POLITICS
Battle has begun at last preceded by a good bad-taste joke
BRUCE ANDERSON
This Parliamentary session began as it will continue right to the hard-fought end in November next year: in acrimony. In recent weeks, Mr Hague has had the odd problem, but on Tuesday he reminded us that in one respect his qualities are unquestionable: as a Parliamentary puncher.
His crack about Lord Mandelson of Rio — the reference is explained in Stephen Glover's article — was in bad taste; most of the best jokes are. Early in the last Parlia- ment, after poor Stephen Milligan's death, John Smith made a jibe about Tory MPs, stockings and oranges. As Mr Milligan was dead, Mr Smith's dig was in worse taste, but no one complained. In the last Parliament, there were hardly any restraints on taste; almost anything went, as long as the victim was a Tory MP.
But Mr Hague's comments caused a fris- son, because he was committing a grave offence: lese-Mandy. A lot of Labour MPs were privately delighted; they wish that they had the nerve to do likewise. Even among the responsible wing of the Labour party — the thinking clone tendency — Mr Mande!son's conduct is causing some alarm. It is becoming increasingly clear that he is accident-prone. Mandelson is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards, most of them of his own igniting.
But the outcome of this session will not depend solely on the Opposition's success in baiting Mr Mandelson. Labour's strategy is now clear. It will present itself as mod- ernising, exciting, relevant: a people's pro- gramme for a people's Parliament, or what- ever. The voters will be invited to contrast all this with the Tories, who are only inter- ested in ritual and privilege. But it will not be that easy.
Both sides learned something from the clashes on the European Parliament. The government had not expected that attack, despite its spin doctors' claims that they had provoked it; even by the standards of this No. 10 press office, that was a shame- less attempt to rewrite history. Despite their brazenness in pretending otherwise, ministers were taken aback by the fierce- ness of last week's onslaught; their response, as ever in such circumstances, was petulance, but petulance tinged by anx- iety. They had encountered what they always hate encountering: something which they cannot control.
As for the Tories, they are confirmed in their belief in the weapon of surprise. They will now scrutinise every piece of govern- ment legislation for opportunities to embarrass ministers, and there will be plen- ty of them. A priori, we can be certain that a number of this session's bills will be ill- drafted: most modern legislation is. But some of these badly drafted bills will almost certainly be ill-thought out; most of this government's proposals are. The combina- tion of under-prepared drafts and lack of intellectual rigour is flammable; that will be a crucial factor in this session.
In at least two areas, asylum and welfare, there is the possibility of a coalition between Tory trouble-seekers and agonis- ing, high-minded liberals. Britain's asylum laws are a mess. We are currently bound by international conventions which were just about sustainable in the days before air travel and when, in both numbers and tem- perament, most of the refugees in London could be accommodated in the reading room of the British Museum. Those 19th- century obligations are now untenable, yet the government is merely proposing to tighten their administration. That could be difficult. Repudiating obligations which we could never discharge would be ruthless and, in certain limited circles, unpopular; it would at least have intellectual clarity. But attempts to clip around the edges will merely enrage the asylum lobbies — natu- ral Labour supporters — without solving the problem.
Welfare is even more difficult. In the last Parliament, John Major put Peter Lilley in charge of welfare reform. Mr Lilley made elegant speeches about the principles. Everyone applauded, and waited for the detail. Mr Lilley made more elegant speeches, and No. 10 grew restive. This was not because Mr Lilley was being too right- wing; there was a feeling that he was not prepared to move beyond the broad-brush second reading speech and press on with the closely argued committee stage. But when he did so, in his thoughtful proposals on pensions, the Labour party took the opportunity to frighten every granny in the land.
A difficult and thorny topic, welfare reform; both Peter Lilley and Frank Field found it so. They have two of the finest intellects in contemporary politics; they have each spent decades thinking about the question: as they and other experts are well aware, a welfare bill cannot just be con- jured out of thin air because it would help to flesh out a Queen's Speech. But when Mr Field resigned from the government, it was clear that his attempts to think the unthinkable on welfare had been blocked, and that the government was not doing any thinking at all. It was widely assumed that the welfare project was dead. This did not please Mr Blair; his projects do not die. He had told the world that there would be a Great Reform Bill on welfare; his ministers would not be allowed to let him down. That is all very well; it also meant, however, that a once great welfare bill was in danger of being replaced by a few wheezes which had been cobbled together while the printers were pacing outside the door. When the bill is published, we will see what it amounts to; I suspect that it will be a great intellectual mess.
The government has provided their Lordships with other opportunities to embarrass them, most notably on homosex- ual sex at 16, where ministers have been guilty of a silly miscalculation. Their assumption was that as Mr Hague would probably vote for 16 in the Commons, Tory peers would be unable to do much about it. But that completely misses the point. In this session, the House of Lords will be concerned above all to demonstrate its independence. If it can wreck a bill which Mr Hague has supported, so much the bet- ter. Arguments could be advanced for or against sodomy at 16, but on one point we can be certain: the House of bards will emasculate that measure and might even toss it out at second reading, but ministers will be unable to accuse their Lordships of defying democracy. After 18 months of phoney war, battle is being joined all along the front. There is excitement around Westminster as the par- tisan temperature rises. This will be the decisive session in this Parliament, one of the most important sessions in the whole postwar period. It is far too early to predict the outcome, but like all battles, as Tolstoy would remind us, some crucial factors Will be outside the generals' control. Last week, while quoting Cato the Elder under a tropical sun, I gave Saddam Hus- sein a feminine gender. Every Spectator reader seems to have noticed, and most of you wrote letters of gleeful castigation. Pec" cavi: apologies.
Previous page
