MAJOR V. THE

BOLSHO-TORIES

The Prime Minister is reasonable. So is most of his party.

But then, says Bruce Anderson, there are the defeatists who

think they are thinkers

Sir Leon was not enjoying himself. To begin with, when the other members of the plat- form party were clapping enthusiastically he would bring his hands together. He soon stopped doing so. Sir Leon has never reached the tonsured stage of incipient baldness, an impression reinforced by his expression, which is usu- ally benign, or even saintly. But as Eurosceptic followed Eurosceptic to the rostrum, he came to resemble a saint with dyspepsia. By the time he had left the plat- form, he looked as if he had swallowed a toad.

This helps to explain why most of those in the hall seemed increasingly contented. They were liking what they were hearing just as much as Sir Leon was detesting it. It is easy to underestimate the Tory faithful. Every year, the press tells us that the repre- sentatives will be sullen or even mutinous, ready to revolt and rend the leadership. But they never do, partly because they come from that section of society with which the average journalist has least affin- ity: the respectable middle class.

These days, however, the Tory Party does not only have representatives, it has activists. Much younger than the average representative and much less respectable, their views tend to be over-represented in press coverage of Tory conferences, because they are the sort of characters with whom journalists can identify. But even if they are heavily out-numbered by the solid, stolid middle Britishness who are still steady on parade, they are a problem for the leadership. It is in their ranks that the revolutionary defeatists are found.

It is a sign of the Tory Party's current dif- ficulties that the Leninist phrase 'revolu- tionary defeatism' is now in common parlance. Some of the Bolsheviks did not mind losing the first world war, because they calculated — correctly — that they could profit from the ensuing chaos. The Bolsho-Tories fake a similar view of the next election. Lose it, dump Major and his equivocation with him, hold a show trial of Clarke, purge the rest of the Europhiles, reunite around Redwood, Portillo or whichever Euroscep hero is in vogue at the moment, then sweep back to power and complete the Thatcherite revolution. There are a couple of hundred people in Bournemouth who hold those views, including a handful of MPs. None of them would mind being told that this is all so unTory, though they ought to; it should also deter sensible persons from listening to them. Tories have tradi- tionally prided themselves on their grasp of reality and their willingness to embrace complexity; doctrinaire simplicities and slo- gan solutions were left to the Left. But all that began to change when intellectuals started joining the Tory Party.

There is one problem with intellectuals in politics. They often behave in such an unintelligent fashion. By temperament at least, most intellectuals are religious; throughout history and in all societies, most of them have been employed by churches. So the recurrent dan- ger is that they will treat poli- tics as a surrogate religion. They will demonise their oppo- nents, especially within their own party, treating any dissent from their own opinion as heresy. They will repeat their chosen solution over and over again as if they were chanting a litany. They will insist that all political choices are a simple matter of distinguishing good from evil.

Twenty years ago, such char- acters infested the Labour party. They would assert that socialism could be brought about next week, if only the party had the right leaders: Tony Benn was their Redwood and Portillo. They con- temptuously dismissed the leading mem- bers of the Callaghan administration as dotards and quislings; they, too, looked for- ward to electoral defeat, it would lay the foundation of future victory.

I remember a conversation with Mr Benn himself around that time. He was serenely confident of the inevitability of socialism. Only one thing could delay its arrival; the right-wing of the Labour Party, which had proved so adept at confusing and dividing the working class. So electoral defeat had no terrors for Mr Benn; on the contrary, it would give him and his friends the chance to complete their capture of the Labour Party and to get rid of all its non- socialists. What did elections matter when history was on your side? These days, it is the right-wing activists in the Tory Party who believe in historical Inevitability. There is only one problem they do not know any history. Their version of events reminds one of those Marxist car- toon-strips for school children produced by Third World educationalists: it is history as caricature. They do not even know what happened in the Thatcher years, which they think of as a succession of glorious cru- sades. When they are asked to explain the Single European Act or the deal over the Common Agricultural Policy they become fretful, as ideologues do when theory appears to be contradicted by practice: it is practice's fault, of course. If one wants to produce an equivalent version of Leon Brittan listening to a Euroscep, it is only necessary to remind them that throughout her years as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was committed to EMU — eco- nomic and monetary union. They will then bluster that she did not mean it (they are right). One can then try gently to point out to them that if it was necessary for Mar- garet Thatcher —even with her large majorities — to make rhetorical conces- sions to the Europhiles, they should surely be more tolerant of Mr Major when he has to do the same, in much more difficult cir- cumstances.

But most of these young activists are not

interested in circumstances. As far as they are concerned, every difficulty has the same cause: a failure of will by the politi- cian encountering it. It is no use pointing out to them that though the true history of the Thatcher years certainly includes suc- cesses and triumphs, there was also cau- tion, compromise and concession; that even if she never admitted what she was doing, she always knew when to make a tactical retreat. A far as Europe was con- cerned, as Charles Powell is happy to acknowledge, at the end of the day she always cut a deal. She was a great Prime Minister and an enduring source of politi- cal inspiration, but she also left John Major some grave unsolved problems, which helps to explain why his premiership has been so embattled.

