Take away this pudding

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH

In a week when Mr Enoch Powell has earned a further public rebuke from his leader, one must plainly return to the Tories. Nothing very ex- citing is likely to emerge from the debate on Labour's proposed constitutional changes, except added confirmation of the extreme short- sightedness which has become such a re- grettable characteristic of the Tory right. Having assimilated the information that a new House of Lords would be filled by Prime Ministerial nomination, they encounter a mental block and can go no further. Further powers of patronage. they think, must be a prelude to the moment when Wilson seizes Absolute Power; the people's rights are threatened—as if the people ever had any say in the matter. No doubt all this derives from an honourable nostalgia for the days when the Upper House effectively represented the interests of property against the envy and avarice of the multitude, but by indulging in this nostalgia they are threatening to undermine the only curb on executive (and Prime Ministerial) power which has been offered since the war.

No doubt Mr Wilson could find two or three hundred stooges to fill the Upper House if he searched hard enough—Mr Heath would prob- ably have less difficulty—but gratitude is not a major force in politics, and neither could have any guarantee that these people would remain stooges for long. With no dog licences to lose, they could devote themselves to a lifetime of creative obstructionism. Just think what some- one of Mr Willie Ross's genius could achieve there. But the Tory right wing is either too stupid or too muddled to recognise a good thing when it sees one. Left wing objections are much easier to understand, and it will need every power of persuasion at Mr Silkin's command to produce even the semblance of Labour agreement. as this week's debate and Wednes- day's vote showed. If the Government decides to drop the whole scheme, Conservative right wingers will have helped it to happen through forming an unprincipled alliance with the Labour left. Only the left stands to gain.

And so to Mr Heath. Although he has once again topped the Prime Minister in the Daily Telegraph Gallup Poll, rather more people still think that he is not proving a good leader of the Conservative party than think that he is. Since only about a third of the population think that either Mr Heath or Mr Wilson is proving a good leader, it might be truer to say that Mr Wilson has overtaken Mr Heath in the unpopularity stakes. Similarly, although Mr Wilson has also at long last overtaken Labour—there is only 1 per cent in it—Mr Heath is still a mammoth thirteen and a half points ahead of the Conservative party in unpopularity. But Mr Heath's • great strength has always been in the `don't knows,' and here he continues to excel. Despite the fact that he has been Leader of the Opposition for three and a half years, that he has fought a general election, that he has been photogthphed on many Sundays _drinking beer or merrily changing his trousers after a boating accident, nearly a quarter of the population has no idea whether he is any good or not.

Personal devotees feel that he should do more to project himself into the consciousness

of the electorate, but there is a substantial body

of opinion inside the Conservative party which doubts whether this course of action would he certain to have the desired effect. Let him revel in his role as Mr Don't Know, the argument runs; give him his full apparatus of modern techniques in private, and let Mr Wilson finish the job of returning the Tories to power.

But last week's Shadow Cabinet reshuffle made it appear that the role of Mr Don't Know had finally gone to his head. Nothing happened whatever. We have the same collection of men whose only distinguishing characteristic is their . apparent inability to disagree with each other on even the smallest point.

Of course, the whole idea of a Shadow Cabinet, with tightly defined briefs and collec- tive responsibility, is a comparatively recent one. Under Churchill, during the last period of Conservative opposition, there was no such

formal arrangement. About twelve to fifteen

Tories would meet regularly once a week for a gargantuan eight-course meal at the Savoy. The idea of these luncheons was that they should decide who would speak for the Opposition in the coming week's debates, but as Mr Churchill always insisted on addressing them about some- thing quite different they very seldom had time to make any decisions. Such matters were de- cided afterwards during informal discussions with the whips. It was at one such feast that Churchill produced his immortal command: `Take away this pudding: it has no theme.7 There was never much question of anyone dis- senting from what Mr Churchill decided—even, in the matter of puddings—partly because no-- body ever really questioned his leadership and partly-- this is surely a lesson Mr Heath could learn, if only he weren't so recklessly self- indulgent with weekend beer and boating equipment--because Mr Churchill always paid for the luncheons himself : oysters, wine, brandy and everything else.

