairman who crushed himself with exhaustion, fighting a desperate battle to retain his seat and another one to supervise the fourth Tory victory. Mrs Douglas Hogg, who masterminded one of the most unreadable and ill-conceived manifestos in modern Tory history, and whose grasp of politics has handicapped Mr Major for the last 16 months, is also high on the charge sheet. But neither her master nor she would have been let near these matters had it not been for Mr Heseltine.
Now, if defeat comes (and even, perhaps, if it does not), another irony beckons. Many ministers and candidates who deeply abhor Mr Heseltine might then feel he may be unstoppable for the leadership of the Conservative party. He has few friends in the party, even on the left. He is by nature a loner. Even if he were more gregarious and less conceited, his status as a big cheese for the last 20 years divides him from those who will fill the depleted Tory benches after Thursday, men and women who were still worrying about their '0' lev- els and their acne when Hezza first strode the Westminster stage. It is not his popular- ity among those who elect the Tory leader that would promote him, but the parlia- mentary party's recognition that he, for all his failings, is the only man who could lead them to victory.
Any overall Tory majority this time is likely to be a small one. It is highly unlikely it will be large enough to allow the Tories to govern comfortably for more than 18
months or two years. The parallel is with Attlee's majority of six in 1950-51. In such circumstances, the Heseltine camp would have time to watch developments, notably the mood at this October's party confer- ence, before committing itself to action.
At the start of the campaign, Mr Hesel- tine told Mr David Frost that not only could he foresee no circumstances in which he would challenge Mr Major, there were no circumstances in which he would do so. Seasoned colleagues of Mr Heseltine dis- miss such talk. 'He is a practised assassin,' one Cabinet minister told me last weekend. 'If he felt he could get away with it, he wouldn't hesititate for a second.'
The rules are these. If he chooses to, Mr Major can resign as leader at any time. The view among his colleagues is that Mr Major is too stubborn to give in that easily. His painful commitment to the highly-defla- tionary Exchange Rate Mechanism has been evidence enough of his capacity for resolve. Of course, things may be so bad after Friday that even he would have no choice but to retire gracefully to Great Stukeley. If he does not choose to go, he cannot (under a rule drawn up by Mr Cran- ley Onslow, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, in July 1991) be challenged until no fewer than three and no more than six months have elapsed from the opening of the new Parliament. At any other time, the challenge must come within 28 days of the State Opening. On this timetable, a contest must come between 27 July and 27 October. Almost that entire three-month period will be one of parliamentary recess, so one awaits a helpful interpretation of the rules by Mr Onslow. The Tories failed to challenge the leader who lost them one election in 1974, and he lost them a second. There may well be two elections this year, and that lesson will not be forgotten.
Mr Heseltine would make a disastrous leader of the Tory party. He may well win it an election. He would almost certainly, though, force it to readopt the corporatist philosophies of the Heath era. He would intervene in areas outside what should be governmental competence. In doing so, he would divide his party. Many experienced Tory politicians feel the Heseltine supremacy is inevitable. It is difficult to gainsay them. If the people of Britain want to stop Michael Heseltine becoming Prime Minister, their only option is to vote Tory.
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