Political commentary

A very private election

Ferdinand Mount

At 11.55 a.m. on the Monday before polling day, two women run out of the Way Ahead hair salon in Ilford High Road. Their hair is still wet and in rollers, and they have damp towels round their necks over their coiffeurs' nylon overalls. The two of them pile into the crowd surrounding the Jaguar and stand on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of Her. A h, this must be our first encounter with that ungovernable enthusiasm which some opinion polls tells us is afflicting workingclass housewives, that impetuous dropping-everything which signals that the saviour is on your doorstep. As the Jag door slams on Mrs Thatcher, the elder lady turns to her friend and says: 'I told you her eyes were really covered in make-up.' Unfair comment perhaps, but a tart reminder that Margaret Thatcher is not only a political leader but a sight to be seen. Her being a woman is a distraction from the underlying tug of party loyalty and the balance between the fears of the future and the resentment built up over the past five years.

My own guess remains that the 'Thatcher factor' seems more crucial than it is, because it is more fun to talk about. If the Conservatives win, it will be because there are enough people who think it's time for a change of government and a change of direction; if they don't, it's because there aren't enough. I do not believe that the risk or the attraction of choosing a woman as Prime Minister — or even of choosing this woman as Prime Minister — is what makes up people's minds, even if it is often the reason that springs most readily to people's lips — 'I could never vote for a/that woman' or 'after all the mess the men have made, I'd like to see a woman have a go.' If more women than men do vote Tory this time, well, so they do at most general elections.

Inside the hall, which is shaped like an aircraft hangar with dung-coloured panelling, MIS Thatcher delivers a brief speech to party workers. It is no better and no worse than the brief speech she made to party workers on a windy lawn in Putney on Friday or the brief speech she made to party workers in Ponders End on Saturday. On the other hand, it is considerably better than the brief speech Mr Callaghan made to party workers in Hendon or was it Hatfield — no. that was Wednesday.

What is the point of all these private sermonettes to the converted? Why all this embussing and debussing, all this lugging of cameras and microphones up stairs and down stairs? Oh, it's for the telly, we're told. These days elections are fought on television and what matters is to secure a flattering snippet on the early evening news. But these snippets look just as stagey on the screen as they are in reality, despite the complicity between the camera men and the party men. Television dares not show any gaps in the audience nor the seediness of the surroundings nor people looking bored if indoors or cold if outdoors.

After a succession of these mean little sorties, you begin to long for a Gladstone or a Khruschev, somebody with the lungs and the stomach to go on for three or four hours before an audience of thousands who have started at dawn from their humble homes.

Jim Prior tells us that some Tory trade unionists did get up at four in the morning to attend the 2,000-strong weekend rally in the Wembley Conference Centre, which he calls 'a landmark in industrial relations'. Yes, but what did the Tories lay on for this unique event? Lulu and Vince Hill singing Hello Maggie, that's what. They are used to stronger meat at the Durham Miners Gala. Those who went to Wembley still blush at the recollection of it.

Politicians have virtually stopped campaigning in the traditional and true sense.

They now openly admit what was formerly not to be admitted, that they loathe General Elections and hate the sight of those whom they hope to make their constituents.

Naturally, with the politician's instinct to blame somebody else for their own short comings, they blame television. Appar ently, it is the trivialising eye which has forced them to manufacture these stunts and non-events. Left to themselves, we are given to understand, they would deliver the most splendid and thoughtful orations.

But it is the television interviewers who are valiantly trying to raise the politicians' sights. Time and again, Day, Dimb leby, Walden and Gardner give ministers and their shadows a chance to say something interesting, and time and again the politicians decline, preferring to rely on the advice of second-rate admen and play it bland and stick to the manifesto. Politicians seem to have lost the confidence to expose themselves to the people. As a result, this General Election has seen both a further decline in the standard of debate and a further loss of the public dimension. It seems hardly coincidental that the only two politicians who have had anything of inter est to say are the two Great Hasbeens, Sir Harold Wilson and Mr Ted Heath, both of whom in their heyday, whatever their other faults, always considered the voters worthy of arduous and considered harangues. But now Mrs Thatcher, after hiring the cream of the Daily Telegraph editorial staff, appears to make scant use of their talents. Perhaps she would do better to read aloud the leaders they still compose for Lord Hartwell in their lunch hour.

The popular belief is that Mrs Thatcher has had the worst of the battle between the two party leaders. The polls say the gap between her and Mr Callaghan has widened. On the other hand, polls have con tinued to find that Tory policies are more popular than Labour's — which presumablY must reflect some credit on the person primarily responsible for broadcasting those policies, viz. Mrs Thatcher. Is she unwittingly sacrificing personal popularity to the communication of party policy, like an unpopular but effective headmistress who never manages to win the heart of the upper fifth however many A-levels she pushes them through? Whatever the result, it has to be placed on record now that she has looked and sounded very much alive all through the campaign, while Mr Callaghan has seemed half-asleep most of the time. Often, both in the flesh and on television, he appears to be startled not so much by the particular question he is being asked as by the fact that he is being asked a question at all. Pundits and opinion polls continue to claim that there is a possum's cunning in this lethargy but it is not exactly an inspiring spectacle.

