AND ANOTHER THING
Puppet on a string, dangling from the Maastricht gallows
PAUL JOHNSON
he Conservative Party is becoming a divided and disreputable organisation, as Monday's vote confirmed. It is a moot point whether the Major regime is the fee- blest of modern times — it depends how far back you go — but it is clearly the worst most people can recall. John Major himself now veers towards the ridiculous, whether flourishing his meaningless Citizen's Char- ter, tinkering with the Honours List, litigat- ing alongside his cook, half-attacking Mar- garet Thatcher in the Independent — then backing down in fear and confusion bickering with his archbishops or giving two cheers (one, really) for his embattled Queen. Not a man to go tiger-shooting with, even if the brutes were drugged or indeed stuffed. If I saw the Captain with a gun I would head for cover.
The only people he has clearly, or at least doggedly, in his sights are the so-called Euro-rebels. I say so-called because I find it hard to regard those who are opposed to the open-ended surrender of sovereignty for which the Maastricht Treaty provides as being rebels in any sense. What are they supposed to be rebelling against? Not Britain, that's for sure. Like Charles de Gaulle in 1940, who was accused by the Main regime of rebellion, condemned for high treason and sentenced to death, they are in fact upholding their country's integri- ty when it has been consigned by its nomi- nal rulers to an alien New Order. Nor are they rebels against Tory principles. Sir Nor- man Fowler, party chairman, told them menacingly last Friday that they were sent to parliament simply to support the Gov- ernment. That merely confirms one's fear that Sir Norman knows little of history. A Tory goes to Westminster to uphold the established order and the constitution, both of them undermined by the Maastricht Treaty. So the 'rebels' faithfully stuck to their principles.
There were hints at Harrogate that they might be deselected. If I were the Tory brass, I should be a little hesitant about car- rying the battle to the shires or the suburbs. The Government is not exactly popular among former Tory voters, as the Newbury by-election will shortly demonstrate in an unmistakable manner. Party workers are divided half-a-dozen ways, pro-Thatcher, pro-Major, pro-Heseltine, pro- and anti- Maastricht and Just Fed Up. Even the paid party officials (some of whom will soon lose their jobs) are sour and cynical, as I discov- ered when I spoke to the agents of one region not long ago; they find the Govern- ment's obsession with Maastricht, when the roof is falling in at home, incomprehensi- ble. If expulsion or deselection machinery is set in motion, then a retaliatory process of putting up independent or anti-Maas- tricht candidates in Tory-held seats will occur, as sure as night follows day. Among traditional Tory supporters in business, the media and property-owners, the splits are already wide. At the first whiff of a witch- hunt, swords will be drawn in earnest and blood will flow. Is that what the Captain wants? Is he sure he won't faint at the sight of it?
The Tories rightly put a high value on loyalty and unity. They are not a party which splits easily. But there are times when they recognise an issue is more important than a façade. Have they ever been confronted with a choice more funda- mental than between Britain's continuance as a sovereign state or her accession to a Continental federation? It is clearly more central even than the Corn Laws, which split them in 1846, and in which — be it noted — the premier, Sir Robert Peel, went into the cold and the 'rebels' were left in possession. More central too than the split over tariffs in 1904-5, which led to the Tories' worst defeat in their electoral histo- ry in 1906. In gravity it compares only to the split over foreign policy in the 1930s, when the survival of the country was also the issue. And here again, we should note, the 'rebels' who nailed their colours to the nation's mast, the Churchills, Edens and Macmillans, eventually ended up the vic- tors. It was the once all-powerful Chamber- lain (`I still have friends in this House') who lost the contest when it came to the test.
John Major, in my estimation, is not the man to frog-march his party towards what he conceives to be its destiny. There is still a rapidly dwindling band, in the country and Westminster, who find him attractive, in some indefinable way, but even they do not associate him with determination, will- power, courage, strength and action. He cannot appeal over the heads of his oppo- nents to the nation — if so, why not have a referendum? He cannot carry the country by his leadership or the Commons by his oratory or the Cabinet by his stature. He has none of these things. He lacks the com- manding presence, let alone the incisive intellect, of Sir Robert Peel. He has none of Chamberlain's capacity for business and personal backbench following which made him such a formidable figure in his day. He is closest to the wretched A.J. Balfour, whose dithering led to the debacle over tar- iffs. But even there the comparison is to his disadvantage. He has none of Balfour's charm, wit, education, brains or social grace. Major is what he is: a man from nowhere, going nowhere, heading for a well-merited obscurity as fast as his mediocre talents can carry him.
In so far as it is anything, this is a whips' government. Like the whips themselves, it has no views, no principles, no master plan, no set of policies writ in stone or even in water, no loyal following, no friends: just rewards and punishments, jobs, perks and patronage. Its only object is survival, now identified with Maastricht ratification. As one of its adornments put it to me, 'It is a case of getting bums off benches and into the right lobby.'
Major, like Pinocchio, is suspended abjectly between his two grubby compan- ions, the whips' office with its scorpions, and Central Office with its dirty tricks. But then, he is only a puppet.
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