POLITICS
The principled way to keep a good party going
CHARLES MOORE
It was hot and sunny just for once on Tuesday and our party sat in the garden and talked. There were elder statesmen there, and younger statesmen and some who amuse themselves by contemplating statesmen of all ages. We took off our coats and sat about, a pow-wow of men in their tribe's uniform — stripy shirts and buttoned braces. We discussed politics in the way that the tribe does when it is keeping its own company — a joshing, flitting, cynical way. We raked up men's pasts and wrote off men's futures and enjoyed ourselves very much.
What would happen, one wanted to know, if Labour were running strongly in the opinion polls a year to six months before the election? Now that we have the free movement of capital, would people start running? And if they did, to whose advantage would it redound? Nobody seemed sure. Very interesting to see what would happen, anyway.
Then there was the reshuffle. Someone said that one of the Big Three (which means, one is surprised to learn, Sir Geoffrey Howe, Mr Nigel Lawson and Mr Leon Brittan) would be sacked. Someone else betted him a fiver that he would not. More fivers. On to the question of Cecil. Should he return? Would he return? One said that the Prime Minister wants him to, so he should. Another suggested that Miss Keays might have another go at him. Some rather personal interjections about Miss Keays, and some even more personal ones about the dos and don'ts of adultery. Ha, ha, poor old Norman Lamont. But any- way, was Cecil really that marvellous? Hadn't he just been lucky — in politics, that is, not in love? 'Well all I know', said the man with the last word,' is that when he came to talk to my constituency, they absolutely loved him.'
We drank a bit more and became less jokey and more argumentative. This is our first presidential Prime Minister, one re- bellious spirit said, and our party rises and falls on her reputation: next time it will fall. Some accusations about who made her presidential. Some demurring; some muted claiming of credit. Then the usual desultory talk about the succession. With- out Tebbit, who was the candidate of the Right? Geoffrey. Geoffrey? Winning an election? John Biffen could be the unifier. Oh no, genuinely does not want it. Oh yes, that's only what he says. What about Michael? What about Peter? Oh God, let's stop this conversation. Strawberries now, and a more reminis- cent air. A gentle, comforting gloom about what is, and a gentle, hazy glow about what was. Words like 'Winston' fill the air. Someone even mentions Lord Boyd- Carpenter; someone else guffaws. Our opinion is canvassed: is this the greyest Cabinet ever? Brainpower is grudgingly admitted, but style, no. Someone is even ready to maintain that Tony Barber and Robert Carr had more of it. Now there's ' no style at all.
But it is time to go and hear Her. She is in difficulties over lop people's' pay and everyone, friend and foe alike, is rather pleased. Foes talk of going to bed early and so defying the whips. One prescient foe predicts the Government's worst vote of the Parliament, and licks his lips. Guests walk towards their drivers and guests without drivers cadge lifts. Goodbye. Have a good recess. See you after the reshuffle, ha, ha. Poor old Norman Lamont, ha, ha.
In the early hours of the following morning, the Government held on by 17 votes to the proposition that the Lord Chancellor should be entitled to another £11,000 a year. Lord Hailsham had already announced that he would not take this increase (he takes less than his previous entitlement as it is), but it was the principle of the thing which mattered to the Govern- ment, and, indeed, to its opponents.
But what, exactly, was the principle? Was it that these distinguished men, bewig- ged or bemedalled, gazetted and CBed and KCMGed, should be paid 'market rates'? Or was it that these things have to be done fairly, and Lord Plowden had produced a terrifically fair piece of comparability? When it plucked up the courage to disband Professor Clegg's commission in 1981, the Government committed itself to the belief that public service is incomparable. The only reservation that it makes to this belief is with the salaries of the richest, and this the constituencies neither understand nor respect. (The only occasion where MPs are thoroughly enthusiastic about 'comparabil- ity' is in the case of their own pay; but only Mr Julian Amery in a question to the Prime Minister, pointed this out.) This Government cannot afford to get confused about its principles. It has no hope of setting the attractive 'style' which my fellow guests craved, nor of providing the fun which makes them feel that the mess of politics is all worthwhile. The one thing that it has been able to do is to enunciate simple principles and sometimes to act on them. It is when it has not acted on them, that it has faltered. It explains, for example, why government should 'get off the backs of the people' and then piles a heavier weight of tax on those backs. It convinces us that public sector work should not automatically secure ever-growing re- wards and then proposes to implement Cord Plowden in all his plenitude.
And since eloquence — being a matter, partly, of style — is not this Government's strong suit, the simplicity matters as much as the principle itself. In the weeks since Brecon and Radnor, ministers have started to try to explain their actions rather dif- ferently, boasting about some extensions of government power and spending, arguing for restraints and reductions in other areas. A perfectly sensible way to carry on, one might suppose, but it is proving much too muddling for a nation accustomed to six years of Mrs Thatcher's simplicities. So it was last week that Mr Tom King, the Employment Secretary, tried to liven up a press conference about a particularly dry little scheme to procure skills for companies through local cham- bers of commerce, by saying that the 'on your bike' idea 'has its limits'. At once the press announced the end of the Tebbit era and a new dawn of fatuous regional aid. Mr King, who does not foresee such things, must have been bewildered.
'Stick to it, Maggie,' cried the strangu- lated voice of Mr 'Chris' Butler as he conceded defeat at Brecon and Radnor. Stick to it, he did not add, because there is nothing else you can do. Stick to it, or the party will be over, and that will be sad.
This is my last appearance in this col- umn. Your autumn will be enriched by the return of Ferdinand Mount. For a few weeks until then, the column will be written by Bruce Anderson.
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