No flowering of talent
Patrick Cosgrave
There is not a great deal that is cheerful to be said in an end of term report on the present Parliament. The amount of legislation has been so great — and most of it so poorly drafted — that adequate consideration of the Government's measures has been virtually impossible. The divisions in the ranks of the two major parties have been so noticeable as to attract attention away from competition between them, so as to focus on competition within them. And ministers — especially the Prime Minister — have been so cavalier in their attitude to the House of Commons that they would, in an earlier age, already have had to endure its censure.
The most notable — if somewhat impalpable — impression of the session has been of a House of Commons greatly reduced in importance; and of one whose members recognise and accept that reduction. When the present Labour Government first came to power last year Mr John Biffen — who accurately predicted that the election following that of February would give neither party a genuine working majority — suggested to me that the age of the private member was about to dawn again. Contrary to the popular impression, Mr, Biffen argued, a Member was not really free even if his party commanded a substantial majority in the House. For, in such a case, the Whips are both Unremitting in their pursuit of the individualist or independent member, and contemptuous of any revolt he may mount. Only when the life — or, what comes to the same, the prestige — of the party depends on mustering every vote is the backbencher really independent of his bosses. It seemed an attractive thesis at the time, and I was disposed to believe it, but things have not turned out that way, and while the same handful of backbenchers on either side have continued to make distinguished contributions to debates, there has been no flowering of either talent or independence in either party.
Of course, it is also true — as Mrs Thatcher likes to emphasise — that the present Govern ment, far from surviving on a knife's edge, enjoys a working majority of about forty. Because they are aware of the fact that there are serious divisions — both philosophical and personal — in the Conservative Party, arguseyed critics of politics have been inclined to note how often Mr Atkins has failed to poll the full strength of the Opposition in divisions. But one of the reasons for his apparent failure is the strategic pointlessness of such an exercise. As long as Mr Mellish can rely on the left not to revolt, on the Ulster Unionists not to turn up, and on the Nationalists and Liberals to share most of the Government's socialist aspirations, Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues cannot hope to bring Mr Wilson down through parliamentary conflict. So, if I am right in supposing that the role of the House of Commons has declined, and that members of the House feel that decline, it can still in no way be put down to the novel situation of a government without a clear majority. For all practical purposes Mr Wilson has such a majority.
There is, however, a weakness on the Opposition side which is felt by every regular Observer of the parliamentary scene, but which is extremely difficult to state. It might be put thus: whereas there are several possible Prime Ministers on Labour's front bench, there is only one among the opposing Tories, and that is Mrs Thatcher herself.
As soon as one puts the matter thus brutally qualifications arise in the mind. An exceptionally able, but not politically-minded, friend from Cambridge told me the other day, for example, that he saw only two people of note in the whole Conservative Party — Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe. I was not hitherto aware that Sir Geoffrey's able and balanced but nonetheless somewhat sotto voce utterances had gained him any following in the country. A qualification must likewise arise in the case of Sir Keith Joseph: for all his personal diffidence he has, since his speech at Preston, materially affected the direction in which the Conservative Party will go. Likewise, Mrs Thatcher's newer appointments, like Mr Fowler and Mrs Oppenheim, need more time to find their feet, and it would be unfair to judge them on their performance so far. The tiresome fact remains that, whatever individual criticisms there are to make of Labour ministers, they have about them an air of permanence and solidarity which the Conservative front bench cannot match.
This is not to say that the Conservative Party in the House of Commons lacks comparable talent — the trouble is that the talent seems to have run in some other direction than the creation of a convincing alternative government. Mr Powell — if, for the purposes of the argument, I may still call him a Tory — remains the most formidable orator in the House of Commons; but he has gone out of his way to be unhelpful to the new leadership of the party. Mr John Peyton remains ,the most under-rated man in Conservative politics, and a connoisseur's delight; but for all his elegant articulation and acid wit he seems unwilling to make a massive constructive effort of the kind — let us say which would make him a possible opposite number to Mr Roy Jenkins and therefore serve his own greatest ambition, which is to be Home Secretary in a Conservative government. Indeed, Mrs Thatcher might be very well advised, in an autumn reshuffle, to move Mr Peyton, with whom she shares so many instincts, to Mr lan Gilmour's job, and make Mr Gilmour Shadow Leader of the House of Commons.
On the Conservative backbenches there are Mr Biffen and Mr Ridley. There are others of ability and formidability, but none with quite the forensic power of these two. It may well be that Mr Ridley especially regrets and resents the fact that he was not offered a front bench position by Mrs Thatcher, and some of her friends and admirers certainly feel that she would have been wiser to include such as Mr Ridley and Mr Biffen even at the expense of Creating the kind of broad front within the party which the present Shadow Cabinet represents. Nonetheless, neither Mr Biffen nor Mr Ridley look, at the moment, like team men: they are, rather, prophets awaiting their hour. As such they symbolise a remarkable change that has been taking place in the Conservative Party over the last decade. Ten years ago those who might conveniently and not inaccurately be called right-wing were widely regarded as buffers and duffers. Today there is no question but that the Conservative right forms the most articulate and intellectually energetic group id politics. It is true that some critics would say that Mr Biffen or Mr Ridley is excessively doctrinaire, and perhaps would not be the most practical of ministers; but all would assent to the proposition that they are intellectually exceptionally impressive, and there must be something wrong with a front bench that has no room for them.
As the star of the right has risen — within, of course, that context of a disappointing House of Commons that I mentioned earlier — so that of the traditional left has fallen. One of the reasons for this is — as I have argued many times in this column — that the left has taken over the Labour Party establishment; and ministers today spout as truisms what made UP the phillipics of the Tribune group five years ago. But, again, one needs to look back no further than Gaitskell to see the impossibility of cOmparing the galaxy of excluded talent whieb then formed the parliamentary left with today's uncourageous critics of Mr Wilson's shenanigans. Only Mr Heffer — who is far from being the world's greatest orator, but who has an exceptional and unusually rock-like combination of humanity and integrity — looks powerful enough to carry his disagreement with the Government to the point of convincing rebellion. There is one respect in which be differs from nearly every other major left-wing figure: he has an unforced and perfectlY genuine belief in freedom, however oddly it may ride with the policies he supports. A last paragraph in an end of termreport must be devoted to the old fox himself, the Prime Minister. Mr Wilson's performance has again fallen off recently, and he is now 50 immured behind the protective wall created for himself by Mr Haines and Lady Falkender that almost no journalist can speak of him with personal knowledge. But he remains the outstanding political figure of his age. He is indecisive, temperamental, inconsistent and has little capacity for seeing what his countrY needs, however ardently he wishes to serve it. But his almost inexplicable command of the political scene deserves both attention and respect. Every Conservative, as soon as he is likely to rejoice in an opinion poll that shows. the Tories 14 per cent ahead of Labour, ought W go to his room and repeat to himself that Mr Wilson is almost unbeatable; and never more formidable than when he looks most in trouble. Like his success he is personally almost impenetrable, but only Mrs Thatcher on the conservative side seems to understand — and her performance at Question Time show that — how gifted he is. Of Mrs Thatcher herself I will write on another occasion, for I do not expect to see her at her best before the autumn. But the difficulty of the task ahead of her is not to be measured by the racked state of the econornY, or the powerful enemies behind her back in her own party, but by a just assessment of the talents of James Harold Wilson.
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