No bike for young John then, no bike for old
John now
BRUCE ANDERSON
It has been a typical week in the life of the government. The PM and his ministers appeared to address a range of difficult questions, tried to take credit for doing so and may have succeeded, thanks to their spin doctors. Behind the spin, however, the whole exercise was intellectually dishonest.
This was especially true of Tony Blair's speech on Europe. European matters have been making the Prime Minister increasingly uneasy, for two reasons. It is the one issue on which he seems to be unable to manipu- late British public opinion and this is a blow to his amour propre, aggravated by the Conti- nentals' reaction. In Brussels, they are begin- ning to grow impatient with Mr Blair.
This is his own fault, for arousing expecta- tions which he cannot fulfil. In his private conversations with European leaders, he almost always tells them what they want to hear. This started in opposition days, with assurances that British Euro-diplomacy would be transformed as soon as New Labour took office. So there was discreet applause in European capitals when Mr Blair swept to power. John Major had been trapped in the Laocoon coils of electoral paralysis. Given the magnitude of the Blair victory, there would be no more of that. Many Continen- tals envy what they assume to be the quasi- dictatorial powers which the British electoral system gives to a premier with a good majo- rity, and there has been nothing in Mr Blair's manner to contradict that impression. So the Europeans cannot understand why he is waiting. Public opinion? To the Euro- nomenklatura, any Eurosceptical public opinion is morally defective and should be contemptuously disregarded.
It is much harder to do that in British poli- tics, as Mr Blair knows. But in Tuesday's speech, he did attempt to marginalise the opponents of the single currency, by claim- ing that they were also opposed to British membership of Europe. There is only one problem with that argument. It is demon- strably untrue.
Most of those in charge of Business for Sterling and other groups which are trying to protect the pound have much longer- standing European credentials than Tony Blair does. It would be absurd to allege that David Owen, Jim Prior, John Ashburton et al. are closet withdrawers, and it is a sign of the PM's desperation that he is prepared to make such a claim. But Mr Blair knows that those opposed to Britain joining the euro command three formidable arguments, which all the spin doctors in Downing Street cannot refute.
The first is political: the euro is a nation- building project, not an economic one; it is driven by those who want to create a united Europe. The second is economic: sooner, rather than later, those charged with manag- ing the euro will have to acquire substantially increased tax powers, to make fiscal transfers to stabilise the new currency. The third is also economic: Britain's prosperity depends, not on the denomination of our bank notes, but on the government's monetary and fiscal rectitude and the private sector's ability to produce goods and services that people want to buy at a price they are prepared to pay. In all those respects, the euro is at best an irrel- evance; at worst, destructive.
Mr Blair will not deal with those argu- ments, because he cannot. Nor can he sup- press them. He is aware of this, which explains the tetchiness visible just below the surface whenever he discusses Europe.
Or other complex matters. Earlier this week, the government produced the latest interim report, a mixture of self-congratula- tion on trivial matters and evasiveness on the important ones. Labour won the last election for a number of reasons, including public dissatisfaction with the Tories' record on public services. This was not always justi- fied, as in the myths about the destruction of the NHS. But the Tory record did offer legitimate targets, especially education and welfare. It is not clear whether standards in schools did improve during the Tory years; that was a shameful failure. As for welfare, the budget grew inexorably for 18 years, and much of it was spent on an ill-fare state with an increasingly feral underclass who regard themselves as entitled to a welfare Zimmer frame as soon as they reach adulthood.
So when Labour announced its intention of cutting the welfare budget and spending some of the savings on educational stan- dards, there was widespread public approval. If the government had succeeded in doing this, it would be entitled to its poll lead. But there have been no such successes. In oppo- sition, Chris Smith was appointed to 'think the unthinkable' on welfare. In government, Frank Field was given the same role. But there had been an error in transmission. For `think the unthinkable' read 'thinking is unthinkable'. The pledges on welfare and education were mere soundbites. Once they had served their electoral purpose, their use- fulness was at an end.
But there is one member of the govern- ment who cannot be accused of dealing in soundbites. He has also been interested in the subject-matter of his portfolio for many years. This is not enough to make him an effective minister, however; his other defects have seen to that.
John Prescott does not speak in sound- bites. To do that, you have to be able to speak, and every Prescott speech sounds like a campaign of ethnic cleansing waged against the English language. Mr Prescott is resent- ful of those who draw attention to his eccen- tric syntax. He blames all his linguistic diffi- culties on early educational deprivation. That is a subject on which his surliness instantly gives way to self-pity, most recently over the bicycle which his father did not give him because he failed the 11-plus. They are good at nursing their grievances to keep them warm, these Prescotts. John Prescott would like us to regard him as Labour's last prole- tarian paladin, a latter-day Ernie Bevin. But can anyone imagine Ernie Bevin behaving in that way? When Mr Prescott lurches into self-pity, we should remind ourselves that he did have five years of higher education. If he is still unable to speak the English language, perhaps the 11-plus examiners were right.
Transport, Mr Prescott's main responsibi- lity, is even more intractable today than it was when Bevin ran the Transport and Gen- eral Workers' Union. Isaiah Berlin taught us that the great goods cannot always live together. Transport is an example. People decide to own cars to enjoy flexible travel. All too often, those individual decisions lead to traffic jams and overcrowded tourist cen- tres. Every motorist can easily become every other motorist's enemy, though John Prescott carries this to excess when, himself a Jaguar owner, he seems to wish to persecute every other motorist.
There are no easy answers in transport. But all routes to possible solutions lie through hard thinking. That will never hap- pen while John Prescott is in charge. Instead, Mr Prescott makes minatory gestures towards the motoring public, which are con- tradicted by No. 10 which knows that motorists have votes. Prescott senior would not give his son a bike and Mr Blair cannot afford to send him on his bike. So even by the standards of this thought-averse government, transport will remain a thought-free zone.
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