ANOTHER VOICE
The dread consequences of Mrs Thatcher's wanting to be loved
AU BERO N WAUGH
All this week I have been dreading Friday, when Mrs Thatcher unfolds her `vision' of Leading Britain into the Nine- ties. It is bound to be embarrassing, of course. Even at her best, proudest mo- ments, she has always been an embarrass- ment, but none the worse for that. We all have reasons to be grateful to her. She has reduced the power of the unions and removed those stupid, brutal faces from the councils of the nation, at any rate for the moment. She has kept the socialists at bay for nine years, reduced the Labour Party to an unelectable, semi-Marxist rab- ble and, with the help of Mr Lawson, scattered plenty o'er a scowling, scoffing land. Nobody else could have done it. The least we can do in exchange is to suffer a little embarrassment. We must not wince. We owe her a respectful hearing, and a prolonged round of applause.
And we may be sure she will receive both. The reason I dread the revelation of Mrs Thatcher's soul is because I fear it will mark the moment when the nation realises that from being our greatest asset she has now become an appalling liability to the Conservative Party and to the nation. Her motive for introducing the idea of 'social Thatcherism' at this late stage is not, I fancy, so much to occupy the alleged middle ground of British politics, with its population of faint hearts, prigs, dogmatic centrists and eccentric exhibitionists. Owen and Steel between them have illus- trated that the middle ground is not worth occupying. The country actually prefers a clear choice.
No, the reason for her sudden and not very credible lurch into a caring posture over the community, the ozone layer, acid rain and all the rest of it has nothing to do with votes. It is quite simply that she has grown exhausted by so much dislike. She wants us all to love her — or at any rate all of us except a few clearly marked hate- focuses: left-wingers in the media and teaching professions; militant homosexuals and child abusers; drunken soccer hooli- gans and lager louts, drug pushers, IRA sympathisers, left-wing intellectuals, etc.
It must be disconcerting to be disliked as much as she is. It is also unfair that she is associated with all her government's most unpopular policies, so that even when her government is riding high in the opinion polls, support for what the country has identified as Thatcherism is low. Here, extrapolated from this week's Sunday Telegraph's Gallup Poll, are the essential figures:
Percentage Thatcher Kinnock Dislike her/him 55 42 Like her/him 42 54 Dislike her/his policies 58 58 Like her/his policies 39 38 Don't know 3 4
From these figures we learn that at a time when a general election held this week would return the Conservatives under Mrs Thatcher with another unheal- thily large majority, most people dislike her as well as disliking her policies, and Kinnock has an enormous lead in personal popularity. No doubt the Conservative Party's soundings are producing the same results.
Admittedly there was some confusion in Gallup's findings on this occasion. When asked whether they agreed or disagreed with Mrs Thatcher's attitude to Europe, 49 per cent agreed, 35 per cent disagreed. But when asked what her attitude was, 48 per cent said it was pro-European, 34 per cent said anti-European. Thank you, Dr Gal- lup. That is democracy at work.
On Friday we will hear much more from her in repudiation of the 'airy-fairy fantasy' of a united Europe, even if she does not address herself quite so thoroughly to the immediate issue, which concerns the aboli- tion of customs and immigration border controls by 1992. As has been pointed out by Lord Deedes, the maintenance of these border controls make nonsense of the case for a railway tunnel under the Channel. Never mind that the argument for these customs and immigration controls is man- ifestly fraudulent. They will make not the smallest difference to the traffic in drugs or terrorists. They are simply the first blow in a wrecking operation to ensure that British politicians lose none of their powers to control and organise us. But they are also further evidence of the Prime Minister's own fantasy of a Thatcher Millennium for which there is no support beyond the present disarray of the Labour Party.
So, it would appear, is her present absurd and undignified flirtation with 'so- cial Thatcherism', the ozone layer, collaps- ing seals and the rest of that rubbish. No doubt the New Thatcher does not repre- sent such a dramatic reversal as the New Grocer of 1972, when apparently overnight Mr Heath became the flabby, corporatist pinko who has remained with us ever since. No doubt she thinks she is simply changing the packaging.
Perhaps the most hopeful clue to her intentions is hidden in the New Lawson, launched on Sunday by Bruce Anderson, and rapturously blessed by St Peregrine from his lofty position in the clouds.
`I'm wholly in favour of wealth being passed on from generation to generation, and I think this is one of the great social changes we will see in this country,' said Lawson. In point of fact, Lawson absolute- ly detests the thought of wealth being passed on from generation to generation. If he had been in favour, it would have been the simplest and cheapest thing in the world for him to have abolished inheri- tance tax five years ago. He has not done it, and has no intention of doing anything but taking tiny — often counterproductive — nibbles at it. There will be no great inheritance of super-valuable houses by the already housed younger generation for the good reason that by the time Ridley's friends in the building trade have been allowed to wreck the Home Counties and the pre-Yuppie generation of house- owners has begun to die, we will have a surfeit of housing in the South-East.
In other words, Lawson is describing the opposite of what he means, and of what he intends to do, in order to make himself more popular at Brighton. Dare we hope that the 'caring' Thatcher is playing the same game, and now intends, at long last, to start cutting public expenditure (which has increased remorselessly as a proportion of national income) on such wasteful and largely useless luxuries as health, public education and defence? Even on the police, whose numbers are now so vast that they suffer their most appalling casualties by falling over each other?
I do not think so. I think my original analysis was the correct one, and Mrs Thatcher simply wants to be loved. It is a fatal flaw in a politician and she is setting about it the wrong way. If she wants to be loved and revered in men's memories even in the history books — she should take this opportunity to retire, leaving the future to Lawson or even Tebbit, if he is up to it — but not, I beg, to Heseltine or Parkinson. If she does not take this oppor- tunity ... but of course she won't.
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