Letters from London (16 page)

But it all depends on the avoidance of trouble. Trouble with a T, and that usually stands for Thatcher. If the Tories damped her down at their conference, she burst spectacularly into flame again at the end of November. The occasion was a Commons debate in the run-up to
the European Community summit at Maastricht, where the next stages of political and monetary union were to be decided. With the three main parties more agreed on the progress of integration than they are probably prepared to admit, the exchange could have been a comparatively peaceful affair, with just a few bits of fake warfare. Instead, the occasion marked the rancorous reentry into domestic politics of Mrs. Thatcher, first in the Commons debate and subsequently on television.

In the debate, she was very much her old self: imperious, finger wagging, basic—at one point even referring to “my Foreign Secretary,” as if she were still running the show. She scornfully dismissed the idea of a single European currency, and brazenly suggested a national referendum on the matter if the three main parties all agreed on being Europe’s lackeys. The Tory Cabinet sat through this blast in silent embarrassment, each member reflecting, perhaps, as her late-found Tennyson put it, that she had

But her performance in a television interview on prime-time news two days later was both more revealing and potentially more damaging. She seemed angrier and also more anguished, like a dowager who has handed over the running of her estate to the next generation only to see her favorite stretch of woodland being sold for timber and the lake drained to make room for a skateboarding arena. Her line was populist, sentimental, and fueled by national fantasy. “Have a little bit more faith in your own fellow countrymen,” she instructed her interviewer at one point. “It was we who rolled back the frontiers of socialism, and we were the first country to do it.” Viewers were reminded, “It was the chimes of Big Ben that rang out across Europe during the war. I do not want our powers taken away.” She ended with another appeal to her totemic figure: “What ever happened to the British lion of whom Winston said it was his privilege to give the roar? And Winston said in 1953, ‘We will be with Europe but not of it,
and when they ask us why we take that view, we will say we dwell in our own land.’”

All very fine to point out the irony of Mrs. Thatcher’s sudden conversion to the joys of the referendum; as Douglas Hurd, no doubt displeased at being labeled “her” Foreign Secretary, reminded the House of Commons, it was she who had argued most persuasively against the Euro-referendum proposed by Harold Wilson in 1975. And all very fine to doubt the impact of some thirty-eight-year-old phrasing (“Where do you stand on the hard ecu?” “Oh, I prefer to dwell in my own land”). The fact is that Mrs. Thatcher—whether from injured pride or true belief—looks to be suffering from a dangerous attack of idealism. When professional politicians start murmuring about “putting my country before my party,” it is usually time to call for the padded van.

However, Mr. Major’s performance at Maastricht in early December succeeded in pacifying the Europhobes of his party while pleasing the Europhiles. Mrs. Thatcher initially pronounced herself “absolutely thrilled” with the deal he brought back. The Prime Minister himself commented with enthusiastic homeliness that it had been “game, set, and match” to Britain; and since every other European head of state was busy celebrating a different victory in his own way, nobody minded this British claim to a sporting Agincourt. The Government’s version of events was that there had been some pretty rough street fighting over there in Holland but that the PM had rolled up his sleeves and punched his weight.
Federal
—the dreaded
F
word, currently much more offensive to men in gray suits than the more colloquial
F
word—had been deleted from the treaty; Britain had won special dispensation on monetary union, and had also been allowed to opt out of the “social chapter” (a section covering workers’ rights, such as a minimum wage and equal opportunity). To doubters, Mr. Major resembled a driver whose response to obtaining his license was to argue vigorously that he should only be permitted to drive his car in the slow lane, while Mr. Kinnock had much fun with the PM’s lack of true Euro-commitment. “Opt-in, opt-out, shake it all about—it’s obviously the hokeycokey clause,” he taunted in the two-day
Commons debate over Maastricht. A week after the summit, Mrs. Thatcher herself began to seem rather less than “absolutely thrilled”: she did not speak in the debate, and abstained from voting. Still, at least she did not utter or act against Mr. Major, and, since her power to influence his job prospects over the next few years is undoubtedly greater than that of either President Mitterrand or Chancellor Kohl, some would say that his political priorities at Maastricht had been correct.

So for the moment Mrs. Thatcher is shutting up, if in her own way. However, Mr. Major and his colleagues would be advised to insert a fallback or opt-out clause in their current election strategy. This would involve a series of pressing invitations to Mrs. Thatcher from foreign billionaires. Large sums of money would be promised to the Thatcher Foundation, in return for the acceptance of enforced hospitality. This would always take place in remote hill country, beyond the reach of fax and phone. And if this fails to work Mr. Major should perhaps take up a little late-night Tennyson himself. There he might discover the poem “Hands All Round” and the following advice:

That man’s the best Conservative
Who lops the moulder’d branch away.

January 1992

6
Vote Glenda!

O
n a dull and edgily damp Saturday afternoon in mid-March, that time of year when the presumptuous prunus blossom is about to be snubbed by winter’s last revengeful frost, a world-famous, Oscar-winning actress rang my doorbell and introduced herself. She was miked up, and there was a TV crew on the pavement a dozen yards away, but this didn’t interfere with our natural, if low-key, chat. Her voice was quiet and sounded tired, but I understood that the more challenging parts of her role lay ahead. Nor did she try to stun me with glamour: her face was devoid of makeup, her hair was wind-battered, and the scarlet trousers that glared from beneath her long brown coat added a homely rather than a dashing touch. She listened attentively to my views, asked for my assistance, and after a couple of minutes—but it seemed longer, much longer—she departed with a friendly smile. I realized as I watched her go that l’
esprit de l’escalier
also strikes those standing at the top of the steps. My best quips and questions had gone unvoiced. But when Glenda Jackson comes to call, as a Labour candidate soliciting your vote in the general election, you do tend to get a bit tongue-tied.

