FORGIVABLE HALITOSIS OF INTIMATE CONSPIRACY

Boris Johnson plunges into the steaming

ferment of the Parliamentary Conservative Party and smells, among other things, a change of direction

IN A SOFTLY lit corridor leading into the Members' lobby in the Commons the battle is being fought for the identity of the Con- servative Party.

oft is being fought over there inside the stone lobby, too, — there where Teresa Gorman can be glimpsed through the bars of the buffed oak door, standing like a sug- ared almond in conversation with Nick Budgen. And the battle is being fought everywhere down the miles of worn green lozenge-patterned carpets, and in the bars and terraces where MPs catch each others' trailing arms and elbows, and bend their heads together in the whorled Pugin alcoves, in the forgivable halitosis of inti- mate conspiracy.

Nowhere, though, is the problem stated more clearly than now, by the tall book- shelves full of parliamentary reports, as two Tory MPs think ahead to the future of their party, their nation and, above all, their £32,000 a year seats; and how best to serve all three interests in the coming choice between Mr Major and Mr Redwood next Tuesday.

It is a conversation between a polka-dot tie and a stripy shirt. Both are Fresh Starters, veterans of the assault on John Major over Europe two weeks ago. Both are on the Right. Both want to stop Michael Heseltine from becoming Prime Minister on the second or third ballot. It is just that they have arrived at opposite con- clusions about how to achieve their ends.

The polka-dot tie has a northern seat with a majority that could be comfortably accommodated in a jumbo jet. If half the Hezza propaganda is true, about the 'Presi- dent's' ability to save marginal seats by force of golden-maned charisma, then this is the kind of MP who should be a natural apostle. The trouble is, somehow, that he doesn't much care for Hezza, and not just because of his views on Europe. He thinks Heseltine is on an 'ego trip', and indeed he has not exchanged a word with the man since Heseltine last attempted to secure his vote at the last leadership contest in 1990.

So, with reluctance, Polka Dot is going to vote for John Major. And, he assures Stripy Shirt, he knows several others of his Euro- sceptic mates who are going to do the same, and for the same reason, that they wish to stop Heseltine. 'I know them well enough to know they are not bullshitting me,' he says defiantly, and Stripy Shirt cackles.

Now this logic presents a delicate prob- lem for Stripy Shirt, who has already declared for John Redwood. He has rea- soned, like perhaps 90 per cent of people at Westminster, that the Prime Minister is done for. Oh yes: Mr Major may well be ahead of Mr Redwood on the first ballot, and a second ballot may not technically be necessary. But if Mr Major suffers com- bined abstentions and votes against him running into three figures, certain Cabinet ministers will threaten to walk out of the Cabinet, he has been assured. The suits will come for Major; and if, per impossibile, they do not finish him off now, they will get him in November, when the rules, incredi- bly, would appear to allow for another leadership election.

In order to be sure of all this now, though, Stripy Shirt has to convince men like Polka Dot that the Right — whether in the form of Redwood or Portillo — has the numbers to defeat Hezza on the second ballot. He has to persuade Polka Dot that if he abstains or votes against John Major he will be part of a growing trend, and that the Redwood bandwagon is starting to roll. `Of course they're bullshitting you,' he says, as if exasperated.

Why, says Stripy Shirt, he knows these chaps who claim to be backing Major. He's just had tea with them. He never met a more convincing crew of right-wing Red- wood-backers. And for a second or two the man with the polka-dot tie pauses. He con- siders. He visibly tries to work out the great question that all MPs are asking themselves just now, as they look into the flickering polygraphs of each others' eyeballs. Polka Dot knows the Portilloites are lying low. He knows the Heseltinies are lying in wait. He knows that everyone is lying.

There is the secretive 'Mussolini' faction of Eurosceptics for Heseltine. They are going to push Redwood on the first ballot; and having ditched Major, they will covert- ly militate for Heseltine. Never mind his views on the single currency. They secretly like Heseltine's semi-fascist approach, as though he might at any moment order the construction of the Milan Railway station or the Campidoglio in the wastes of Liver- pool. Then there is the mystery over the exact intention of the Portillo backers, out- flanked and stranded by Redwood's panz- ers; whether they will vote for Redwood, their ideological soulmate, or whether they will abstain in the hope of damaging Major while nonetheless slowing the Vulcan's advance.

Mainly there is the calculation on which perhaps the whole election rests: just how confident are the 60 or so Heseltinies that they can achieve the opposite of what both Polka Dot and Stripy Shirt want — that is, elect Heseltine — while joining them in ditching Mr Major on the first ballot. The 329 Tories are each and every one like a man trying to steer a tractor and trailer backwards round a corner, working out which motion of the steering wheel will produce the result he wants.

