Political commentary
Mr Tebbit's teddy
Charles Moore
T can confirm that the race for the Tory leadership is on. Alas, I am not free to disclose the intensely top level sources who would have told me if I had felt like asking them. Instead I refer you to the press photographs of Mr Norman Tebbit stan- ding next to a large teddy bear. When I add that Mr Michael Heseltine has been spotted talking affably to journalists, I will have said enough to convince the most sceptical observer.
Of course, this does not mean that the race may not be off again in a few weeks, or rather, that it may not soon drop out of sight, and be run for another year or two underground, the candidates panting and sweating down subterranean corridors hun- ting for the right place and moment to break out into the light. But the coincidence of the Parkinson affair and a week in Blackpool (if coincidence it was) has pro- vided the first opportunity since the defeat of the Wets two years ago to view the field.
In an unintentional sort of way, Mr Parkinson has helped Mr Tebbit by describ- ing him, at a widely reported private dinner in Blackpool, as his 'worst enemy'. What possessed Mr Parkinson to say this one should perhaps not try to guess at, except to say that 'possessed' may be the right word. For some time before his downfall, Mr Parkinson was prone to extraordinarily frank expressions of feeling about his political allies. Shortly after the election, he amazed and delighted his audience at a journalists' dining club in the House of Commons, by describing the scene at Che- quers on the day that the election date was chosen in comic terms unflattering to the Prime Minister. What made it particularly odd was that Mrs Thatcher's two press men, Bernard Ingham and Derek Howe, were there. Anyway, whatever Mr Parkin- son intended during his evening with Sir Larry Lamb, he succeeded in making Mr Tebbit appear very wise and very deep. At the weekend Mr Tebbit went to see him and stuck up for him (he had gone by then, of course) on television. On Sunday, Mr Teb- bit got Mr Parkinson's job, and on Monday he and the teddy bear faced the press — a scene as macabre as the Parkinson family holding hands in Potter's Bar.
Before the Parkinson affair, the leader- ship question had had too hypothetical an air even for political gossips to enjoy it much. There was Heseltine on the left, and Tebbit on the right, and Parkinson slipping through the middle, and Geoffrey Howe guaranteed to get round if the others fell at the fences; but nothing worth betting on. Then there was the disgrace of Parkinson,
and we all watched the reactions of the con- ference to the remaining candidates. The Heseltine ovation this year was given more in deference to tradition than with feeling, more applause for a good performance than for a good fellow. Mr Tebbit was received with more warmth. Then Miss Keays misread the Daily Telegraph and flew into a rage, Trade and Industry fell vacant and Mr Tebbit got one up on Mr Heseltine.
The question is, is Trade-and-Industry one of those heights which a future Prime Minister should aspire to command, or is Mr Tebbit unwittingly making himself obscure? Compared with the Foreign Of- fice or the Treasury, it has an off-putting technical air about it. It sounds like one of those jobs that Churchill offered people as an insult, and we know that it does not have a very high moral tone because it was made clear until Friday's debacle that Mr Parkin- son could stay there as a 'self-confessed adulterer' but could not have stayed as Par- ty Chairman. One associates it with wearisome sales trips abroad,and with speeches claiming that a technological development is 'exciting' (politician's code word for 'boring).
It is true, though, that the newly designed department has something definite to do. Unlike Mr Heath's outfit of the same name, this one excludes Transport and Energy en- tirely and so hopes to be manageable. The point of it, as conceived by Mr Parkinson and approved by Mrs Thatcher, is that it should be a sort of ministry for business, rather than a department concentrating on propping up manufacturing industry and forgetting about everything else. It com- bines the control and dispersal of na- tionalised industries, regional policy, merger policy, tariff agreements and infor- mation technology. It even has two perma- nent secretaries, which shows that it is still bigger than it is wise.
Mr Tebbit comes in at a time when much of the work done by his predecessors to prepare nationalised industries for sale is approaching fruition. If you buy a Jaguar now, apparently, it works. Someone might want to buy the warship and offshore bits of British Shipbuilders. Even British Steel appears to be prospering, though officials doubt whether its accounts are quite as good as they look. Above all, Mr Tebbit has to sell off 51 per cent of British Telecom and raise four billion pounds, trying on the one hand to make it clear that there will still be telephone boxes in rural areas, and on the other to make sure that there is real competition in the market after the sale. If Mr Tebbit is able to preside over a series of successful sales, everyone will think him very efficient to have untangled so much complication, and the Conservative Party will feel itself vindicated in a belief which, until recently, it has followed with more piety than activity.
Regional policy, though, will test Mr Tebbit's political courage more sharply. Despite all its appeals to the free market, the Government has continued a policy of regional aid based on encouraging capital investment in manufacturing industries and plucking at the sleeves of big companies begging them to set up uneconomic and easily closed branch plants in unsuitable spots. The calculation is that each job created by these methods costs £45,000 of government money, and there is nothing to show for it all in the unemployment figures from the assisted regions. Why not say openly that such subsidies do active harm, withdraw them, and try to use the money saved to reduce the business rate? Because there are too many votes, or, at least, com- plaining backbenchers involved, has been the answer in the past. Mr Tebbit will be forced to decide one way or the other on the question by the case of the West Midlands, which have in the past eschewed assistance, but now argue that they will have to have it if it is still handed out to other areas. They are stuffed with Tory marginals, so Mr Teb- bit will be tempted to give in. But if he does, the Conservative economic argument will collapse (and the decline of the aided regions will continue).
It may be that, after Telecom has been sold, there will be a partial eclipse of Mr Tebbit as a public figure. He will no longer be expected to delight and shock us with his views on the unions, and he will have to cultivate the arts of peace, talking politely to all those managerial types who, even if they are not terribly thrusting, are collec- tively 'one of us'. But that should not im- pede his advance. His party's MPs will want him to use his skills of trenchant com- munication constructively, and perhaps, if Mr Lawson proves too much for the televi- sion viewer, they will want Mr Tebbit to become the main public advocate of the Government's economic policy. He must prove that he can control his savagery, though not discard it. Mr Tebbit is happy to oblige — hence the teddy bear.
Some say that it is very ridiculous of politicians to go gossiping and fantasising about the future when there is work to be done, and no real immediate prospect of Mrs Thatcher not being there to do it, and that journalists make it worse by repeating all the chatter and gossiping themselves. But what would you do by way of relaxa- tion if you had to spend twelve hours a day in a high-rise block shuffling memos about rate support grants and small business in- centives? A politician only has his future, just as a war veteran only has his past. His actions are sacrifices for that future. Mr Tebbit has made a number of sacrifices over the past fortnight, and the conscientious chronicler has a duty to record them.
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