KINNOCK'S QUEER AMBASSADORSHIP
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on the Labour
leader's incomprehension of how to present Britain in America
Washington `YOU don't go abroad and then rubbish your own country and Prime Minister,' objects David Owen, the master of pro- tocol. Actually, it is hard to see how Kinnock's unexceptional remarks in the United States could be taken as 'deeply offensive' towards Margaret Thatcher, especially by Kinnock's standards. Rather worse, for a Labour leader on thin ice, were his comments about American fore- ign policy just days before going to Washington. There are ways to dissent politely but firmly from President Reagan's visceral crusade against the Marxist regime in Nicaragua. Calling the Contras American- sponsored 'terrorists' is not one of them. It may be that Kinnock feels so strongly about the Contras he can't control himself when the subject comes up, but while he was in Nicaragua two years ago he showed scant interest in the country. The highlight of that trip was a televised chat with Fidel Castro about beards and baldness, the reward for waiting half the night in a dingy lobby until the `Jefe supremo' could snatch a few moments away from his friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But less known is Kinnock's exquisite diplomacy at a dinner held in his honour where he seemed to forget he was in Central America at all, talked obsessively about British politics, and froze the gathering by calling Scargill a `cunt'.
Mr Kinnock has not acquired gravitas since then. His public appearances in Washington were spirited, even eloquent, but there was something about the grinning and the bobbing of the head that failed to impress. His hosts on the television prog- ramme Crossfire snapped `verbage', `appeasement', and 'Dunkirk' at his re- marks and grilled him as if he were a fringe candidate from the loony Left. A Salvador- ean rebel leader might have got a better hearing, but then the Salvadoreans no longer employ Fenton Communications as their Washington media consultants. Nor do the Sandinistas, although the Angolan government still hangs in. For the Labour Party to contract Fenton, said one congres- sional Democrat, was 'a particularly inept choice'. The silver lining was that Fenton failed to get Kinnock much media atten- tion anyway: not a glimpse on the network news, nor a mention in the editorial press. He left as obscure as he came, which was the one thing that saved his trip from disaster.
According to the New York Times there was some debate within the White House over whether to receive Kinnock at all. It was concluded that a snub might do him more good than harm — an extraordinary admission of anti-American feeling in Bri- tain — and he was granted a 21 minute 38 second meeting with President Reagan and his full national security team. Afterwards the White House issued a statement claim- ing Reagan had told Kinnock that Labour's defence policies 'would have a strong effect on Nato and East-West relations and would undercut our negotiating position at Geneva'. Denis Healey, who was greeted warmly by the President as 'Mr Ambassa- dor', claims Reagan said nothing of the sort. 'He was not capable of making a response. He just nodded his head. . . . He appeared to think we were in favour of throwing away all our weapons, nuclear and conventional.' The White House state- ment, therefore, was a plot by aides to `It's Neil Kinnock.' `help Mrs Thatcher in her election battle by being unkind to the Labour Party'.
Is Healey spoiling for a fight? He has insulted the President and called the White House staff liars, to no obvious purpose. Even if his version is true it doesn't make a jot of difference. Can there be any doubt what the Reagan administration really thinks of Labour's defence policy? Does it all hinge on a few disputed words ex- changed last Friday? True, Reagan and Kinnock share an ideal in that they both consider nuclear weapons 'immoral and uncivilised', but between the former's space defence — 'the biggest hope the free world has' — and the latter's faith in the force of good example, there can be no agreement on how to get there. Kinnock tried to disguise nuclear disarmament as a restructuring towards more efficient de- fence: 'The only practical way in which we can sustain a modern 50-ship surface fleet, and thereby do our Nato naval duty defending the North Atlantic and also ensure high-quality training, supply and weapons for our air force and army, is by cancelling the Trident submarine system.'
Snag: nuclear missiles are cheap; ships, tanks and planes are expensive. In any case the credibility of that argument is under- mined by Labour's extension of the nuclear ban to American weapons.
If it were just a question of Britain's scrapping its own nuclear deterrent, few in Washington would care. But the expulsion of American missiles worries the Penta- gon, as well as Congressmen from both parties, because of its likely 'knock-on' effect in the rest of Europe, and because it would be interpreted — quite rightly — as a hostile gesture towards the United States. Conservative isolationists might welcome that as a chance to break out of an entangling alliance and withdraw troops from Europe. They could be said to form Kinnock's main constituency in the United States. But few officials in Washington, of whatever stripe, think he will either be elected, or be fool enough to scupper Nato if he is. 'Who takes Labour's threats seriously? Everyone remembers Harold Wilson's speeches,' said a source on the House armed services committee. 'Just you wait, one day they'll name a Trident after Kinnock.'
If less attention had been paid to de- fence, Americans might have better under- stood the bankruptcy of Kinnock's econo- mics. When asked what he thought of Reaganomics he amazingly applauded the US budget deficit: 'It's given great vitality to the American economy and I think that's a blessing to the American people.'
Not a word about tax cuts, investment climate, labour mobility: some of the supply-side triumphs that are the secret of America's relatively low unemployment and its longest sustained recovery since the second world war. Worse was to come. Kinnock praised Reagan's loose monetary policy — when in fact Paul Volcker at the federal reserve had stubbornly kept it tight — showing he did not understand the difference between fiscal and monetary policy, and therefore why the United States has run a large deficit with low inflation. Kinnock, it seems, is still an unreconstructed Keynesian whose only tool of economic management is aggregate demand, as if we hadn't all learnt by now that spending is no cure for unemploy- ment. He says that much as he admires Reagan's (or more accurately Congress's) excesses Labour would not run a compara- ble deficit. Indeed not. Hattersley's £18 billion shortfall would be four and a half per cent of GNP, roughly double the total government borrowing, state and federal, in the United States, and would be un- checked by monetary restraint.
Labour's critics say its spending would soon cause balance of payments difficul- ties. Hence Kinnock's plea in New York for a revamped Bretton Woods system `to prevent trade deficits rising to crisis levels' so that countries 'could expand without fear'. In other words he wants a licence to reflate behind a wall of emergency tariffs. God forbid.
Nobody in America, of course, took any notice. They were too busy watching tele- vision footage of Margaret Thatcher's red carpet treatment in Moscow, and reading leaders about the invaluable contributions of Europe's 'senior stateswoman' to the allied cause. According to a Gallup poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations she is the most popular leader in the United States after the Pope. In November her 'thermometer rating' was 68 per cent — the same as Ronald Reagan's — though her supporters re- spected rather than liked her, unlike the beloved but somewhat mocked President. Curiously, they were not the same 68 per cent. Mrs Thatcher does well with Amer- ican blacks and Jews, while Reagan does not, mainly because he is a Republican, and she has no 'gender gap', getting the same score from both American men and women. Since November she has un- doubtedly pulled ahead of President Reagan in overall popularity, giving her the rare distinction of beating every Amer- ican politician on his own turf. Much of this comes from her political longevity — i.e. they have heard of her — from the fact that she is a woman, and from her image as a fighter. But it also reflects an appreciation for her reliability as an ally, particularly since the bombing of Libya, and for paying the compliment of wishing the British were a bit more like the Americans.
If Neil Kinnock is to retain a fraction of the good will generated for Britain, then he must bend over backwards to praise Amer- ican values. Saying, as he did in 1983, that `there is an almost miserable equality of threat' from both America and Russia, and calling White House officials liars suggest he does not even begin to understand Americans or what they think of us.
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