ANOTHER VOICE

We few, we happy few

BORIS JOHNSON We were having a tough time of it at the Oxford Union the other night. The place was stifling, jammed with well over 1,000 students — some said 1,400 — flout- ing the fire regulations and goggling from the gallery: freshers intoxicated by their first debate and the chance to hear, for the first time in this chamber for 20 years, a Labour Cabinet minister.

My partner was Ann Widdecombe, at least in the sense that we were trying to per- suade the young ones not to have confidence in Her Majesty's government, and it wasn't as easy as you might suppose. Every time Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, gave vent to some Labour party banality, like 'the future not the past', a girl in the gallery would go wild.

She would remove her lollipop from her mouth and ululate, like a woman wailing for her demon lover. 'The many not the few,' Chris Smith would say, and she would throw back her head, shake her liquorice locks and assent in Bacchic fashion. Our student opponents were frighteningly able and well briefed. Every time I stuttered some defence of the Tory years, the benches opposite would writhe and coil like vipers, and a young man of Indian extraction would hiss to his feet and spout statistics.

So relentless was his psychological war- fare that another student (plainly public- school educated) was driven to cross the floor and physically shut his tormentor's lips. Uh-oh, I thought, as I felt our support draining away. This is going to be bad, I thought. What have we Tory-types to say to these 18- to 20-year-old thrusters?

Their ethos is aspirational, post- Thatcherite. They are just as rapacious as our lot were in the mid-Eighties; still the same load of gizzajob Oxbridge CV-pack- ers; and yet they are different and — I blush — in some ways better. They seemed to understand the forms of the House bet- ter than we did. They observed the differ- ence between Points of Order and Points of Information; they spoke fluently, without notes. And, worst of all, they seemed, to some extent, nicer.

Political correctness has done its work, so that when Chris Smith made a pawky little joke about not being the 'Secretary of Straight', they laughed respectfully; politely. I tell you, back in our day, the mediaeval Thatcherite mid-Eighties, that would have been met with incredulous silence. But that is the change that Blair understands and expresses. To the undergraduates, I realised, he offers a Britain in which you can get rich quick, become a virtual billionaire with www.hotcroissantforbreakfast.co.uk, and still feel g0000d about yourself.

As the genetically-modified cash washes over your gunwales, you can still hug your- self and think of your values, like those creeps who make Ben and Jerry's ice cream. What rival rhetoric can we offer, we throwbacks from the era of kick-ass, red- braced yuppiedom?

'The many not the few,' chirruped Chris Smith for the umpteenth time, and then it hit me. Just as a girl at my feet was yodelling her delight, I saw a way of turning this ghastly slogan to our advantage. How could the decent, compassionate under- graduates miss the brutality of the phrase? We know whom the Labour leaders mean to pick out by the 'Few'. They mean the col- lection of overlapping minorities which Tony deems it prudent to revile: the fox- hunters, the hereditary peers, those who have two homes or three cars, the entire Conservative party. These are the Few who are excluded from the Blairite Kingdom of Heaven. Those who send their children to private school, or who use private medicine (so alleviating the state of a considerable burden): these are the groups for whom the government is avowedly not working.

That, especially after Blair's speech, is the only construction one can put on the phrase. Labour does not say, 'the many, not just the few'. The Blairites say that the Few are shut out, not wanted on voyage; and as soon as people understand the divisiveness involved, the bullying majoritarian tyranny of Blairism, they will take fright.

Who are the Few? Which minority is really safe? Single mothers have had their benefits cut. Old people living in rural 'It's our new come-clean image.' areas find petrol prohibitively expensive. Sheep farmers are driven to shooting their flocks. Children who were counting on the assisted-places scheme have found their education truncated. Each of these groups, of course, represents an electorally insignif- icant handful. They are not part of the great metropolitan mass that New labour is so desperate to woo and keep.

But add those Pews' up and you have the makings of a coalition. 'Weird, weird, weird,' said Blair of Ann Widdecombc. Well, Tony, old bean, we are all a little bit weird in our own way, each in our minority of one, and if you are going to be weirdist you condemn a sizeable chunk of the British people. From Henry V to Churchill, after all, the Few, not to speak of the Weird, have had an honoured place in British literature and history; and that is why the Tories should turn the slogan on its head.

Forget the exclusiveness of New Labour, the sneering at those who don't belong to the shiny-toothed Islington elite. Let the Tories be the party of the many AND the Few. 'That's it!' I cried, bouncing on the bench with Archimedean excitement. That's the stuff to give the troops. The Many AND the Few. That's the phrase for Hague.

That's the way to counter Blair and his appeal to these post-Moonshot, nicey-nicey, Generation-X students. By all means let us assist the many. But let us not oppress the Few! The Tories spent 18 years finding vari- ous minorities — miners, dockers, nurses, teachers, taxpayers — and roughing them up. The Tories paid for it in the end.

Perhaps Blair, obsessed as he is with imi- tation of the Thatcher imperium, is deter- mined to find his own set of enemies. All the signs from his recent speech are that he wants to radicalise society, turn neighbour against neighbour, and hound out those whose lives and opinions are not acceptable to him and Cherie. Well, let him be careful: because we who are Few are also Many, and the Many are nothing but the agglom- eration of the Few.

It was too late for me, since my speech was over, but perhaps these thoughts some- how communicated themselves to Ann Widdecombe as she strutted the Floor and harangued us about health; because the students decided we Tories weren't entirely objectionable and voted by 449 to 409 to carry the motion. So there, Blair. The ranks of the Few are swelling.