Political Commentary

The new team and the snags

Patrick Cosgrave

On the whole Mr Wilson's new team has been received extraordinarily well. This is partly because commentators and journalists look forward to a professionally exciting time under his ministrations; partly because of the conviction that, between 1964 and 1966, he managed an analagous situation with amazing adroitness; and partly because most people are sportingly moved to give a minority government a fair wind. Then, too, some favourite characters have appeared in new guise: the ever-delightful, ever-loved Mr Michael Foot. is to cut his teeth on a ministerial job at last; Mrs Barbara Castle has made what, a year or two ago, when she lost her Shadow Cabinet position, seemed an impossible come-back. Mr Roy Jenkins is, once more, quietly slotted into the Home Office to make Britain safe for soft porn, and Uncle Jim is safely deployed to try that ruthless folk wisdom out on the foreigners. Indeed — and this is something the Tories ought to note very carefully, and worry about very seriously

— the new Labour Government slipped into office as into a well-worn and comfortable pair of slippers. "Experience," sighed more than one leader writer with relief, and relaxed.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the new administration — and this is, again, something of which the Tories must beware

— is the changed attitude.of Mr Wilson himself. When he was transformed by a cruel stroke of fate into Leader of the Opposition in 1970, he seemed to have two reactions which were in fact if not in recognition contradictory. He attacked everything the new Government did, and the greater the superiority of what they were doing to what Labour had done, the deeper the bitterness of his attack. At the same time he utterly ignored every Labour failure, and could be persuaded only with the utmost effort to admit any mistakes. Indeed, a tendency to selfjustification which has always marked Mr Wilson's character became, in his unhappy time of opposition, ever more marked. When colleagues as well as enemies suggested that it was time for him to depart the leadership it was this perennial self-justification that they had most in mind: it seemed to blind the Leader of the Opposition to the necessities of his job — essentially, effectively to oppose; and it seemed to reflect some sea change in Mr Wilson himself, something that had deprived him of his old physical and political vitality. Again, even colleagues who admired and liked him looked sadly back to the days of 1963, when he was the most effective Leader of the Opposition Westminster could recall.

That sorry picture has now been changed utterly. From the outset, and particularly in his first address to his backbenchers, Mr Wilson has acknowledged all the mistakes made before, and signalled his determination not to repeat them. One of his greatest mistakes the last time he was in power, when he proudly described himself as the hardestworking Prime Minister in the world, was to take an enormous burden of work on himself: he was always reading, always consulting, always asking for more paper (a trait, this, incidentally, shared with Mr Heath). At the same time, he was always dominating government initiatives and seizing the limelight. This time Mr Wilson has remained in the background, following the tactics of the campaign in bringing forward colleagues as often as possible, and allowing them to make their own decisions. It is clear he is not going to work anything like as foolishly hard as he did between 1964 and 1970, clear, indeed, that he intends to be the presiding mind of his new administration, its strategist and cheer-leader in chief, rather than its chief executive. It is clear, further, that he is far less in awe of the Civil Service than he was last time — and far less than poor Mr Heath was — and is utterly determined to overcome their frequently pernicious opposition to strong government — he once in opposition declared that one of the great satisfactions of returning to power would be the opportunity thus given .of screwing up the Civil Service.

Mr Wilson, then, is a far more formidable politician now than he was in 1964. Nonetheless, there are certain very important question marks hanging over the government he has constructed. The appointment of Mr Harold Lever to a spot close to the Prime Minister has been very widely welcomed, while that of Mr Healey to the Treasury accepted with a surprising amount of goodwill considering his lamentable performances at the dispatch box in opposition. But the arrangement has about it that smack of the desire to bring into being 'creative tension' which marked, in 1964, the creation of the DEA to do battle with the Treasury, and which was an unqualified disaster. The Treasury is probably the most incompetent department in Whitehall, forever getting its forecasts and its policies wrong, and forever explaining its blunders away with impenetrable smoothness. Labour in 1964 grasped this fact, and decided to do something about it. But the DEA was a singularly inadequate method, especially once Mr Wilson was persuaded — do they use hypnotic drugs, these Treasury knights? — to join forces with the Treasury against Lord George-Brown. One doesn't see Mr Lever alone doing better than Lord George-Brown — no discredit to Mr Lever in that remark — so a great deal is going to depend on Mr Healey's toughness. He might remember that the Treasury has not been defeated since Mr Barber insisted on going ahead with his tax-cutting programme, and they made up for that many times subsequently.

