POLITICS
I hope I have done only a little harm, but I'm not sure about the Prime Minister
BORIS JOHNSON
After the fiasco, everyone was blaming the Prime Minister. 'Is this a cock-up, then?' I asked a minister not known to be unsympathetic to John Major. 'I don't think you could describe it as a great feat of statecraft,' he said. His detractors say that Major commissioned Nolan to sit in judg- ment over the House, just as he has com- missioned Scott to sit in judgment over ministers, without thinking through the consequences. Throughout, runs this argu- ment, he has conducted himself with stun- ning ineptitude.
Once he had received the Nolan report, he sounded welcoming: 'I don't just accept the broad thrust of Nolan. I agree with it.' Then, taken aback by the venal frenzy of his backbenchers, he said he would not sup- port Nolan's demand for disclosure of income from parliamentary activity. Then he contrived to lose the resolution by 50 votes. The only skill in all this, cry the crit- ics, was that he managed to absent himself to be at the funeral of Mr Rabin and then at the Commonwealth conference in New Zealand while the Tories were being humil- iated.
The case against disclosure of income by MPs to their constituents and fellow MPs is difficult to argue convincingly. It might have been set as a suasoria, a debating exercise in an ancient school of rhetoric. That does not mean it is a bad case. I hap- pen to think it is right. The case is that pub- lic men and women should be entitled to a minimal level of privacy in their financial affairs. And when Labour says that this pri- vacy should only surround income not deriving from 'parliamentary activity', the answer is, Yes, but what do you mean?
As the dismal sophistries of the debate showed, no one has the faintest idea where to draw the line. What income must be declared, and how might an MP satisfy the House that money he earns does not in any way result from the fact that he is an MP. Must Edwina Curry declare her royalties? Or Douglas Hurd? What about a lawyer who attracts briefs partly because of his experience of Westminster? And so on.
The case against disclosure is reinforced when one considers what the consequences are, and that these are exactly what Labour intends.
Nolan discovered that 168 MPs between them hold 356 consultancies, not just with lobbyists, but with other companies and trade associations. There was always a cer- tain mystery in how MPs attracted these salaries for lobbying, said to be worth in the region of £20,000 per year. For someone is being conned in this lobbying business. The victim is not the general public, nor the vot- ers. The victim is not even the lobbyists. The gulls are the clients of the lobbyists deluded Arabs or whoever, who believe that they are really buying influence, by putting money into the pockets of back- bench MPs.
Now, with this expenditure laid out in the register, the scales are likely to fall from their eyes. Already some of the lobbyists are drawing in their horns. Shandwick com- munications has decided it can rub along without the services of Mr David Mellor. Lord Parkinson has wound up Task Force Communications. One need not, perhaps, shed many tears for them. But once earn- ings from lobbying melt away in the glare of publicity, Labour will turn its fire else- where. Armed with this catch-all phrase, `earnings from parliamentary activity', and with such earnings detailed for all to see, Labour will foment embarrassment.
The whole pressure and direction will be towards creating a new class of MP, who is interested in and remunerated for one thing: politics. To a large extent, that has already happened. A glance at the Tory benches will reveal that some of them are almost as unemployable in the real world as Labour MPs. They are not all that bad yet, though. Instead of being social workers or stooges of the Unions, many Tory MPs could still be said to have a serious career waiting for them beyond Westminster: whether as farmers, squires, businessmen, and, yes, why the hell not, as garagistes.
Nolan, ultimately, will change all that. In `Law is law and orders is orders.' the end we will have professional politi- cians, paid at least twice as much as the £32,000 they now receive.
All that being so, I return to the original question: has this all been an enormous cock-up on the part of the Prime Minister? Those who say it has are missing the most obvious point. Mr Major is himself, after all, the consummate example of the profes- sional politician. Apart from a stint at Stan- dard Chartered Bank, he has spent his life hacking his way through local government and the Whips Office, to the top. It may be that it simply did not occur to him that there might be something regrettable in the passing of the rubicund farmer-MP, or the barrister-MP who spends his mornings in chambers, because such a way of life is more or less outside his experience. He may see no particular importance in ensur- ing that MPs can always have jobs, because he has always had one. For that reason, if no other, I suspect Mr Major views the result of Nolan with equanimity.
While on the subject of being forbidden to hold two jobs, the Sleazebusters of Canary Wharf have ruled that your Politi- cal Correspondent must stand down, after 18 months in the office. It has not been an altogether glorious innings.
Having consistently minimised the prospects of toppling Mr Major, the col- umn was outflanked by the Prime Minis- ter's decision to topple himself, if only tem- porarily. And if you ask, what is my mes- sage, one racks the brain and sucks the teeth. Is it something to do with the way the Tories are in many ways Right but, alas, after 16 years, in many ways repulsive? Or that Labour is a con trick? The ERM an epic goof? Public spending too high? Power too centralised? Ummm . . . If one were honest, one would have to admit that there hasn't been much of a Message here these last 18 months. Perhaps the point is to show that politics can be entertaining, which of course they are. Perhaps, in con- clusion, one might slightly adjust the words by which the late Paul Eddington, aka Jim Hacker, said he would like to be remem- bered, that he hoped he 'hadn't done much harm'. I hope I've done a little harm, though not much, Boris Johnson is assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph. Matthew Parris will write Politics next week
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