POLITICS

The chances of survival in white-collar jobs are becoming almost as bad as those at Aspinall's zoo

BORIS JOHNSON

Balkash rose on his hind legs and put his front paws on Trevor's shoulders. Trevor buckled under the weight, shouted, and the rest is natural history. One hesi- tates to appropriate the tragedy of the 32- year-old former postman to make a point about politics. But is it stretching things to see, in the accident at Howletts Zoo, a metaphor for a problem facing the Govern- ment, and indeed the entire British man- agerial class?

Sudden and unexpected, the tiger's betrayal is like the stunning reversals of for- tune that can overtake all of us these days, in all walks of life, from zoo keepers to the cleverest and nicest heads of prime ministe- rial policy units. Poor Sarah Hogg, who was presumably rounded on, after four years in Downing street, by the inoffensive creature she had fed and patted.

Mr Major, too, may yet have his own peripeteia. Perhaps his chances of losing in a leadership challenge from Norman Lam- ont are remote; if not quite as remote as your chances of winning the National Lot- tery, then in the same neighbourhood of probability. And yet, without wishing to belabour this tiger metaphor, the Tory Right is always there, its hot meaty breath playing on his neck.

Trevor Smith, Sarah Hogg, John Major; all three exemplify, in their varying ways the latter-day phenomenon which will inform the struggle between Tories and Labour. They call it job insecurity, or just Insecurity. If there is one reason why voters claim to be deserting in such droves to Tony Blair, quite apart from the general disdain for the Government, it is that the old Tory interest groups feel chronically unsettled about their careers.

There are few jobs in which the penalty for error is to be eaten by a 500lb Siberian tiger. But the statistical chances of survival, in what were once cushy white-collar bil- lets, are becoming almost as bad as those of the keepers in Aspinall's zoos. About 100,000 jobs have gone in local government since 1990, and legions in all the other pri- vatised industries. What really hurts the Tories, though, is where this is happening — in places like Newbury; and the way middle managers, and senior managers, in short, the most surprising people, are get- ting the bullet.

In Whitehall, say insiders, a turning-point was reached with the axing, in July last year, of the top Cabinet Office wallah Peter Kemp. This week we learned that the Gov- ernment is going further, with a new con- tract which enables ministers and senior civil servants to 'hire and fire at will'. One may take with a pinch of salt the suggestion that 33 of the top 91 Treasury mandarins are poised to spend more time with their families. But at least some of them are.

Tens of thousands of workers have been laid off by the main high street banks. Every office in the City, even in journalism, is now a kind of Sarajevo in fear of the sniper in the hills. In some newsrooms they now have a practice called 'hot-desldrig', a kind of musical chairs, by which if you fail to get in early enough for work, you will find some acned scribbler at your terminal and refusing to budge. Look at Goldman Sachs, who this week admitted that they `overbuilt a bit' in Europe, undergoing across-the-board job cuts of about 5 per cent.

These upheavals in the salariat, in Britain and America, are, so far, having a reason- ably devastating effect on the government in power. The Americans are enjoying a convincing economic recovery, and yet Insecurity, partly in the form of stagnant wages, was one of the prime reasons why Mr Clinton received such a thrashing in the congressional elections.

In Britain, similarly, growth is at 3.8 per cent, unemployment is falling and inflation is low. Yet the feelgood factor is so resoundingly absent that Mr Major is trail- ing by anything up to 30 per cent in the polls. Tories and Labour have an essential- ly similar approach to the problem. All this talk of 'community' and warm beer is an attempt to recreate the sense of together- ness that they imagine was part of the 1950s, to protect people from the cruel, atomistic operation of the market.

No one, though, seems to have asked whether Insecurity is such a bad thing, at least in economic terms. If you ask the top mandarins' union, the First Division Asso- ciation of civil servants, who are bracing themselves for cuts of 50,000 more jobs from Whitehall's 530,000 functionaries, they will naturally tell you that the atmo- sphere is disastrous for performance and morale. Insecurity blights confidence, espe- cially in the housing market, they say. 'You don't get the best out of people if they are worried and anxious,' is the view of Lyn Bryan of Unison, the public sector union. `People don't need a sword of Damocles dangling over them.'

Now that, it seems to me, is the crucial proposition. It is not at all clear that it is true. One might retort that if we have learned anything about the British middle classes in the last 40 years, it is that they need absolutely no encouragement to lean on their oars. The public sector still employs 28 per cent of the workforce and public spending takes up 43.75 per cent of GDP. Is there really no more pruning to be done? There must be some economists who would agree with me that what the British white-collar workforce really needs, in reg- ular cycles, is not security, but a couple of firm slaps in the face and a swift kick in the pants.

What we should all be hoping, surely, is that as the economy recovers, it will not mark a return of 'security'. Insecurity means that people feel unable to take out irresponsibly large mortgages. It is a vital factor in the new, low-inflation economy. It is, at last, shaking out the public sector and services in the way manufacturing was shaken out in the 1980s. Insecurity means dynamism. Insecurity is good.

All this is naturally postulated in the con- fident assumption that politicians of all par- ties will ignore it, and every effort will con- tinue to be made to cushion the middle class. This month's budget will barely scratch at their universal benefits. That is a regrettable fact: though as one in perma- nent danger of being hot-desked, one views it with mixed feelings.

Boris Johnson is assistant editor at the Daily Telegraph.