This is a central question, because it is in

economic management that both Mr Wilsne)

and Mr Heath failed before, in a fashion that meant that all the good things they did wen' for nothing. But there are others. For example, though Mr Foot's appointment has been justly applauded, though he made a

first-class and speedy job of settling with the miners, and though he, more than any other Labour minister, may be able to make Plain:, the outline detail at least of that shado‘l social compact or contract which is supPose to exist between the new government and the unions, it is doubtful if any Labour minister except, possibly, Mr Prentice — grasps th,„e significance of the unions as a mon0P090 force, rather than as the creators of wagA'

inflation. Too many Labour members an' ministers still regard the Parliamentary Pahl

as an extension of the trade unionsan'a' though they are frequently brought to V'u', same erroneous conclusion as the Tories thar union wage bargaining power is a creator.01 inflation, they tend to ignore that it is uni0,11 monopoly in labour and production the" rather, constitutes the main threat both t° government and freedom. Then there is a horrible contradictloll between the ambitions of the new Foreign Office team and that of the new defence team' I The Labour movement has always had I strong anti-American tendency, though Callaghan's good sense is sure to moderate it I Now, we depend for our defence on tile I United States, unless the European powers are willing to spend much more, and taki,e, much stronger action, for their protection.'" spite of all this Labour is pledged to re-nege,., tiate with Europe in a fashion that certaini, means our effective withdrawal from the EEC' cut defence spending massively; and, in ; various areas, oppose American wishes as . well. If Mr Callaghan and Mr Mason and the junior ministers are genuinely prepared tt consider the national interest, then one 0' these commitments or attitudes has got t° ( give, and it would be by far the best if Labour forgot its determination to cut spending again — though, one fears, there little hope of any such thing, and the new„ Government's handling of the defence force' I is likely to be marked by exactly the sae t mixture of pathetic muddle and wish-fuliii

ment as that of 1964-70.

Then comes the serious question of what „

Healey and Mrs Castle jointly are going to tin about Sir Keith Joseph's embryo tax credits scheme. In blinkered fashion the Labour or position resisted bitterly every move made 133; the last government towards a negative reverse income tax as a means of tacklirt poverty and doing away with the complex °r inadequate means tests which dominates provision of social welfare in cash. Thour r tax credits do not make up a NIT scher0e' they represent some step along the road to and also the main hope of improving the er b ficiency and humanity of the welfare systere,it in a radical way. It would be sad indeed if 9,1,11 blindness on the part of the two ministers nors It most concerned resulted in the death ofthIA s plan, for which so many Tories fought $o bar; iv for so long. For that would mean a relaPs' d into the old jungle, the old mess, which he 31 Tories inherited in 1970. ver ' So, in any event, Mr Wilson starts all h• 4 again, with far fewer advantages than thele'e 4 time, and with the country in a far 111°riji horrible state than before. How successful W't he be? There are very few Tories who feel th.,st t they have much chance of victory in the rie7:x election, unless they fall back on the ile.0 adage that, these days, only oppositions Wi elections, since circumstances are so intr c.5 table that governments always make a hies t of things. Be sure that no such gl°°. Ye thought is in the mind of the new PrIflie Minister: like any politician worth his salt 'to fact of being in office looms much larger or h him than does any fear of circumstances the malice of his enemies.