CITY AND SUBURBAN
Snake-oil merchants try to bounce the Cabinet with talk of an instant cure
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
There is a lot of snake-oil on the market these days. None is more pushily marketed than the essence of the Snake which symbolises the European Monetary System. Competition from the various brands of snake-oil oppresses the Chancel- lor, Nigel Lawson, who cannot claim for his own medicine that it is either painless or instantly efficacious — arguing only that, over time, it will work. Other brands are more enticingly labelled. Mr Lawson, in conversation, can be heard to attack two supposedly painless cures — bringing back credit controls (`more holes than a col- ander') or letting the exchange rate col- lapse. (We have had plenty of chances to learn that devaluation, if it is an option, is not a soft option.) What about the third cure — immediate full membership of the EMS? This, Mr Lawson will say, has two groups of promoters: those who assume that it won't hurt at all, and those who are sure it will hurt very much, and will therefore be good for us. We can all see that both groups are now lobbying hard. Their latest effect is the synthetic row about the Prime Minister's adviser, Sir Alan Walters, and his article in an Amer- ican economic journal. There is nothing new, either about Sir Alan's opinions on the EMS, or about his article, which has been in print on both sides of the Atlantic. Now, though, it has been subjected to a Process familiar to hard-pressed newspaper editors, who when all else fails can recycle Yesterday's story as today's headline news, by adding the words ROW GROWS. This row has been grown to keep up the momentum built up in the week of the Conservative Party conference. Then, the faithful were being encouraged to believe that joining the EMS was just around the corner, and that Mr Lawson would announce it, either to the conference or in his Mansion House speech to the bankers and merchants of the City. He of course did no such thing, and I am not sure that he can be happy with the self-appointed allies who are so ostentatiously taking his side against Sir Alan. They, and not Sir Alan, are trying to upset the agreement on EMS Policy which Mr Lawson and the Prime Minister reached before the Madrid sum- mit in June. They are trying to bounce him, her and the Cabinet. Theirs might be the jaunty manifesto put out by George Brown, in his brief stint as Foreign Secret- ary: 'Into Europe at one hell of a lick.' It didn't work for George, either,
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