POLITICS

The Strange Case of the Toothless Candidate

ANDREW GIMSON

The time has come, in The Strange Case of the Toothless Candidate, to talk to the dentist. It would be wrong to claim that an interview with him will resolve every mysterious aspect of the case. But there is a hole which needs filling.

In November 1990, when Margaret Thatcher underwent political assassination at the hands of her fellow Conservative MPs, the man who benefited most from her downfall was having a wisdom tooth out. It seemed like the perfect alibi. He had the operation in an east London hospital on the Saturday before she fell, went home on Sunday to Huntingdon to convalesce and did not return to London until the following Thursday morning, just after she resigned.

Even at the time, his absence did not sat- isfy everyone that he could have played no part in her defeat. 'After all,' one of Mrs Thatcher's speech-writers, the journalist John O'Sullivan, remarked, 'in any good detective story, at the moment when the killing takes place the murderer always appears to have been conducting a sympho- ny concert in front of an audience of 1,500.'

John Major's supporters get ruffled when one makes a remark like that. They treat it as an aspersion against their man, and retaliate by making aspersions against `embittered Thatcherites who can't come to terms with the fact that she was way past her sell-by date'.

Now if there is one thing this column will not trade in, it is aspersions. Truth, unblushing truth, has ever been our watch- word, and perhaps the first truth which needs to be demonstrated is that the dental issue is not so frivolous as it may appear.

It has a vital bearing on the loyalty which Mr Major can expect from the Thatcherites in his party. Mrs Thatcher never lost a gen- eral election. She fell because many MPs on her own side were fed up with her by the autumn of 1990, and one of them, Michael Heseltine, raised the standard of revolt. As soon as she had been persuaded that she could not beat him, she and her supporters looked around for someone who could.

Their choice fell, faute de mieux, on Mr Major. Without their help, he would not have won. But though they did not imagine he was a patch on her, they had no idea how unThatcherite he would prove. He is far too keen on 'Europe' and on spending money, and speaks of her years in power as `a golden age that never was'. The Thatcherites should have realised that someone who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, engineered Britain's entry into the ERM, was not from their point of view sound. According to Kenneth Baker, an extract from whose admittedly self-serving memoirs was published last Sunday in the Sunday Times, Lord Whitelaw spotted this at the time. 'I expect John Major will stand,' he told Mr Baker on the Monday of the crucial week. 'Many will vote for him think- ing that he is on the right wing. They'll be dis- appointed and soon find out that he isn't.'

So the Thatcherites have to face the infu- riating fact that they were gulled, and gulled mainly by themselves, blinded as they were by hatred of Mr Heseltine, though also by Mr Major's amazingly skil- ful reticence. Mr Major did not lie to them, but nor did he try to correct certain miscon- ceptions about himself which arose in Thatcherite breasts.

Extreme reticence also characterised Mr Major's behaviour during the final struggle to save Mrs Thatcher. In Mr Baker's account, he is 'literally silent on Margaret's behalf. On Wednesday in the crucial week, three of her closest supporters, including Lord McAlpine, asked him to return to London immediately and go on television to express his strongest support for her, but he told them, 'I'll have to think about it.'

She telephoned him and asked him to second her renomination for the second ballot. According to Mr Baker, 'There was a long pause and she repeated the question. He replied, "If that's what you want me to do, I'll do it."' It is curious to read in Bruce Anderson's book about the same events that Mr Major `instantly agreed to second her in the sec- ond ballot', though later in the book we find Mr Major hesitating to sign her papers because he 'was no longer clear whether Mrs Thatcher still wanted him to', and he only actually signs once he is sure she is going to stand down.

Mr Anderson, an ardent member of Mr Major's campaign team, explains with admirable candour that Mr Major was 'try- ing to minimise his contacts with London. His operation provided a good excuse: throughout Monday and Tuesday, most of those who telephoned were told that he was asleep, or not really able to talk, or some such. In fact he would have been per- fectly able to talk on the phone.' According to Mr Anderson, Mr Major's `overriding concern was to do nothing that could be construed as disloyalty'. Mr Major therefore urged his friends 'to say nothing that might give the impression that he was preparing to stand; it would have been a false impression'.

Would it? I wonder if Mr Anderson has been unjust to his chief. Was Mr Major such a simple soul that he made no prepa- rations against a contingency which his closest political friends kept telling him might well occur? Did he not take the chance, given that he was not a Thatcherite, to put his own conception of the party's interests above hers?

On the Monday of this vital week, two days after the wisdom tooth operation, Mr Major chose to convalesce in the company of Jeffrey Archer, who spent much of the day at the Majors' house. At lunch Mr Archer asked his host what would happen if Mrs Thatcher did so badly in the first ballot (held the next day, on the Tuesday) that she could not continue. Mr Major replied that he would fall in with whatever advice the Whips gave him. Norma Major said, `You do realise you're talking about being Prime Minister?' The two men smiled.

The account in Edward Pearce's book of the same events is less circumstantial. Mr Pearce relies heavily on the version told to him by the MP Terence Higgins, a valued supporter of Mr Major but not as close to him as others such as Norman Lamont. According to Mr Higgins, the dental sur- geon had described Mr Major's poisoned wisdom tooth as the worst case he had ever seen, 'so while all this [politicking in Lon- don] was going on he [Mr Major] was still in bed'. As late as Wednesday, Mr Pearce has Mr Major 'lying groggily in bed in Huntingdon', 'trying to read Jeffrey Archer's MS of his novel which the writer had presented to him'.

Many of us would feel groggy after reading that, but the very next morning Mr Major was well enough to drive to London and begin his public campaign for the leadership.

So how ill had Mr Major been? Cherchez le dentiste is not, I fear, so rousing a cry as Cherchez la femme, but I hope these few rough notes may encourage younger, fitter men to follow where I have so falteringly tried to lead.

Simon Heifer is away.