POLITICS
The reviving powers of Mrs Thatcher's kiss of death
NOEL MALCOLM
Among the various reasons which have been offered for the Prime Minister's surprising timing of her Cabinet reshuffle, the most implausible is surely the argument that she wanted all her ministers to enjoy their holidays. The holidays, in Mrs Thatcher's eys, are simply that period of the year in which it becomes possible to read official papers at all times of the day without interruption; for her to recom- mend relaxation to her colleagues would be rather like an alcoholic promoting mineral water. A more plausible reason for the July announcement would be that she wanted to give Mr Kenneth Clarke enough time to get fully acquainted with the mysteries of the NHS review before term starts again in October — in other words, to ruin his holidays as thoroughly as possible.
Summer reshuffles have not been un- known in the past (Harold Wilson's Cabinet changes on the eve of the summer recess in 1966 were an example of very similar timing), but the pattern has settled under Mrs Thatcher into a fairly regular annual round, with the major appoint- ments being left undisturbed for a mini- mum of two years. Any such pattern of expectations creates stability, but at the cost of short-term instability during the run-up to the next set of changes. By jumping ahead of herself in this way, the Prime Minister has succeeded in clearing the press and the public to concentrate on all the uncertainties in the Labour Party instead. But the price she pays for this year's clever wheeze is that next year the speculation about her Cabinet will start in June. Surprise is a commodity which has to be paid for in the end, and Mrs Thatcher must have had special reasons for wanting to buy some now.
To understand some of those reasons, it is necessary only to look back to a month or two ago, when the drinking places of Westminster were filled with MPs and journalists playing a form of political soli- taire. The game involved trying to find a hole into which the peg marked 'Sir Geof- frey Howe' could be moved, in order to create a hole for Mr Lawson, in order to leave a hole for Mr Parkinson, or whoever. But during July the solitaire boards have been put aside, and a great cry has gone up from the Tory back benches demanding that preservation orders be slapped as publicly as possible on the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary. The message, it seems, has finally got through to 10 Down- ing Street.
Future historians will puzzle over the fact that in a government which remains both dominated by its Prime Minister and steadily ahead in the opinion polls, the best route to popularity for any individual minister is to be criticised by his boss. Mr Kenneth Baker enjoyed an unexpected- wave of cross-party sympathy when it was revealed that Mrs Thatcher was critical of obscure details of his policy on assessment in schools; and Sir Geoffrey Howe must know that one modest bit of sparring with her over the EMS is worth a dozen appearances on the Wogan show. Who knows, perhaps even Mr Ridley might become a much-loved figure if only he could persuade Mrs Thatcher to disagree with him publicly over the Green Belt. Certainly the opposite principle holds good, that her blessing is a curse on any ambitious politician's career, as Mr John Moore has eventually discovered.
A little thinking along these lines should enable the Chancellor to sleep more soundly in his bed of woe. The last two weeks have not been pleasant for him. But it can reasonably be predicted that long after the local irritation of the Alan Wal- ters fracas had died down, the warm glow of support for Mr Lawson which it has aroused will linger on. He has been in a position where nothing he could do would seem right — and so, very sensibly, he has done nothing. Some of his staunchest defenders, such as Mr Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times, believe that he has do the emergency stops.' been bought off too easily, and that he should have resorted to an 'either he goes or I do' ultimatum. But demands of that nature would only have added to the impression that some sort of fully-fledged alternative economic policy was available next door as a counter-weight to his own. By affecting to ignore the views of Sir Alan Walters as if they were the opinions of the most lightweight of teenage scribblers, the Chancellor has preserved an important psychological advantage.
Mr Lawson will have benefited, in the long run, from a mixture of shrewdness, resilience, disdain, bad management and good luck. Bad management in the sense that he is not one of those politicians who are supported by an active public relations team. (The Treasury, indeed, is hyper- inactive in this respect.) And good luck in the sense that four months after the budget, when Tory MPs might be filled with second thoughts about the consumer boom and the balance of trade deficit, they are preoccupied instead with shouting down anyone who shows any signs of being nasty to Nigel. Last week's meeting of the 1922 Committee turned, by all accounts, into a 'save our Lawson' rally, and as they banged their desks Mrs Thatcher was obliged to smile sweetly and reflect that even the headmistress has to take a lesson from her pupils from time to time.
To say that there has been bad manage- ment at 10 Downing Street would be to beg the question of whether there has been management at all. At first sight, Sir Alan's unstoppable (or rather, unstopped interventions looked suspiciously like Phase One of the familiar, sordid process by which Mrs Thatcher begins to ditch her ministers. But at second sight the whole business looks more like a cock-up than a conspiracy. Sir Alan's opening shot, an article in the Independent, was the result of a chance commission by the features editor of that paper and not part of a pre- arranged campaign. The operators of the Downing Street machine were slow to shut him up; but the more he talked the weaker their position became, and they have back- tracked now to the point of emphasising that his appointment has not been officially confirmed. The mess has not been cleared up, and will remain with us until it is officially revoked. But in the meantime the Chancellor, for one, can feel entitled to his holiday.
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