Perhaps some of these thoughts coursed behind Polka Dot's furrowed brow, as he considered whether it was safe to vote for Redwood. But when the amiable and straightforward right-winger next spoke, one felt, at last, that the Tory leadership contest of 1995 was not as vacuous and cynical as Tony Blair would like to pretend. 'So', he said slowly, as though considering the question for the first time, 'your pre- ferred outcome is a victory for Redwood or Portillo?'

Yes, beneath the lies and the evasion, the Tory party has now to make up its mind what it thinks. It is true that when the con- test was triggered by John Major last Thursday, the issue was not really 'Europe', or the Left-Right split. It was the widespread perception that Mr Major was weak, and unable to shake off his critics. In succeeding days, though, the ideological issues have been unavoidable; and they must form at least part of Polka Dot's ruminations.

After John Redwood gave his second press conference on Tuesday morning, eyes were round and shining with a strange radi- ance, and not just the eyes of Mr Bill Cash MP or those of the 44-year-old former Welsh Secretary. Some in the audience of 200 or so had been reminded of what it felt like to be a Thatcherite at the beginning of her mission. Oh, the Major campaign was able to make its digs in retaliation. It was unfortunate, for a man trying to appeal to the broad mass of the party, that Mr Red- wood had seemed to launch himself from beneath the pistachio bosom of Teresa.

Downing Street officials could legitimately make fun of Mr Redwood's appeal to save the Royal Yacht Britannia, his seeming urge to slap a preservation order on all old, local hospitals, and his desire to pour soup into the mouths of the homeless.

They tried their best to persuade us that Redwood was just like Major, that there was nothing new in the idea of wanting to instal close circuit television everywhere; and indeed it was intelligent of Redwood not to make his pitch superficially dissimi- lar from the Prime Minister. For everyone knows that the Redwood agenda is differ- ent. He exudes a political emotion which the Tories rather liked in the 1980s, and which they have latterly forgotten. It is not his desire to restore capital punishment, which some right-wingers find almost sexu- ally exciting. It is a sense that he is going to relaunch the revolutionary struggle against the toils of the state. Like Thatcher, they sensed that he would be an outsider, the scourge of bureaucrats, not their collabora- tor.

Some MPs — who knows how many are beginning to feel that this is the man who can do something about the £303 bil-

lion of government spending, the beast Mrs Thatcher never remotely tamed in the excitement of privatisation and taming the unions. This is the man who will resist the collectivist creep of Brussels, they feel. He is also, and being Conservatives they have a special knowing way of saying this, a family man. Out of this amoral decision to jugu- late the Prime Minister, which mainly stems from a sense that he lacks the right personal style to win the election, has flow- ered something admirable. It is a real argu- ment over principles, forcing MPs like our man in the polka-dot tie to think what they really want, and what the British people might want, if it were put to them intelligi- bly.

The question Redwood poses is whether the treatment for middle-class insecurity, which is the Government's besetting diffi- culty, should be a war on taxation, on scroungers, and on bureaucracy; or whether it would be better, as Mr Blair and Mr Major seem to believe, to muddle on in a Lab-Con consensus on Europe, on tax and on spending. 'At last we're having a debate!' barked the Fellow of All Souls, audibly pressing the button marked 'pas- sion' in his voice repertoire.

He is right, and he is to be congratulated for his courage. He may not win. For though the party may get rid of Mr Major in the next few days and weeks, there is on balance unlikely to be a terminal resolution of the schism. For years it has been predict- ed that the party will formally split over the single currency, just as it split over the Corn Laws. Maybe, in Redwood's cam- paign, we are seeing the beginning of that meiosis. Several MPs on the left of the party said they would rather bring the Gov- ernment down than support a Redwood government that ruled out the final stage of monetary union. They said they would unhesitatingly vote against Mr Redwood if Labour tabled a confidence motion, and send him back to the Palace. 'There are at least 20 of us', said one, pointing out that the Tory majority is nine.

'Derek's just winding down after the stress and frustrations of Baywatch. ' Conversely the Kamikaze Right say they would consider doing exactly the same if Mr Heseltine won, since they can never forgive him for assassinating Mrs Thatcher. There is no strong reason to believe either group, given what we have said earlier about the lust to remain in parliament. It is true that Mr Major's claim to 'unify' the party was that he embodied, in one person, the schizophrenia of his party. If Mr Major goes, the most likely outcome by far will be not a right-wing or a left-wing Cabinet, nor a cut and dried position on the single cur- rency. What the party may end up with now is someone who can at least exhibit the symptoms of the schizophrenia necessary to appease both factions, while somehow contriving to give a stronger lead. Some say Gillian Shephard has an interesting ten- dency to a split personality on Europe, though few would put money on her. In the end, it may come down to whether the left finds it easier to deal with Redwood and Portillo, or whether the Right finds it easi- er to deal with Heseltine. At present, Hes- eltine looks the more opportunist. Whoever wins, Mr Redwood, by his stand and by his arguments, is already changing the direction of the party.

Boris Johnson is assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph.