CENTRE POINT
Politics knows no sleep as MPs go holidaying-for-office
SIMON JENKINS
The news that John Major is holidaying in the Dordogne will send a shiver of excitement upstream from Bordeaux through the gorges to Sarlat. This is the equivalent of a Labour leader spending Wakes Week in Blackpool. Middle Eng- land is distressed and Mr Major is coming to reassure it. The red-tiled 'farmhouse conversions' of Perigord may once have seemed an escape from politics. From the wine caves of St Emilion to the meanders of Bergerac, the nose-to-tail Volvos and Rovers thought they could retreat behind the brown varnished shutters. But the Majors have 'taken a place' locally and are with them in more than spirit. The Prime Minister is sharing with them a taste most precious to every Englishman, his prefer- ence for a region of France. Verily politics knows no sleep.
Mr Major is playing a dangerous game. Will he gain more by associating with the Dordogne than the Dordogne may lose by being the object of his favour? True, his last two summers were wasted sweltering in Iberia. They were a psephological disaster. Like an Angevin monarch, he has now understood that his fate will be determined in the hills of Aquitaine and on the plains of Gascony. It is in such corners of a for- eign field that an English leader must assert his power, not in the decadent courts of London.
For two decades the electoral soft centre of British politics has holidayed on the banks of the Dordogne, cooled by the familiar showers of Biscay. Spain was for plebs, Tuscany for snobs and the Cote d'Azur for the gold chain and skin cancer set. The Dordogne was where unostenta- tious professionals met the connoisseurs of chatter. Here the battered refugees of the SDP came to lick their wounds in the late- 1980s. Dordogne people were the sort who lied to pollsters but voted for Thatcher in the privacy of the ballot booth. Their votes are now floating down river and Major is after them.
Tony Blair is holidaying-for-office too. He shrewdly campaigns farther south. While Henry I fussed over Anjou, his son Richard knew the key to the English throne lay in Gascony. Here we find Blair Coeur- de-lion, hotfoot from the fleshpots of Aus- tralia, blessing with his company the stock option barons of Gers. Here is the land of musketeers and rugby where the Labour leader will wolf down pâté de foie and con- fit de canard with the rest of Islington-sur- Garonne. He will make their hair stand on end with tales from home of that vicious left-winger, Kenneth Clarke, squeezing their share options 'till the pips squeak'. Waving a glass of armagnac, he will pledge himself to reverse such Healeyesque non- sense under New Labour. These are pledges wellspent. Richard I was ten years on the English throne, of which nine and a half were spent campaigning in France. Mr Blair could afford to do likewise.
The party leaders have realised that the next British election will be won in south- west France. No by-election, no leadership race, no Euro-crisis has seen the political class heading so determinedly in the same direction. The Times reports the departure for France of not just the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition but of the Liberal Democrat leader, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the social security secretary, the health secre- tary, the education secretary, the Welsh Secretary and unnamed others.
If I was chairman of the British Tourist Authority, I would chain myself to the Downing Street railings and go on hunger strike until they all turned back. This is an appalling vote of no confidence in the charms of the British Isles. I would plead that ministers should surely back the home- grown product. They are expected to drive a British car, fly in a British plane and wear British suits. The Wye Valley has all that the Dordogne can offer and more. Dorset About time too.' is Gascony plus charm. Cornwall is a sun- nier version of Brittany, full of the same Celts and cromlechs.
Ministers live out their careers in West- minster and notice little of Britain beyond their constituencies. They rarely see the squalor to which their policies might be reducing the countryside. Why Britain should currently have the worst tourism performance of any large country in Europe is probably beyond them. The answer is that so much of what was once beautiful is now ugly. I often wonder whether the devastation of coastal scenery outside National Trust land by fixed cara- van parks would have been tolerated by Tory environment secretaries had they been forced to holiday next to them. Their attitude is that the British landscape is good for nothing but cheap working-class tourism. Smart people go to France.
Not just smart people, but smart voters as well. Enter a bastide square or place de l'eglise in south-west France in summer and you will nowadays hear far more English than French. Electoral science has moved on. There will be soap-boxes in Bergerac and posters in Auch. Eager young men will leaflet every farmhouse conver- sion sure in the knowledge than a vote floats on every blue pool. A British politi- cian will earn more kudos opposing the TGV-Sud through Aquitaine than the High-speed Link through Kent. Mr Blair will demand more work not less for Airbus of Toulouse. England is finished. Pas encore les patrons prennent les vacances ki.
There is one hope. The Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine, announces that he is remaining at his post throughout August. The lion will be prowling his new lair, electronic pass to No 10 in his paw. He need not stir to stage his coup d'Otat. A flip of the card and he is at the door of No 10 with a cheery wave. The limousine is ready, outriders waiting. While the others are wal- lowing in pâté and claret, the old-timer is eating roast beef and two veg in Downing Street, the Union Jack emblazoned on his woolly vest. He has three months before Cabinet and Parliament return from France to call him to any account. He is, to coin a phrase from across the Atlantic, 'cur- rently in charge here'. He should start mak- ing Britain tolerable once more for middle- class vacations.
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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