THE PHANTOM SHADOW CABINET
Just who do you think they are?
Sion Simon on the Tories who
have gone missing
LET me be the first to say, it's been a good couple of months for the Conservative party. No doubt about that. First there was the pretend pogrom against the non-exis- tent asylum-seekers, when Hague's Tories thrashed Jack Straw's boys in the matter of how many non-existent immigrants they could verbally expatriate. Then came the big moment of Hague's leadership to date, the canonisation of 'quick-draw' farmer Tony Martin. As one unusually forthright (though not to the extent of agreeing to be identified) Tory MP quipped, 'We were thrilled when William came out for shoot- to-kill, but we never dreamed it would be on the mainland. Superb.' Not only did Hague's sharp tack to the right warm the Tory cockles in Parliament, but April's electoral Super Thursday — when Labour was annihilated in London by Ken, and the Tories made 600 gains in the local elec- tions — seemed to confirm that he was striking a chord in the country as well.
So the Tories are on the march again, hurrah, hurrah. 'At last,' confided a back- bench foot-soldier, 'we're making the weather. Fingers have finally been extract- ed and since Easter we've actually been saying something.' Among the Tory grass- roots, as well, party members are starting to come round to Hague. There is a sense that finally he is talking their language.
According to that unusually honest (but actually very objective) shoot-to-kill MP, 'It has now become the general assumption that Hague has got a second term in him. You don't hear any of that Portillo specula- tion any more. He begins to look more like a Kinnock 83-92 figure.' Not exactly brim- ming over with optimism, then, but an enor- mous improvement on what Tories were saying privately in January.
It is all Hague, though, and nobody else. In the first instance it's right that it should be so. He is the leader. Leaders must lead. Leaders who lead are what parties need. So it was Hague — not Ms Widdecombe who decided and then propagandised the line on asylum-seekers and Tony 'Death Wish' Martin. It was Hague — that man o' t' people and Magdalen — who most effec- tively joined battle on elitism (though he showed his old lack of touch in his failure to lead it). It was Hague, on Tuesday, who led the van on the plan to send naughty chil- dren to labour camps (I find it puts Com- rade Stalin in quite a new light if you think of Ivan Denisovich as just cooling his heels in a sin bin). The shadow education secre- tary was nowhere to be seen.
Which leads us, as Mr Eliot said, to an overwhelming question: who is the shadow education secretary? It would be wrong to say that the identity of the shadow educa- tion secretary is a closely guarded secret. But it is nearer to that than it is to com- mon knowledge, even among those who ought to know. And even those who sort of know in theory don't actually do so in practice. When I asked four lobby corre- spondents with a century's parliamentary experience between them (three of them from Conservative newspapers) who was the shadow education secretary, they all shot back 'Theresa May' without hesita- tion. But when I asked them for their opin- ions of her they all replied, 'Couldn't say; I've never met her.'
For it is she, the 45-year-old former adviser on international affairs to the Association for Payment Clearing Ser- vices, who has sat for Maidenhead since 1997, who now speaks for the Conserva- tive party on education. Perhaps I should not intrude on private grief, but all the Tories I know are privately fuming at their spokesman's invisibility during two solid weeks of nothing but higher educa- tion. As one of them remarked, 'She came from nowhere and stayed there.' But they don't like to say so in public.
It doesn't really matter that nobody has heard of the rest of the shadow Cabinet: but to have an imperceptible education spokesman is surely to miss a trick.
