AND ANOTHER THING
A New Year curse on John Major and all his mendacious administration
PAUL JOHNSON
The coming year will witness the end, I predict and hope, of the Major Govern- ment, the most disreputable of my lifetime. To some extent its awfulness simply reflects changes for the worse in our society, and so within Conservatism, our only national party. I had a good laugh with Lady Trump- ington, an old-fashioned Tory dame, when both of us heard the Chancellor, in a lunch- time speech, say that as a young man he had hesitated between becoming a saxo- phonist, aspiring to be a football manager, or merely going into politics. There, we chortled, were the values of modern Con- servatism. But John Major, who seems to stand for no principle, belief or ideal of any description, has given his own twist to this downward spiral. Having failed in his mis- guided attempt to keep the gruesome David Mellor in his Cabinet, he has got away with retaining the services of one of his transport ministers, a former used-car salesman, discovered juggling with the affections of no less than five mistresses. There, it seems to many, is the archetypical member of the Major Government.
For government is not just about admin- istration and efficiency, raising revenue and spending it, reforming and improving; it is about morals too, or else it is little better than an organised conspiracy to share the spoils of power. When I pointed out that there were only four gentlemen in Major's Government (it is now down to three, and one is a wimp so scarcely counts), I was making a moral not a social observation. To be a gentleman has nothing to do with birth; it is about conduct. The greatest gen- tleman I ever knew was our old gardener at Iver: he had served as a soldier and been a bookie, but he possessed that measured sensitivity for the feelings of others, and that instinctive knack of respecting them, which marks the true gentleman.
The other salient characteristic of a gen- tleman is a strict regard for truth, and he is most on trial when these two virtues come into conflict, as they often do: but truth must, in some sense, prevail, and the gen- tleman bravely winces as he tells it. The Prime Minister and his Irish Secretary have recently been caught out telling whoppers about negotiating with the IRA. Instead of putting it to the nation frankly, 'It is repug- nant to deal with murderers but it may be in the public interest' — something we would have understood — the two men engaged in systematic and deliberate
deception. The excuses advanced on their behalf will not bear the most cursory inspection. The public prefers to turn a blind eye, because it wants peace at almost any cost. But it has registered the point that this Government habitually lied, confirm- ing many earlier impressions. A recent Observer/ICM poll records the alarming finding that no less than 77 per cent of the sample reject the assertion: 'Generally, the present Government tells the truth about things.' Politicians score only slightly higher than car salesmen as people to be trusted. I doubt if ministers of the crown, in particu- lar, have ever been held by the British peo- ple in lower esteem: they are seen as shifty cynics, steeped in mendacity, their fingers itching towards the till. And enough has occurred under Major to give colour to this impression.
Do not believe those who, ignorant of history, tell you that governments have always lied. Quite the contrary: British gov- ernments have traditionally set enormous store by their record for telling the truth in all circumstances. Sir Anthony Eden felt he was obliged to mislead over his 'collusion' with Israel in 1956. He did not exactly tell a lie but he presented the facts in such a way as to deceive. The 'act and the knowledge of it were agony to him; it scorched his mind to the end of his days. Throughout the 19th and for most of the 20th century, the repu- tation of British statesmen for veracity was their greatest strength. The Duke of Wellington, himself a stickler for truth, said of Sir Robert Peel — a colleague he did not particularly like — 'In the whole course of his life Sir Robert never said a word that he did not believe to be strictly true.' The same could be said of literally dozens of leading ministers since those days. I once asked Lord Attlee, in the light of the Suez collusion, if he had ever felt obliged to engage in deliberate deception. 'Certainly not,' he snapped, adding, 'Even in wartime.' He was offended by my question. The idea horrified him.
It is surely significant that the most respected and loved of our national moral mentors, Dr Johnson, placed particular emphasis on truth and accuracy. He was obsessed by them. He felt, as Boswell records, that, 'the importance of strict and scrupulous veracity cannot be too often inculcated. Johnson was known to be so rigidly attentive to it that even in his com- mon conversation the slightest circum- stance was mentioned with exact precision. The knowledge of his having such a princi- ple and habit made his friends have a per- fect reliance on the truth of everything that he told, however it might have been doubt- ed if told by many others.' Johnson said to Mrs Thrale: 'Accustom your children con- stantly to this: if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.' Mrs Thrale protested: 'Little variations in narra- tive must happen a thousand times a day, if one is not perpetually watching.' Johnson: 'Well, Madam, and you ought to be perpet- ually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.'
I have often thought that this last exchange ought to be set in large print and hung in every newspaper office and televi- sion studio in the world. But what, I won- der, would Dr Johnson have said of our present ministers, who are not only careless about the truth but also, when it suits them, lie with full intent, again and again? He would have condemned them root and branch, and made it plain that no one who valued his or her reputation for honesty could have anything to do with them. This is a government born in treachery, surviv- ing by subterfuge, double-dealing and fraud, Janus-faced and brazen, slippery and underhand, a dismaying blend of incompe- tence and low cunning, doomed to end in shame and recrimination. I wish it the worst possible ill-fortune in 1994 and trust that, come the summer, we shall have seen the back of it.
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