POLITICS
The Conservative Party wants to be led: but first Mr Major must hoist the colours
SIMON HEFFER
espite the claims of omniscient pun- dits, it is not always easy to judge the mood of a big political gathering. Some of us may have been lulled by the unblemished optimism of Labour at Brighton last week into thinking this art had suddenly become simpler. Here at Blackpool, though, old complexities have re-emerged. No two people seem to feel the same about the future. Almost everywhere there is ten- sion; in some places, depression. Those in the safest seats are raring to go; those in the marginals have one eye on the cam- paign and the other on their plans for retirement. Some console themselves with the thought that, in a few weeks' time, Labour's triumph will be forgotten; others counter with the view that while success is easily forgotten, mistakes are not, and problems this week will linger in the electoral memory. However, Tory doubts about impending success are being sup- pressed, thanks to the well-bred resilience of the Conservative Party activist, who (having learned to endure the climate, food, tastelessness and discomfort of Blackpool) can shrug off most things.
The morale of the rank and file has been dented by the admission — implicit in the postponement of the election — that the party is yet in no position to win a fourth term. However, the conference remains more of a social occasion than an event of practical political use, but while there are no signs of complacency, there is the sense that this is neither the time nor the place to start whining about the prospect of meet- ing at Brighton next year as the party of opposition.
Morale is, though, being maintained better at the lower end of the hierarchy than at the top. This may be because the professional politicians, with their army of occasionally reliable advisers, can see more clearly what is coming, and are more aware of the party's deficiencies in countering the problems. The very assiduity and charm with which some ministers are seeking out journalists to put their interpretation of events is the clearest sign yet that the old certainties have disappeared. But when Mr Patten, the party chairman, tried to rouse (and to some extent succeeded in rousing) the rabble on Tuesday morning, he showed what can be done when a lead is given when the most vague and basic principles (sound money, robust defence and all that) are expounded with passion to a party longing to be led. (It was not the happiest of moments, though, when the loudest cheer in Mr Patten's address came after his praise of the ex-Prime Minister.) By con- trast, in dealing with the press Mr Patten has become a master of ennui, creating the impression that after each encounter he returns to his well-appointed suite in the Imperial Hotel to collapse face down on his bed and chew his eiderdown with sheer frustration. He hears, perhaps, rumbles that he has been chosen to succeed Mrs Thatcher as scapegoat-in-chief should the election be lost.
The Conservative Party is not unlike an English football hooligan. It becomes rest- less when there is no enemy around to kick in the head. It becomes frantic when there is an enemy around, head ready and waiting to be kicked, but when the pack leader dithers about giving the order to let fly. The party can shrug off the so-called crisis in the National Health Service, for few in the party genuinely believe that the NHS is being run in anything other than the best possible fashion. It is less sanguine about the economy, for too many of the hitherto faithful have seen the recession at the sharp end. What it is, though, gasping for the order to fight about is Europe.
It was not just Mrs Thatcher, in her absence, who was cheered on the opening day (and whose actual appearance pro- voked a near-riot). In the foreign affairs debate the speakers who received the rapturous ovations were those who stated, baldly, what they knew most people wanted to hear: that Britons never, never, never shall be forced into a single currency.
And, just in case the leadership planned to persist with this line that we can agree now in principle to a single currency but not necessarily sign up in practice, one speaker put that idea to the sword with a ferocity that provoked one of the greater roars of recent conferences. Had Mrs Thatcher been allowed to say it to them, in their present mood, the stretcher parties would have been kept busy for the rest of the day. It is precisely the sort of thing Mr Major, who is a considerable politician, should grab with both hands. However, his posi- tion on the national question remains vague and confused, the debate conducted almost entirely in code. Mr Hurd did nothing on Tuesday to end the pretence that there is a halfway house between federalism and non-federalism, denying his party the honest statement it deserves, and all under the smokescreen of 'negotiations in progress'.
The party activists are not just longing to be led: they admire Mr Major, feel terrific affection for him, and want him to lead them. He may need a personality trans- plant before he can motivate them effec- tively; and he might also have to stop listening quite so carefully to his advisers, who are not in his league politically. Those who have had dealings with the Prime Minister recently describe him as super- ficially relaxed but, underneath, nervous. He remains alert to personal criticism — as he has every right to be — but, worse, continues to interpret attacks on his poli- cies (or lack of them) as personal criticism too. He is said still to spend undue time reading the newspapers, a desperately bad habit. Part of the reason for the lugub- riousness of the cabinet last weekend was the photograph of the happy smiling faces of the Labour leadership on the front of last Saturday's papers, and the helpful impact (from the Opposition's point of view) that the cabinet and its media advis- ers felt this would have on the public. Worst of all, though, Mr Major is said to suffer from an inferiority complex about his intellectual attainments. This is absurd, but is also, along with his unwarranted regard for what the headline writers say, a bar to his exerting himself to lead with a vision in which he can have complete, well-founded faith. One of his closest associates describes how Mr Major has surrounded himself with clever people, like Mrs Douglas Hogg and others, and feels over-awed by them. It is time, perhaps, for someone to remind him that his own breathtaking success has been proof enough of the shrewdness of his mind, and his brilliance as a politician, and is an attainment — the greatest attainment in our politics — that none of his supposedly clever hangers-on can remotely match.
His party wants him to be assertive, especially in fulfilling the traditional Tory role of defending parliamentary sovereign- ty. He must find that assertiveness within himself, rather than relying upon others to find it for him. If his people do not soon feel that they are being led, and that they are being told definitely where they are going, they cannot hope to know how best to continue their hazardous journey.
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