POLITICS
The Tories get the smell of victory, and a slight whiff of moral defeat
SIMON HEFFER
If you consult one of those charming Reader's Digest style home doctor encyclo- pedias, without which no hypochondriac's library is complete, you will find a main symptom of manic depression (and various related psycho-sexual maladies) described as 'extreme swings of mood', or some other such euphemism. This may explain why, at Westminster earlier this week, almost every Conservative MP one encountered was positively elated about the imminent victo- ry of his party at the General Election. Yet, as Mr Matthew Parris wrote on this page three weeks ago, these same MPs spent their Christmas holidays drowning in inspissated gloom at the prospect of their impending confrontation with the hard- ships facing Britain's unemployed.
What has brought about this change? The Conservative party has, for once, attacked pre-emptively, and on a subject where its opponents are genuinely and embarrassingly confused and weak — per- sonal taxation. The trusty naked self-inter- est of the British public, upon which the Tories have relied so productively at the last three elections, is again paying off. No matter that this spectre of impoverishment- by-socialism must be sustained for another 10 or 14 weeks; the seed is sown. But what has really put the monkey gland straight into the arteries of the used-car salesmen on the Tory backbenches is the run of three (Who would have believed it? Three!' as one almost incontinent enthusiast put it to me the other day) opinion polls showing their party ahead. One finds the happiness of the Tories at this time so touching in its simplicity that one forbears from pointing out that, within the next ten days, three polls could all show Labour in front. The turn-round in morale, going, as one minis- ter observed, from despair to complacency' without pausing at equanimity en route, is a little like assuming marriage after being invited in for an unmetaphorical cup of cof- fee on the first date.
The consensus view, assiduously encour- aged by party managers, is that the Govern- ment is heading for a majority of '20 to 30'. This number is felt to be tasteful, showing as it does a proper humility (the present majority is 88) without lapsing into defeatism. If, to use Dr Gallup's famous (and fatuous) formula, there were an elec- tion tomorrow, the Tories probably would win, but (whatever the great minds of the back benches think) so precariously as to leave them two or three by-elections away from peril. So the matter of winning the war looks as much under control as it is ever likely to be. One knows less, though, of what use the Tory party intends to make of its victory.
'We'll worry about that when we've won', says a normally intelligent under-secretary. That, indeed, does appear to be the strate- gy. For years Labour has made ground by keeping quiet about its own policies, and using all its energies to assault the Govern- ment's. Now, just as the Tories have stolen some of Labour's policies (notably the fetish of the public services), so are they stealing its tactics. To judge from the tax offensive, it was right to do so; and when one remembers how few new policies there are to advertise instead, it looks righter still.
When the party last year published its Campaign Guide (the biblical text that uses extensive quotations from Ministerial poli- cy pronouncements to show candidates how best to play the required confidence trick on the electorate) it was conspicuous for its Sovietical omission, on all but a few, rare instances, of the words 'Mrs Thatcher'. This has led pessimists to imagine that the forthcoming manifesto, being crafted in 10 Downing Street by Mrs Douglas Hogg in between her painstaking research of the Prime Minister's eight records for Desert Island Discs, will be cleansed of ideology using the carbolic soap of pragmatism. In fact, the manifesto promises to be rather boring because, in certain areas, it will say the same as before. Low taxes; stable prices; privatisation; all this and more will be trooped out again, though there will be conspicuous changes from last time such as the poll tax, about which we know already.
Indeed, we know most of the manifesto already, because the length of the pre-cam- paign (as the jargonists have termed the time in which we now live) has forced such ideas as there are out of their burrows. It is difficult to engage a Minister of the Crown in conversation for more than ten minutes without hearing him lament how his own great departmental idea for the Fourth Term has already been snatched from him and paraded promiscuously in a White or Green Paper. There may be one or two 'surprises' — apparently Mr Heseltine has some environmental stunts up his sleeve,
and the law and order question is set to be addressed more firmly than for some time — but otherwise the manifesto will give us a compendium of the small ideas of the last year. No-one has been honest enough to say it in public, but if you think you can win simply by bashing Labour, there is no point gratuitously offering hostages to fortune.
Last Monday, though, Mr Major relaunched the Citizen's Charter, that mishmash of cosy Pooterism that sounds sufficiently active to convince the public something is being done, but is in reality insufficiently tough to rattle any important cages. The lack of enthusiasm among min- isters for chartermongery is now the stuff of legend. Those MPs and officials of the party who look fondly on the old days view it as a gravely inadequate wheeze. Worse, it points to what will really happen in the fourth term. Whoever wins will be commit- ted to something called 'better public ser- vices'. But whoever wins will also find there is simply not enough cash in the till to pay for them.
Here, perhaps, a difference between the two main parties emerges. Labour would tax more highly to pay for those services. The Tories will go into the campaign prop- er, though, after a Budget that is likely to have been a statement of intent about the low-tax economy Britain must pursue. It is likely that, if the Tories win, consumer con- fidence, the stock and housing markets and manufacturing industry will revive on the back of that victoiy. That might just pro- duce more revenues to pay for those better services. But in reality the Government's first priority after a victory in April or May would be to tame public spending, which is widely agreed to be out of control.
But even here there is defeatism. 'We can't hope to cut it,' says one of the party's hired intellects, 'we can only hope to stop it rising so quickly as a proportion of GDP.' It is now 42 per cent of GDP, and set to rise by 4 per cent a year in real terms until 1995. Until the Citizen's Charter includes a taxpayer's charter, to protect individuals and businesses from the levels of expropria- tion needed to run a public sector of this size, it will be meaningless. The provision of incentive for growth will be replaced by the provision of welfare for stagnation. But we are all pragmatists now, and therefore such fiscal rectitude is one wheeze you will not find hiding in the manifesto.
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