POLITICS
Butch Hattersley and the Sundance Kid
NOEL MALCOLM
Five years ago it was easy to say what Mr Hattersley was for. He was a component of that peculiar balance of reveries which constituted Labour's 'dream ticket': Kin- nock was meant to satisfy the Left, and Hattersley as deputy leader was there to reassure the Right. As a balancing act it was barely convincing at the time; but now that Mr Kinnock is sitting at the same end of the seesaw as his deputy it has lost all credibility. That is not to say, however, that 'balance' is either necessary or desir- able. As Mr Kinnock has moved to the Right, so has the trade union card vote on which every Labour leader ultimately de- pends. 'Balance' has become less and less needful as a tactical device for uniting an otherwise divided power-base. But it is Mr Hattersley's tragedy that, the more the party leader and the trade union bosses have come to agree with him, the more dispensable he has come to seem.
The other element of balance in the 'dream ticket' of 1983 was a balance of experience against youth. Mr Kinnock has never occupied any government office; Mr Hattersley had held a variety of junior ministerial posts, and had risen to the dizzy heights of Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection (what a vanished political world that title conjures up!) in the Callaghan administration. It seemed vital at the time to keep up the apostolic succession of ministerial experience, just as, under Cromwell, members of the Church of England were deeply worried that the line of English bishops might die out altogether. But with bright sparks such as Mr Robin Cook and Mr Bryan Gould managing perfectly well without it, experi- ence of government begins to look more and more unimportant. At 55, Mr Hatters- ley is slightly too young to act the elder statesman; and while his talent to amuse is not sufficiently appreciated to make him a much-loved figure in the party, it is recog- nised just enough to deprive him of the gravitas to which he might otherwise aspire.
Poor Mr Hattersley. Any man of fewer talents would have had fewer stools be- tween which to fall. He is, as readers of Punch and the Guardian are reminded at regular intervals, a man of the people; but somehow the people seem peculiarly reluc- tant to identify with someone who appreci- ates good restaurants, appears on radio panel games and writes about his roots in the Guardian and Punch. He has done little to create a popular following, while falling short of the full-blooded bloody- mindedness which, in Mr Denis Healey's case, did earn genuine respect and admira- tion. His popularity in the party is especial- ly low at constituency level, and if he comes through the deputy leadership con- test unscathed it will be thanks to a great deal of arm-twisting of trade union leaders by Mr Kinnock. His supporters are confi- dent that he will carry the parliamentary party, thanks mainly to the shortcomings of his opponents: Mr Heifer is agreed to be a non-starter, and Mr Prescott is widely disliked for his lack, to put it mildly, of sparkle and personal charm. But even this confidence may be misplaced. Some MPs on the Right of the party are already muttering that they would rather abstain on the deputy leadership vote. When Mr Hattersley's own ideological allies start regarding him as a liability rather than an asset, his long-term future begins to look very shaky indeed.
One day, perhaps, the history books will reveal just how close Mr Hattersley came to getting the chop in the aftermath of the last general election. From what little is known of the in-fighting which went on in the days immediately following Labour's defeat, it appears that Mr Hattersley did come very close to losing his job under the terms of a squalid compromise between Mr Kinnock and the left wing of his party. Mr Kinnock's instinct was to go for a quick and far-reaching post-mortem, which would concentrate on those vote-losing policies (such as unilateralism) which the Left held so dear. The Left, knowing its vulnerability on these points, wanted no post-mortem; it threatened in return to make life difficult for Mr Kinnock, who, like Mr Foot, had led his party to a crushing defeat but, unlike Mr Foot, showed no willingness to shoulder any personal responsibility for it. The compromise solution was to gang up on Mr Hattersley, blaming the defeat not on the real vote-losing issues but on his 'poor presentation' of tax and economic policies during the campaign. That way the Left would be granted both a diversion and a much-desired sacrificial victim; and the Labour leader would be granted a smooth ride at the expense only of jettisoning a colleague with whom he had never enjoyed much personal closeness.
We know what the angel said to Abra- ham when he stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But what God's message was to Mr Kinnock, we can only guess. As Labour picked up the pieces during the course of last summer, he must have gradually realised that his personal position was much stronger than anyone had thought possible in the immediate aftermath of defeat. 'Never mind about the election,' God said, 'you won the cam- paign. Coracles of Fire was a smash hit, and will soon be on general release. You're going to get a hero's welcome at Brighton, so why stick to your bargain with the Left when you can break it with impunity?' Something like that, anyway.
Mr Kinnock's latest pronouncements on nuclear weapons might almost be a subcon- scious expression of his policy on the dismantling of Hattersleys. Why give up your Hattersleys in return for nothing, when you could hang onto them and use them as a bargaining counter to obtain some real concessions from the other side? And the very fact that Mr Kinnock has launched the new multilateralist policy entirely on his own is an indication of just how dispensable his right-hand man has become. If a not-too-popular deputy lead- er on the Right of the party is for anything, he is surely for using as a troubleshooter and kite-flyer on policy changes of this kind. And if he is not for that, then sooner or later — October 1989, perhaps — he is for the chop.
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