Political Commentary
The new Heath
Patrick Cosgrave
In London on Sunday afternoon Mr Heath, fighting the most unusual campaign of his strange career, sat, in his new, pullovered style, engaging, or indulging, in a question and answer session with selected young Conservatives. The relaxed, non-speechifying method of running a campaign, it should be observed, demonstrates more than ever before the obeisance paid by the present Leader of the Conservative Party and his advisers to television, for these gatherings which have so marked and made individual the second Tory election effort of 1974 are deliberately designed to reproduce the intimacy of a television studio in hustings surroundings.
thisis not to say that they are not of real value; for the questions of a disturbed and worried party faithful can often be more penetrating than those of a polished professional TV interviewer. Anyway, of such a character was the question on Sunday which invited Mr Heath to state how a majority achieved by him and his party on October 10 would differ from that of June 1970 and produce, magically, a leader determined to reconcile as opposed to a leader determined to dominate. Mr Heath replied that the whole appeal, the whole logic, of his 1974 campaign was different: if he was given a majority this time it would be a mandate to reconcile, not a mandate for reform — which that of 1970 was — nor one which would allow him to assert the preponderance of his view of what was good for the nation in the way he did earlier this year.
Thus the situation in the present campaign. It is a summary of what has been going on for nearly a fortnight — what was referred to by one political correspondent as taking policy out of politics — and it raises a whole series of interesting questions. The most important, as well as the most interesting, of these is whether Mr Heath has at all changed his character. For example, supposing he were re-elected with an absolute Tory majority, or conveyed into office in alliance with one or more of the shadowy fringe parties, and that reconciliation of the talents of the nation which he has appealed for — with new jobs in government and the civil service for all sorts of sectional interests (I do not use that phrase in a derogatory, but in a descriptive, manner) — was denied him, what would he do then? Would he persevere with, let us say, three-day weeks and statutory incomes policies? Or would he give place to some other leader, either from the Conservative or another party?
It is not easy for him to have it both ways, but it is perfectly understandable that he would prefer not to answer the question. If he says he would give way, then that would encourage people who know he would accept defeat to refuse their services from the outset. If he says he would go ahead on his own, then that strange phrase in the Conservative manifesto — over which so many bitter battles were fought in drafting sessions — about the fall-back desirability of a statutory incomes policy would be used to conjure up new visions of the kind of industrial and national chaos that struck the nation down earlier this year. So: the only way, other than a ruthlessly logical and open one, in which the matter can be resolved is through consideration of the new Mr Heath. Mention of the adjective brings smiles to the lips of his critics: they recall the new Nixon put before the American people in 1968, and how that turned out, However, there are almost no parallels between the two men:
Mr Heath was one of the first British politicians to see the truth about Mr Nixon and, even before Mr Jenkins had begun to use the Watergate stick, he was making public and caustic jokes about the now fallen President. The case for Mr Heath, which is made by some who work closely with him but who have not done so for as long as have his older partisans (to whom I will come in a moment), is that the angry will which was so evident when he was Prime Minister has given way to the passion for detail, for care, for getting things right, for consuming paper and listening to opinions which was also always a part of his nature.
During his first period as leader of the Opposition Mr Heath could never have enough paper, never hear enough divergent opinions. During the closing period of his Prime Ministerial reign he was interested only in the papers and the information which supported the policy options he had chosen. This unfortunate blindness persisted even after he had been defeated last February: "Why," he asked a critic at a party just before the recess, "don't you understand my policies?." Not, be it noted, why don't you support them, but why don't you understand them. His mind was not then large enough to grasp opposition on principle to what he wanted to do: he equated understanding with support — or its opposite with subversion. If you understand, he seemed to say, you would automatically support, unless you were a revolutionary. Now, however, he has set his enormous energy and dedication to the task of suppressing his own will and his own drive, and to putting them at the service of his party and his country: he no longer, it seems, regards his vision of where Britain ought to go as the exclusive and domineering vision; he is prepared, instead, to accept other opinions as of a weight equal to his own. Here again, of course, he must run into a logical difficulty: what is the use of a Prime Minister, or a leader, who is merely a chairman? Should not a leader lead? It is likely, however, that not this, but the first question — whether Mr Heath has really changed his spots — will spring most readily into the mind. To try to
answer it we must consider two aspects of rMlr Spectator October 5, 1974. Heath — that supposed private loveability Tory commentators refer to in passing and the supposed flexibility of recent months. Mr Heath has always been able to command an extraordinary loyalty from some men verY different to him in character and temperament, of whom Mr Whitelaw is the foremost. This Is a fact which may be explained, but cannot be denied. A whole series of Tory politicians
, extremely unlike him in temperament, habit or
upbringing have been devoted to him, and one or two of these have developed their devotion since, not before, last February. Again, the instances of personal and private kindness which he has insisted should not be reported or exploited are numerous: I will mention only the small child of a very junior colleague of his whose life was materially and favourablY • affected by his emotional support. It has never been very clear in quite what spirit Mr Heath does personal good, for a brusqueness that May mask shyness usually cloaks his motives. About him personally he has, too, what a loyal colleague recently described as the personal selfishness of a long-term bachelor, accus.tomed to having his wishes catered to. There is undeniably enough, however, in his character, to suppose that his new professions of amicability are genuine. Mr Heath has always been bedevilled bY something I mentioned earlier — a combined appetite for generalisation and capacity for detail. It was noted how his spirits lifted after his visit to China, and again when he recently saw President Ford. Of course he was flattered again to be treated as a Prime Ministet, but he has always enjoyed summit table conversations of a general and synoptic character. A trip to Iran in 1969 remains very much in his memory because of the generalising character of his conversations with the Shah, and he has usually been at his best when, the official business of the day over, he relaxes abroad with some whisky and his personal staff, allowing the conversation to roam in the most philosophical fashion. Against all this can, of course, be quoted instances of exceptional rudeness' unpleasantness and thoughtlessness, but the favourable anecdotes should be quoted as well.
The generalising instinct is, however, at war with that for detail. A former Conservative minister who has no cause whatever to love Mr Heath once described the'exceptional mastery he displayed in a report to the Cabinet on his 1962 EEC negotiations, when he spoke for forty minutes without a note and then answered questions for another hour without ever losing the thread of his discourse. Even now, it is said that capacity shores up his authority in the Shadow Cabinet, inferior though it is to that he enjoyed as Prime Minister, and so damaged by the new indepe..dence of mind displayed bY such as Sir Keith Joseph. The essential and objective difficulty about Mr Heath is that, in office, he tries to insist on making his generalisations over into detailed memoranda for action: he is never content to shift things in his own direction, to try to guide or give a lead, rather than a detailed departmental blueprint. And so the final and third question remains to be answered. Even if the new Mr Heath is .a genuine model, even if he has learned from his experiences — has he the capacity, the diplomatic talent to run a government of national reconciliation (even leaving aside whether such a government would be anY good)? As the campaign proceeds the Conser. vative leader, who seems to have thrown away the potential for a great act of reconciliation, bY refusing to countenance an EEC referendum, will find posed again and again the proposition' before he destroys the validity of that proposition.
not that his conversion to ameliorative politics lacks genuineness, not that he lacks many great abilities, but that he is unwilling to make the final sacrifice, if necessary, of standing down; and that he is simply not the right man at the right time. Mr Heath has a great deal to do
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