Political Commentary

What would Roy have done?

Ferdinand Mount

Mr Roy Jenkins is a name not much conjured with these days. Doubtless we ought to be conjuring with it; if we were properly

communautaire, we would be anxiously studying his latest pronouncement on

European monetary union for some fresh shift or nuance. But we aren't and we don't. The only aspect of Mr Jenkins's activities in Brussels that continues to excite much interest in British political circles is his remuneration. Sixty thou tax-free, plus exes, is it now? The equivalent of 200 Gs per annum for you and me? At all events, a whole lot of lettuce.

This is of course a deplorable attitude, demonstrating anew those deficiencies of vitality, imagination and intellectual energy

in our political culture, so rightly lamented by Mr Robert Jackson and other Nen pensants in the Rue Ravenstein. From the

domestic point of view, Mr Jenkins has drifted into that particular sector of oblivion reserved for past deputy-leaders of the Labour Party. Within the party, his memory is kept green only as an Awful Warning of what happens if you don't bribe the electorate enough.

It is still widely held that he lost Labour the 1970 election by presenting an 'overcautious' Budget. Had he overruled the Treasury knights and 'given away' £500£600 million in taxation, so the theory goes, Labour would have waltzed home at the General Election two months later. This fearful example is said to haunt leading Labour politicians to this day and to be acting at this very moment as a severe constraint on Mr Denis Healey in framing his Budget. If the Chancellor does not make huge cuts in taxation next month, we are told that he risks losing the election and therefore his chances of succeeding Mr Callaghan. If he does make huge cuts, he risks a return of hyper-inflation and economic collapse. Hence the government's efforts over the past few weeks to lower expectations of a generous Budget, so that we may be let down gently. We are instructed to sympathise with the Chancellor in what is generally regarded as a dreadfully difficult task.

This is all eyewash. Mr J enkins didn't lose the 1970 General Election. He very nearly won it. That is not a matter of arbitrary interpretation in the sense that one may call a jug half-full or half-empty. There are facts and figures which allow of no other, conclusion.

First, the opinion polls. In March 1970, the Conservatives were leading Labour in all the polls: by 39.5 to 34 according to Gallup, by 49.5 to 42 according to NOP, by 48 to 41 according to ORC, by 49 to 42 according to Louis Harris. On April 14 Mr Jenkins presented his Budget. In May, Labour led the Tories by 41.5 to 35.5 according to Gallup, by 45.5 to 44.5 accord ing to ORC and by 48 to 44.5 according to Louis Harris (NOP did not publish a poll).

This was the first time since mid-1967 that any opinion poll had shown Labour ahead. True, the opinion polls were then made to look very silly in the General Election, but their pre-election results do not look so silly because they were strikingly confirmed by the results of the local elections. The county elections were held the week before the Budget. There was virtually no change from the last time these seats had been fought in 1967; that was equivalent to a 7 per cent Tory lead. The municipal elections were held after the Budget at the beginning of May and produced a spectacular swing back to the government, estimated to be worth an overall Labour majority of fifty seats if repeated at a General Election. Now this swing-back represents a sharp break. The Bridgewater by-election, held on 12 March, had shown a swing of 8.7 per cent to the Conservatives since the 1966 General Elec

tion, much the same as the county elections a month later and little less than the pro Tory swings recorded in other by-elections held that winter and the preceding autumn.

So after the Tories had led for months and months, the climate had altered dramat ically over a period of four or five weeks, during which the only event of any con sequence was the Budget. Because the change in opinion is so clearly established I think we can argue here at least post hoc,

ergo propter hoc. Mr Jenkins's Budget was

popular. And it was a direct consequence of the way it improved the government's standing that Mr Wilson went to the coun try. He lost by a narrow margin. The defeat was a surprise only because of the spec tacular nature of Labour's recovery.

Why did the Budget have such a startling effect on public opinion? It reduced tax revenue by a total of £179 million, a sum which these days is hardly worth recording in the statistical errors column and even

then was peanuts. Mr Peter Jay in The Times, Mr Kenneth Fleet in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail leader all gave Mr

Jenkins guarded praise for his fiscal caution and monetary responsibility. No Labour Chancellor could have expected a better Tory press. It was agreed by more or less everyone that the Budget was at the lower end of the range of options as to how much might safely be handed back to the taxpayer.

In other words, Mr Jenkins's Budget was popular not because it was a give-away but because it was not. After a chaotic period of sterling crisis after sterling crisis, culminating in the devaluation of November 1967 and the resignation of Mr Callaghan,

the new Chancellor had established a reputation for sound management.. This repu

tation began to diffuse an aura of sobriety, prudence and realism around that gang of squabbling fantasists who composed the Wilson Cabinet. And the Budget of 1970 embodied and epitomised this moral recovery by demonstrating to the public Mr Jen kins's willingness to stand up against the forces pressing for harebrained handouts — come, let us not be coy — to stand up against Harold Wilson. Any large-scale hand-out would have been presented by the Tories and the press and perceived by many voters as irresponsible bribery. The way to win votes in that context was to appear not to be trying to win votes.

Although the economic parallel between 1970 and 1978 is not exact, the political parallel is very close. Once again, the popu lar reputation of the government is intimately related to the reputation of the Chancellor. It is from the Treasury that the general impression of the government's capacity or incapacity to govern radiates. And therein lies the problem. Mr Healey has a rather limited capacity for playing the sort of renaissance statesman who if not called by duty to emulate Keynes at Bretton Woods would have been an aesthetician of the first water, an English Benedetto Croce. He can only keep this line up for so long before the bar-room brawler in him comes out and off he goes calling Mrs Thatcher `a recruiting officer for the National Front. One doesn't want to be unkind to the poor fellow, but his real trouble is that he is not as good at being vulgar as he thinks he is. He lacks the Prime Minister's ability to veil and modulate the grossness of his appeal to our baser instincts.

Yet on this occasion Mr Healey's task is almost childishly simple. He has only to introduce the modest concessions already promised on income tax and then utter a few sombre warnings — and sit down. A sober, cautious Budget would be the right Budget to allow the economy time to recover at its own pace without running another high fever. It would also be the Budget most likely to add to Labour's general aura of competence to govern.

A month or so ago, Labour seemed to ooze confidence. But now a crop of bad opinions and trade figures have produced a fit of the jitters. Of course, the wicked Tory press has exaggerated the jitters but it has not invented them. The Prime Minister has several times been floored in the Commons by relatively simple questions from h'ir,s Thatcher; he has sounded flustered; and his protestations of unconcern have rung false. What Labour needs now is a certain lofty calm, in short, the Jenkins touch. There can be no guarantee that the Jenkins touch Will work. After all, it didn't quite come of in 1970. Voters' memories are not always as short as politicians would like. But if lofty calm doesn't work, nothing will.