THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Simon Heifer argues that reports of an
outbreak of unity in the Conservative Party, and of a shift to the right, are exaggerated
PARTY CONFERENCES, particularly Tory ones, are about constructing public relations artifices. The level of debate, with its slogans and name-calling, rarely rises above that of the playground; during speeches, most Cabinet ministers never think to elevate themselves above plati- tude. They rely, often successfully, on the press not to find them out. On the penulti- mate morning of last week's conference, the tabloids and broadsheets alike announced that the Tory party had moved to the right. Two days later, once Mr Major had succeeded in not fluffing his lines, the consensus was that unity — however fragile — had been established. The truth was oth- erwise. For all the talk at Blackpool of a return to traditional Tory values, nothing has changed. A senior centre-left minister — a Hesel- tine man in 1990 — told me that it was balls' to suggest the Right were on their way back. 'Nothing has changed. We say whatever we have to say to keep everyone quiet. But it's our people who are still run- ning everything.' When the Right's icon, Lady Thatcher, arrived, 40 per cent of the audience gave a demonstration of unity by stopping their polite applause quickly and then grimly watching the extended ecstasy of their fellows.
The continuing dominance of the centre- left in the Tory party is hard to refute. The press's announcement of the rightward shift was provoked by two speeches from the platform: Mr Howard, the Home Sec- retary, engaging in popular authoritarian- ism on law and order; and Mr Lilley, the Social Security Secretary, promising clamp- downs on benefit fraudsters and, in particu- lar, on foreign scroungers. The media deal superficially in labels, and in the contest of Left and Right, Right was now apparently fighting back. Mr Major, clever enough to kn ow that nothing of the sort was happen- ing, must have felt a rare spasm of delight with Fleet Street. The newspapers' failure to take anything at other than its face value helped to buy him a little time, and helped to convince his audience that there was something to be cheerful about. The representatives in the hall may have been happy; but there were fewer of them this year, many regulars having suffered such a crash of morale that they did not attend. The Conservative Party in the country is in a parlous state: the published accounts show a deficit of £18.6 million, agents are being sacked and quotas are not being paid to the centre. The middle-aged representatives, who predominated at Blackpool, go to conferences for the same reasons they resolutely stay in the party for social or tribal rather than ideological stimulation. The younger ones are fewer but more vocal, and motivated more by a desire to fight doctrinal battles. Many of them were carefully screened out of debates in which it was thought they might be troublesome: the debate on foreign poli- cy gave no impression that the Tory party had torn itself apart in the last 12 months on the question of Europe. Next year, the Young Conservatives' delegation is to be trimmed substantially to safeguard further against an outbreak of the true feelings of disaffected Tories.
Mr Lilley's was the only genuinely right- wing speech of the week from the platform, although it was more a reflection of his profound Euro-scepticism and his loathing of fixed exchange rate systems than it was an exposition of the ills of welfarism. After the Prime Minister had spoken on Friday, Messrs Lilley and Portillo, the Cabinet's leading 'bastards', were made available to the press to protest that Mr Major had reaffirmed traditional values and how bril- liant the speech had been. But this message of unity was scarcely supported by the text, whose only rightist commitment was to clamp down on one of Britain's few suc- cessful export businesses, pornography.
Mr Howard, the third 'bastard', pulled off a superficial presentational success in making those who watched him think he was leading some new rightward shift. He did, with much trumpeting, announce 27 measures to allow the forces of law and order to get tough on crime. But this was mostly tinkering, and the reversal of liber- alisations to the system carried out while the Tories have been in power. To judge by the orgasmic ovation given to a Young Conservative who called for the reintroduc- tion of birching and hanging, Mr Howard failed to give his audience what they really wanted. Next year, if he is still Home Sec- retary, it is more than likely that he will deliver his conference speech against a background of even higher crime figures (5.7 million offences a year at the latest count) than today. Perhaps by then birch- ing and hanging will be the only wheezes left, unless transportation to the colonies wins renewed intellectual favour.
The most compelling evidence against the so-called shift to the right is presented by a perusal of the Cabinet list. Until the levers of power are in the hands of the Right, the Right will be impotent. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary, the President of the Board of Trade, the Chief Whip and the party chairman (to name but a few) are not of the Right's faction. `The "bastards" haven't got a chance in Cabi- net,' says a colleague of impeccable legiti- macy. Tilley isn't afraid to argue, but Michael [Portillo] has his hands tied by Ken [Clarke, the Chief Secretary's boss]. They can't make the running.' When it suits, such as at Blackpool last week, one thing will be told to the faithful, and anoth- er pursued in the secrecy of the party's highest councils.
To maintain the stability the leadership needs if it is to continue on its centre-left course, it must at least pretend to placate the Right. So terrified is the Tory leader- ship of the descendants of Lady Thatcher that it was deemed essential for ministers with leftist credentials to do their bit (how- ever insincere) to show the faithful that they, too, could talk dirty. In this respect, the speech of Mr David Hunt, the Employ- ment Secretary, was breathtaking. Mr Hunt is a crusading centre-leftist and former pro- tégé of Lord Walker. His commitment to the European cause is legendary. Yet he laced his rather poor speech with a puerile assault on M. Jacques Delors, and provided some hostages to fortune in his promises to challenge in the European Court statutory limits on working hours, and to veto com- pulsory Work Councils. The Maastricht rebels countered that there could be no veto, unless Britain invoked the Luxem- bourg Compromise — which, in the inter- ests of remaining communautaire, it has always said it will not.
