POLITICS
As much integrity as anyone in public life, but the public will never believe it
BRUCE ANDERSON
There is an art to find the mind's con- struction in the face. That old booby King Duncan asserted the contrary; look what happened to him. Most people earn their faces and deserve to be judged accordingly. Someone who seems weaselly, shifty and insincere should not expect to sell many second-hand cars.
But there is one conspicuous exception to this rule. On Tuesday night there was a party at Jonathan Aitken's house to launch a new pamphlet on Europe by Michael Howard. Naturally enough, the talk was less about Europe than about Mr Howard's chances of becoming Tory leader. But some readers might be bewildered by the tenor of that conversation; almost all the politicians — by no means only committed Howard supporters — were vying with one another to pay tribute to Michael Howard. This did not relate to his forensic powers; those were taken for granted. His colleagues were praising him as a man of honour.
Jonathan Aitken makes an interesting point. As chief secretary to the Treasury — minister in charge of public spending — you get to know your colleagues; it is hard for a spending minister to be a hero to his chief secretary. Mr Aitken could not com- ment on William Hague's record: Mr Hague only joined the Cabinet as Mr Aitken was leaving it to do battle against the Guardian. But Jonathan Aitken had closely observed Messrs Howard, Lilley and Redwood.
Peter Lilley and John Redwood do not get high marks. When it came to controlling spending, they both talked a good game; out on the pitch, however, neither could deliver. Mr Howard did deliver. He fought tenaciously for his spending proposals, but if he lost, he accepted the verdict gracious- ly. He also stuck to his agreements. After an adverse settlement, some spending min- isters behave like a spivvy building contrac- tor who has just secured a job at an unreal- istically low price, and take any excuse to slip in extra charges. Not Mr Howard.
The recently displaced business managers in the House of Lords tell a similar story. Over the years, the Home Office had devel- oped a reputation for sending their Lord- ships ill-drafted bills which disintegrated under scrutiny, especially as the scrutineers included Law Lords and other eminences. Lords Cranborne, Strathclyde and others were impressed by several aspects of Mr Howard's performance. First, he tried to sort out his department, and brought some of his famed intolerance to bear on the defaulting officials. Second, he was willing to listen to advice; he was never uncritical or unchallenging but he was always reasonable.
When there were arguments over the leg- islation programme, Mr Howard would fight his case all the way to Cabinet. But if he lost, he never complained. Unlike one or two other former Cabinet ministers, he understood that collective responsibility does not mean bitching in the lobby after a decision goes against you: it means loyally defending a position to which you had been strongly opposed.
None of this will surprise Mr Howard's friends. They know that he has as much integrity as anyone in British public life. They also know that his political views have depth; that, at least in private, he looks and sounds like someone who has held high office; in short, they know that he has all the moral and intellectual qualities neces- sary to lead the Tory party and to become prime minister. There is only one trifling obstacle between Mr Howard and the lead- ership: the impossibility of persuading the public to appreciate his merits.
Michael Howard's unpopularity is para- doxical as well as manifest. For the first time in a generation, we had a Tory home secretary who seemed in touch with the public mood (Reggie Maudling had voted for hanging, but was not a populist, David Waddington was a right-winger, but was unable to challenge Home Office orthodox- ies). Yet Mr Howard was one of the most unpopular members of the outgoing gov- ernment. One had assumed that no one could ever suffer electoral damage by underestimating the liberal instincts of the British electorate; perhaps not. Mr Howard's unpopularity is further proof that it is harder than might have been expected to brush aside liberal establishments in the name of a supposed silent majority.
If Mr Howard had looked and sounded like Ken Clarke, he might have won sup- port for his views. This suggests a general conclusion. To be a successful populist requires not only populist views but a popu- lar personality. Gordon Reece always reminds politicians that it is not enough to win arguments on television or radio, for real people do not follow arguments. They ask themselves a much more basic ques- tion: is this a nice person or a nasty person that has come in to my living room? In the case of Mr Howard, the answer was rarely favourable. The public were not impressed by Mr Howard's views because they did not like or trust Mr Howard.
That inevitably raises the question of anti-Semitism; to what extent does that explain either the public's reservations about Mr Howard, or his colleagues'? I see no evidence that it does. Though the Tory party would not normally be regarded as philo-Semitic, there have been two Jewish home secretaries, one chancellor and one foreign secretary during the past 18 years, plus other Cabinet ministers. For a few days, between Michael Heseltine's resigna- tion over Westland and Leon Brittan's join- ing him, there were five Jews serving in Cabinet: Malcolm Rifkind had been pro- moted to join Messrs Brittan, Lawson, Sir Keith Joseph and Lord Young. There is no bar to Jews rising on merit in the Tory party; no reason why there should not be a successor to Disraeli. Nor are there any grounds for thinking that the public would be unhappy if there were, as long as they liked the individual concerned.
When one suggests to the Howard camp that his unpopularity with the voters is an absolute bar to his ambitions, there are two responses. The first is to insist that his tele- vision performance has improved. It has, but there is still a problem; he continues to sound like Michael Howard. The second is to remind one of Ted Heath. If we could get him elected, they say, we could surely do the same for Michael.
That is a powerful argument, but even since 1970 British politics has become more media-driven and soundbite-riven. It may be that long before the millennium the Blair government will have come to seem as tawdry as Mr Wilson's did, and there would be one difference between Mr Howard and Mr Heath: Mr Heath's public image was not unfair.
Mr Howard's is. It seems wrong, unwor- thy, immoral to hold that against him: to make such a grovelling concession to the politics of meretriciousness. But the fact remains that three or four million people whose votes the Tories will depend on if they are to recover, let alone win, are implacably hostile to Mr Howard. That is the difficulty his campaign faces: it is hard to see a solution.
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