POLITICS
Is Norman Tebbit socialism's last hope?
FERDINAND MOUNT
We commentators have our ups and downs. There are off-days when the glass is cloudy and the tea-leaves are a soggy mess. At such moments, some customers are inclined to blame the decline in standards, like the elder Mrs Khoja in Shiva Naipaul's Fireflies: ' "You not the pundit your father used to be." The pundit was resigned, "Some of us naturally better than others," he said.'
This time last month and the month before, we were all going on ad nauseam about the Westland Affair as the biggest thing since Profumo or possibly Dreyfus. It was going to be the fatal blow to Mrs Thatcher's authority, never glad confident morning again, the Watershed. Or alterna- tively, looking at it another way, she was going to come through it, tempered by the struggle, a finer and better woman, no longer dragged down by pygmies and fainthearts. One way or another, things would never be the same again.
However, the same again is suspiciously what things look like. According to Mori, public opinion has scarcely shifted since well before Christmas: Labour 35, Con- servative 34, Alliance 30. The by-elections will no doubt cheer up the Alliance as they did last year. Labour has perked up but still appears to be knocking its head against a ceiling in the mid-30s. Mrs Thatcher not very popular, Mr Kinnock not very popu- lar either. In fact, anybody's game — and not a very interesting game at that.
But then these game-metaphors with which we try to inject life into politics — 'shoot-out', 'photo-finish', 'trench warfare' and so on — often cover with a grubby old blanket happenings and portents of the greatest interest. Take, for example, the choice of viewing offered on Sunday night. At 8.45, BBC 2 had 'THINKING ALOUD: "Socialism — an idea whose time has gone?" ', a discussion chaired by Bryan Magee. But thousands of thinking men must have already been irreparably glued to Channel 4, where our own Christopher Hitchens was well launched on `My Britain — a meditation on "Britain in chronic decline. . . its old values of decency and patriotism distorted and decayed. . . . Can you be a socialist and a patriot too?" ' Ten years, even five years ago, so rich a choice would have been inconceivable. For one thing, Mr Magee was a Labour MP in those days, certainly one who didn't be- lieve in all that Clause Four nonsense but still a chap who was in some higher, slightly mysterious sense, 'a good socialist'. The sort of question one asked then was still 'How do we redefine socialism?' or 'What does socialism mean to us today?' As for Mr Hitchens, he was, well, he was a bit different. His shirt was open to the navel with, if memory serves, some metallic adornment nestling in his chest-curls; there was a cherubic smile on his lips and a copy of Penthouse under his arm; one felt, perhaps wrongly, that he was not at that very moment wrestling with the old values of decency and patriotism. Ah well, I grow old . . . I grow old . . . I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, turn-ups are in again.
Now patriotism is not the same thing as socialism. Indeed, in the meanings tradi- tionally allotted to these words, they were quite often thought to be opposite things, for example, in the initial reaction to the Great War. Patriotism is the last refuge of a socialist. When Mr Neil Kinnock starts going on about 'the patriotism of produc- tion. . . the patriotism of pride in care', one suspects that he has really not got a great deal to say. Alliteration is not an adequate substitute for meaning, although Peter Piper's peck of pickled peppers has done much less harm than Plato's Re- public.
Nor can the British socialist look across, as of old, to the Continent to see socialism at work either in theory or practice. In France, socialism appears to mean having to listen to Mlle Frangoise Sagan's re- miniscences of the gaming tables; in Ger- many, it means listening to Herr Gunter Grass getting extremely cross at confer- ences. Meanwhile, little French children buckle down to their dictée at impeccably run private schools which the Socialist government dared not touch. And the Italian Socialists hack away at the welfare state with a ferocity Mr Norman Fowler would not dare to imitate. And Spanish Socialists try to persuade the voters to say Yes to Nato.
All in all, then, it does not seem to be a case so much of `no enemies to the Left' as of 'nobody much on the Left at all'.
At which point we turn to Mr Norman Tebbit. The Conservative Party Chairman is now widely portrayed, along with Mrs Thatcher, as the last best hope of the Left. It is his 'raucous' approach (Mr Biffen), his ineradicable tendency to 'scrag' opponents (Mr Hurd) which, commentators of the centre and Left all agree, offer Labour its best hope of victory. The Conservatives, the conventional wisdom now runs, would do much better to keep the temperature fairly low and either abandon or mute their more controversial inclinations, such as the introduction of education vouchers and the abolition of the Rent Acts. It is, therefore, good news for Labour that Mr Tebbit has taken personal charge of the preparation of the Conservative manifesto and will be cooking it up all by himself and throwing le lots of contentious proposals without con- sulting fellow ministers, especially on like Peter Walker.
I wonder about all this. First, it cannel be true both that Mr Tebbit is writing the manifesto single-handed and that it will be filled with specific controversial proposals,' For such proposals must first be checkeu and agreed by departments, otherwise they will not stand up to the wear and tear of an election campaign (Sir Humphrey will nib' bish them off the record and the aggrieved minister will distance himself from there publicly). If the manifesto is to be all Mr Tebbit's own work, it will have to be short, punchy and vague — much more like r.he manifestoes of the Churchill era, which, covered no more than one or two sheets ef, paper, and ran roughly: 'Let's get rationing. We believe in world peace. Th is a photograph of me with my wife. She I' is the one with the pearls. God save th.e Queen.' There is much to be said for suer' an approach. The opposite approach that taken by the Labour Party and _ Michael Foot in 1983 (or rather without n Foot intervening to stop it) — prodtce:J. the only memorable and the only ,cliuse astrous manifesto of modern times — longest suicide note in history'. But short or long (and I cannot believe that Mrs Thatcher will not insist on threW- ing in a few tempting bon-bons) we can bet sure of one thing — the document vii1111.°e lack raucous scragging. And that is red logical. For an atmosphere of consensus can only favour the oppositioll parties. Both Labour and the Alhaneer have to persuade a crucial five to teri een, cent of the electorate that there is notb1,11b; risky or irresponsible about voting them. The Conservative Party has to Pe.:, suade them that there is. A sense of dailP.; has to be inculcated. And that is rather Mr Tebbit's alley.
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