Political Commentary

The cost of Denis Healey

Patrick Cosgrave

There is one political instinct which Mr Denis Healey most conspicuously lacks — the instinct for the jugular. I say this in full awareness of Mr Healey's reputation as a political toughie — a Leeds East skinhead, to coin a phrase: but it is true, nonetheless. Take the debate on value added tax, last Tuesday afternoon and evening.

I must ask my gentle readers to lay aside for a moment any questions they have about the merits or demerits of VAT, and consider merely the parliamentary and political calibre of spokesmen on either side of the House of Commons. I will pass aver, in c'harity, the speech Mr Healey made introducing the Opposition motion to delay the implementation of VAT, and refer to an incident during the debate. Over the weekend Mr Healey made a radio broadcast in which he said that the civil servants working for Customs and Excise were in a state of near-mutiny because of the imminence of the dreaded tax. (As it happens, this is perfectly true.) The Chancellor, replying to his opposite number, chid Mr Healey, and purported to quote a fairly senior civil servant to the effect that the Customs and Excise people were perfectly happy with VAT. And then a certain amount of hell broke loose.

A number of Labour members wanted to know what authority lay behind Mr Barber's quote: would he, they asked, lay on the table of the House of Commons, for the inspection of all, such documentation as he possessed, substantiating his point of view? Aimlessly and harmlessly Mr Barber confessed that he had just a couple of notes of a conversation, Mr Healey rose, for the kill, as most Labour members must have expected. He referred in horror to the Chancellor's tendency to quote civil servants in support of a political point; it was, he thought, an abominable practice, without precedent since the time of some unnamed Secretary of State for Defence — who, in subsequent exchanges, was revealed as Lord Thorneycroft — and concluded by giving as his authority for the unhappiness of the Customs and Excise people an article in the Financial Times. Frustrated Labour backbenchers went on jumping up, trying to persuade the Deputy Speaker to compel the Chancellor to lay his evidence before them. Mr Healey went on about Lord Thomeycroft and the Financial Times; and Mr Barber sat back and smirked. When the uproar subsided the Chancellor went on about something quite different: we never discovered whether he had any authority for what he was saying, or not — because Mr Healey meandered.

To put it bluntly the Shadow Chancellor should have done two things he failed utterly to do. He should have insisted, simply and repeatedly, that Mr Barber produce his evidence; and, if the Chancellor was unwilling, he should have been armoured with a great deal more than the clipboard full of newspaper clippings which seemed to constitute his brief. He should have been willing and able to quote a number of trade union leaders, in opposition to Mr Barber's eponymous and, virtually, anonymous civil servants. Still, Mr Healey meandered. And that verb is a very good one to describe his parliamentary performance. He wanders around, picking things up and throwing them down, never considering them: he always misses the point in order to make a series of points. And the worst thing that can be said about him is this: Mr Barber would never have dared to make so phoney a point about the morale of the Customs and Excise staff had Mr Jenkins or Mr Crosland been opposing him. The truth of the matter is that the Tories have a feeling of genuine contempt for the Labour Party's senior spokesman on economic matters.

All this may seem to be an unduly lengthy dissection of a piece of parliamentary byplay. But there is more to it than the tactics of parliamentary interchange. Mr Healey is, after all, the custodian of the Labour Party's hopes for the future, and the interpreter to the country of their economic policy. Can we take him seriously as such?

In a debate on the economic state of the nation last November 7, Mr Healey was still putting newsclippings together: he said that "The Financial Times" — that paper again —

pointed out that the September figures showed profits 17.4 per cent higher than in the previous year and dividends 18.3 per cent higher. The European management magazine Vision has pointed out that profits in Britain are higher than anywhere else in Europe.

Shortly afterwards the fairly junior Tory member for the Cities of London and Westminster, Mr Christopher Tugendhat, asked Mr Healey whether he would not agree

that it is hardly surprising, given the rate of inflation, that there has been a sharp increase in money profits, whereas the level of profits as a proportion of gross national product is very much lower than it was a few years ago and very much lower than in Europe, and that is what accounts for the lack of investment?

All Mr Healey could say was With great respect the article in Vision suggested exactly the opposite.

For myself I neither know nor care what the article in Vision said: I have never even seen a copy of the magazine; and I suspect I have that lack of experience in common with most Labour backbenchers. What is at issue in the exchange I have just quoted is an essential difference between socialism and capitalism. The socialist is disturbed, with reason, by the capacity of the capitalist to make a profit out of any economic situation. The capitalist retorts, again with reason, that his profits are not " real " — they are merely paper. What is at issue is a question of how to manage an economy, with regard to social and economic justice. And when that issue is raised, and questions anent it posed, it does not do for a Labour Shadow Chancellor to quote a "European management magazine," requote the same paper, and leave it at that. Has — one must ask — Mr Healey got any convictions?

It has been said by his friendlier critics that Mr Harold Wilson's greatest failure is in his judgement of men. When the unhappy moment arrived at which Mr Jenkins felt he had to leave the Labour front bench, Mr Wilson appointed Mr Healey to succeed him, because of the solidity, authority and intellectuality that the member for Leeds East seemed to carry within himself, in spite of all his prevarications and subsequent selfjustifications at the Ministry of Defence. It was a bad choice. And this was borne in on one last Tuesday when one looked down from the Press Gallery of the House of Commons on Mr Healey in his sharp brown suit, and saw so many Labour members who could have done better in his job.

