POLITICS
The doctor and the colonel still wait for Mr Heseltine's apotheosis
SIMON HEFFER
More than a fortnight ago, just before the local government elections, one or two members of Parliament covered by the generic term, 'friends of Mr Michael Heseltine', were touring the Palace of Westminster offering hope to those col- leagues depressed by the thrashing the Conservative Party was about to receive. They promised that, as the most significant contribution to the electoral post-mortem, Mr Heseltine would reveal to a grateful party his solution to that most intractable political problem, the community charge.
Now it would be wrong, and possibly wicked, to speculate on how Mr Heseltine felt in his heart when he learned that only one local government flagship had been sunk, and that the loss of seats was only half what accredited pessimists expected. The fact is that within a week of the elections his campaign — undeclared, of course — for the party leadership had been virtually halted, almost entirely as a result of his own over-reaching. Mr Heseltine had banked on defeat for his party in those elections to sustain his movement towards Downing Street. Having persistently claimed he would not oppose Mrs Thatch- er, the publicity that accompanied his community charge article in the Times gave the impression he was doing just that. The Conservative Party, in a rare periodic fit of morality, decided he had gone too far.
Mr Heseltine too knew the risk he had taken had turned his potential followers against him. Mr John Prescott may feel pleased with himself for driving Mr Hesel- tine, on television on the day his article was published, to promise he would not oppose Mrs Thatcher. In fact Mr Heseltine knew that the better than expected results in the local elections, and the lukewarm recep- tion his community charge ideas had re- ceived even among his supporters, meant there was no hope of progress for him in the short term. Indeed, the prognosis may be worse even than that. Who would say with certainty that historians, one day, will not mark this as the time when Mr Hesel- tine's chances of leading his party receded for good?
The chances of recovery for Mr Hesel- tine are not helped by the fragility of his campaigning operation, a fragility his per- sonal energy and financial investments have successfully concealed from wider political perceptions. In the four years since he walked out of the Cabinet Mr
Heseltine has been attended, as is well known, by his former parliamentary pri- vate secretary Dr Keith Hampson (`his batman', as one backbencher described him) and Colonel Michael Mates Ms adjutant'). They are charming, loyal, hon- ourable, but not very impressive men. Various ex-ministers, some of whom work- ed with Mr Heseltine in the heady days when he was Minister for Merseyside, are still believed to be supporters, like Sir Neil MacFarlane, Sir Barney Hayhoe and Sir George Young. On Europe, Mr Heseltine has been advised by Mr Christopher Tugendhat, the former EEC commission- er; and as his chef de cabinet he has had the former Times and ITN political correspon- dent Mr Julian Haviland — who, with Dr Hampson, is believed to have been the architect of the community charge article. Mr Heseltine is not famous for his facility with the written word.
Those men, some on a very casual basis, have been in charge of the campaign. In four years Mr Heseltine has not attracted the wider parliamentary support necessary for a serious challenge. He has instead relied on his opponent to make her mis- takes. Once she stops making them, or at least stops making so many, he has no base upon which to fall back. His campaign was lifted last winter by the flirtation with him, in despair, by a small but significant number of Conservative backbenchers. They were, however, attracted to Mr Heseltine not out of principle but out of spinelessness. That same spinelessness call it self-interest — has now worked against him. Easily convinced by the bur- den of opinion that perhaps Mrs Thatcher will succeed after all, just as they were easily convinced by the burden of opinion three months ago that she would be their downfall, the ex-apostates are now giving Mr Heseltine the wide berth.
There is a lack of support for Mr Heseltine where he needs it most, among senior ministers. Indeed, so frustrated have many of them become as a result of his behaviour, and by the difficulties he has caused them both in their constituencies and in the discharge of their portfolios, that they now feel more hostile towards him than ever.
Worse, as a man who knows the value of having opinion-formers on his side, Mr Heseltine now sees he has been deserted by parts of the media thought to be
sympathetic to him. The Daily Mail ridi- culed his community charge plans as pre- senting a saving of 25p a week; last Friday the Independent, which broadly invented Mr Heseltine as a serious opponent to Mrs Thatcher, seized on the confession wrung from him by Mr Prescott, and buried him face down in a lead-lined coffin under yards of cement.
Even if his campaign had not suffered this collapse, there was doubt about what the next step would be. Mr Heseltine should float into the party conference on a cloud of glory. His camp was apparently divided about when this cloud should be manufactured; whether a knock-out blow should be delivered before the summer holidays in the form of further extracts from the Heseltine manifesto; or whether this should be delayed until the conference itself, in the hope that the intervening months would bring still more grief to Mrs Thatcher. Both schemes had the same ending: such support would he attract that the Chief Whip, Mr Renton, and the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, Mr Cranley Onslow, would have no choke but to advise Mrs Thatcher to go, giving Mr Heseltine a free run. Dr Hampson is said to have favoured the first option; Colonel Mates, as a military strategist, favoured delay. Now such matters are academic.
By the time Mr Heseltine can have a free run it may well be 1993; the Conservative Government may well be in the mid-term difficulties of its fourth parliament; he himself will be 60 and seven or eight years out of the Cabinet. Mr Chris Patten and Mr John Major will be 50 and still in the Cabinet. It does not look promising.
Mrs Thatcher has a strategic advantage over the Leader of her Internal Opposi- tion. He might, if interest rates rise by 2 per cent, stage a revival. Mrs Thatcher should be prepared for such an exigency. Within weeks Lord Young is likely to resign as Deputy Chairman of the Con- servative Party, to pursue a career In business. Mr Heseltine protests a desire to serve the party and help it win the next election. Mrs Thatcher should offer him Lord Young's job. It would be a signal honour for an ordinary backbencher. And, as Gibbon said, those who refuse the sword must renounce the sceptre.
Simon Heifer writes for the Daily Tele- graph. Noel Malcolm is abroad.
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