There are, however, occasions when you are grateful that Mr Callaghan spares you too much intellectual stimulation, not least when you have drawn the worst seat at the press table next to the terrible reporter from Der Tagesspiegel who repeats significant passages from Mr Callaghan's speech very loudly into his tape recorder about thirtY seconds later and then bellows information about the British political scene in German back to a less well-informed cameraman who is darting round jumping on tables and chairs to get a better picture, while at the same time the Prime Minister is struggling to make himself heard above the screams of IRA hecklers and the Socialist Workers Party.

'The people of this country will not buy a pig in a poke.'

'Hands off Ireland!'

`Siddown!'

'Why are 800 Republicians in jail?' 'There'll be 801 if you go on shouting.' `Ze people of zis country vii not buy a Pig in ze poke.' 'And this is my challenge to the To/ leadership. . 'Das ist Douglas Jay. Frau Callaghan sitzt neben.'

'Talk about torture!'

`Und zis is my challenge to ze Tory leadership.' 'North Sea Oil is a wonderful gift. This priceless asset must remain in our hands.'

Perhaps the nadir of a low-lying cantpaign is reached when Joel Barnett, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, unveils his 'Tory Budget' on a blackboard at Transport House. The mere sight of the blackboard rouses groans from those present who know by bitter experience that a politician with a blackboard is a politician who is about to tell you fibs even more whopping than usual. And so it proves. Mr Barnett's table of figures shows that Tory tax cuts would make everyone earning less than £10,000 a Year worse off. Why? Because the Tories would put VAT up to 13 percent. How does he know they would? Well, he doesn't, but that's what they would have to put it up to if they didn't cut government spending. But government spending is what the Tories said they would cut. And so on. Not that the Tories are particularly adept at rebuttal. Indeed, a curious thing happens. In the first week of the campaign, Geoffrey Howe spells out his income tax cuts in some detail — top rate down to 60 per cent, basic rate down to 30 per cent in the £, etc. But by the second week, he appears to have retreated into a general promise of reduced rates — and the specific plans for reductions Iii. government spending appear to have misted up, too. A Conservative government would have to 'look at the books' first. Across the road, Mr Callaghan fairly twits them with this sudden fit of vagueness, but then he develops equal vagueness when asked about the shape of Mr Healey's Budget if Labour wins. Honestly, why do they bother to hold these press conferences?

This whole campaign is a string of oppor-, tunnies missed and openings unexploited. Not until Lord Hailsham lets rip at a press Conference two days before polling day, do the Tories make any serious effort to remind voters of the winter of discontent, and the Prime Minister is allowed to get away with painting the Conservatives as the party of materialism and the law of the jungle. The most significant events seem to be the events that did not happen.

Mrs Thatcher did not crack up, as the Labour Party had devoutly hoped; on the contrary, she finished very strongly.

Mr Heath did not go berserk — an event • much dreaded by Tory MPs. Or rather he did go a little berserk, but only in a single column on page 4 of the Observer. For those who missed it, Mr Heath apparently now thinks there is now a real possibility of another hung Parliament (i.e. another possibility of The Call to Greatness of E.H.). He talked of the 'trivialities' and the 'parochialities' of the campaign — and he didn't just mean Mr Callaghan. In other words, he was spreading exactly the same kind of despondency as Rab Butler spread in his celebrated indiscreet interview with George Gale before the 1964 General Election; he was voicing the same disloyal thoughts as Sir Harold Wilson had voiced to Gordon Greig of the Daily Mail a few days earlier. Mysteriously, however, the Observer let these thoughts languish in obscurity. But then perhaps that is where the whole conduct of this election deserves to languish. In the closing stages of the campaign, most people seemed to have little better to talk about than the latest opinion polls which were as plentiful and quirky as the political argument was sparse and stale.

Both the MO RI finding of no more than a 3 per cent Tory lead a week before polling day and NOP's finding of a tiny Labour lead with two days to go sent shudders through Conservative Central Office of a seismic magnitude, just as Transport House had been smothered in a seemingly permanent gloom by the steady substantial Tory lead in the preceding weeks. Whoever wins, one can't help feeling that it is only fair that both camps should be afflicted by the moraleshattering predictions of these hamfisted soothsayers.

Among the benefits of the Restoration of 1660 was the ending of the Ranters' copious and tedious predictions of the end of the world 'produced by fanatiques to rouse the vulgar'. In our own time it is hard to say which is sillier — Mr Michael Foot's prediction that a Tory government would go about shooting trade unionists or those opinion polls which tell you things like 39 per cent of housewives in Midlands marginals would vote Liberal if there were no Tory candidate.

We men of true science can only do our best, as Thomas Sprat put it in his history of the Royal Society, 'to shake off the shadows and to scatter the mists which fill the minds of men with a vain consternation.' And those of us who have committed a few vulgar prophecies of our own had better keep mum and hold our breath.