POLITICS
The problems of those who have greatness thrust upon them
SIMON HEFFER
However, if there is a campaign to hob- ble him, Mr Portillo himself seems to be leading it. His latest contribution to politi- cal debate was some remarks to students at Southampton University about how corrupt foreigners are. While what he said was broadly true, if exaggerated, it has brought down on him the opprobrium of thoughtful people, or whatever the code phrase for hypocrites is these days. The inexorable rise has suffered its first serious arrestation.
This may not be such a bad thing for Mr Portillo. It may, in the long run, help him to have done something harmless and insignif- icant that makes him look a twit and calls into question his infallibility. Mr Portillo has never pushed himself, though he has been handicapped by undesirable people pushing for him. The last thing he wants, as he well knows, is to appear so perfect that he becomes the John Moore de nos fours. The former Social Services Secretary, it will be recalled, was the man who by talent, background and demeanour was the inevitable next leader of the Conservative Party after Mrs Thatcher. He is now spend- ing more time with the boards of various companies. Mr Portillo is younger, cleverer and more charming than Lord Moore. No wonder his enemies have it in for him.
The alter ego of Mr Portillo is his Trea- sury colleague Stephen Dorrell, the Finan- cial Secretary. Mr Dorrell has not achieved cabinet rank, even though he has been in the House since 1979. He is, though, widely assumed to be the next man in the Cabinet, and could well vault over Mr Portillo by being given a serious department to man- age. He pays tribute to the patronage of Lord Walker, with whom he once closely worked. That association kept Mr Dorrell, who is unquestionably efficient, from more rapid promotion, since in former times he was regarded as unsound. Now, though, the Tory left are grooming him as their princi- pal representative in Mr Portillo's genera- tion. 'The mistake the right make,' one of Mr Dorrell's admirers told me, 'is that they try to measure Portillo up against Clarke. There's just no comparison. We're playing a longer game for Stephen. Portillo's the man he'll have to take on, one day.'
However, in neither Mr Dorrell's nor Mr Portillo's case is the future simply about becoming Prime Minister. Both are barely 40 years old. Both are inexperienced. Nei- ther has run his own department. Mr Dor- rell, though temporarily behind on the lad- der, has the benefit of having Mr Clarke and, possibly, Mr Hunt to pave the way for him, and shield him from having to go too far too soon. Nor has Mr Dorrell the repu- tation of being an intellectual (his recent speech in Cambridge on the future of Con- servatism shows how right that is). Above all, he does not need to steer a difficult course between his 'one nation', pro-Euro- pean, anti-monetarist beliefs and the beliefs of his leader, for they are more or less identical. This, especially, is not a luxu- ry afforded Mr Portillo.
Mr Portillo. too, made a speech about the future of Conservatism a few weeks ago. Mr Dorrell's, a week later, was per- ceived as a response to it. Mr Portillo was obeying orders to go out and laud the poli- cy of 'back to basics'. Lacking Mr Dorrell's natural enthusiasm for such vapid concepts, Mr Portillo sought to defend the policy in what he thought was an original, rightward- leading way. He praised the basics of Tory- ism, our national institutions. The results were disastrous. Commentators pointed out that the national cynicism criticised by 'And I suppose you want to know what its worth?' Mr Portillo was fed by the public's view of the behaviour of the institution of which he is a prominent member. The intellectual underpinning of the speech was, to say the least, unoriginal. Mr Dorrell was offered an easy opportunity to put his own nose in front. In his Cambridge speech he said that institutions must earn respect rather than be afforded it as of right. That, though, was the only striking point among remarks that smacked of Sir Edward Heath without the rollicking sense of humour.
For Mr Portillo, the last indignity was to suffer that scrutiny all serious political thinkers open themselves up to when they expose their thoughts: trial by Enoch. After a couple of weeks of cogitation, the Sage of Wolverhampton wrote crushingly in the Times last Monday about how all Mr Por- tillo's views about Britain were pointless, coming, as they did, from a member of a government that upheld the surrender of British sovereignty to Brussels. Mr Portillo is known to venerate Mr Powell, so the blow will have been hard.
The Chief Secretary cannot win. The left reject his attempts to carry forward Pow- ellite Toryism because they are too Pow- ellite for civilised taste; and the right reject them because they are not Powellite enough. Because no one speaks of Mr Dor- rell as the inheritor of any great Tory intel- lectual tradition, no one has such expecta- tions of him, and he does not have the pres- sures Mr Portillo suffers. Secure in the knowledge that patronage is exercised in the Tory party by people who favour con- solidators over radicals, Mr Dorrell can relax and wait his turn at the trough.
'The lesson Portillo's got to learn,' says a party elder, 'is that the most impressive thing he could do for his prospects is not to stand in any leadership contest in this par- liament.' Such a tactic would, though, upset his friends on the right. `He's all we've got,' said a senior minister of the Partin() per- suasion. `If he doesn't stand it doesn't mat- ter who else we put up. We are giving Clarke a clear run. That can't be allowed to happen.' Others worry that Mr Portillo would be damaged by a premature leader- ship bid, leaving the way clear in the future for the likes of Mr Dorrell. Such talk is a needless distraction. The big boys' game, as Mr Clarke emphasised in Paris on Tuesday, shows no sign of starting yet. However, the small boys' one is well under way.
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