POLITICS
Mr Major's saving grace is that he is not noticeably more unpopular than the rest of his party
BORIS JOHNSON
No one will miss the irony that Mr Major is about to lead the national celebra- tions of Victory in Europe at exactly the moment when his party is rolling in the ashes of a catastrophic defeat, like some Roman consul parading in triumph after the battle of Cannae. No, this will not be a good week for John Major. In the mind's ear one can already hear the calls for his extermination. And yet no matter how bad the results for the Tories of the local elec- tions, it is doubtful that the end is quite at hand for our leader.
Assuredly, treason is spoken more freely than ever by those who might have been taken to.be 'loyal'. But the anti-Majorites are over-optimistic if they believe they can eliminate him in the next few weeks. They have no mechanism, no gin to snare him.
Some MPs talk of peppering Downing Street with round-robin petitions, like motorway protestors. Some even believe the scene of the assassination will be the 1922 Committee meeting next Thursday. That would take a succession of stout hearts in brogues to stand up and denounce the Prime Minister, in public, and somehow I do not think they will.
As so often before, Mr Major will proba- bly survive the immediate aftermath of the Tory debacle. I must report, however, a growing conviction among many MPs that `something' will happen in November. Then, say the Kill-Major faction, it will at last penetrate the skulls of the men with the 8-10,000 majorities, hitherto regarded as comfortable, that this man will cost them their jobs, while Michael Heseltine might conceivably save them. 'Some of these lads need these jobs. They've got nothing else to do,' moaned one conspirator. In that two- week period after the Queen's Speech, when the rules say that Mr Major must be re-elected leader of the Conservative Party, the stalking-horse (N. Lamont) will rear foaming from the mist. Those MPs who thought a challenge last year was merely possible think this year that it is a certainty.
That is not to say that it will be a success- ful challenge. It may very well be that Mr Major will send the stalking-badger packing with only 40 votes or so, and emerge hard- ened and tempered. As this column has said before, the form book would favour that outcome, if only because such is the stock denouement of these Major leader- ship dramas. Furthermore I do not take the argument, advanced by some, that there is a moral imperative to be rid of Mr Major and to substitute Mr Heseltine. The Presi- dent of the Board of Trade did not storm out over the disgraceful ERM episode, no more than did any other cabinet minister. Nor is there any obvious practical advan- tage to the switch, apart from Mr Hesel- tine's allegedly 'barn-storming' style. Instead of tepid announcements about pri- vatising the nuclear industry, we would pre- sumably have barn-storming announce- ments. Mr Major's saving grace remains, unlike Mrs Thatcher at the time of her defenestration, that he is not noticeably more unpopular than the rest of the party.
That completes the classic case for the defence of John Major. A few months ago, it might have sufficed. No longer. Mr Major must know that matters cannot go on as they are. He needs to show these poltroons on his backbenches that he can still change the electoral arithmetic. He must convince the Tory party that he can jump the points on these tram-tracks lead- ing them over the precipice. I was deeply depressed by his performance on Panorama, and his failure to crush the revolting condescension of Dimbleby the elder. It seems incredible that he should have turned a simple wheeze like the national lottery from political gold into dross. If he is to transform his fortunes, it will no longer be enough to remove Mr Jeremy Hanley from Central Office in a July reshuffle, or to replace Virginia Bot- tomley or Richard Ryder, the Chief Whip worsted by Teresa Gorman. It will certainly not be enough to adopt a 'tough' line on Europe; or not what the Foreign Office believes to be 'tough'.
It is said that Mr Norman Blackwell, the new Sarah Hogg at Downing Street, is meditating deeply on what Mr Blair is achieving, the terrifying swathes the Labour leader is cutting through core Tory support. If Mr Major is to save his own skin, let alone the election for the Tory party, he will have to give what we all now call Middle England reasons for voting for the Tory party. There is only one way to do that. It is to bribe them and to promise to bribe them more.
For Mr Major's personal safety, this will require an element of orchestration between the party conference in September and the budget in November — the period in which a challenge could be mounted. Without revealing the detail of the budget, Mr Major's party conference speech will somehow have to foreshadow important improvements in the lives of these erstwhile Tory supporters. Let me give some exam- ples. If Kenneth Clarke were to raise the top rate tax threshold by £500, he would take 100,000 people out of top rate tax at a cost of £160 million. The Tories should restore Married Couple's allowance. They should immediately raise the wildly unpop- ular threshold, by which children cannot call upon state help for care of their elderly parents if those aged folk hold more than £8,000 in assets. They should never again allow the public to hear anything as absurd as this week's news that homeowners could be taxed on claiming mortgage protection insurance — the very schemes Mr Liffey is trying to promote. Above all, in this budget, the Tories must cut income tax, and offer earnests that it will be further cut.
In so far as these manoeuvres sometimes depart from the principle that welfare enti- tlements are for the poor, not the middle classes, it is regrettable. This scheme to win back the middle classes from Blair, and save the political life of John Major, should naturally be balanced by cuts in public spending. Some ministers believe £2-3 bil- lion could still be shaved from the big spending departments. In the words of King Edward VIII, 'Something must be done for these people'. It is time the Tories behaved not just like Tories, but like politi- cians.
Boris Johnson is assistant editor of the DAY Telegraph.
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