Why the Tory generals are hunting down the mad mullahs of the Monday Club
FRANK JOHNSON
Mr Duncan Smith and his party chairman, Mr David Davis, have been told, and seem to believe, that they are in need of an enemy whom they must humble, For that purpose, it may be asked: what's wrong with the government? But to ask that question is to misunderstand the most important conventional theory of modern politics.
Party leaders, the theory runs, can only become admired by the voters, and feared by the opposing party, if they do down people who are allegedly powerful in their own party. Thus, it is said, voters only began to admire Mr Kinnock when at his party conference he denounced Mr Derek Hatton, the allegedly powerful left-winger. That Mr Kinnock went on to lose the subsequent 1987 general election is overlooked.
But quite a lot, in the theory, is overlooked. For every leader who became admired by attacking a large part of his own party, there are many more who became admired by agreeing with, even embodying, a large part of their own party. It is just that the latter leaders were admired by different people. Thus President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher liked the larger part of their own parties, and the larger part of their own parties liked them. In 1980, Mr Reagan — after years of liking his party and much of it liking him — became the first presidential candidate to defeat an incumbent president since 1932, and was re-elected by a landslide four years later. Mrs Thatcher, the heart and soul of her party, won all three of the successive general elections which she contested: a record.
A variant of the conventional theory is the 'Nixon to China' thesis. Only a famed anti-communist, such as Nixon, could have escaped anti-communists' wrath by visiting China. In reality, he did not escape their wrath. America's anti-communists, such as the columnist Mr William Buckley, denounced him for it just the same. But, by the subsequent presidential election (1972), voters had other things on their minds, including a Democratic candidate who did not impress them (Mr George McGovern). There is no evidence that Nixon's China visit helped or hindered his re-election.
In 1969, Harold Wilson, as prime minister, assailed the then most powerful force behind his party, and one of the most unpopular in the country: the unions. The white paper, In Place of Strife', was intended to bring them more within the law. He was forced to withdraw it, and lost the subsequent election. In the recent Conservative leadership election, Mr Portillo took the theory one stage further. He seemed to want to do down much of his party without first taking the precaution of winning the election for its leader. Understandably, the party decided to do him down before he did it down. Mr Portillo seemed to be against anything recognisably Tory. A Tory MP, very much opposed to him, put it pithily: 'Nixon only went to China. He didn't stay in China.'
The most prominent form which the theory at present takes is that only Mr Blair could carry out the privatisation which the NHS needs. His party, and the health-service unions, think otherwise. We shall see who does down whom.
Yet still the theory of the importance of fratricide to political leaders remains unassailable. Nearly everyone who writes about politics espouses it. This is because nearly everyone who writes about politics is a centrist. They expect political leaders to do down their right or their left, never their centre. Most front-bench politicians now seem to espouse it, too. That is because, for various, perhaps sociological, reasons, they are more cowed by the people who write about politics than they used to be.
The logic of all this is that left-wingers should vote for right-wing politicians if they want to get anything right-wing done, and vice versa. Fortunately, the political animal is not constituted so as to make that possible. The political animal is a tribal creature, Most voters can vary their votes from election to election. But most voters are not political animals, and the political animal cannot.
Mr Duncan Smith has yet to make his mark with the voters. He is told that the only way he can start to do so is to do down 'the Right': if necessary, almost the whole of his party. Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Davis have promised that they will rid the world of Lord Sudeley and Viscount Massereene and Ferrard. They preside, it seems, over a Conservative-wide terror network called the Monday Club. The viscount is the club's president, and Lord Sudeley its chairman, or possibly the other way about. Whichever it is, for Mr Davis's purposes, the viscount is the Mullah Omah, and Lord Sudeley is the bin Laden, or again, possibly the other way about. Mr Duncan Smith is the President Bush, and Mr Davis the Donald Rumsfeld. That is definitely the right way about. Mr Duncan Smith, like President Bush, gives the impression of being honourably uncertain as to the best way to deal with the Monday Club terror. He is not even sure that he is hitting the right target. But Mr Davis's reputation, like Mr Rumsfeld's, is founded on the idea that he is the tough, capable one, who knows what to do in a world full of conciliatory Colin Powells.
After the meeting, Mr Davis summoned the press; which summoning was the whole point of the operation. The gist of what he said was that the Monday Club must stop saying things which can be construed as racist. He did not say what these things were. But party officials point to the club favouring voluntary repatriation of immigrants. There is a difficulty here. Legislation to help finance immigrants who want voluntarily to repatriate was introduced, not by Mrs Thatcher, but around 1971 by Edward Heath. No one knows what has become of it. It does not seem to have been repealed. Perhaps the scheme is still there, mouldering in Whitehall under Mr Blair, all these years later.
But there is an insuperable problem with the viscount and the lord as useful enemies. No one can put a face to them. Massereene and Ferrard is suitably exotic-sounding. But where is the beard, the cave, the video promising more terrible deeds for the approval of the Tory faithful? I have no idea what he looks like. Neither do any of the media liberals who are urging Mr Duncan Smith to destroy him.
According to Western intelligence — that is, Dods Parliamentary Companion for the last year in which all hereditaries could sit in the Lords — his title was created in 1660, and his other names are John David Clotworthy Whyte-Melville Foster Skeffington. But perhaps these are the aliases which he uses as he moves about the country, one step ahead of Tory leaders trying to appear liberal by destroying him. Lord Sudeley is also named Merlin Charles Sainthill Hanbury-Tracy. Everyone with just one of those names must be considered a suspect.
One last problem. As recently as 2 September, a Sunday newspaper quoted Mr Duncan Smith as saying of the Monday Club: 'They are a viable group within the party, and they are in a sense what that party is all about.' This suggests that Mr Duncan Smith is seeking to become the first party leader to win liberal acclaim by purging — from his party — himself. Such is the power of a centrist media theory.
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