WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?
Peter Oborne says Nicholas Soames is
neither senior nor grand enough to behave like this to Mr Hague
AS A GENERAL rule Nicholas Soames is a popular sort of chap. He is in demand at country-house weekends. His appearance on the scene, in the Commons tea-room or the Turf Club bar or wherever, never fails to raise the spirits. He is universally acknowledged to be a character, a bird of Multicoloured plumage. He is, on the whole, harmless. The media loves him. Labour loves him. Everyone loves him. Everyone, that is, except the modern Tory Party, where there is a growing body of opinion that Nicholas Soames is (to bor- row his own colourful terminology) a 24-carat gold, château-bottled, copper-bot- tomed, ocean-going shit. There have always been certain doubts about Soames, ever since he entered the House of Commons in 1983. He passed himself off as a buffoon, though shrewder observers noted a steely ambition under- neath it all. Nevertheless there were plenty of Tory MPs ready to question his creden- tials. He had a bluff and confident exteri- Or. But did he have real guts? Was he steady under fire? Many thought not. There were always those who resented his blustery self-confidence, well-placed friends and apparently effortless access to the higher levels. Lesser men were always ready to whisper against him. But Soames had a satisfactory answer: his competent and sometimes inspirational performance as a government minister, first at Agricul- ture and then at Defence.
This time it is different. Now even long- standing admirers of Soames admit that his behaviour is, at best, strange. And now he is, for the first time, badly out of sym- pathy with the mainstream of the party. The whips' office was once full of Soames supporters. Not any more. A month ago Mr Soarnes was invited to join the Tory session' at Eastbourne. Accord- in. to Tory sources, a reply was not at first forthcoming. Then, late one after- noon, the telephone rang in William Hague's office. Soames's booming voice was at the end of the line. 'Can't make Eastbourne,' he declared. 'Sorry. Matter of principle.' What kind of principle was involved is still unclear. 'Three kinds of bird are cur- rently in season,' mutters one shadow Cabinet minister 'Grouse, partridge or pheasant.' There are plenty of Tory MPs who are beginning to wonder exactly who Mr Soames thinks he is. It was one thing for Michael Heseltine or John Major to turn up their noses at Eastbourne. They are eminences who had earned the right to stay away, and whose political careers had in any case effectively ended. Soames, by contrast, is simply a former defence minis- ter outside the Cabinet, of no particular standing.
Nor is the Eastbourne episode the first time that Soarnes has set himself at odds with the new party hierarchy. Last June, in the wake of the leadership election, William Hague failed to offer him a job in his shadow government. This looked like a snub until Soames himself made it plain that he had informed Hague personally that he had no wish to serve under him. There have even been reports — angrily denied by Soames himself — that he has been rubbishing the new Tory leader in pri- vate.
All this, remember, from a man who traded-in his marginal Crawley constituen- cy for leafy Mid-Sussex before the last elec- tion. Chicken-running is bad form at the best of times. Chicken-running and then sticking two fingers up at the Tory leader- ship is very bad form indeed. And what has Soames done for his Mid-Sussex con- stituency? There is no shortage of those ready to claim that he has been feathering his own nest and point their fingers at a growing list of cosy non-executive director- ships since the general election. Being Nicholas Soames does not come cheap. He runs, as his close friend Tristan Garel- Jones once remarked, on gulls' eggs and champagne.
Accidentally or not, Soames has allowed himself to become detached from his own party. It may be that he feels a sense of dis- dain towards Hague, his circle and all that he stands for. `Soames has a general intol- erance of his social inferiors,' one whip claims. 'He would see William Hague as a tykey Yorkshire upstart. Compare the way that Robert Cranbome, far more of a Tory toff, has handled Hague. He has embraced him; invited him to his country seat; sits next to him in the shadow Cabinet; become his best friend. Cranborne has been much smarter. The truth is that Soames has misjudged William Hague, who is ten times the leader John Major ever was. Hague won't forget, and he won't forgive.'
So the charge-sheet is as follows: that as the Tory party faces its greatest crisis for a century Winston Churchill's grandson has ducked for cover; that as the Conserva- tives fight for their very survival in the wake of their worst ever election defeat, Soames is unsteady on parade; that instead of doing his job as an MP, he has been enriching himself in the City.
Last week, I read out the charges over the phone to one of Mr Soames's most loyal friends. Within three minutes of the conversation ending, Soames himself was on the line to me. He thundered, 'I hear you want to give me a good kicking. I'm all for giving people a good kicking. But I tell you I'm not guilty. You may not want to hear this, but I work bloody hard at my job. I just don't want to be front-bench spokesman. It's not compulsory,' he declared. 'I'm telling you that you've got to get away from the culture that the only thing that matters is being a front-bench spokesman.
`The operation against the Labour gov- ernment needs to take place in one place and one place only and that is the House of Commons. I have played a big part in har- rying Labour in the Commons and I'm sorry but I don't need to go down to East- bourne to learn how to do that.'
He denied slandering William Hague ('whoever told you that can't be a friend of mine') and said that outside work takes up no more than three mornings a week. He insisted, with justice, that he is a regular and active backbencher when parliament is sitting.
What is undeniable, however, is that Nicholas Soames is not at home in the new Tory party. He is palpably upset with William Hague and his management con- sultant talk, and his faceless young cronies. He is out of time with the shadow Cabinet line on Europe. Rather like Labour's Den- nis Skinner, whom he somewhat resembles, he faces the prospect of a long spell of internal exile. And that is a pity, for a fully functioning Tory party needs to find a place for Soames and a fully functioning Soames needs to find a place for the Tories.
The author is political columnist of the Express.
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