POLITICS
Hunt the future leader: a harmless little party game
SIMON HEFFER
At least two of the politicians to have held the office of Employment Secretary in the last ten years would, in their more visionary and lubricated moments, admit to having a long-term ambition for their department: to close it down. The successor of the old Ministry of Labour, some have argued, belongs to an age of consensus that has passed with the emasculation of the trades unions. This secretaryship of state has, though, always been a stepping stone for someone on the way up. Those who might have been capable of abolition have, therefore, inevitably been moved on before having the chance to achieve their aim. I have not had the honour of discussing the matter with Mr David Hunt, the present incumbent. A glance at his impeccably left- of-centre curriculum vitae suggests, though, that he is not a chap to dirty his hands on abolishing engines of state supervision.
Mr Hunt is a man who has long excited strong emotions. He is very able, but he is also deeply ambitious, and this, as one might expect, has made him more than his just share of enemies. In the last couple of months he has been talked of more and more as the rising star of the Cabinet. Some of his friends even speak about his growing chances of leading the Tory party one day. This talk has upset some on the right of that party. Normally, one would indulge in euphemism, saying that the Right are 'sus- picious' of Mr Hunt or 'concerned' about his views. But euphemism cannot convey what a few present and past colleagues of Mr Hunt feel towards him. They hate him.
This is, of course, a tribute to him. 'He's bloody dangerous,' a former minister who has observed Mr Hunt at close quarters told me. 'He's not a Conservative,' says another, referring to Mr Hunt's soi-disant status as a 'Christian Democrat'. Like all politicians, Mr Hunt has also occasionally been guilty of opportunism and apparent insincerity. When he entered the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Wales in 1990 he made the rather foolish and smarmy pro- nouncement that no greater honour could befall a man born in Wales than to be Welsh Secretary. This was flannel on two counts. For a start, Mr Hunt was only born in Wales by accident, his mother having been evacuated there from the Liverpool blitz. It was through not really being Welsh that Mr Hunt made his second mistake; the greatest honour that can befall a man born
in Wales, as they know from Holyhead to Tiger Bay, is to play for the Principality against the English at Cardiff Arms Park.
All the nastiness may be seen as the huff- ing and puffing of internal factionalism, and to a large extent it is; if Mr Hunt were as bad as some of his detractors claim him to be, he would have been locked up long ago. 'He is a superb professional politician,' says a colleague who is not predisposed to Mr Hunt's politics. 'He behaves like a prop- er cabinet minister. He doesn't bog himself down in minutiae like half the Cabinet do; he actually gives a lead and sets a style.' One Department of Employment official describes Mr Hunt's arrival there as mak- ing the place go 'straight from first gear into fifth'. Also, for all his Europhilia, Mr Hunt has not rolled over in front of the European Commission on the much- loathed working time directive, preferring instead to put up further resistance. 'That really shows he believes in nothing except himself,' says a detractor. But it also, given the present mood of the Tory party, shows he is a rather sophisticated politician.
Mr Hunt was a protégé of Peter Walker's, who secured him the job of Welsh Secretary. Like Lord Walker and his other hero, Michael Heseltine, Mr Hunt wins the respect of his junior ministers by being an effective and successful delegator. Again, though, cynics argue that this proves his lack of concern over what political doc- trine his department may be seen to be pro- pounding. Yet for all his opportunistic approach to issues (another trait he shares with Heseltine and Walker) he remains a Tory Reform Group man in his viscera.
Those who dislike or fear him fall into two distinct categories. Some have never forgiven him for his attack on Enoch Pow- ell at the 1972 Tory party conference. At the time Mr Hunt, a pushy Young Conser- vative on the make, was candidate for the winnable seat of Plymouth Drake. He was promptly deselected. His political antennae in those days were so underdeveloped that he had not appreciated the average Tory's view of the relative merits of Powell and Heath. The memory of his insolence lin- gered so strongly that it almost prevented him from securing the nomination for the Wirral in 1976, when Selwyn Lloyd created a vacancy by resigning from the Speaker- ship. In the 1980s, when Mr Hunt was the vice-chairman in charge of candidates, he was felt to be trying to keep more right- wing candidates at arm's length. The unim- pressive quality of the 1987 intake owed much to him.
But these personal objections to him only scratch the surface. 'He believes in spend- ing money,' says a colleague, with reference to the welfarist attitude Mr Hunt took in his three years as Welsh Secretary. Oppo- nents also adduce in evidence against him an ambitiously philosophical speech made last month to the TEC Conference, which contained some concepts that stick in the throats of unreconstructed Thatcherites. In defining the role of the Government, Mr Hunt said it should 'do that which needs to be done, but which others cannot do for reasons of law, or market failure'. Shrewdly but unconvincingly, Mr Hunt spent much of the speech denying that his desire for `partnership' between government and industry was corporatist, and that he was in favour of subsidy. Yet he quite unashamed- ly said that a government could 'where nec- essary . . . remedy market failure through direct intervention', which sounds like a good defence for a rapist. What is 'market failure'? What is this 'direct intervention' by which the market — the forum, remem- ber, for the freely made decisions of pro- ducers and consumers — can be made to succeed? And who pays for it?
Such philosophical questions are not entirely relevant. Mr Hunt's detractors have claimed that he has been the principal operator in the campaign to promote David Hunt. Some claim, authoritatively, that Mr Major, while impressed by Hunt the politi- cian, is not keen on Hunt the man. This perhaps dovetails with a far more interest- ing story doing the rounds. Whatever Mr Major's views of Hunt the man or Hunt the politician, he is said to be getting con- cerned by the growing popularity of Mr Kenneth Clarke. Given that the proportion of the public that admits to liking the Prime Minister is about the same as that which finds child molestation socially acceptable, Mr Major has every cause to be worried. So how better to safeguard his position than by seeing to it that Mr Clarke cannot monopolise support on the centre left of the party? Why not see to it that that nice, competent and self-possessed Mr Hunt also emerges as a possible future leader. It may sound far-fetched now, but just you remem- ber where you heard it first.
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