POLITICS
The Thatcher problem: displacement not replacement
NOEL MALCOLM
O Gods! Who is't can say 'I am at the worst'? I am worse than e'er I was . . .
And worse I may be yet; the worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst'.
True enough. At that point in King Lear there are still almost two whole acts to go, with a good 50 pages before `All's cheerless, dark, and deadly'. Similarly, in the Conservative Party, things have been going from worst to worst for more than three months now, and are likely to get worse before they get better. The Govern- ment's defeat on a section of the NHS Bill was the worst Government setback in the Commons for four years; the post-Budget shambles over back-dating the increased savings limit for poll tax rebates in Scot- land was perhaps the worst instance of an incompetently managed climb-down in the last ten years; the Mid-Staffordshire by- election result was the worst for 50 years; and the current popularity rating for Mrs Thatcher in the opinion polls is the worst for any Prime Minister this century. Com- ing up next: the local elections.
The phrase, 'Mrs Thatcher is now facing the toughest week in her political career' has probably been stored in the memories of most newspapers' computers by now, so that it can be summoned up at the touch of a single button. At Conservative Central Office, on the other hand, they are running out of buttons to press. Remember the 'team approach' and 'The Right Team for Britain's Future'? That was little more than six months ago, but already it seems as old as a Pattie newsreel. Then there was the charm offensive, with Mrs Thatcher shar- ing a joke with Mr Terry Wogan on television.
And now the charm has gone too; we are just left with offensive. 'I am very fit', said the Prime Minister in her last major interview. 'I have lots of stamina. I have firm, fundamental convictions.' That is the real Mrs Thatcher talking — the style may be as rhetorical as that of Mohammed Ali chanting 'I am the greatest', yet it is also just as sincere. 'Conviction politics' may be a poor explanation for the political reality of much that she does; but it is the explanation which she feels happiest with — the one she uses, so to speak, to reconcile her actions to herself.
So the appeal of Mr Heseltine must be peculiarly difficult for her to comprehend. If (for the sake of argument) Sir Geoffrey Howe had stepped into the ring last au- tumn, declaring that what the country needed was a new, collegiate and consen- sual style of government, she would have known what she was up against: consensus versus strong leadership. But Mr Hesel- tine's mounting popularity in the party gives the lie to all last year's complaints about Mrs Thatcher's domineering style. Those who experienced his way of operat- ing as a minister assure me that Mr Heseltine's style of government would be if anything more domineering than hers, with more hiring and firing and a tendency to make policy on the hoof.
The unpalatable truth is that it is not Mrs Thatcher's style of leadership that has gone out of fashion, but Mrs Thatcher herself. Mr Heseltine would also want to act as a `conviction politician'; again, it is not his convictions that have come into fashion, but Mr Heseltine himself.
Hence the paradox that, the more back- ing Mr Heseltine resembles signing a blank cheque, the more Tory MPs become will- ing to sign. The most surprising news of the last week was that a group of MPs on the Right of the Party had offered him their support on the condition that he toned down his enthusiasm for European integra- tion. Such backroom deals are a real sign of desperation, since those MPs must realise that agreements of this kind can scarcely be enforced once they have kept their side of the bargain. But it is a sign of just how cleverly Mr Heseltine has played his hand up till now that the European question is the only outstanding one on which a clear stand on principle might be made against him by a significant number of MPs. Despite the endless rhetoric about Mrs Thatcher's 'isolation' on Europe, she has in fact experienced a growth in support 'My client has asked not to be sent to prison, M'lud, as he is afraid of heights.' within her Party on this issue during the last year. It is also one of the topics with which Mr Tebbit has become increasingly preoccupied; his hard (and hardening) line on Europe constitutes the main objection to any theory that he might be secretly conniving with Mr Heseltine in carving up the Tory Party for the purposes of some future 'dream ticket'. The EEC is out of the news at the moment (scandalously so, where last month's meeting of EEC fi- nance ministers to discuss the Delors Re- port was concerned); but if Mrs Thatcher is still Prime Minister in December, the rows she will stir up at the Inter-Governmental Conference will make life just as difficult for Mr Heseltine as they will for her.
Most Tory MPs seem reconciled to hanging on to Mrs Thatcher for at least as long as that. 'If she's still a liability with the public once inflation and mortgage rates have come down again', one told me, `there'll still be time to get rid of her in 1991. The rule that you mustn't rock the boat in the run-up to an election isn't always right. After all, if Michael's appeal is mainly that he's a new broom, the newer he is when the election happens, the better.'
On the other hand, of course, the longer Mrs Thatcher stays in power after this summer, the more likely she is to survive as the panic recedes. With inflation and in- terest rates declining, with entry into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism hap- pening at last, with the NHS reforms being lost for the time being in a maze of tests and pilot schemes, and with a little more trimming and U–turning all round, the Tory Party would recover its nerve and its thirst for charismatic alternatives might dwindle.
Only two stumbling-blocks would re- main then. One of them is the poll tax; this clearly requires a U–turn on a far grander scale than any of the tinkering with rebates and tax-bands that has been contemplated so far. The other is Mrs Thatcher herself. Just at the moment, it is impossible to tell whether she is a real stumbling-block or just one of those things which we like to kick, venting our frustrations in what psychologists describe as displacement activity. If she stepped down gracefully now, we would never know the answer to that question. But we shall have time to find out; all the evidence suggests that she is prepared to fight every inch of the way.
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