THE LAST REFUGE OF DESPERATE MEN

Boris Johnson argues that the Tor), party's move to

the Right is a confected illusion, which has fooled only Mr Alan Howarth

Blackpool WHEN THE waistcoated young Portillistas leapt to their feet, and when John Major, beaming, actually shook hands — both hands, for heaven's sake — with the boss- eyed hidalgo of the Right, it seemed unde- niable that there had been a change. Gone was the chalky grip of Douglas Hurd, who would never have permitted such rhetoric to pass a minister's lips. There was a new fault-line in British politics, Malcolm Rifkind had already proclaimed: Europe!

And the Portillistas drummed their feet and gur- gled like the impis of Chaka.

Even Mrs Peter Bottom- ley, kind, sweet Virginia, per- mitted herself a crack at the Eurocrats who, or so she seemed to conceive, had designs upon the Depart- ment of National Heritage. `Brussels can stay at home, thank you very much,' said Virginia, and how the fonc- tionnaires must have trem- bled in the Rue de la Loi.

So it has gone on through- out this Tory party confer- ence. The Right, or so conventional wisdom runs, has won the argument. No attempt will be made to fight Tony Blair in the centre ground. Ho, at last, for Clear Blue Water. Michael Howard offers to put yet more people in the slammer. Peter Lil- ley chastises the bludgers and scroungers who are bleeding us all white to the tune of £90 billion per year. In a speech to the Tory party agents, Mr Major tells them to brace themselves for a 'ruthless' assault on the welfare state, to pave the way for tax cuts; and the following day, Mr Brian Mawhinney, the Tory party chairman, con- firms that this is the whole instinct and intention of the Government.

Watching from his farm in Warwickshire, or Walworth Road, or Chianti, or wherever he now is, Alan Howarth must have felt vindicated. For too long, the defecting MP for Stratford-upon-Avon has told the press, Mr Major has been trying to ride the tiger of the ideological Right. Now the smile is on the Face of the Tiger. Portillo is the Dauphin. Xenophobia is licensed. Major, the man who once swore to 'put Britain at the heart of Europe', is seen on television beaming at a speech warning of Brussels' alleged intention to metricate military cap badges.

I told you so, Mr Howarth can say to his new friends on the Guardian: see what a nasty bourgeois party this has become — picking on people who can't fight back: sin- gle mothers, Brussels officials with an imperfect command of English, illegal immigrants. And perhaps Mr Howarth sin- cerely believes that the Tory party has lurched to the Right. But the closer one examines events over the last few days, the more likely it seems that the spiritual revo- lution has taken place inside Mr Howarth and not the Tory party. If British politics were like selling dog food, this party con- ference would be more to do with market positioning and brand recognition than with a new ratio of liver to bonemeal.

This is not to deny that the proceedings have been noisome in the nostrils of the Tory Left. In the shadows, behind the pil- lars in the wings of the gorgeous balustrad- ed ballroom, in the Winter Gardens, you can hear the wheezes of resignation, almost of despair. 'I find it quite terrifying that these people are released into the Commu- nity,' said one Europhile, as a carrot- topped thruster from Surrey frothed against the Single Currency. Do not believe, incidentally, that all local party activists are also foamers, cappuccino- lipped haters of immigrants. 'Look,' said one gloomy and prosperous-looking One- Nation Tory from Bas- ingstoke, 'hardly a black face in the room. We ignore the social minorities who would otherwise vote for us, like the Asian community. We make too much of a fetish of family values.'

I watched one minister, a one-time member of the Blue Chip dining group of wets (which once included John Major), stony-faced as he beheld Portillo's some- what Latin American per- formance. 'He's young,' was all the man would say. Another former minister was more forthright. 'I think it's yucky and despicable. You could imagine him being cheered by the One can agree with the Left of the party that the language is becoming raci- er. But it is difficult to see where, sub- stantively, the party has moved to the Right. Few attach much credence to Michael Howard's new plans to get tough on criminals. Representatives here cannot have forgotten the last time Howard issued a 29-point plan for a 'crackdown' on crime, not a single item of which can now be remembered. Peter Lilley is far too wary of the public reaction, this close to an election, that would follow genuine- ly pruning benefits for people other than fraudsters: cutting a billion, remember, is taking a thousand pounds from a million people. It is clear from the PSBR figures that Kenneth Clarke has room for little but cosmetic tax cuts.

As for Europe, faites-moi un faveur, as we used to say in Brussels. This is the most brazen illusion of all. Mr Portillo made an ingenious speech, in which he was able to maximise the tangential role of Brussels in defence matters. As I am sure he would admit, it was pretty shameless dema- goguery. As long as he was Defence Secre- tary, Michael Portillo assured us, British soldiers would 'die for Britain and not for Brussels'. For a moment, one thought he must be heralding withdrawal from Nato, which has had its HQ in Brussels since 1966. But no, he genuinely seemed to mean a Euro-army, commanded by Field-Mar- shal Sir Leon. This is a phantasm, a turnip- ghost. It is true, as Mr Portillo afterwards explained, that some countries are vainly requesting to introduce qualified majority voting throughout the 'Joint Actions' of the hitherto vacuous Common Foreign and Security Policy. But it is, shall we say, a simplification to conclude that Our Boys will be made to lay down their lives by the EU Commissioner for War.

