HOLLOW APPLAUSE FOR THE HOLLOW MEN

Boris Johnson, with the Conservative Party in Bournemouth,

senses strange echoes of the decadent last days of some defunct East European political establishment

Bournemouth I NEVER HAD the luck to attend one of those last Communist Party conferences in eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when the comrades tear- fully voted themselves out of existence. But there was something of the flavour of those occasions at this week's Tory conference in Bournemouth.

As one beheld the bluff coves and periwigged matrons, they seemed to be transformed before one's eyes into rich functionaries with Russian tube- cigarettes wearing bad nylon suits; and in place of the gin and canapes and whorled-up salmon, one could imagine vodka thim- bles and hunks of fatty gar- lic sausage.

Yes: like the Communists of 1989 and 1990, the Tories this week have evinced that fatal inability to adapt that comes from too long, and too cushy, a period in power. Already the one- time faithful reel at the corruption, the baroque tales of sleaze which surround the children of once-revered leaders. Am I alone in hearing an echo, in the curious episode of the alleged £12 million commis- sion for Mark Thatcher for the Al- Yamamah deal, of the insouciance of Brezhnev's daughter or, indeed, of Nicu Ceausescu? Of course She is blameless Herself. How could you suggest such a thing? But it was noticeable that, appearing on the platform, She received a 30-second ovation that was gauged as somewhere between sub-orgiastic and perfunctory. In Bournemouth this week, Tory honchos can be seen ferried from cocktail party to sup- per party slumped in the back of their black Jaguars, like so many Zil limousines, their faces mottling purple in the reading light at newspaper editorials questioning their financial probity. On the conference floor, they rage at the newspapers for car- rying such hateful tidings; but rage also at the way the Tory nomenklatura are letting the side down.

Poor Jeremy Hanley, the latest object of mass hilarity, has been left with nothing to say but the party line that 'allegations have to be made to the proper authorities'. The Tory womenfolk are still here in force, deep-chested, powdered, penned, the backs of their knees braced above their high heels; but fewer of them, apparently, than in previous years, and one wonders whether next year they will stay at home, or even contemplate emotional defection to Tony.

Like the decaying apparatus of totalitari- anism, to continue the analogy, the old Tory hierarchies have broken up. One MP compared Cabinet ministers to ex-Commie chieftains, the Yeltsins, Ligachevs, bicker- ing in the ideological wasteland left by Gorbo-Major. 'Clarke and Hezza can do what they like. No one knows who is in charge,' he said. And why this decay? To round off this simile a queue longue, the end of the Cold War has finally caught up with the Tory party, just as it has caught up with every other political institution in east and west Europe.

Like the problems of the former commu- nist parties, the trouble dates from the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is 'Europe% though the Tory high com- mand will not, cannot admit it. For the 1970s and much of the 1980s, wailed one despairing MP to me, the party had a convincing, Hurdite line. The Commu- nity was basically about free trade, and the stuff about Ever Closer Union and a single currency was just flummery to satisfy the French and German need to offer earnests of mutual esteem.

Now, with yet another inter-governmental confer- ence on the horizon to amend the Treaty of Maas- tricht in the direction of intensified federalism, that is no longer credible. 'In the old days we used to be able to argue that Europe would be a brake on socialism in Britain,' one MP points out, noting that the position is now reversed: Brussels makes light of the various treaty articles on competition (witness the craven indul- gence, lately, of the French and Air France), and instead imagines Europe with a socialist design. As we have heard recent- ly from Paris and Bonn, a serious federalist agenda is once more in play. Not surprisingly, the platoons of Tories drum their brogues and Hush Puppies to the hope of a reaction. Give us a sign! they tell the leadership. What should 'Clear Blue Water' mean, if not a change of tack on Europe? This week Norman Lamont openly called for this country to be relegat- ed to an outer tier with — what? — Liecht- enstein and the residue of Efta. There may be a touch of the Strangelove about some of what he says. But he speaks closer to the fuchsia-jowled mass of the party than does Douglas Hurd. Deep tides are moving. Jimmy Goldsmith has arrived here, a white-domed messiah preaching pan-European insurrection, a Jacquerie against Delors.