One has these discussions over and over again, to little effect. The Bolsho-Tories are not interested in history as what really happened; they value history solely as myth and as a source of emotional sustenance. Their version of the Thatcher years is a life of St Margaret by an especially credulous hagiographer.

But these Tory Bolsheviks are only an extreme version of the problem which would confront any government that had been in power for 17 years. Longevity wears out governments just as it wears out the human form. The two principal dis- eases of governmental old age which threaten to accelerate mortality are a bored electorate and a sense of betrayal among staunch supporters.

When Cardinal Morton was Henry VII's Treasury Minister, he found an ingenious way of taxing the rich. If a nobleman was living ostentatiously, Morton would declare that he was obviously a rich man who could afford to pay a lot. But a frugal nobleman did not escape: the Cardinal would insist that he was clearly saving a lot of money and could therefore pay his taxes — hence Morton's Fork.

The voters impale governments which have been long in office on a similar fork. If ministers do not seem to have new ideas, they are accused of being stale. But if they do produce ideas, the other prong comes into play: if that is such a good proposal, the voters will respond, why has it taken 17 years for you to come up with it? There is no easy way of resolving this dilemma, though perhaps a little more candour would help. The voters would not necessar- ily reject the plea of 'better late than never.'

The betrayed supporters are a more seri- ous problem. All governments inevitably betray their strongest supporters, because they can never fulfil their dreams. Most devout Tories are hangers, intensely frus- trated that after 17 years of Tory rule, the restoration of the death penalty seems as far away as ever. They believe in retributive justice, and will cheer Michael Howard: how fortunate for the Tories that after 17 years, Mr Howard can still find new crimes to punish. But when the Home Secretary sits down, those who have been cheering him know that the crime problem is still unsolved. Devoted Tories also want a smaller state — without affecting the ser- vices they use — and lower taxes. Every day, it seems, they open the paper and find that the Government is doing things it ought not to be doing: paying vast sums to pregnant servicewomen, sending young hooligans on expensive holidays — but not tackling the real issues of crime, dole fraud — and Europe.

It is no more use describing the obstacles in the path of action to them than it is try- ing to explain the real history of the Thatcher years to the Bolsho-Tories. There is a difference. Those staunch supporters do want to win the election; as any good Tory should, they find revolutionary defeatism unthinkable. In this as in other respects, they resemble Lady Thatcher who is their heroine also. Even at her moments of maximum discontent with Mr Major and his government, she never wanted him to lose. But she is still, albeit unwillingly, adding to his problems. She is making it hard for him to assuage the discontents of these fundamentally loyal supporters.

They miss her. She was one of them, really, and they know it. Like them, she was often fed up with the government. They wondered why some of these ministers couldn't just summon up a bit more back- bone and get on with it; so did she, and they could tell it from her body language and from the unspoken passages in her speeches. She might not be able to do everything they wanted this year; maybe not even next year — but they knew that she did want to do it, and they believed that one of these years she would.

One of the crucial components of Mar- garet Thatcher's political genius was her ability to keep words and actions in sepa- rate components — sometimes indeed, separate universes. She never allowed the compromises she made to dim her convic- tions. That was a hard act to sustain, and by the end of her premiership, it was becom- ing almost impossible: the tension between principles and realities had grown too great, as a large number of Tory MPs had come to recognise, however reluctantly.

But that recognition was nothing like as widespread among the constituency repre- sentatives. The shock-waves of her fall are still reverberating. Seeing her on Tuesday, one was reminded just what a thrilling politician she was, and is. Over 15 years, the Tory Party grew accustomed to that thrill; a lot of the representatives were not so much Thatcher admirers as Thatcher addicts. John Major has spent his whole premiership in adversity, but even in the most benign conditions he could not have reproduced the Thatcher effect. No one could.

That Thatcher effect also helped to pre- vent a mutiny among the Eurosceptics. They knew that she disapproved of Europe as much as they did. So they trusted her, in a way that they do not trust Mr Major. Europe is the most complicated of all polit- ical issues. Not only are there no easy answers, there are not even any easy ques- tions. But here again, a growing number of Tories are impatient with complexity. They have simply had enough of Europe, and they want something done, now. The proposition that the power of Brussels has increased, is increasing and must be dimin- ished would command 95 per cent support in the conference hall. Europe is the grievance of grievances.

I ran into Leon Brittan later on Tuesday; his political digestion had clearly recov- ered. He was having a cup of tea with Ken- neth Clarke in the main conference hall while going over the Chancellor's speech; that was a sight to curdle any Eurosceptic's champagne. The rumour was that Ken was determined to speak out — as if he ever did anything else. As of Wednesday morn- ing, the conference was going much better than anyone had predicted it would. The Prime Minister's question and answer ses- sion was an outstanding performance, and lifted everyone's morale. But by Thursday afternoon, with the Chancellor's help, that could all change. But if so, we may be near- er to answering an important question: is Ken Clarke the revolutionary defeatists' principal ally?