POLITICS
The Tories in search of an eanum leader
FERDINAND MOUNT
And what exactly, the returning traveller is asked, is it that they are so worried about up there? Well, schools and hospitals, oh, and buses, very worried about the buses they are. Buses mean a lot to country people. I know most of them don't actually travel on them themselves, but there's always a pensioner next door . . . and yes, of course, they don't like Mrs Thatcher either.
Quite so. How fine the great red-and- cream Wilts-and-Dorset double-decker used to look as it swayed along the A36, towering over the dusty hedges. From the top deck which smelled of boiled sweets and Players Navy Cut, you could see across the railway to the villages the far side of the Wylye. At each perilous fare stage, the traffic had to screech to a halt behind and before as the bus stopped in the narrow road, sometimes for an elderly party with a shopping bag panting up from the little footbridge, more often for no one at all, unfailingly obedient to company regula- tions. These majestic conveyances, with their dignified uniformed conductors often accompanied by an even more dignified inspector, so absurdly out of scale with the traffic they carried — for me, country buses remain as redolent as stopping trains were for previous generations. And now the best you can hope for is a cheeky chap in jeans in a minibus who calls you mate.
It is not apparently the Great Issues of the Day as defined by the chattering classes in London, not Unemployment, or the Manufacturing Base, or the Future of the Anglo-American Alliance which disturb the voters; it is Mr Ridley's deregulation of country bus services which casts the most horrific shadow on the wall. Useless to argue that the long-distance coach business has thrived since being deregulated or that most county councils will still be subsidis- ing their unprofitable routes or that, two years hence, there may actually be more country buses running but smaller cheaper ones than at present. Nothing will reassure them. For what is involved here is not so much a fresh upsurge of belief in the importance of our public services as that old aversion to change of any kind which has so often unhorsed this Government - on issues from the taxation of pension funds to Sunday Trading. The Government can hurriedly increase expenditure on hos- pitals and schools and spend less on de- fence — indeed, such a switch is already becoming visible, and not before time. Yet some underused services would still have to be closed, and still there would be bugles calling from sad shires. For this is an elegiac protest — to which there is no answer except polite regret.
And nothing will reassure those Tory MPs who have been afflicted by a catatonic state of terror. Useless to remind them that the Tories are only a couple of points behind Labour in the national opinion polls and that, in the past, by-elections and local elections have gone as badly as this within months of famous election victories. They still cannot wait to abandon the hard standing and make for the softer ground. Couldn't we somehow be, or at any rate seem nicer, less abrasive, more eanum (to borrow the Windsors' invaluable private word for 'small, affecting, pathetic')? Couldn't we have a different leader or at least see and hear rather less of her? That is the simple message behind all these mysterious formulae — the 'balanced tick- et' urged by Mr John Biffen, 'the Howe- Biffen tandem' suggested by Mr Edward Pearce in the Sunday Telegraph, the 're- turn to Cabinet government' applauded by Mr Douglas Hurd, the 'broad appeal' hankered for by other leading Conserva- tives.
These interesting ideas all seem to me, when closely inspected, to look like fanta- sies born of wishful thinking. They are short on substance and shaky on logic.
To be brutal, the alternatives are as follows: Either Mrs Thatcher fights the next election as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. It will be diffi- cult for her to win. No party leader has won three general elections running since the Great Reform Bill. But win or lose, it will be impossible to pretend that her role is a minor one, that she is merely part of a collective effort, and that the Tory Party now looks on Thatcherism as an aberration in its long history of mild acquiescence.
Or she is removed before the next election. There seems to me to be several obstacles to this. First, she won't go. I cannot think of a Conservative party leader in recent history who was in good health and good spirits and who was removed against his or her will.
Well, there is always a first time. Sup- pose a sufficient number of Tory MPs did nerve themselves to make a properly orga- nised effort to replace her by Sir Geoffrey Howe. I cannot think of another candidate who would have much of a chance. Sup- pose — although this seems even less likely the coup works, the Party presumably being sunk in despair after further name- less calamities. Then what happens? The Conservative Party has to go to the country saying 'look, we now have a new incredibly nice leader, full of eanum qual- ities; sorry about the last one getting on your nerves.' The voters would correctly interpret this as a sort of awkward apology for the last seven years. Why on earth should they vote for a party which had, by the violent unseating of its most dominat- ing leader in modern times, in effect admitted that it was wrong about the most important things? If the voters want mild- ness, they have two other unbelievably mild parties to choose from. For the soft ground is appallingly over-crowded and as muddy as a point-to-point car park in a wet March. Late arrivals cannot expect their tyres to grip. A change of leader — or an attempt to minimise Mrs Thatcher's dominance --- would also signal an ostentatious slacken- ing of tension in British political life. The governing party would be announcing that Britain's situation was no longer desperate or even very dangerous and that serious reform was no longer imperative. A hung parliament would not only be likely in such circumstances, it would be the appropriate result. And the subsequent coalition gov" ernment would find it extremely difficult to move the country in any direction at all Immobilists in all parties might welcome prospect. I find it a dismal one. I also find it unlikely. On the contrary, eve thing seems to me to be tending towards the usual robust contest between Con- servative and Labour taking place smile time next year, with Mrs Thatcher and Mr, Kinnock each having a sporting chance of an overall majority. It also seems likely that raucousness will not be wholly absent. It was not, if you recall, Mrs Thatcher or, Mr Tebbit who accused their opponents of spilling other people's guts. arid Mrs Thatcher won't go, can go t. shouldn't go. A judgment has to be detj,- vered, at full term, on whether the Britts'e electorate prefers the hard ground or thhe soft ground. It is not only right that her should be there to clarify the choice; he!, presence offers the Conservatives their best and perhaps only hope of victory.
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