Political Commentary ,
A fool and your money
Patrick Cosgrave
Mr Ian Aitken of the Guardian, in a rather jolly portrait, once referred to Mr Denis Healey as a thug, and made it clear that, in his view, there were no two ways about the judgement. Certainly, Mr Healey looks like a thug: the huge brows, the massive shoulders, the vulpine grin, the bouncer's arrogance, the way he swings a fist when he is making a telling political point (or one he thinks is telling), the conviction of righteousness which he carries about with him wherever he goes — which enables him, incidentally, to change convictions, several times in a week, and frequently to assert two utterly opposing views at the same time, insisting that the whole procedure shows how intelligent he is — not to mention his unpleasant habit of regaling listeners (as he used to regale his Department of Defence civil servants) with crude imitations of the Prime Minister, all these sustain Mr Aitken's judgement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There are two questions to be asked about this Mr Healey in a week in which he has presented a mini-Budget. First, how on earth did he get his reputation as an intellectual; and, second, what sort of Chancellor is he? (The second question need not be answered in the negative merely because of what I have said above: many distinguished political commentators, and Mr David Wood in particular, think there is a lot to be said for having a stupid Chancellor; it is the clever ones who most often fall victim to Treasury hypnosis.) The essential basis of Mr Healey's reputation as an intellectual was built when he was Secretary of State for Defence. (I should, by the Wray, distinguish, like Baldwin, between an intellectual and a man of intellect, the distinction being the same as that between a gent and a gentleman.) It is a curious paradox of his career that the holding of that office both made his name as a man of thought among those too superficial to judge these matters, and destroyed his chances of ever leading the Labour Party; for Labour is ineradicably hostile to anybody who ever makes any show of even caring about defending the country in arms — witness the rejection of Mr Fred Peart at Shadow Cabinet elections for the sole sin of opposing defence expenditure reduction.
During his time at the MoD Mr Healey was careful regularly to attend meetings of the Institute (or, as it became, the International Institute) of Strategic Studies. He was fortunate never to come under the penetrating cross-examination of Professor Alastair Buchan to too severe an extent but, as he reversed British defence policy time after time, and rowed along with any old thing the last Labour government found at any time necessary on grounds of expediency (party expediency, that is, not national) his reputation waxed. He hired a Ministry of Defence adviser who had forged a PhD qualification, and collaborated with that man in the production of an adulatory biography of himself, being unable to distinguish between quality and pretence. And he reached a high moment in professional esteem when Mr Michael Howard, who is quite a distinguished historian, produced an adoring profile of the Secretary of State in the Sunday Times under a photograph of Mr Healey, couchant.
Through all this Mr Healey could readily bludgeon his way, for he is, above all, expert at making his personality felt. He has, like most politicians who pretend to expertise in this game, a number of tricks ready to hand. Thus, opposing a woman on a television programme some time ago Mr Healey leant over during the. seconds before going on the air and remarked that there was lipstick on her teeth. So he ensured that the unfortunate lady would spend a great deal of the ensuing programme time licking her teeth, and be caught by the camera in so doing. At almost any juncture Mr Healey extends the force of his vibrant personality, for it is his only weapon. He has almost no ideas of his own, but he seeks out ideas like a vampire, flatters the producers thereof, and seeks to make them his men. Thus has he worked on the Cambridge school of economists.
And so we come to Mr Healey as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His appointment as Shadow Chancellor was odd enough, and a suggestion to many that Mr Wilson's mind was wandering. His confirmation in the substantive role was odder still, when Mr Crosland was available, given that Mr Lever was unfit. Of course, as a Shadow Chancellor Mr Healey was a delight to his advisers, more often than not unworldly academics — like the defence experts he had earlier flattered — who were thrilled to see a politician get up and spout their views. Unfortunately — because there are eagle eyes in the press gallery of the House of Commons — Mr Healey never sat well with the ideas. Even the short-sighted reporter could detect the pink pages of the Financial Times among his notes, and the slavishness with which he read from them.
Even so a certain reputation for low political cunning might have remained Mr Healey's — after all, it is clever in a politician to have a press reputation with so little basis — were it
not for his complete miscalculation of the political situation, while in opposition, on the Common Market. Just as it had become clear to almost everybody that the Labour Party was about to opt for a policy of renegotiation Mr Healey took an enormous amount of space in the Daily Mirror to announce that he was convinced that membership of the EEC as it was was good for us. Conservative Central Office was delighted and an aparatchik there, amazed at my scoffing dismissal of the durability of Mr Healey's conversion, bet me a substantial lunch that it would prove lasting. A few weeks later he lost the bet.
This gent is now in main charge of the British economy. If lain Macleod were still live and Shadow Chancellor, or if someone with a corn' mand of the economic rapier, like Mrs Thatcher, confronted him week after week across his dispatch box, even Mr Healey would, surely, be unable to sustain the pretence of command that he has still enjoyed. Only because his Shadow, Mr Robert Carr, is so patient and kindly and reasonable and un-economic a man has Mr Healey escaped; and even then Mr Carr has brought him to heel more than once. Even so, it is useful to note the complaint Mr Healey made, more than once in recent days, when, snapping in a corner, and blustering as usual (only Mr Healey can snap and bluster at the same time), he threatens general elections and all manner of Arrnageddons on nasty Con' servatives who were amending his Finance Bill. The Tories, he argued, were denying his Budget judgement; and he said it in the tones of a child whose toy was being taken away. Now, those two words, 'Budget judgement' ought to be savoured. There are two points of interest about them. First, they are TreasurY words: they are aloof formulations of the mandarins of Great George Street, designed t° convince the rest crf us that the argument is too complex for us to follow. As has been typical of his career, Mr Healey is yielding to the advice closest to him. Second, there was no judgement about the economy in Mr Healey's budget speech last April, or nothing that could be dignified by that appellation. The Chancellor spoke for an hour before he came to a single measure, and that hour contained the most pedestrian monologue on our economic affairs that the sleepiest reporter could have wished for. Mr Callaghan was hopeful; Mr Jenkins Was puritan; Mr Macleod was potential; Mr Barber was a gambler; Mr Healey was a nothing. The measure of Mr Healey's egotism was the length of time for which he spoke: when the second hour was being reached the exhausted audience was in a mood to beg for relief rather than to hope for it. And here there is an essential clue to Mr Healey's technique. Where he does not bludgeon down opposition, he tires It He is so enamoured of himself that he has ne time for selflet alone other criticism; he is toe enamoured of himself even to think; he is even too enamoured of himself ever to complete hisf promised study of British defence policy, part the manuscript of which was lost in opposition. Yet, he has a gift of the gab — it cannot he denied — and a way of sounding the most intellectually assured of men, which has served him well. If it is true, as Mr Kenneth Harris once observed, that Mr Callaghan was the Labour minister to go on the box and tell the nation there were one million unemployed and make it sound like a social service, then Mr Healey isf the man to do the same and gain the plaudits o Oxbridge. It is related that Mr William Cosgrave, father of the present Irish Prime Minister, walking through the audience before the first meeting of the independent Irish Dail — or parliament came across an outstanding young barristel; one Rory O'Connor, who was an IRA extrernis.,
and who later died in the Irish Civil War. Wilt stopped, dropped a hand on the young man "
shoulder and asked, with simple malice, "Ror)_'" Are ye still the brilliant fool?" Mr Healey is tri` brilliant fool of British politics.
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