POLITICS
Johnny Major beats up Johnny Foreigner: always a vote-winner
SIMON HEFFER
It is touching that so many of you obvi- ously read as far as the end of last week's column — or, rather, to as near the end as you could. Circumstances Beyond My Con- trol caused the last line to be chopped off. Many readers have taken the trouble to inquire about what the closing bars of Hef- fees Unfinished Column were. I am happy to tell you because, as Mr Hurd painfully knows, they still have a discordant echo this week.
It was supposed to say, 'If you hand over your sovereignty to other people, you can hardly complain when they start using it.' In the ten days since Mr Hurd's first visit to Brussels to thrash out the matter of the number of votes needed to veto undesir- able legislation, the temper of the parlia- mentary Conservative party has been soured. The talk was of compromise, but the fear that a little more of our sovereign- ty might be conceded was more than most Tories could bear. Such was the force of the resistance in the Commons that the tone had to change. 'Major's got the mes- sage,' said one minister after the Prime Minister's histrionic, mock-Euro-sceptical performance at Question Time last Tues- day. 'Apart from about 20 loonies, the party has spoken. They just won't put up with any more vacillation. The word "com- promise" simply isn't spoken any more.'
However, the issue of voting rights itself has ceased to be of paramount interest to all but the hard core of fanatics on both sides of the argument. The question has, instead, taken on symbolic importance. Mild-mannered backbenchers are fulminat- ing at what one of them described as the 'blithering stupidity' of the Government in ever letting this arcane matter assume such importance. Loyal old men who have never complained in their lives have started writ- ing to their whips asking why this row was allowed to happen. 'I've just about got my people under control,' one said to me of the tensions among his constituency activists, 'and now they do this to me. It's impossible.' Until such an issue was made of the voting rights question last week, few Tory activists knew the first thing about it. That, sadly for Mr Hurd, has now changed.
It was allowed to happen because the Government was desperate to find some- thing to make it, and particularly the Prime Minister, look tough, dominant and pur- poseful in the run-up to the campaigns for the local and European elections. Voting rights was not, though, a sensible slipway from which to launch the good ship Credi- bility. As revealed in one of the published parts of last week's column, we have this problem because we ratified the Maastricht Treaty. We risk having further incursions made into what we thought were our sovereign rights because we agreed to par- ticipate in a European Union. It is simply not rational for anyone who supported the ratification of the treaty to start complain- ing now, but then many Tory MPs have long since ceased to be rational or, rather, were never rational in the first place.
In what the BBC and the Guardian call the European Union, matters like health and safety (to pick one at random) that we thought were our business have become the business of 11 other nations. Mr Hurd has just woken up to this (or, perhaps it is truer to say, Mr Major has woken him up to the anger it inspires in many of his colleagues), and is desperately trying to secure some- thing that can be portrayed as a victory for Britain. A decision has been postponed, and anger is mounting among our partners. Having caused so much trouble, Mr Hurd will look silly indeed if he surrenders in the end. If he does not surrender in the end, he and Mr Major will have done something unusually praiseworthy, and something that might mitigate the impending disaster of the European elections.
Late though it is, Mr Major has also realised the need to expose to the public the pusillanimous attitude of the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties towards vot- ing rights in particular, and European poli- cy in general. His caricature of Mr Smith last Tuesday as 'Brussels' Poodle' (looking, no doubt, for the same lamp-posts Mr Major himself frequented until his recent burst of Little Englandism) and 'Monsieur Oui' were puerile and unoriginal, but utter- ly accurate. Labour is as split on Europe as the Tories, but has the wit to conceal the fact. Sadly for Mr Major, the European Elections will be fought so much on domes- tic issues that attempts to expose the absur- dity of Labour's programme are unlikely to win much coverage.
The normally uncomplaining and silent mass of Tory MPs who are now turning ugly reflect the feelings of their constituen- cy activists. This weekend the Conservative Central Council — a national gathering of the party's most senior workers — meets in Plymouth in tense circumstances. The par- ticipants were ordered by the leadership not to put down motions for debate at the Council, as it was felt important not to give the press any further scope to write about disunity. Several constituencies have ignored this directive. No debates will take place, but the damage to the façade of togetherness has been done. It is becoming harder and harder for the knights and dames who run the voluntary side of the Conservative Party to keep order, and to pretend it is business as usual.
Mr Major knows he must win back the confidence of his followers, and is going about it in an interesting way. A refusal to compromise over voting rights would cer- tainly put his party (with the exception of Sir Edward Heath and Mr Hugh Dykes) in better heart; but Europe is not the only problem. In his so-called shouting match with Dr Ian Paisley last Monday Ca shout- ing match between Major and Paisley is like a cricket match between us and the West Indies' was how one critic of the Prime Minister put it), Mr Major had clear- ly found his latest stooge against whom to 'act tough'. Dr Paisley and the only other person in recent times with whom Mr Major took issue, Sir George Gardiner, are hardly political versions of Arnie Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone. When the Government has come up against prop- er big boys like the Germans, the Ameri- cans or even the Irish, it has in the past usually rolled over.
Meanwhile Dr Paisley's complaint, that Mr Major's Northern Ireland policy is a joke, and Sir George's, that the Cabinet is so full of deadbeats that it ought urgently to be reshuffled, go unanswered, though both are true. However, the Prime Minister is not yet beyond salvation, not least because of the paucity of the alternatives. If his next performance turns out to be an Oscar-winning two-fingered salute to our partners in the best traditions of General de Gaulle, Mr Major may have laid the foundations of a most unexpected revival.
Previous page
