POLITICS
With friends like his, perhaps Mr Major should pay some heed to his enemies
SIMON HEFFER
he next great political event threatens to be the reconstruction of the Government following the resignation of Mr Lamont, the Chancellor. Mr Lamont has not, of course, resigned yet. Like Mr David Mellor before him, he has no intention of doing so. As with Mr Mellor, too, Prime Ministerial support is strong. However, recent events suggest, to coin one of Mr Lamont's phras- es, that the game is up. His poor speech to the Party Conference was not one of a man resolute to carry on; rather, it was one of a man whose main concern is to salvage a posthumous reputation. His performance before the Treasury Select Committee last Monday was petulant and unconvincing. If there is an economic policy at the moment, no one appears to have told Mr Lamont.
But worse for him was the emergence of the favourite to succeed him, Mr John MacGregor (another good, solid, Scottish banker), to field half-an-hour of difficult questions on television last Sunday. It is not usual for the Secretary of State for Trans- port to have to defend Government eco- nomic management. The conclusion about why Mr MacGregor, rather than an eco- nomic minister or the holder of a great office of State, was put up to explain what is happening is obvious.
The press, rather than ministers, is being blamed for most of the Government's diffi- culties. Mr Lamont threw the toys out of his pram at the Select Committee hearing, when his attention was drawn to an article in the Financial Times suggesting he had ordered officials to 'cook the books' before the last election, to make matters look bet- ter than they were. Mr Max Hastings, edi- tor of the Daily Telegraph, was despised and rejected of men at Brighton last week because of his calls for Mr Lamont to behave like an officer and a gentlemen. As one rebel Tory MP said to me, 'the Government fear the press because they are too vain and thin-skinned to stop read- ing it, and because they know there is much worse to come'. Worse? 'ERM re- entry, Maastricht, the council tax, the com- munity care scheme, job losses, transport failures ... ' In an attempt to discount this, Mr Bruce. Anderson, propagandist-in-chief to the Pnme Minister, disquisited in last Monday's Guardian about the beastly way the press treats Mr Major. This column, among others, was attacked for its knack of finding 'the right anonymous quote to rein-
force the point' whenever it seeks to show all is not well. Only Mr Anderson could believe that no backbencher, no minister is prepared to talk on Lobby terms about what a mess the Government is in. In a richly comic article published the Sunday after White Wednesday, he wrote the fol- lowing in support of his heroes:
On Wednesday, even while the storm was at its height, one very promising Treasury offi- cial came out with the best assessment of its long-term consequences. 'This will turn out to be the day on which the Government won the next election.'
Good old Bruce. He is a fellow with consid- erable journalistic gifts — above all the knack of finding exactly the right anony- mous quote to reinforce the point he is try- ing to make.
The ERM will be the gravest matter fac- ing the Prime Minister in the months ahead. As one (anonymous, naturally) min- ister said, 'A battle is going on in his cabi- net about re-entry. Howard, Lilley, Portillo and Shephard don't want it. God knows where Lamont stands. Clarke, Heseltine, Hurd, Hunt and Gummer are all for it, and they've got Major's ear.' For Messrs Clarke and Heseltine this battle is a possible pre- lude to their leadership campaigns, if things go badly wrong for Mr Major. They have become the two most influential ministers in the Government, and Mr Clarke is the Government's most formidable politician. Mr Major might be lucky to have them on his side, but that is not a conclusion to which one should come too quickly.
In his celebrated piece on the devalua- tion, Mr Anderson, speaking with the inti- mate knowledge usually only a wife or a valet can possess, claimed that 'even though John Major and Norman Lamont regularly reaffirmed their support for the ERM, they shared many of the sceptics' anxieties — which is one reason why they are in such good heart this weekend.' Ignoring the implication that we should not believe a word the Prime Minister or the Chancellor says (a view the markets have since cottoned on to), this seems to suggest Mr Major is in no hurry to go back. The challenge facing him will be to resist the strong men of his Cabinet who are telling him to do just that, and to resist them, in all probability, with a new Chancellor.
Mr Major does not appear to see Mr Clarke and Mr Heseltine as a potential
threat to his position; and indeed, directly, they are not. They are simply circling, wait- ing for Mr Major to become a corpse for them to feed off. If their counsel prevails, and Mr Major ignores what his friends — like Mr Anderson — tell us are his instincts of keeping out of the ERM, then even this somewhat unprincipled Cabinet will be per- ilously split. As it stands, the Cabinet is unrepresentative not just of the politics of the party in the country, but of the parlia- mentary Conservative party. It was ever thus: Mrs Thatcher's downfall can be attributed partly to her failure to have enough natural supporters around the Cab- inet table (and do not forget, also, that the only minister with the guts to say he would resign if she stayed on was Mr Clarke). 'Major's a whip,' says one of his col- leagues. 'He finds it less easy to hold views than some of us do.' That is why he is fair game for clever men like Mr Clarke, and driven men like Mr Heseltine, who can use their immense skills and intellectual cer- tainties to push him along. His own advis- ers, discredited after the ERM debacle, are in no position to shore him up. One by one, his natural cronies are being picked off. When he has to reconstruct the Govern- ment after Mr Lamont leaves, he will have an opportunity to provide himself with more colleagues who could help him chal- lenge the orthodoxies that the powerful voices around him are articulating. If Mr Peter Brooke's return from the grave to be Heritage Secretary is anything to go by, Mr Major will not be that brave.. Mr Peter Lilley, and not Mr MacGregor, Is the man intellectually best equipped to be Chancellor; but he will not get the job for fear of upsetting the 'balance'. The two most talented ministers outside the cabinet are Mr John Redwood, who is a right- winger, and Mr Stephen Done11, a protege of Mr Peter Walker. The word is that they will come in together, rather than disturb the 'balance'. If there is a single vacaneY, Sir Norman Fowler may well be sent for. So polarised is opinion on the ERM, and so urgent is the problem of whether or not we go back, that it is hard to see how Mr Major can avoid a confrontation on the. issue. He would do well to find himself some more allies to support his instincts: His current friends, urging him to repel! the mistakes of the last two years, may 0tIr. erwise kill him with their kindness.
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