POLITICS
It will take more than cunning stunts to win the Tories the next election
SIMON HEFFER
As much on grounds of taste as of intellect, one resists agreeing with Mr Roy Hattersley, the deputy leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. However, in some splutterings last weekend, this great novelist and epicure said something that, once the hyperbole was stripped away, should have touched the consciences of many communicating members of the Con- servative party. 'The Government is disin- tegrating, and the reason for its collapse is obvious. It no longer has any purpose except the obsessive hope that it can hold on to office for a few months longer.' Per- haps to demonstrate what he hoped was the untruthfulness of the Hattersley doc- trine, Mr Major cranked his team into action the moment business resumed on Monday morning.
A campaign to boost career prospects for women, Opportunity 2000, gave the Tories a chance to further their latest campaign, Opportunism 1991. Not only did Mr Major commit himself to better jobs in the public service for women (with the unconcious irony of a man who replaced the only woman cabinet minister), he also said he would want to know 'why' if any public ser- vice short-list appeared without a woman on it. Then, on Monday evening, it was announced that his colleagues in the For- eign Office had scored a great 'triumph' for Britain in securing from the Dutch presi- dency of the EEC the 'right' to opt out of a European single currency. So there you had it: proof of purpose in this desire to improve the lot of just over half the popula- tion, and to defend the nation's freedom to mint the pound sterling.
Yet both these great gestures are indica- tive of the malaises now infecting this Con- servative Government. Gimmickry, as in the Opportunity 2000 campaign to secure better jobs for women, is replacing policy. Fraudulence, as in the pretence that the so- called Dutch plan somehow helps guaran- tee the retention of our sovereignty when it fact it makes inevitable the loss of a vast amount of it, is replacing plain dealing. Both failings are inevitable consequences of having a Government that follows rather than leads opinion, is short of ideas and flexible of principle, has a tenuous grasp of its constitutional responsibilities, and con- tains too many men who look jaded and completely uninspired after continuous years of office. Resorting to gimmickry as a substitute for policy is easily construed as a means to hold on to office with no 'pur- pose' save to keep the ministerial Rover. In short, Mr Hattersley (who, one can safely say, would be every bit as venal himself were he in the shoes of his opponents) is not far from the mark.
Gimmickry has been a hallmark of the Tories' post-Thatcher image ever since the pseudo-vision of the 'classless society' was revealed on the steps of Downing Street last November. The Citizen's Charter was the mother of all gimmicks, and from it has flowed an ill-structured and ill-thought-out campaign to propitiate any group the Gov- ernment fears has the electoral muscle to cut up rough. Also, despite the Conserva- tive Party's howls of outrage when anybody suggests it is copying its socialist oppo- nents, many of these stunts —.the one on women is a prime example — are uncom- monly like Labour policy. Long before women were in on the act, though, Sir Ian McKellen, on behalf of the nation's homo- sexuals, was invited into Downing Street to represent the grievances of that minority. We have had a patient's charter and a par- ent's charter; there is talk of an animal's charter. No doubt soon a chartermonger- general will be charged to find people who have escaped the protection of the existing charters, and to fill the deficiency quickly.
The essence of the new Chartism is to treat symptoms rather than causes, notably the monopolistic vices of the public ser- vices. Yet, to the Whiggish minds of the current Government, acting in this way seems good politics. It allows the Govern- ment to suck up to strong pressure groups at relatively little immediate cost. There is a parallel in its European conduct, where the latest Dutch plan allows the Tory lead- ership to remain friends with other heads of government while not calling upon the British people to pay the unacceptably high price of that friendship until it is too late to avoid the unpalatable political conse- quences. Government by gimmick also avoids the need to embrace difficult ideolo- gies, and the tiresome principles they entail. Take, for example, Opportunity 2000. Mr Major's sudden espousal of posi- tive discrimination is a contradiction of the free-market ideology in which his party until so recently believed. He claims that for 23 per cent of top jobs in the public ser- vices to be held by women is 'simply not good enough'. We are not told what would be good enough, nor are there specific ref- erences to ability, nor to who pays for the elaborate child-care and other schemes aimed at bribing women to go out to work. If there are so many talented women not being promoted in the public service, they will presumably leave and take better jobs in the private sector. By contracting-out as many of the public services as possible, market forces would eradicate the problem of discrimination much more quickly than Government intervention ever would. Unpromoted women would start being poached, to the detriment of their original employer, by his competitors.
It is easier, in the short term, to sell a gimmick than a principle. Principles (such as those of ownership and deregulation, so successful in the first decade of this Gov- ernment) take longer to attract support, but when they do their effect is enduring. More thoughtful critics have been pointing this out for months, but have fallen foul of the Government's habit (bred of its intel- lectual insecurity) to treat criticism of poli- cy as ad hominern abuse, some ministers taking it as they might an affront to their wives or mistresses.
Like Mr Hattersley, one waits with inter- est to see the next Tory manifesto. If the current quality of ideas is any guide it will be a slim volume, and one that will hold out little promise of genuine reform of those institutions and attitudes in Britain that still hamstring our competitiveness and effi- ciency. The Government has to lose its rep- utation for fearing intellectual leaps for- ward and coherent policies of long-terrn radical reform. The Citizen's Charter and its undernourished offspring will not be suf- ficient to carry the Tory party forward at a time when the voters' fear of Mr HattersleY and his master is, unaccountably, wearing off. It is not just the six or seven point deficits in the opinion polls that show how bad things are, but the increasing fatuous' ness of editorials in loyal Tory newspapers whose editors are searching for reasons t° tell the country to stick with the Tories, and coming up with very little. If the Govern- ment wants to continue to govern it had better start giving the voters some jolly con- vincing reasons why they should continue to let it. Otherwise it risks making Mr Hat- tersley look perceptive and accurate, a blow from which it might never recover.
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