New Statesman & Society leader, 6 May 1995
It would take just 50 Tory MPs to fail to vote for the Prime Minister next Tuesday
to make his position untenable
Is John Major finished? We'll find out next Tuesday, when the Tories' vote of
confidence in his leadership takes place. With a majority in the Commons of
only eight, his credibility, already in tatters, will be utterly destroyed even
if just 50 Tory MPs fail to vote for him. Any more than that would surely be
enough to prompt his immediate resignation and a real leadership election
contested by the Tories' heavyweights.
As Ian Aitken argues on page 14, what all the pundits thought last week was a
brave gamble by the Prime Minister is now looking increasingly like a stupid
act of desperation. This is only partly because of the decision of John
Redwood to resign from the cabinet and take on Major in the first round of the
leadership contest. Redwood is, of course, a somewhat more substantial figure
than most of the back-bench Europhobes who were being tipped as stalking-horses
before he announced his candidacy, and, unlike Norman Lamont, he cannot be
easily dismissed as a sour man eager to extract his revenge.
But he is not really a serious challenger for the Tory leadership. He has the
charisma of a speak-your-weight machine, and his programme is a mish-mash of
discredited free-market dogma, xenophobic nationalism and crude
authoritarianism – including his backing for the return of the death penalty – that
is radically at odds with the mood of the country. His few concessions to the
"One Nation" Tory left are superficial and wholly unconvincing. Only
a party that had completely taken leave of its senses would consider him less
of an electoral liability than Major. Even the Tories are not yet totally
barmy.
All the same, Redwood has turned out to be as good a stalking-horse as anyone, and
it is by no means unlikely that there will be sufficient votes for him and
abstentions next Tuesday to force Major to resign. What then? It is, of course,
impossible to tell – and Tory leadership elections have a habit of yielding
surprising results. Neither Margaret Thatcher nor Major were favourites for the
job when they got it in 1975 and 1990 respectively, and it's quite feasible
that 1995 will follow a similar pattern.
Nevertheless, the smart money has to be on Michael Heseltine emerging from the second round
as leader.
He can rely on the support of the pro-Europe left of the party, whose other
favourite, Kenneth Clarke, is considered too divisive to become leader; and he
has widespread support among the large swathe of "unpolitical" Tory
MPs who are worried about nothing more than the prospect of losing their seats:
alone of the obvious candidates, he is considered by his party as a
vote-winner. He also has the backing of that part of the Europhobe right that
has written off the next election and is prepared to put up with Heseltine's
Europhilia because it reckons that he can be relied upon to resign as soon as
he loses the election. At this point, they believe, Michael Portillo or some
other right-winger – perhaps Redwood will be a really credible candidate by
then – would be a shoo-in as leader of the opposition.
But enough of speculation. Whatever happens, one thing is certain: the Tory party
is now in a state of civil war over its policy towards Europe, and there is no
sign that any result next Tuesday, or in the second round if there is one, or
in November if Major hangs on severely but not mortally wounded, can possibly
provide a resolution. There is no leader who can command the confidence of the
whole party, no compromise that can be assured of widespread consent. The best
that any leader could hope for would be a ceasefire until the next election – but
that, as Major himself has discovered in the past year, is something that the
Europhobes will not allow.
All of which makes a fascinating spectator sport for journalists and others
obsessed with politics, but it leaves the electorate as a whole completely
cold. Most people rightly see the Tories' divisions over Europe as a symptom –
like sleaze – of political exhaustion. The Tories have, quite simply, been in
power too long, and everyone knows it apart from themselves. They might limp
along until 1997 under Major or under a new leader – but they cannot regain
either their sense of purpose or the support of the electorate that they lost
so soon after they lied their way to victory in 1992.
The country does not want the current Tory leader as Prime Minister – and it
doesn't want another Tory leader as Prime Minister. If Major really were brave,
he would have done the decent thing – and called an immediate general
election.
