Notebook
Lefor Mr Jock Bruce-Gardyne is a series of banana skins. Before the last elec- tion he dared point out in print that to reduce public spending was not an abstract exercise but meant that specific institutions and groups of individnals would have to get less money. He went on to make a few sug- gestions. For this-dangerous recognition of the truth he was excluded from Mrs That- cher's administration when it was first formed. Then last spring, by now a Treasury minister, he said in a letter to a mend what many people privately thought about the Falklands adventure. The letter Was stolen and illegally published, Jock was hauled to Number Ten for six of the best from the beak, and he was snubbed in knutsford, his parliamentary seat. Now comes the final punishment: neither of the two new constituencies into which Knutsford is being dissolved will have him, and he has decided to leave the Commons. It is only tne most dramatic episode so far in the Great Reselection Saga. Not long ago !ones used to scoff at Labour for its savage Intestine feuds. They never guessed that .following the boundary changes, and also ironical ronical consequence of the Left-imposed _Policy of mandatory reselection, the c.`"Ple's Party would now be filling its list 'or the next election in peaceful amity, While at half the Conservative Associations ; 'n the land there is dirty work at the crossroads and blood on the carpets. So- rne°ne has blundered at Central Office.
of which would be very funny if it GPvvgeren't sad. Along with his flair for Uttin people's backs up Mr Bruce- t ardYne is a man of considerable intellec- tual gifts. To say that the present-day Con- servative Party can ill afford to lose so- rneone of his ability is weary understate- r.r,lent. For the worst of this story is to see Line sort of people who are being chosen: A 0t15 said and written about the changing nature of the Labour Party and its shift to "ne Left. But as the Tory ranks fill up with Iasty,. narrow-minded, conformist, vulgar, sl rerni-literate oafs it is hard to see why the Tes.t of us should much worry about aoour. The enthusiastic re-adoption of Mr 4rveY Proctor is one portent. And when the round of musical chairs began, one of very first MPs to be reselected for a ov.wer and safer billet was Mr Geoffrey a,,icAkens, scourge of the kiddy-porn envoys ,;'" her of the the dansant. That says niost all that needs to be said about the Tory Party today. When Twinkletoes trip- Ded 0, into the limelight the other year a few Us said what a pity it was that he represented a marginal and wouldn't be u
nd to increase his public stock of
harmless pleasure after the next election. We did not expect these ironic jests to be taken quite so literally, and we do not look forward to the day when the Conservative benches are entirely populated by egregious buffoons. Anyway, I hope that Jock Bruce- Gardyne doesn't lick his wounds for too long and that we shall be welcoming him back soon to the Street of Ink. When all is said — and as this story illustrates — jour- nalism is a nicer trade than politics.
The tendency to blame one's failures on anyone but oneself is not unique to politicians but they are very prone to it. The latest to succumb is Mr Roy Jenkins. He foolishly says that the other parties ganged up on the SDP at Darlington. An alter- native excuse is unfair press coverage. The hacks, it must be said, do sometimes pick on one candidate as their butt, out of boredom, not malice. During the 1965 Rox- burgh, Selkirk and Peebles by-election the late Robin McEwen was cruelly ragged by Messrs George Gale and Alan Watkins. At every press conference one of them would ask him for his views on winter keep — of which these two townsmen knew no more than the name — until Robin finally told them where to put their winter keep. These exchanges did not, however, affect Mr David Steel's subsequent victory. And the truth is that the SDP lost Darlington because it fought a poor campaign with a poor candidate. The result was an especially bad one for the Social Democrats since it confirmed the impression of the party as all leaders and no led, all chiefs and no In- dians, nationally famous Members already in parliament but mediocre prospective can- didates. This last may be unfair. One can't choose which MP is going to die next (much as one would sometimes like to). And so by their nature by-elections are random things, to be fought with whomever is selected and to hand. Come the general election we may yet be dazzled by the glittering regiment of dons, publishers and merchant bankers standing for the SDP. All the same, before then the SDP will have to win a seat with a little-known candidate (which is not to say a
deservedly obscure one) if they are to stay in the running.
Many years ago I sat in a Soho pub drinking with Goronwy Rees while he 'told me who the Fourth Man was. It seemed implausible at the time. There are still voices to be heard saying that spy stories are reactionary fantasy. But again and again over more than 30 years, since the disap-' pearance of Burgess and Maclean, the most unlikely stories have turned out to be true, and only half of the truth. Of the Cam- bridge spies, Guy Burgess remains the most fascinating: an appalling shit but also, from all accounts, a man of points, and of great charm. But Anthony Blunt was the most formidable. To have resisted prolonged in- terrogation (are MI5's methods too namby- pamby?), then to have elicited a promise of immunity before making a selective confes- sion, then to have spent another 15 years in a miasma of well-informed suspicion, then 'to have blithely sailed through public disgrace and to have gone on living in Lon- don as though scarcely anything had hap- pened — all that testifies to an iron will, 'whatever his moral character. When Blunt's exposure came, the Spectator (Max Hastings to be precise) was the only paper to urge him to shoot himself. He ignored that advice, stuck it out and died in his bed. Not a good man, but a tough one.
L' aster and the showers sweet of April bring a happy thought: the cricket season will soon be here, and before very long the football season takes its brief break. (Byron spoke of the English winter ending in July to recommence in August, and nowadays football is our winter sport in just that sense.) I used to enjoy football. So did the millions of others who now stay away. The football authorities agonise over why this should be. In actual matter of fact, as Mr Brian Clough would say, the answer is blindingly simple, although it is not found in Sir Norman Chester's report. There is too much football and it is not good enough. A 92-club professional League is redundant; the fans have voted on this question with their feet. The first and second divisions should be reduced to 16 clubs each, not 20 as Chester suggests, with three or four regional sections of the third division. Reorganisation cannot of itself solve the problem of boring play, which seems to have increased in step with the players' prosperity; no-one wants to go back to the maximum wage, but it is strik- ing that with players earning huge sums and clubs ever closer to bankruptcy, there is no team in the land to be mentioned in the same breath as Spurs of 1961 or Manchester United of 1968. In ten years time, with millionaire footballers playing goalless draws in empty stadiums, the club owners will still be whining about their blameless misfortune.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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