ANOTHER VOICE
Her plan to manipulate the morons of Britain
AUBERON WAUGH
This will be my last appearance in the front half of the Spectator until the end of April, as I must take time off to write my memoirs (or autobiography as it should more properly be called, since I remember practically nothing of the past 40 years and have vivid but inaccurate memories only of my first ten). Perhaps I might take this opportunity once again of appealing to any Spectator reader who has any personal knowledge or second-hand anecdote of anything I might have done, or been reported to have done, in the past 40 years. Dates would be a tremendous help, too, but all information will be treated in confidence and gratefully acknowledged. Letters should be sent to me at Combe Florey, near Taunton, Somerset.
Rip Van Winkle went to sleep for rather more than four months, of course, but the aphorism for which Harold Wilson will be remembered even longer than his one- liners about the white heat of the technolo- gical revolution, or the pound in your pocket, is surely the one to the effect that `a week is a long time in politics'. The reason it is so much more memorable than almost anything else he ever said is that it is actually true. It would be a foolish journal- ist who chose to predict what will be the state even of domestic politics in four months' time. Rather than making any predictions, I shall jot down quite simply what I expect to find.
In the first place, the Conservatives will be about to be wiped out as a force in local government by May's local elections, com- ing on top of the first demands for poll tax. No doubt many wobbling Tories will vote Green or Liberal or SDP, but the greatest turn-out will be among people who do not normally vote at all in local elections (or even national ones, in many cases) and they will be voting Labour. Local Labour parties are not nearly such sanitised things as we see displayed nowadays by Messrs Kinnock and Hattersley or Dr Cunning- ham. Goodness knows what sort of insects will be seen crawling from under what sort of stones to take over the centres of local government in May. One is reminded of Philbrick's reaction on first seeing the Llanabba Silver Band arrive for Sports Day: `Crikey! Loonies! This is where I shoot.'
Will the Conservatives then pluck up courage to shoot Mrs Thatcher? I doubt it. She has them mesmerised. If she told them to drink cyanide, half of them would do so. Or so it seems now. It is a commonplace among those who decide, for one reason or another, that Mrs Thatcher should be retained until after the next election to misrepresent those who take the contrary view as claiming that she is insane. I have never thought her mad, and I do not think I have ever even suggested she was, although one cannot be so sure about that. She has become an electoral liability be- cause of her extreme unpopularity among the young, and the fact that through excessive self-advertisement she has associ- ated herself personally with every aspect of government policy to which any citizen objects. But I have to admit that when I read Susan Crosland's account in the Sun- day Times of how she charmed the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery with a display of girlish, almost flirtatious diffi- dence and self-deprecatory humour, I be- gan for the first time to wonder whether we might not be dealing with a psychopath.
And now, we are told by Peter Jenkins in the Independent, she has charmed the European leaders at Strasbourg. 'She may have changed her mind about nothing but this summit will go down as the one at which she changed her tune,' he wrote, on Monday 11 December .1989. 'Although twice in a minority of one, she behaved throughout as if the butter mountain wouldn't have melted in her mouth.' I have always been unhappy about that metaphor of butter refusing to melt in someone's mouth, suspecting that it means exactly the opposite of what Mr Jenkins appears to think it means. Never mind. She seems to have convinced Mr Jenkins that her atti- tude towards Europe is softening — first because of developments in the East, secondly because of pressure from Presi- dent Bush, thirdly because of pressures at home. A similar account appeared in the Daily Telegraph. There could be no doubt that Mrs Thatcher was reacting to President Bush's reservations about her position, and also to domestic pressures at home. For that week, at any rate, she succeeded in convincing Mr Jenkins and most of the more intelligent commentators that she was experiencing a change of heart. What convinced me that she was engaged in an elaborate and not entirely sane charade to hide her true feelings and bide her time until she could reaffirm her belief that the harmonisation of tax and excise rates would be a 'nightmare', the opening of frontiers a national disaster, was a leader in the Sun which appeared on the same day as Mr Jenkins's article in the Independent. It has long been my contention that if one wishes to know what Mrs Thatcher is really thinking, and where she really hopes to lead the country, one should read the political and leader pages of the Sun.
`DREAM THAT IS ONE LONG NIGHTMARE', this leader began: 'Two decades after Ted Heath railroaded Britain into the Common Market one question remains unanswered. Just what benefit has this country ever obtained from mem- bership?' It goes on to warn us of the dangers of a united Germany, in the language of every saloon bar bore I can remember: 'Since 1945 there have been 44 years of peace in Europe because Germany was divided.'
It goes without saying that Mrs Thatcher does not believe in any of this twaddle, any more than she was concerned with a diet of Brussels sprouts at the time of her dis- astrous intrusion into the European elec- tions. But the repeated use of the word `nightmare' in this Sun leader of 11 Decem- ber 1989 convinces me that she is personal- ly in charge of a campaign to manipulate the morons of Britain into supporting a total retreat from the Common Market. If I am right, it leaves those with carefully thought-out positions about ways the Com- mon Market can be improved by a forth- right approach looking rather silly. Her real motive, as I see it, is no more and no less than an absolute rejection of any threat to her own personal sovereignty. If I am right, then despite all her achievements in the past she is a very dangerous woman now. Of course I may be absolutely wrong. Things should be clearer in May.
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