POLITICS
Heseltine rejects a short dash to freedom
FERD INAND MO UNT
t may be recalled that Mr Francis Pym, the last of the Old Wets to publish an alternative credo, advanced upon the pub- lic bearing a watering can. The photograph which accompanied the Sunday Times ex- tract from The Politics of Consent set out to present the author as a faintly moth-eaten but utterly genuine country gent. No such sentiments have animated the publicity department at Messrs Hutchinson. The photograph on the back of Where There's A Will (£12.95) depicts the Heseltines in flagrantly noove outfits: both shod in Hunter wellies so new you can still read the maker's name on them, he in some purpose-built blood-sports jacket, she in pheasant-scaring Nordic sweater, between two large outdoors dogs from Canine Casting, in the background the extent of their estate discreetly indicated (Mr Pym gave the impression of doing his watering in a modest suburban patch).
This lack of inhibition, this cheerful arrivisme is one of Michael Heseltine's most alluring traits. At intervals through- out the book, he reminds us of his shaky start in business: `I remember a moment in my business life when every Friday the company finance director used to bring in the list of outstanding creditors. There were three columns headed: solicitors' letters, writs received and writs whose time limits for reply were about to expire. The bills in the last column we paid.' At a pinch, I suppose that might just find a place in the early-struggles chapter of other tycoons-turned-politician. But not many others would include in a book intended to establish the author as an alternative Prime Minister the following vignette: `Once, by chance, I overheard a conversation be- tween Rachman and one of his managers in Bayswater in 1956. It was brief and un- forgettable: Manager: "A young girl has fallen off the balcony of one of our houses and died." Rachman; "Are we insured?" He drove away content: they were.' How exactly, one can imagine the executive of the 1922 Committee wondering, did Mr Heseltine come to overhear this exchange and how did he know Rachman was insured?
This reckless impatience with the pieties may well have been what drove him to flounce out of the Cabinet. But it also make him one of the two or three most brilliant ministerial initiators since the war, at his best in situations like Toxteth which otherwise looked hopeless. True, these same qualities also led him into spectacular cock-ups like the 1980 Local Government, Planning and Land Act, not, I think, mentioned by name in the text, although he does admit having made a mistake somewhere in that area. But the revival of the docklands of London and Liverpool, the clearance and re-use of derelict land, the garden festivals — all this is his and pretty much his alone. He is an instinctive activist, oddly protected from disabling alliances by his off-putting flashness. If he had more friends, he might get less done.
Mr Heseltine tells us what he has done, at some length. Readers have been warned as early as page three that 'although I have a certain fluency and familiarity with the spoken word, I find it less easy to absorb from or communicate through the written'. While some of Mr Heseltine's oldest poli- tical colleagues have been saying for years that `the trouble with Michael is he's virtually dyslexic', it is unnerving to have this confirmed at source.
This too has its advantages. His freedom from excessive reading and writing may help to make the world seem more open, more abounding in possibilities, its con- straints more trivial. He blithely picks up policies which other Wets might steer clear of as being distastefully Thatcherite such as the adoption of American-style `Workfare' (the scheme under which you are entitled to the dole only if you agree to perform work allotted to you). He brushes aside as semantic quibbles the arguments about the meaning of `intervention' or `planning'. Action not words, he cries, reaching for flak jacket or mace.
Far from being doctrinaire, he confesses, again with beguiling candour, that the sole recurrent theme he can discern in his own book is 'the conviction that only in the philosophy and practice of the Conserva- tion Party is there any promise of a safe and better future'. Or, to put it another way, vote for us.
In fact, most of what he is putting forward, even in the cloudy and supposed- ly daring chapter on Industrial Strategy, is now pretty standard Conservative Party stuff. For those looking for aggravation, there is not a word about Westland and only a routine side-swipe in the finale against `assertive' leadership and 'hector- ing abuse'. Even this is contradicted by an acknowledgement in the succeeding sent- ence that `the Conservative Party, by its leadership in two successive Parliaments, has implanted a new confidence in the British people'. Rather as at the beginning of an old-fashioned film about the sea, you might hear behind the soaring violins the sound of waves lapping and oars creaking in rowlocks, so here, behind the mood music, one hears the unmistakable sounds of a shipwrecked mariner attempting to work his passage back.
Where Mr Heseltine remains a perpe- tually unguided missile is in his distrust of the Treasury. Again and again, he returns to the Treasury's `lack of imagination', `never-ending round of book-balancing', `inflexibility', `inexperience of industry'. Yet it is precisely these qualities, better known as prudence, which are the founda- tion of the whole enterprise. That, if anything, is what has implanted the new confidence etc. Mr Heseltine brushes aside these fundamentals in a single sentence: `Few in government today believe it is possible to make a short dash to freedom associated with significantly high public expenditure or borrowing.'
Oh I don't know. After all, it is only a couple of years since Mr Heseltine himself believed precisely that. And there are still quite a few with-one-bound-she-was-freers about. Professor Patrick Minford, for ex- ample, argues that `too much caution is as bad as too little caution. . . . Suppose the Chancellor cuts taxes by £4 billion, setting a 25p standard rate. Will the sky fall in?' Perhaps not, but it might be a spot over- cast. Is this really the best way to achieve the stability of tax rates, which Minford rightly sets as the desirable criterion? Suppose that Government spending runs a little over forecast next year and the year after (it has been known to happen). Suppose that the present flood of revenue into the Treasury tails off, just a little. Suppose that the Government delays put- ting tax rates back up again, for fear of looking foolish. Might we not be back in the same old rackety game of high interest rates, sterling crises, rising inflation, all the hard-won stability gone? Most major re- forms, such as the reform of trade union law are best done step by step, since the rewards of gradualism outweigh the risks. There are others, such as the aboliton of exchange controls, which have to be done at a stroke. But I don't think that the 25p standard rate is one of them.
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