Chris Patten did not get where he is today by being a troublemaker

FRANK JiL r Mr Chris Patten. in a newspaper interview the other day, said he wanted to be thought of as a 'troublemaker'. He added that one of the people who most inspired him was the late Roy Jenkins.

Mr Patten is European Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and Chancellor of Oxford University. Jenkins held the latter office too, as well as having been European Commission President. He is an appropriate inspirer of Mr Patten. The whole point about Mr Patten, and about Roy Jenkins, is that both were master trouble-avoiders rather than makers. Does Mr Patten think he would have attained those two offices if he had ever made any trouble at all for anyone apart from spent forces and soft targets such as Ulster Unionists and the Conservative party?

Oxford in particular is the traditional home of safe causes. He would not preside over it now if he was trouble, nor would Jenkins have done so. Both had views acceptable to a majority of the old Oxonians who elect the Chancellor. In the past, those views were Conservative. That was why Lord Halifax was Chancellor in the 1950s; the Halifax still constantly vilified and misrepresented as a wartime defeatist. Lord Halifax became Chancellor because the Establishment was then Conservative, or at least with a small 'c'. Now the Establishment is liberal. Even Lord Chief Justices do not attach high importance to keeping out bogus asylum-seekers.

Jenkins and Patten were the beneficiaries of an important component of today's Establishment liberalism: belief in 'Europe'. Patten was one of Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet ministers. For a while, he presided over the poll tax. That impost did not worry the Establishment one way or another but was useful to it as a way of inciting the masses against her. But like Jenkins he also said a lot about being for 'Europe'. The poll tax, and his acceptance of Thatcher patronage, were therefore forgiven and forgotten. He became Oxford's magnifico. All worldly reward comes to those who are Europeans: sinecures in Brussels or Oxford, baubles, Orders of Merit.

Mr Patten would object that he makes trouble for people who are not supporters of the single currency or advocates of a European army, but who approve of the old Royal Ulster Constabulary, support capital punishment, regret the multicultural society and share the belief that Roy Jenkins and

Kenneth Clarke were the best prime ministers we never had. But to upset such people is not troublemaking. Such people have no patronage. They cannot offer the gewgaws, in Brussels or Oxford, that Mr Patten and Roy Jenkins coveted. It is true that this Establishment of which I speak has not yet got us into the single currency. But that is a matter of timing. If we look closer we can see that it is already seducing Mr Howard from his implacable opposition to it. According to Mr Glover in last week's Spectator, a shift towards the euro has begun from Mr Portillo. Being apparently a seeker after the sort of prizes which Mr Patten and Roy Jenkins won, Mr Portillo is wise. Becoming a right-winger did him no good even in the medium term. His present grandeur rests on his being acceptable to the Establishment as the Thatcherite that repenteth.

I do not complain all that much. I share many of Mr Patten's comfortable views, though not on the euro. People with such views are essential in order to stop public life becoming a matter of endless strife and illtemper. But people of such a placid disposition should not try to don the guise of the roustabout. Consider, in contrast to Mr Patten, Sir Andrew Green. Since he is a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Syria, one might think him an Establishment figure. The FO's Arabists are not associated with troublemaking. But he is also chairman of Migration Watch UK, says that Whitehall is minimising the numbers migrating to Britain, and that the migration is storing up much grief. For that he is vilified by the forces that exalt the Fattens and Jenkinses. Now there is a real troublemaker.

Yet I suppose it is hard for public figures to admit that their views are conformist and no threat to the comfortable. Perhaps Mr Patten and Roy Jenkins truly thought that they were iconoclasts and that in being disrespectful about Mrs Thatcher they were making trouble for the forces of authority instead of for one lonely and embattled commander whose officers swiftly deserted her when she became vulnerable. Perhaps, from the High Table beyond our world, Roy visits Mr Patten in the latter's dreams.

`Can you hear me, Chris?'

'Is it you, Roy?'

`Yes, it's me. Now I hope you've been making a lot of trouble since my last visit.'

'Oh, yes, Roy. I told Blair that he had missed the bus on the euro and was in danger of being isolated in Europe. I also told Howard that power lies in the centre, that oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them, and that the Tory party is a national party or it is nothing. Before that, I told everyone that IDS was useless. There comes a time when a man has to speak out.'

'All that's very brave of you. Chris. But be careful. Don't overuse your courage. How's Douglas Hurd doing, by the way? Gutsy as usual, I hope.'

'He's not letting you down, Roy. Still making trouble for the powers-that-be. He's just been made an OM.'

-And Oxford? How are you getting on in that job?'

'Well, I dined at Christ Church the other night, and I'm afraid I made trouble there too.' `Now you've worried me. What did you say?' `I told a servant that I'd had better claret from Waitrose.'

'I'm relieved. For one minute I thought you might have made trouble for someone who was in a position to make trouble for you. That's not the name of our game, is it, Chris?'

Imissed the first 'gay kiss' in the history of The Archers. But, since The Archers is a radio programme, I searched the newspapers to see if any of them explained whether a gay kiss sounded any different from a straight kiss. None did.

To Central Office's glee, the first avowedly lesbian prospective Tory candidate has just won a nomination. The party hopes that others will follow. This means that the newspapers will eventually report on the first lesbian Commons heckle and the first lesbian point of order. But they will sound no different from those of heterosexual female MPs. Presumably that is the point.