The truth about the 'ring of fairies' around Mr Hague
BRUCE ANDERSON
William Hague may well be the fittest man in the Commons, but fitness does not guarantee a permanent state of rude am- mal health. When Mr Hague was a junior minister at Social Security he and Sir Michael Partridge, the then permanent sec- retary, used to go to the gym with Peter Barnes, the political adviser. Peter Lilley, their boss, who did not accompany them, was impressed by all the feats of iron- pumping, until he noticed that as soon as the cold and flu season opened, all the gymnasts fell ill. Mr Lilley, who does most of his weight-lifting with fork and glass, remained amusedly immune Last week- end, Mr Hague was again stricken by flu, which prevented him attending Monday's debate on homosexual sex and voting in favour of lowering the age of consent to 16.
He would not have found the debate illu- minating. Kant declared that we should act as if our every action would become a uni- versal moral law. While this may be impos- sibly rigorous, we can surely agree that any useful discussion of moral questions must have intellectual backbone. But in Britain, the debate on morality has never been more impoverished. For Kant, read cant.
Last week, Mr Blair told us that convicted football hooligans should lose their jobs. This raises a number of questions. Why should football-related crimes be punished more severely than other forms of hooligan- ism, or than other mildly serious offences? How long should this period of unemploy- ment last? If these men's present employers followed the PM's advice, why should any other employer give them a job? So is foot- ball hooliganism to mean a sentence of life- long unemployment? What about the numerous Home Office studies which demonstrate that employment is one of the best cures for criminal behaviour? Even if it has not worked — yet — with the hooligans, unemployment would not help to reform them. But Mr Blair got his headlines.
The government will allow boys of 16 and 17 to engage in homosexual sex, but not to buy cigarettes or alcohol. Unlike lung can- cer, Aids is politically correct. But no one of any age is to take marijuana, heroin or cocaine. On what principle does the gov- ernment assert the right to regulate the pri- vate moral behaviour of adults?
On the hardest of all contemporary moral questions, the government's incoher- ence is even more pronounced: abortion. The mass destruction of foetuses is a much graver moral lacuna than homosexuality or drug-taking. It may be that no moral argu- ment could prevail against the practicalities of contemporary sexual behaviour and the need for long-stop contraception; there ought at least to be some hard-edged dis- cussion. But Mr Blair tells Roman Catholic audiences that he is opposed to abortion, and feminist audiences that he will vote for it. This is the apotheosis of cant.
Mr Hague has given these matters much more thought than Mr Blair has. The Tory leader describes his position as liberal rather than libertarian. He is instinctively opposed to allowing the state to deny the right of private moral judgment, and also thinks that politicians should beware of moral exhortation — an aversion which has been strengthened as a result of facing preacher Blair across the dispatch box.
But even Mr Hague is prepared to subor- dinate philosophical logic to political reali- ty. In a book called Satan's Children, his friend and adviser Alan Duncan called for the legalisation of drugs, not because he approved of drug-taking, but because he believed that the state's attempts to prevent it have made matters worse. Mr Duncan has now had to excise the offending pas- sage from future editions. But he had a point. There are good reasons to suppose that the present methods of tackling the drug problem will continue to fail. Yet there cannot be an intelligent public discus- sion. In dumb Britannia, the drugs debate is at the level of hysterical pulp fiction around the turn of the century, dealing with opium dens in Wapping.
On Monday, instead of voting, Mr Hague was taking drugs: aspirin, antibiotics and, one trusts, alcohol in a hot toddy. Not all his advisers were unhappy; some felt that his presence in the 'Yes' lobby would add to his difficulties, in two respects.
Mr Hague has strong views, but he has not succeeded in communicating them to the voters. People do not yet know who he is or in what he believes, and Tory activists are becoming restless. That problem is made worse because many Tory core voters are uneasy about the message which they think they are receiving from headquarters. Partly because they do not understand the tactical subtleties of the Hague/Cranbome position, they are unhappy about the party's apparent willingness to abandon the hereditary peerage. Nor are they placated by Central Office's penchant for manage- ment jargon. Archie Norman, an unfairlY maligned figure, is aware of the difference between politics and selling baked beans. But Mr Norman is an enthusiast with all MBA who has not yet learned to we his learning lightly. Above all, the Tory faithful are unhaPPY at the Opposition's failure to make an impact. Unlike Labour supporters, Tones are not used to opposition; they immediate- ly start complaining and looking for some- one to blame. That was the case between 1975 and 1979; though Mrs Thatcher her- self was largely exempted from criticism, favourable comments about her usually took the form: 'She seems to be the 001,Y man we've got.' But in those days, as In most previous periods of opposition, the Tory party's grumbling was kept in check by the expectation of winning the next Clec.- tion. There is not much of that now. So perhaps it is just as well that MI Hague was unable to vote: 'Tory leader pro gay sex at 16' is not the message most Tories want to hear. It might also haYe added to foul rumours which have been or culating: that Mr Hague himself is homo- sexual. Tony Bevins, the Daily Express's new political editor, fuelled these by referring to a 'ring of fairies' in Mr Hague's office. Per- haps he was trying to repay Peter Mandel- son for furthering his career. But most of those around Mr Hague are enthusiastic heterosexuals. Any homosad al quotient is no larger than it would have been in Mrs Thatcher's political office -- at least two of her close advisers were homo- sexual — or in Mr Blair's. Yet the cattail" vies persist. One venomous ultra-right columnist actually implied that the Hague wedding would be a sham and that Ws Jenkins was being enticed into a mariage blanc. That was a lie, and a cowardly one; it was phrased just within the law of libel. But there is one weakness which NU, Hague may possess. Anyone who believed half the rumours about him would assume that he was an extraordinary character. Not so. Apart from the brain power and the oratory, Mr Hague is a conventional fellow with a rounded, easy personality. That could never have been said of Heath or , Thatcher, and this may be Mr Hague, s problem. Can a rounded, easy personahtY lead the Tories out of opposition?
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