And what can the poor Tory leadership say? Nothing but the clapped-out rhetoric of 'Heart of Europe'. Even if Mr Major and his advisers privately wanted to burst these bonds, wrap themselves in the flag, and fight the next election on a manifesto of 'No further', they dare not. They are too frightened, bluntly, of finding them- selves outflanked by Mr Blair and a British people nervous of being left out of something big. In the old days, Tories knew that Ameri- can presidents were good chaps, and when America spoke they snapped to. Now the Tories are left with Clinton, whom they despise, and a backlog of fossilised slogans about the supremacy of Nato; and all the while Whitehall stealthily prepares for a U- turn on the Euro-defence pact in 1996. 'It's just like Stalin,' one admittedly Euro-scep- tic MP told me. 'What you say is more important than what you do.'

As I say, this analogy with the Commu- nists starts to creak after a while. It would be merely whimsical to compare the scrofu- lous New Age Travellers in Park Lane to the thousands of candle-bearing protestors in Wenceslas Square, Prague; and not every Tory problem can be traced to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

What one can say, though, is that the the present Tory leadership, like the Commu- nists, have lost all margin of manoeuvre. Take public spending, the second of the policy areas where Mr Portillo and Cecil Parkinson, his patron, would have them push out for Clear Blue Water. It should be every Tory's chief goal and pleasure in life to make life hard for scroungers by tak- ing a sharp knife to the soft parts of the welfare state. The statistics are hard to gainsay. The Government now spends £80 billion on welfare, and the amount has been increasing every year by 3-4 per cent above the rate of inflation.

Yet few believe that the estimable Mr Lilley has the mandate to do much more than chivvy out a few malingerers in those South Wales villages which allegedly sub- sist on invalidity benefit. His clinical, Thatcherite mind has boggled at the diffi- culties.

'Lilley's gone on strike,' chuckles one ministerial chum. Or take taxation. low Tax', the clearest, bluest slogan of all, has lost the ring of conviction and even, absurdly, been expropriated by Blair. Sir George Gardiner's calls for a 2 per cent cut are dismissed with a wave of Kenneth Clarke's cheroot. One might mention law and order. You will not be surprised to learn that, here in Bournemouth, the matter has indeed been raised. Yet for all the Tory folk's incontinent spluttering, poor Michael Howard can promise not much more than the brilliant new scheme of — chest out, chin up — 'walking with purpose'.

We gather the Tories are to introduce ID cards. I beg you not to be fooled. This has nothing to do with some new crack- down on crime. As one Cabinet minister privately admitted, the main reason for this intrusion upon our liberties is that we now live in a Europe without frontiers, and it will be handy for the police to mount street spot checks against against anyone funny-looking.

In sum, there is no new radical agenda unless and until Mr Portillo comes to power, or Mr Major has an uncharacteristic fit of ideology. The privatisation larder is bare. The Post Office sell-off is already half-baked, since the Tories have funked the sale of the underused high street branches, all on prime sites. This week, moreover, the conference throbbed with rumour that the whole scheme would be scrapped. Meanwhile, the railway privatisa- tion will be shuffled off into some siding, with only a fraction of the franchises sold.

It is all consolidation, steady as she goes, and welcome aboard, Mr Blair, to our point of view. In the short term, it may be prudent not to be panicked by Tony into adopting radical, electorally challenging policies. In the long run, these Bournemouth Tories will need a clearer lead. In the sweep of history, absence of ideology has helped the Tories. They have been called the 'stupid' party; stupid, but blessed with arm-round-the-shoulder man- agerial talent. As one of its up-and-corners said, though, thinking mainly of the ERM: `The one thing the electorate is absolutely convinced of is that we're not very good at managing.'

Mr Major is probably safe, for this year and next. The view gaining ground is that the Prime Minister's approach resembles that of a scared mafioso, appointing weak men like Mr Hanley (`hopeless, hopeless, hopeless' — leftish MP) to minimise the threat to his own position. 'He's just trying to cover his back. Mrs Thatcher would have despised this,' says the MP.

With its exhausted slogans and fractious politburo, this conference was never likely to give the requisite trumpet-blast. The Conservatives will limp on, neither convinc- ingly left-wing nor right-wing, and loyalty will atrophy. As one MP confessed to me: `I get called on to these radio programmes, and I don't know what to f—ing say.'

Unless they are lucky, even luckier than last time, HMS Tory and its crew will go the way of the Commie barques of yore: its rudder lashed, its sails flapping, creaking towards the next election, the whirlpool and oblivion.

Boris Johnson writes for the Daily Telegraph `Geoff had the fish tank customised so he can be more at one with his fish.'