Whipping, too, was held on a much looser rein. Mr Churchill accepted that the Tories

could vote until they were blue in the face, but they would never be able to outvote a Labour majority of 146. Hence if there were any revolts from those who called themselves Tory re- formers, led by such lean young firebrands as Messrs Quintin Hogg and Peter Thorneycroft, nobody noticed much and their revolt died from apathy.

Of course, a possible disadvantage of intro- ducing a looser rein in Opposition whipping

might be that many Tory MPS would im-

mediately disappear without trace into the various City boardrooms and management advisory centres from which they received the

people's call to duty in the first place. This may have been acceptable in 1945, when an me's

salary stood at £600, but would probably cause a certain amount of scandal today, when tax- payers contribute £3,250 a year towards the material comfort of each member. On the other

hand, I cannot see that the House of Commons would be much poorer for the absence of these people, and it might produce a popular demand for the reduction of nips' salaries, which is surely a good idea, since the present level results in many unfortunate misunderstandings. Recently. I received a letter from the wife of a Labour MP which would have been heartrending if it had not been so abusive. It revealed that her hus- band, who had been a skilled craftsman, actually hoped to better himself materially by joining the salaried classes at £3,250 a year.

It is well known (at least I have said it often enough) that Mr Heath has a horror of any loose-rein policy in opposition, partly because he cut his own magnificent teeth as Government Chief Whip and partly because it goes against his very nature that anything he does should seem to be half-hearted. Whatever fatuous com- promise the Shadow, Cabinet may decide be- tween them must be defended with passion. To do Mr Heath justice, the Conservatives seem to respond to this treatment—partly, no doubt, because it absolves them from the obligation to think anything out for them- selves, but also because loyalty has always seemed to them the supreme virtue, and they need a loyalty-focus as much as clergymen need a prayer-book. But the end result of all this loyalty and all this unanimity is that when the big swing back to the Government starts some time next year, the Conservatives will be left with no economic policy whatever, beyond the pious hope that a voluntary incomes policy will work where a compulsory one has failed and some schemes which will be represented as shifting the burden of taxation upon the poor; with a highly unpopular foreign and defence policy, which will destroy the credibility of any promises to cut public expenditure or restore a favourable balance of payments; and with a leader whose fitness for the job over 60 per cent of the population either deny or declare un- certain.

When things are seen in this light, perhaps it follows that the basic fallacy in the row over whether or not Mr Powell should have been sacked from the Shadow Cabinet lies in the whole idea of a Shadow Cabinet as something from which people can be sacked. Under Chur- chill's dispensation, one imagines that he would simply no longer be asked to luncheon at the Savoy, nor to answer debates on defence, until he mended his ways.

Alas, nowadays, it is usually Sir Edward Boyle to whom Conservatives refer when they shout: 'Take away this pudding? It is true that Sir Edward has no theme, and if he is in- sufficiently convinced of the depravity involved in the whole idea of unstreamed comprehen- sive schools, he should be chastised for it. But he would be a grave loss to Con- servative counsels, partly because he is a highly intelligent man, partly because he is a good man, but most of all because he is a likeable man, and if the Conservatives have a crying need at the moment it is for someone who can make them seem likeable.

However, there are signs that the strains of this artificial unanimity—especially on the race issue—are beginning to tell on him, and I should be most surprised if he were to refuse any respectable offer in the academic world which might be made to him. It would be a tragedy, I think, not only for the Conservative party but for the whole idea of democratic decency if he were allowed to go. The pudding which needs to be taken away is not Sir Edward Boyle, nor Mr Heath for that matter, but the whole con- cept of a Shadow Cabinet as something which produces alternative policies with monotonous regularity and whips the Opposition into sup- porting them. The Shadow Cabinet has no con- stitutional existence anyway. If Mr Heath can't afford oysters and brandy, let it eat fish- fingers and drink tea.