`Have you been snorting cocaine?' According to another Tory MP, 'In the run-up to the general election it really doesn't matter that no one's heard of Gary Streeter. Who cares whether Ainsworth is "doing the business, on Sport?" But it is significant, in the words of a High Tory com- mentator, that 'the least visible member of the shadow Cabinet, by a country mile, is in a portfolio which one could have predicted before the election would be our most fertile ground. Blair made such an incredible fuss about education, education, education that — whatever they did — we were always going to be able to hammer them for not delivering.' Perhaps responding to the wave of aid' cism, Ms May did finally emerge last Sunday on the BBC's On the Record just as the edu- cation debate was dying down. Until then, though, she had been spectacularly absent. When I rang Mr Hague's deputy press secre- tary, Nick Wood, to ask where Ms MaY might be hiding, and what was the point of an invisible shadow education spokesman, he replied, 'We operate a rota system over the holidays. Willetts was the man on duty, but Theresa was around. She did a speech on Saturday. Just because your lefty churns, Sion, don't like her doesn't mean Central Office is going to back that line. She's done an awful lot in the past week.' I tried to point out that none of my WV chums had ever heard of her; it is Tories who are, to say the least, rather cross. But Mr Wood was not keen to develop the theme. Despite official protestations, the ruin° among Conservatives close to the leadership is that Ms May will be moved in the next Hague reshuffle (if there is one before the election) to somewhere more touchy-feelY and less electorally important. She cannot be sacked because she is a woman and because dropping her completely would prove what 3 mistake it was to appoint her. Shadowing Clare Short at international development is thought to be a good bet. It may seem unfair to single out Ms MaY as she is by no means alone in obscurity. simple 'name the main members of the shad- ow Cabinet' test yielded the following results: Conservative lobbyist and ParHaar" tary candidate, 13.5/16; top No. 10 aid!: 9.5/16; famous Tory columnist, 8.5/16' Labour party official, 7.5/16; highly collar-It: ted Conservative activist, 4/16; educate °, politically interested, Radio Four-listening man in the street, 1/16. (The half marks wet,e .. awarded to all those who identified the shad ow Northern Ireland secretary as 'that little bloke who's married to Julie Kirkbride, I cap never remember his name'. Mr Andrew ..,, Mackay — the man in question — has . self been the perpetrator of several extremes ly high-profile absences at crucial junctures for the Province. In his case, he was alwn on holiday, which, while hardly admirabl was at least deliberate. Though, as Laboil', backbencher Fraser Kemp remarked o . _1, Mackay's strangely orange compleXilf `You'd spend all your time on holiday ro° you had to keep up a tan like that.' But there are some who are making a more laudable mark. The shadow social security secretary, David 'Two Brains' Wil- letts, has made a spectacular comeback. By far the most visible Tory during the elitism fiasco, he has more than made amends for what was seen as a lacklustre performance in his previous portfolio — education. The other shadow Cabinet member who gets grudging admiration even from No. 10 and Millbank (apart from Michael Portillo, Who it is admitted, 'cuts a certain dash') is the shadow defence secretary, lain Duncan Smith. (He is the more user-friendly Nor- man Tebbit look- and think-alike who inherited Tebbit's Chingford seat.) Most observers on both sides also agree that John Redwood (sacked from the shadow Cabinet at the last reshuffle) remains the Tories' most effective performer. As Fras- er Kemp points out, 'Redwood is higher profile now than he was when he was in the shadow Cabinet, which tells you some- thing more than just that it was a mistake to sack him.' Opinions on Portillo are extremely mixed, but I'm with the (smaller) camp Which believes that he is doing well. Archie Norman, the likeable but inexperienced for- mer Asda boss, is universally agreed to be hopelessly out of his depth shadowing envi- ronment, transport and the regions. Tory VIPs admit that he is beyond redemption, and a typical Labour view is that `he should go back to selling groceries. Prescott can't believe his luck. Politics is cabaret, and that Man is an accountant.' It is out in the grassroots, though, that the shadow Cabinet — just as Hague is finally beginning to give some hope — is causing such despair. When I spoke to a highly committed Tory activist friend in a key urban-industrial battleground in the North, I heard a cry from the heart: 'I !'now he took a beating on Rover, but at least Byers was out there all the time. He \Vas incredibly visible. On the day that those thousands of people were marching 41 Birmingham, I was watching Angela _town Browning [Byers's[ shadow] speak to the Conservatives in Harrogate. I remember here inking, "What the hell are you doing there talking to us? You should be out nere talking to them." I don't even know who our education or Northern Ireland spokesmen are, and I'm See someinterested in both. I'd like to pa some big hitters in the Conservative gat least in the main departments of startYi e. It's because people don't particularly n to Hague that he desperately needs h,„ support And it would also be nice to Wr'ove people to sacrifice when things go ng. Hague gets all the glory at the th;„1"nent, but he also gets all the blame when g_s go wrong. And that can't be right.' th tang Theresa May for a comment, but ere was no reply.
rally Telegraph author writeh. s a weekly column in the 4-)
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