Most preposterously, Mr Hunt also called for 'loyalty to the people of this country, and the covenant of trust which they have made with our Conservative and Unionist Party'. When Mr Lilley said some- thing far milder, Sir Edward Heath called for him to be sacked for nasty and narrow- minded nationalism; on Mr Hunt, his co- religionist, the old monster was damningly silent. Barely 36 hours earlier, Mr Hunt had told his sympathisers in the Tory Reform Group that 'we have always, right- ly, rejected . . . the concept of a "laissez faire" economy. In European terms, we are moving towards an increasingly competitive and deregulated version of what the Ger- mans term the "social market economy".' `He's a shit, and a particularly dangerous shit at that,' said an observer of Mr Hunt's from the opposite wing of the party. 'The talk of his becoming party chairman is ter- rifying. He'd weed out our people from the candidates' list and use it as a springboard for the leadership. He's far worse than Clarke.'
The confidence trick was mounted to make the party in the country, watching on television, think it was just like the old days of vision, and unity around that vision. However, as well as not moving to the right, the party is not united. A battle is being conducted about public spending and whether or not to raise taxation. At a more ideological level, there is a debate about the role and the size of the state which Mr Major will have to referee. His Foreign Secretary, Mr Hurd, believes the state should be maintained; his Chief Secretary, Mr Portillo, wants it sharply reduced in size and scope. Even quite right-wing ministers are claiming in private that cuts 'cannot' be made. However, especially with the recov- ery seeming to stutter, the only real mea- sure of whether the party is moving to the right economically will be if the apparently unthinkable is done, and taxes kept down.
Mr Major himself still has trouble facing up to reality. 'He still can't say "never" about the ERM,' says a colleague. 'Until he does, he can never win the confidence of the Right.' Competitiveness between the factions in his party is as strong as ever. When Mr Clarke's conference speech was perceived to have bombed, there was undisguised rejoicing in the bars of Black- pool among the Right. And, despite the assurances from all and sundry — not least Lady Thatcher — that Mr Major's leader- ship is safe, Left and Right alike are plot: ting about that too. Both factions agree it is not a question of whether, but when. They also agree that there is no point choosing a new leader now, only for him to be cruci- fied after the Tories do badly in next May's local government elections and June's Euro-elections.
Good taste has, so far, prevented more detailed planning for the future by either Left or Right. Some of Mr Major's associ- ates were livid at the perception that Mr Clarke's friends had started an unofficial campaign for him to become leader. It was no surprise, therefore, when the Chancellor devoted a prominent part of his speech to swearing undying loyalty to Mr Major. But at least the Left has a candidate — for the moment, though an unpopular Budget could be the end of Mr Clarke's aspira- tions. The Right has, until recently, been so overwhelmed by the memory of Lady Thatcher that the search for a new leader 'As a traditionalist I demand to be taught by a man.' of their faction has never really begun. The impact of her memoirs (which have helped sustain, rather than cause, the climate of internal dissent), as well as the urgency of having to find a candidate, has at last made the Right concentrate on the future. Mr Howard, who had looked to be their natu- ral choice, suffers from unpopularity on the Right. Mr Portillo has devotees, but most of them say that, despite his skills, he is too young and needs the experience of running a department if he is to assert himself properly among less able colleagues.
Mr Lilley, ten years older than Mr Por- tillo, has struggled with a credibility prob- lem ever since he entered the Cabinet in 1990. Yet, in purely rhetorical and perfor- mance terms, he made the best speech of the conference for the second successive year. Right-wing ministers have unstinting regard for his intellect and moral courage. MPs previously deterred by his understated personality were, after his speech last week, talking about him as a leadership chal- lenger. He helped himself greatly in their eyes not by talking tough about foreigners and scroungers, but by poking fun at the Prime Minister for the 'bastards' remark. Mr Lilley's perceived charisma deficit is, it seems, being reversed.
The worst problem facing the Tory party, however, has nothing to do with factions. It is that the Government still has not rebuilt its moral authority after the political catas- trophe of Black Wednesday 13 months ago. The sacking of Norman Lamont, designed to make matters better, has only made them worse because of the way Mr Lamont has since ruthlessly exposed the self-serving turpitude of his former colleagues, not least the Prime Minister. The decision to put VAT on fuel is further seen as having damaged the moral authority of a govern- ment that denied, in the election campaign, that it had any plans to raise VAT. If taxes are raised in next month's Budget it will look like a further breaking of promises. Some points made sincerely on the fringe at Blackpool — like Mr Portillo on the need for greater individual responsibility, and Mr Howard on the moral problems of single mothers — contrast ill with a party where no one thinks that losing £3 billion of the taxpayer's money in an afternoon is a resigning matter, and a minister with five mistresses can carry on regardless.
If the 1992-93 session of parliament, which begins its final chapter when the House of Commons opens on Monday, is any guide to the one that opens next month, more than we can predict will go wrong, and panic will return. Many MPs returning to their constituencies last week- end found all too quickly that their activists who had not been to Blackpool did not suddenly believe that everything was com- ing up roses. The breathing space Mr Major and his friends cunningly won at Blackpool signifies the end of the begin- ning; but after that, of course, comes the beginning of the end.
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