Such personal moments are to be treasured and remembered, because the 1992 general election was a dull affair, cagey, grouchy, and grinding, its tone a down-market snarl. Every facet of life seemed temporarily politicized—even the Grand National steeplechase was won by a horse called Party Politics—while the party leaders dug up extra reasons to impose themselves on us: both John Major and Neil Kinnock managed to celebrate their birthdays during the four-week election period, and Kinnock threw in the twenty-fifth anniversary of his wedding to Glenys. Of course, the result of this election was always going to be fascinating, with Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck in the polls throughout, giving the Liberal Democrats a real chance to hold the balance of power; but the actual process of getting to that result felt interminable. For the voter, it was like getting caught in some deeply unwelcome relationship, one with definite sadomasochistic overtones, involving both addiction and revulsion, endurable only because of the knowledge that it would certainly be over within a month—over, that is, until the next time. So you gritted your teeth and thought of England, amazed yet again at the driven quest for power and domination that you had got yourself involved with.

Electoral warfare traditionally begins with the dropping of propaganda leaflets. In the old days, party manifestos were brief statements of intent and hope, normally given away or sold for coppers; over the years, though, they have grown to novella length, are priced accordingly, and are, some would say, just as fictional in content. Labour’s booklet (“It’s Time to Get Britain Working Again”) was the cheapest, and the only one not featuring the party leader’s face on its cover; instead, it showed the four flags of the United Kingdom, subliminally declaring, perhaps, an equal-but-separate message. The Conservative manifesto (“The Best Future for Britain”) showed a bleached-blue, slightly out-of-focus John Major, smiling merrily, as if personally illustrating his much-stated vision of “a nation at ease with itself.” The Liberal Democrat manifesto (“Changing Britain for Good”) was, as befits the smallest party, comfortably the largest in format, its cover occupied by a pore-scouringly high-definition mug shot of
rugged Paddy Ashdown, not smiling at all (nothing to smile about given the mess Britain’s in) but looking determined (there are tough decisions to be made) yet humane (and we shall make those decisions with compassion). Whether these booklets are intended to convert or are meant as pocket catechisms for canvassers, reminding them of this year’s promises as opposed to last year’s, is not clear; either way, they contain a target-’em-all scattershot of policies. The Conservatives promise to keep “the toughest anti-pornography laws in Western Europe” while teaching every child to swim by the age of eleven. Labour will insist on the fencing off of wasteland while banning the sale of replica guns and ensuring better treatment for animals in transit. The Liberal Democrats will plant more broad-leaved hard woods, “protect those who fish sustainably, such as mackerel hand-liners,” and introduce new efficiency standards for lightbulbs, fridges, and cookers.

Few candidates mentioned infant swimmers or broad-leaved hardwoods in their campaigns; but then equally few mentioned such graver matters as foreign policy, Northern Ireland (Britain’s Croatia), or the European Community, these being subjects that, like the fate of Mr. Salman Rushdie, are regarded by the main parties as largely vote-losing—or, at any rate, not vote-attracting. The Liberal Democrats concentrated their campaign on the gubernatorial qualities of Mr. Paddy Ashdown, a policy of one penny on the basic rate of tax specifically to pay for improvements in education, and a demand to rejuvenate the voting system with proportional representation. Labour emphasized the health service and education, offering an alternative budget designed to make the fiscally advantaged pay more tax (raising the top rate from 40 percent to 50), while seeking to reassure everyone else that under Labour nine families out of ten would be better off. The Conservatives campaigned for the most part negatively, claiming that Labour’s figures didn’t add up, that a vote for the Liberal Democrats would let in Labour, and that the recession, which wasn’t their fault anyway, was coming to an end, in which case it would be lunacy to exchange such a soberly responsible government for a high-tax, high-spend Labour alternative at this crucial moment
in Britain’s history. (Elections, it is worth noting, are always held at crucial moments in Britain’s history. One of these days, a Prime Minister will have the guts to call an election with the cry “This is a comparatively unimportant time in our nation’s history.”)

A week before Election Day, I suggested to Oliver Letwin, Glenda Jackson’s Tory opponent in Hampstead and Highgate, that the Conservative campaign had been uninspiring. He replied (after first wisely checking when this piece would run), “Oh, it’s been no good at all. Nobody decided early on what they were trying to say in the campaign.” When a party has been in power—and a fortiori when it has been in power for thirteen years—there are two ways of best approaching the electorate. One is to boast of what you have already achieved; the other is energetically to lay out your plans for the next five years. The Tories took a third route; that of trashing Labour’s proposals (and, in the time left over, those of the Lib Dems as well). This may have been understandable, given the closeness of the polls, but it was tactically dumb. Letwin contrasted John Major’s campaign with those of Mrs. Thatcher, in whose Policy Unit at No. 10 he had worked: she went into a campaign knowing exactly what she wanted to say, and said it again and again and again, unworried by repetitive strain injury, ensuring by this method that at least it was she who set the agenda.