POLITICS
Winning a battle in the war of words, while losing the campaign
NOEL MALCOLM
Never underestimate the power of words in politics. Not the power of what the words mean, that is, but the power of the words themselves. When the old Labour Exchanges were re-named 'Job Centres', Labour Party organisers in some large towns noticed a falling off in local support: many people, they discovered, had been under the impression that the Labour Exchanges were run by the Labour Party.
Other instances spring to mind. Because the Strasbourg Assembly calls itself the European Parliament, many people think that it is or ought to be a real parliament i.e. that it ought to do for Europe what Westminster does for the United King- dom. On the other hand, canvassers in the summer of 1989 found that some voters, told there was going to be a European election, assumed that it was nothing to do with them because it must be an election for Europeans, i.e. foreigners. So perhaps those two misconceptions cancelled each other out.
And here is another example, from the account I gave on this page of a Welsh by-election campaign — not in Monmouth, but in the Vale of Glamorgan:
Discontent about the Health Service reforms has been encouraged by the Government's complete failure to explain what they will mean for ordinary patients. We met several people who thought that, if their local hospital 'opted out', this meant that it would leave the NHS and join Bupa.
That was two whole years ago. A very long time in politics has passed, and what has the Government done to rectify this error? Nothing, except for a lame recent attempt to re-name the things 'health trusts' or 'NHS trusts'. Perhaps people now think that the catering at these hospitals will be run by Trust House Forte.
It is impossible to make this sort of comment without being ticked off sooner or later by pompously solemner-than-thou politicians. 'You mustn't underestimate the intelligence of the electorate', they say, as if the main complaints they received at their constituency surgeries were from people who found Mensa tests too easy. But it isn't the people's intelligence that matters here (though I assume, by the way, that roughly half the electorate are of below average intelligence); it is their level of knowledge, interest, and capacity to be bothered to find out what anything means.
Over the next three months we are promised a flood of white papers, green papers, policy commitments and propos- als, covering much of the contents of the next Tory manifesto, but concentrating on the areas of welfare and the public ser- vices. Each new set of promises, like Monday's white papers on high education and training, will be dutifully examined and discussed in whole pages of the quality newspapers. The political intelligentsia may react favourably to this idea or that; the atmosphere in the House of Commons may change as Conservative backbenchers begin to feel that their party has regained the policy initiative; but the vast mass of ordinary voters will have only the haziest idea of what these proposals are about. The form taken by the hazy idea will be, at best, that the Government 'cares': that it cares about training, or public transport, or whatever. Mr Major, according to the publicity people at Conservative Central Office, will be given extra prominence, launching his ministers' white papers for them, and sounding as many 'keynotes' as a one-man band tuning up. And in the process, his personal image will be boosted and enhanced; he will be the Conserva- tives' Mr Caring. There is some good news here for the party faithful — above all, the implication that there will be some proper co- ordination of publicity, instead of the shambles of the last few weeks. And it looks at first sight as if the Tory Party will be playing to its strengths, for a change. Mr Major's credit for 'caring' already rides high in the opinion polls; he only has to keep talking about training schemes, trans- port schemes and schemes to convey old ladies across roads, surely, to beat Labour at their own game. Why, only this week the Opposition front bench were complaining that their own ideas on vocational training had been stolen by the Government. For the first time in 16 years, we have a Tory leader who can claim to be more caring than the Labour one — and be believed.
But the trouble is, if you play Labour's game, you have to play it by Labour's rules. And rule No. 1 is that caring means spending money, and that the more a government spends, the more it cares. Misled again by the sound of the words, most of the electorate seem to believe this. It sounds correct, because if I, an indi- vidual, want to care for a friend in need, I will usually spend some of my money on his behalf. But a government is not like an individual. If a government tries to 'care' more for its people, the extra money it spends is the people's own money. Only if it can be sure that it will spend that money more efficiently than the people would have spent it themselves, can it claim to benefit the people in the long run.
Somehow the electorate has got it into its head that caring and market forces are mutually exclusive things, like matter and anti-matter. After nearly 11 years of lectur- ing and cajoling the public on this issue, even Mrs Thatcher failed to shift their thinking more than an inch or two. But at least she tried. Mr Major starts now from several inches further back; for the last six months, his government has seemed rather to encourage than to counter the popular belief, performing acts of 'generosity' with the tax-payers' money and boasting about unprecedentedly high levels of public spending. The true significance of the current spat over the NHS reforms is this: although the Government cannot abandon the market-oriented measures it has inher- ited, it cannot properly defend them either, because it has adopted (by drift and default) so much of the Opposition's rhe- toric of generous, caring spending. And so it is reduced either to shrill denunciations of one obvious Labour lie, or to the pathetic spectacle of Mr Waldegrave assur- ing us that he doesn't really have his own private health insurance, he is just part of a group scheme taken out by his Oxford college, and he wouldn't dream of using it, honest to goodness he wouldn't.
So it looks as if we are in for a long, hazy summer. The Government may demand laser-like clarity on 'opting out' now, but it will continue to add to the general haze of caring and spending. High-spending minis- ters will be queuing up for half a billion here and half a billion there. And the real, traditional strengths of a Tory government, of which David Mellor had just begun to remind the electorate in several first-rate performances over the last two weeks, will be clouded over and obscured.
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