The cost of Mr Healey to the Labour Party is large. It is a cost not easily measured. Mr Jenkins has authority; Mr Crosland has intelligence; Mr Foot has conviction; Mr Healey — or his adviser - has a file of newspaper and magazine clippings. The despair with which the prospect of Mr Healey presenting their economic case at a general election confronts many Labour members was accurately conveyed to me by the man who said, "If only old Jim had handled that VAT debate with Tony Barber."

After all, the Shadow Chancellor must trY, not merely to propound workable economic doctrines, but also to make sense of Labour Party aspirations. In their mid-term manifesto, the Labour Party said:

Tory policy is developed in private and handed down from the top . . . the Labour Party does not work like this, and has no wish to do so. We are the only political party which grew from the constituencies into Parliament — instead of vice versa — . . . policy in the Labour Party is made by the members.

Mr Healey consults neither pragmatic economic doctine, nor Labour Party hopes. He has no feeling for the kind of populist economic policy put forward by the Labour Party last July. Thus, drifting between his party^ and the press, he goes his own inchoate, meandering, unimportant way.

Extreme Co-operation

At twelve minutes to nine last Tuesday, during that VAT debate to which I have just made reference, a tall, slim, integral, symbolic figure rose to speak from the Tory back benches. It was Mr Nicholas Ridley, discarded minister, proponent of Tory derring-do in economic matters, the only sacked minister I have ever come across who has had the effrontery to declare that he was sacked for his — right-wing economic — convictions. Mr Ridley said three things in his speech to which Labour Party managers should pay attention. First, he said, he would support VAT — because he was a Common Marketeer — thus dashing the hopes of such Labour men as, at twelve to nine, still entertained hopes of defeating, or humiliating, the Government. Second, he so fervently supported the idea of a free market economy, at High Street level, as a corrective to abuses which might arise under VAT as to cause Mr Eric Helfer to protest, and later to threaten to write his entire local newspaper column around Mr Ridley's speech. Third, in an attempt to banish a spectre which has haunted the Tory Party since Peel, he saw no intrinsic evil in taxes on food.

Why should Labour Party managers bother about these convoluted exercises in Tory theology? Because it is now quite obviously their plan regularly to confront the Government with votes on such issues as immigration and heavy lorries and 'VAT — EEC issues, mainly, but not entirely — and because their hopes of victory on any occasion depend on alliance with the Tory right. Once Mr Ridley had spoken on Tuesday, and declared his support of the new tax, it was clear that no Tory revolt of any substance would occur. "Just the hard Core," said one Whip, " it"11 be all right." It was more than all right, and less than the hard core, since no more than three Tories abstained in the vote. It is Still possible, however, on a number of future votes, for the Labour whips to acquire Tory allies.

Nor can the Government reasonably Complain about this, nor accuse such Tory rebels — as they will nonetheless no doubt — of excessive and pernicious disloyalty; after all, this Government got its Common Market Bill through only because of an alliance between Mr Pym and the Jenkinsite rebels in the Labour Party. If the Government loses a number of votes on orders and regulations in the future Mr Mellish can merely grin at his opposite number and say, "Tit for tat."

It is, however, the fact and character of such an alliance between the mainstream of the Labour Party and the fringe right of the Conservative Party which really commands interest. After all, there are very few points of contact or sympathy between the Opposition and the discontented Tories; and on most matters of substance the views are diametrically opposed to one another. Between antiMarket Conservatives and anti-Market Socialists one can, of course, see reason for an alliance; but what happened over immigration, and what would have happened over heavy lorries, had the Government not drawn back in time, and what may well happen more often in the future, requires some more considered explanation than one based on an affinity which rarely exists.

Two things, I believe, are happening. First, the Labour Opposition is, quite reasonably and in its own interest, seeking out occasions on which it can force votes in the knowledge that the Tory right may support it. Second, there is a body of men, slightly variable in number, on that right wing, who think about their politics, work out what they think is right, and vote for it whether their vote pleases the Government or not. This is the first time since the Reform Act of 1867 when there has been an intellectual Conservative right represented in Parliament by political figures of any substance. It may be that the existence of such a group is gratifying to the Labour Whips, for the moment at any, rate: it is certainly good for the Conservative Party, for no one can claim any longer that its most important spokesmen on the right are merely backwoodsmen.

That is where Mr Ridley's speech was important. One could, as various Labour members did, disagree quite violently with what he had to say. But one could not say that he was not logical, coherent, lucid and thoughtful. He is a great slayer of cant, is Mr Ridley, and I was particularly entertained by his denunciation of Labour's tendency to describe certain kinds of profit as "dishonest." "Nothing is dis'honest which is legal," said Mr Ridley. "You may find something objectionable, which is a very different matter." It is a new situation to find the Tory right making the most distinguished, and thoughtful, speeches from their side of the House; and to find more than one or two of them who are capable of doing so.

Mr Ridley's speech on Tuesday night was symbolic of all this. What the consequences of such a development in right-wing politics will be I do not know. The ad hoc alliance with Labour may founder. Mr Heath may relent, and invite some of these rebels to join his Government. Or the steady attrition of their arguments and rebellions may help to erode the confidence and strength of this Government. All of these things are in doubt: what is not in doubt is that the source of most fertile and challenging ideas in parliamentary debate today is the once despised and still excluded Tory right.