ANOTHER VOICE

A deeply sensitive man, but at the same time a man without pride

CHARLES MOORE

What do you think of this assessment of the Prime Minister?

For John Major 'keeping all the options open' is not so much a cliché, more a way of life. He was grievously misunderstood over the Common Market. Those who argued over whether the Prime Minister was a pro- European or an anti-European were both wide of the mark. He was — and is — nei- ther. This was a dangerous subject, and one, therefore, to be played most carefully by ear, not to attain a predetermined result but, like the French Abbe, "to survive' — and prefer. ably to survive as Prime Minister.

. . . He is now repeating the same process in relation to economic and monetary union . . . Once again let no one ask 'Is John Major a federalist or an anti-federalist?' He is neither. John Major is not that sort of politician.

A fair description of the case, wouldn't you say? But I have cheated. The piece just quoted was published 20 years ago, and wherever I have interpolated the words `John Major' the original reads 'Harold Wilson'. The author of the article was Enoch Powell, in the Director magazine, September 1975.

The applicability of Mr Powell's portrait is uncanny. I continue with my substitution of names:

John Major is a deeply sensitive man, but at the same time a man without pride. We all in politics are much less pachydermatous than we appear; but some are protected against the slings and arrows of the outside world by a good thick carapace of the mortal sin of pride, not to call it arrogance. The Prime Minister has never had this sort of protec- tion, and I believe he feels insult and hostility more than most. The converse of this sensi- tivity to his own hurt is a real sympathy for the hurt of others. This is, at heart, a kind and kindly man . . . The fact that he could nevertheless survive, beyond all expectation, the humiliations that were heaped upon him . . . was due to something more than simply persistence. . .. Only the total absence of pride could enable any human being to sur- vive that terrible rain of insult — absence of pride, allied to an infinite suppleness and resource.

And even the methods are the same:

The absence of pride on his own behalf has its counterpart in a certain lack of scruple in the choice of weapons against others and a preference for striking the lower notes of the political scale rather than the higher ones.

You really do not need to read anything else at all about the character of the Prime Minister as a politician. It is all there in the words quoted. It only remains to apply them to situations as they arise.

Take the first bit about his attitude to the EC. It is very hard for what Enoch, in the same piece, self-mockingly calls 'those grim people who believe in political aims and principles', really to accept that a politician can be like that. They keep thinking that he must harbour some secret belief and only twist and weave in public for tactical rea- sons. They are mistaken. Mr Major does not believe anything about Europe. It fol- lows that when one side in the argument claims they have won him over they are deluding themselves. His movement in any one direction at any one time reflects only a calculation about survival — not so much a cynically personal one, more a general one about how best the Conservatives can stay in office.

Therefore the happiest moments in Mr Major's life come when he has persuaded both sides in an argument that he agrees with them. He is very good at this. Many is the time when both camps on a particular subject have emerged from a meeting with him beaming from ear to ear. But a point is often reached a bit later on when the con- tradiction becomes apparent and then everyone is even angrier than before. For a long time, for example, Mr Major managed to be best friends with Mr James Molyneaux while devising a rough draft for a united Ireland. Now that Mr Molyneaux understands this, the friendship is inevitably impaired. Friendships with Mr Major are often like that. The initial warmth cools as the friend surveys the his- tory of the relationship. Look at Helmut Kohl, Norman Lamont and Margaret Thatcher.

And another thing happens. Once people know that this is how Mr Major behaves they become more suspicious-minded than if he had never been friendly to them in the first place. Last Friday the Prime Minister told the Conservative Way Forward group that a single currency introduced on sched- `The leak is mightier than the bomb.' ule would tear the European Union apart, and proposed more stringent convergence criteria than those set out in the Maastricht Treaty. The newspapers noted his more Euro-sceptical position. Yet on a Saturday morning I was besieged by calls from oppo- nents of a single currency saying that he had moved the Government closer towards one than ever before and given more power in the matter to the arch-Europhile, Mr Kenneth Clarke. The day after that, Mr Michael Heseltine's words suggested that he feared the exact opposite and felt that Mr Major had given in to the wicked Aitken and Portillo. And so it goes on and on, a government whose members never know whether the hand about to slap them on the back contains a knife.

In some ways, it is reassuring to see his- tory repeating itself. The question of eco- nomic and monetary union to which Mr Powell refers arose for Harold Wilson because, at the Paris summit of 1972, the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, had committed Britain to it by 1980. If it failed, then it may, with a bit of luck, fail now. And Enoch makes a good and, given his own political character, generous case for the Wilson/Major figure in politics, a case about the need for the Queen's govern- ment to be carried on. Such figures are basically humane and decent and their skills are real and necessary.

But on the whole I find the comparison depressing, for two reasons. The first is that, broadly speaking, Harold Wilson's record in government is ignominious. He tried and failed to maintain a fixed, high value for the pound and was forced into a humiliating devaluation. He tried and failed to reform the trade unions. He drove up inflation. He made a mess of Northern Ireland. He reduced his country's standing in the world and the standing of govern- ment by increasing what is now called the sleaze factor, at home. His tenure of office was long, but his achievements were ephemeral.

The second reason may be of more inter- est to Mr Major. It is that Harold Wilson failed in his own terms. He passed on a party that had lost the will to power. None of his successors has won a general elec- tion. He kept his party together but, by the time he had finished with it, no one could remember what it was being kept together for. If you always and only play for time, you find at last that time is not on your side.