POLITICS

There is only one thing wrong with the Tory Right; they are disgusting

MATTHEW PARRIS

In politics as in Gadara, there is a powerful case for getting demons out of your system. The Conservative Party is inhabited by demons and it might be for the best if we released them.

So I am beginning to think it a pity Mr John Redwood did not win the Party's lead- ership contest earlier this year, and get the chance to run with his version of Conservatism over the electoral cliff. For those of us who believe that the Tories would be crazy to cut loose from the Cen- tre in British politics, there is an argument for urging them to give it a go: get their wagon rolling now, and don't spare the horses. It would roll right off the road but it might stop them telling us they know how to drive.

I have a dream — and it is neither incredible nor displeasing, — in which the so-called 'lurch to the Right' gathers momentum. Aboard the hijacked bandwag- on John Major is taken hostage. The Right provokes a series of blazing and self- destructive rows in Europe, butchers its way into a bloody mess on state spending and, with Mr John Townend on the eco- nomic trumpet, Lady Olga Maitland on the moral megaphone, Sir Teddy Taylor loud- speakering European mayhem and the Daily Mail shouting Yahoo!, careers towards one of the more notable electoral road accidents in Tory history.

Then we should be rid of them. We would have exorcised the demons. We would have given them their head, and let the voters remove it.

We would be spared Mr Michael Portillo's memories of a saviour spurned; Sir George Gardiner's bitter reminiscences of a prophet scorned. We would be spared the 'if only you had listened to us' columns on the morning after the election. Even now, I sense early drafts forming in the air above Mr Simon Heffer's typewriter.

The Tory Right are full of self-belief. They are the only faction in modern British politics who are still thinking originally. It's fun to be on the Tory Right. Their ranks include many of the best columnists and some of the better political minds of the age. Their arguments are powerful and sometimes fair. Their salons are lively, their conversation sharp, their company con- vivial and their dinner parties a hoot.

There is only one thing wrong with these people. They disgust the British electorate. Nobody will vote for them. I doubt whether they realise this. They should. If only we could let them put up and hear for them- selves the voters telling them to shut up!

But we will not. It is only a dream, a Gadarene fantasy, and I awake to the sounds of another row over the Queen's speech on the Today programme. The row provides in vignette a model for the tenor and content of the Parliamentary Session ahead.

It will be rancorous, personal, partisan and empty. On questions of substance both sides are walking on eggs; the Tories bruised, aching and fearful: Labour terrified lest even now — their party manages to blow it.

The prospect is depressing. I know the columnists will congratulate everyone for boxing clever, and offer commentary on the skill with which Dr Brian Mawhinney and his fixers try to 'smoke out' Labour with ephemera too nasty for even Mr Tony Blair to cheer, but still I question the strategy. How impressed are the voters by this sort of thing? Boxing clever isn't going to save the Conservative Party now. Is there no way the Tories can punch a hole right out of the crumpled old paper bag wherein the politicians scratch and spit, and breathe fresh air?

There is. But here is where we come up against a problem concerning Mr Major which I am still struggling to define. Let me try putting it this way. I think he's lonely.

I don't mean personally lonely. There's Norma of course, and, besides, Mr Major is friendlier and has better friends than most leaders. And I don't quite mean politically lonely, either. A good faction of the rank and file support him, and his standing with- in the Cabinet must be more secure than it has been for some time. Mr Major has the allies he needs to protect his position at every level.

No, the Prime Minister is philosophically lonely, and has been from the start. There is, or was, what (in the jargon) we might call a Majorite Project. It's actually rather distinct, easily identifiable and — if ever it had been properly identified, branded and marketed — potentially very pleasing to the British electorate. It was trailed at the outset by a phrase Mr Major really meant, and which meant something to him, 'a nation at ease with itself. The Project is glimpsed fleetingly through the fog in measures like the open- ing up of the honours system, the demystifi- cation of the secret services and the de-stig- matising of the polytechnics. It is glimpsed in the Citizen's Charter, the increased access to universities and the free Com- mons vote on the age of homosexual con- sent. It was glimpsed clearly in Major's ini- tial stance on Nolan — and then the fog closed in again. The vocabulary employed in the Project's service includes words like decency, openness, civility and tolerance. Glasnost and perestroika would serve, too. Apologia for class, for snobbishness, for privilege, for secrecy and for the Establish- ment are absent from the Project. Most important, it is glimpsed in the person of Mr Major himself, and in the knowledge we have of his own family and background.

If I were a Public Relations boffin, I would tell you this can be marketed. If I were a politician, I would tell you it can be stamped coherently into policy. If I were a psephologist I would tell you there are votes in it. But as I am none of these things, I will simply tell you I think it is right and needed for Britain.

The Prime Minister has needed someone to tell him this, someone at his right hand, someone he respects and trusts, someone in the thick of Cabinet Politics with him. He has needed , if you like, a philosophical soul-mate with political punch. He has also needed an articulator, someone to explain, and keep explaining, how and why the ele- ments of the Project tie together. His need has been the more intense because he is not a Tory and the Project is not a Tory project. This does not matter. God help the Tory party if the Tories ever get control of it; they are regularly rescued by outsiders and the same could have been said of Disraeli or of Macmillan: but Mr Major lacks Disraeli's cheerful cynicism or Macmillan's bravado and philosophically alone he has seemed to falter, to lose coherence.

This is not a bid for the job. It must be a person of real weight, and an insider. If only the Hon. William Waldegrave had not been dogged by accident of birth: if onlY Chris Patten had not been in Hong Kong: if only.. .

Ah well, just a dream.

Matthew Parris writes for the Times