It is one thing, one might think, for jour- nalists to perform these entertaining extrapolations of the Brussels agenda. It is another for a Cabinet minister.

Most of what Douglas Hurd used to denounce as 'Euro-myths' contain more than a grit of truth; not this one, though; and it will be interesting to see how the Foreign Office treats it in its latest pam- phlet on irresponsible scare stories. This is a styrofoam federalist plot matched by sty- rofoam Euro-scepticism; and it comes so cheap because the Government does not have to give the slightest practical evidence of its new hard line on Europe until after the election. For the other EC countries will happily defer the finale of the next intergovernmental conference to allow the Tories to go to the country wrapped in the flag.

Our partners know that they will either play the final rubber of the talks with Mr Blair; or else a Major so intoxicated with victory that he will, as Malcolm Rifkind put it, 'decide where the balance of British interest lies': viz that he will, of course, compromise. People here are aware of the emptiness of these promises on Europe. If Mr Howarth poked his head round the door of some of the Euro-sceptic fringe meetings on the sea front, he would not see the serried ranks of glistening-browed Tory youth, but a few bearded men obsessed with metrication. Iain Duncan-Smith exem- plifies all that a Right-wing Tory MP should be, but only a couple of people turned up to hear him.

It is true that John Redwood received a fairly rapturous reception for his speech in the MGM cinema. But it wasn't a patch on last year in Bournemouth, when people were more or less hanging from the chan- deliers, and a couple of women were so overcome with Euro-sceptical feeling that they swooned and burst their corsets. The European question is less charged, partly because of the impending humiliation of the franc, which will rob EMU of some of its flesh-creeping potential. Partly it is because Mr Major has cunningly allowed Mr Portillo's artful claptrap on the confer- ence floor to steal Redwood's thunder on the fringe. Partly, 'Europe' has not caught fire this year because it was always camouflage for the leadership issue, and code for attacking John Major. Since the leadership has been settled, the sound of heresy on Europe has lost its thrill.

The illusion, as I say, is not confined to the European issue. If anything, this so- called radical Right-wing agenda involves more public spending on the common weal, from plans to keep open local hospitals and to give families tax breaks for children to John Major's plans to spend more on edu- cation, and even workfare. Yes, the closer one inspects the abiding Tory policies, never mind the rhetoric, the more obvious it is that Alan Howarth has been irrational. His 'friends' have been obscurely blaming his desertion of the Tories on his upbring- ing. Apparently, his father, Tom Howarth, who was High Master at St Pants and then a don at Magdalen, as well as being one of Montgomery's ADCs, used to give him a hard time. 'Tom was always tough on Alan. He regarded him as a drip.' I cannot vouch for the theory. All one can say is that it is preposterous for Mr Howarth to claim that the party has moved substantially to the Right since the days when he was head of the Research Department in 1981, the days of Geoffrey Howe's viciously deflationary Budget. The proof that this Right-wing lurch is an illu- sion will be seen, I think, in the actions of the other Tory Left-wingers. They will not follow Mr Howarth. They will wait and see. `The Left thinks they can win the argument when [sic] we get back into power,' said one source close to Redwood; and suddenly one had a sense of deja vu. We have been here before. I mean last week, in Brighton.

In a certain respect, the Tory Left resem- bles the Labour Left. The leadership of both parties claims to have moved to the Right. In reality, as we saw last week, Tony Blair's party retains its broadly socialist and redistributive ethic; whereas in the Tory case, the party remains essentially moder- ate and willing to compromise on Europe, and reluctant to do serious damage to the welfare state. In both parties, the Left has decided it must consent to the lie that the party has moved to the Right. This is in the interests of party unity and because the Left in each case has been persuaded that the party will thereby have a better chance of winning the election. It would be a fine thing, of course, if this deception worked for the Tories.

Their hunger for power was summed up for me, though, by one man who was lying flat on his back throughout Rifkind's speech. The snoring grew louder and loud- er. When Mr Rifkind made a joke, his hands by some instinct came up and briefly fluttered together before subsiding. It will take more than warnings about Brussels harmonising cap-badges and regiments to get these people going. Malcolm Rifkind may proclaim that 'Europe' is the new fault-line in British politics. But I would be amazed if the electorate is moved enough to agree.

Boris Johnson is associate editor of the Daily Telegraph.

Hi. I'm Joe Johnson and this is my old pal, Demon Rum.'