ANOTHER VOICE
The only Tory reason for not wanting a Tory defeat
CHARLES MOORE
Six months' abstention from journalism has given me the chance to listen like a normal human being, for once. As I have listened, I have heard our nation's leaders speaking of a crisis of the utmost gravity, something putting all other matters in the shade, something to which the Government is devoting its supreme energies. This is a war, I have heard, a war that must be fought and will be won, a war for which no sacrifice is too great, no effort too much, no alliance too peculiar. And the war is not being fought in some faraway country of which we know little, but here, on our streets, on our doorsteps, even, I dare say, on the beaches. It is not the war against Saddam Hussein, but the war against inflation. I have naturally been excited to hear of new campaigns and amazing acts of hero- ism. I heard that we had to fight the war alone, that it would sap our fighting strength to throw in our lot with ERM, and then I heard that, using that great military virtue of surprise, our generals had mar- ched our men into that same ERM over- night.
Ours not to reason why, of course. But, although I was too young at the time to remember it clearly, I rather think that this war began a long time ago. Behaving like a Political journalist once more, I consult the Campaign Guide issued by Conservative Central Office in 1977 (the one used in the 1979 election) and find that it was indeed so. War was declared then, and, according to the Campaign Guide for 1990, is being fought still. The 1977 version cost £4.75. That for 1989 costs £12.50. Of course, the later volume does contain more good war stories.
As well as having been temporarily a normal human being, I am permanently, I hope, a Tory, and I have listened in these six months for anything Tory which this Conservative Government might do or say. I haven't heard much. What I have heard instead is a government too tired by the struggle to survive to think beyond the next week, too used to office to imagine what it is like to be the governed rather than the governor, too harassed by the need to justify its past acts to be able to think about its new ones. What does Mr John MacGregor, or Mr Chris Patten or Mr John Major or Sir Geoffrey Howe or Mr Kenneth Baker or virtually any of them, think he is doing? The answer must be that they are all too busy to think at all. If you think of how hard ministers work, how many speeches they read out, how many red boxes they take home at night, how often they appear on television, how frequently they have to lunch with their opposite numbers from Guatemala or the Philippines, you will see that thinking is actively discouraged, and really downright impossible. And besides, it would be wrong to assume that the above-mentioned gentlemen had a strong enthusiasm for the activity in the first place. Which leads me to suggest that what the Tories need now, from a Tory point of view, is a period in opposition. They built their successes of the Eighties on the results of being out of office between 1975 and 1979. They will not succeed in the mid-1990s without another such period soon.
What holds me back from advocating Tory defeat, however (apart from a grow- ing conviction that Labour is more empty of ideas than any opposition since the war), is the belief that the commander-in-chief does still think that for her there is still a purpose in being at the top other than just being at the top. In my six months on furlough, she has been the only person in the Government making noises that one could recognise as Tory. I have continued to believe that, if she could get her way, 'Some bastard's nicked our bricks.' her generalship would yet win.
Since ERM entry, though, I doubt whether she will ever get her way. I do not understand how market confidence can be restored by an action which undermines the chief reason for market confidence this past decade — the authority of Mrs Thatcher. I now fear that the Italian diplomat quoted in Monday's Daily Tele- graph may be right: 'European leaders have found out that she screams and screams, but then she comes along.' Perhaps she has already climbed aboard the wretched Euro-train of which Sir Geof- frey Howe has spoken, and can now do nothing more useful than complain to the ticket collector about the price of the fare. People attack Mrs Thatcher's Government for being too strong, too harsh. Yet what ERM entry shows is that it is weak, and its counsels are divided. We now have what its advocates mean by 'Cabinet government', and it is a disaster.
It is true, of course, that something similar happened after Westland. But the elapse of time makes it much worse now. The chief thing that holds political parties and governments together is the desire to win elections. A whole generation of Tory politicians realises that a Tory victory next time means a victory for her. They there- fore do not really want it; and since they do not really want it, they will continue to do all they can within the limits of decorum to weaken her.
If Mrs Thatcher gives in over 'Europe' at the Intergovernmental Conferences in Rome in December, by which I mean, if she signs a treaty agreeing to economic and monetary union and to political union, or even to economic and monetary union with political union expressed as an 'aspiration' rather than something with an exact date, or even to economic and monetary union as proposed by M. Delors, I do not see what Tory reasons would remain for con- tinuing to support this Conservative Gov- ernment. Certainly many of us who have been fighting the propaganda battle these 11 years would no longer have the heart to hail as victories yet further indecisive and bloody battles in the war against inflation.
Charles Moore is deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph. His column will appear fort- nightly on this page, alternating with Aube- ron Waugh's.
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