POLITICS
Mr Major grabs a life-raft on the sea of drift and waffle
SIMON HEFFER
I want to see a society that liberates people. Dignity, security, independence, self-respect — these are the human aspirations we under- stand and we endorse. I want a society which encourages achievement and rewards hard work. We believe in fostering tolerance by respecting the individual; by recognising every citizen's power to choose and right to own. [The people] want a society which is fair and just, and creates opportunities for every one of its citizens. The policies and language of our party may evolve, but the principles remain the same. People also know that the old answers are inadequate to tackle today's problems. The days when people could be considered somehow superior because of who they were, and not what they were, are fading into history. There are those who see accountability for public services only in terms of the occasional election at the local and national level. Democracy should not just be a ritual undertaken every four or five years in the privacy of the polling station. I want a new accountability. I prefer a much broader and deeper concept: of accountabili- ty to the individual. [Our] goal must be about the advancement of individual people.
Icould pretend this comes from a speech by the Leader of the Government of National Salvation, Major John Smith. Tex- tual critics will, though, have spotted that the first, third, fifth, seventh, tenth and thir- teenth sentences were uttered last Sunday by Mr John Smith; and the rest came four days earlier from Mr John Major. It could easily have been the other way round. Mr Smith's speech to Labour's local govern- ment conference was his strongest hint yet that in order to take power he would steal the Tories' clothes — and, indeed, wear some they admire but still consider too avant-garde. Mr Major's speech to the Carl- ton Club, the hub of the classless society, was a half-cock attempt to prove he has a vision. This vision was of a nation of bak- ers' shops: which, as Mr Smith pointed out, were mostly obliterated in the triumph of the supermarket in the retail war of the Thatcher years.
The effect of Mr Smith's revisionism has been startling. Few of his opponents — or, indeed, colleagues — had believed he would contemplate ending universal wel- fare, boosting ownership, advancing low taxation and curtailing the state. By Mon- day, though, some were less sure. It worries the Tories too that, the Benns and Skinners notwithstanding, many of Mr Smith's abler colleagues believe he has further to go.
It was appropriate, therefore, that the next move in the game should have been the statement on Monday afternoon by Mr Portillo, the Chief Secretary, on a further review of public spending. Because of Labour's somersaults, Mr Portillo has more room in which to manoeuvre. In a way that would have been impossible a year ago, he gave notice he would look at areas from which the state could 'withdraw'. As he spoke he was flanked by Mr Lilley, the Social Security Secretary; Mr Patten, the Education Secretary; and Mrs Bottomley, the Health Secretary. Their departments, and Mr Clarke's Home Office, are to be the first targets of this review. Mr Lilley is even more anti-statist than Mr Portillo, so he will be no problem. Mr Clarke has built a career on upsetting public sector workers, and is about to continue it with the police. Mr Patten has protested for months that he hates spending public money, and was a model of good behaviour in the last spend- ing round; unlike Mrs Bottomley, to whom Mr Portillo was unnecessarily generous. She is being brought into line, which demonstrates the gravity of the situation.
Labour sniped at Mr Portillo for prepar- ing to renege on election promises. One of his own backbenchers, Mr James Couch- man, reminded him how prized the 'free' health service was by 'rich and poor alike'. The process of re-education will not be easy. But Mr Smith has helped. 'We must make the public realise', a Cabinet minister said to me, 'that after each of the last three elections Labour has congratulated the public on their good sense in not voting for it, and offered new promises for next time.' This is happening again. However, the 'one more heave' Labour says it needs to win is the 'one more heave' required to make themselves a carbon copy of the Tories.
The Tory Right has long had the ideas to stay ahead of Labour in what has become a sudden rush to move from the old centre ground. The tone of Mr Portillo's state- ment was pure Thatcherism. In pre-Budget purdah his views on how to achieve recov- ery are secret. However, the emphasis he has put on cutting back the state puts him in the camp thought to include Mr Lilley, the Environment Secretary Mr Howard and, it is alleged, the Prime Minister. They feel tax increases would make no impact on the deficit and would squash any recovery. Stung by criticism that it was showing no leadership, the Tory Right has offered Mr Major a way out of the swamp of waffle about classlessness, opportunity and van- ous sorts of bakers' shops, where he and Mr Smith coalesce. Labour has helped Mr Major by making it respectable to debate the contraction of the state's role, especial- ly in welfare. As a result we have the first innovative front-bench political debate about the state since privatisation and deregulation of non-welfare activities were thrashed out more than a decade ago.
There is, though, a great distance between rhetoric and action. Despite this glimpse of principle, nothing has yet dis- pelled the view that the Government Is drifting in crisis. That is Mr Major's fault. Mr Portillo's statement was made with an eye on the markets; the markets responded the next day by sending the pound into free-fall. If Mr Portillo's review achieves nothing, his prospects and credibility would be badly impaired, as would his party's. But Mr Portillo senses the importance of demonstrating that the Government has all underlying strategy, of which the reduction of the size of the state and the encourage- ment of personal prosperity are at the heart. He has signalled that `preliminary conclusions' to his review of the first four departments will be available within a few, months. 'The economy is all that matters, one of the brighter members of the Cabinet told me earlier this week. 'We have to offer proof that we are recovering. Our worst mistake has been to keep promising it and, then finding inevitably it doesn't happen. Another minister said: 'I think once Lam- ont is fired the press might just lay off us for a bit; but if we don't have some con- crete results by the party conference, it on be Major who's in serious trouble.' This shows the great paradox of the belated galvanisation of policy. Mr Maio!: with whom the Right has lost patience, w'11 be the greatest beneficiary of a review that enacts the Right's low-spending doctrine. If there is no recovery by the autumn, he faces the near-certainty of an attempt to wound him in a leadership contest. It is he, and not Mr Lamont, whom the Right blames most for the current troubles. Mr Lamont has just been appropriate whip- ping-boy. If the spending review is came° out properly, Mr Major may give hope not just to the country, but to himself.
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