‘YOU’VE GOT THE Iron Lady at the Winter Gardens and Rambo at the ABC – not much to choose between them,’ said my taxi driver with a sniff, as he dropped me off at the 1985 Tory Party Conference. It was plain, though, as I fought my way through a forest of friskers into the conference hall, that the Iron Lady and the Tory Party were hell-bent on softening their image.
Labour’s renaissance at Bournemouth had put the fear of God into them. To stop Mr Kinnock cornering the market in compassion, ministers were falling over themselves to appear the most caring.
Mrs Thatcher’s hair and make-up were softer. The powder-blue platform subtly emphasised her blue eyes, which filled with tears during ‘I Vow To Thee My Country’. Now she was gazing besottedly up at Transport Minister Nicholas Ridley, who was rabbiting on about buses, as though they’d just got engaged. There was Willie Whitelaw radiating paternalism, and Leon Brittan like a short-sighted camel, gazing mournfully out of its cage on the ills of the world.
Also on the platform under the sign saying ‘Serving the Nation’ sat my old friend and fellow panellist on ‘What’s My Line?’, Jeffrey Archer. I resisted the temptation to wave and ask him: ‘Does your party really provide a service?’ Poor Jeffrey’s had a bad time since he joined up, but I’m sure he’ll bounce back. Maybe he should try some remedial exercises for fallen Archers.
Mr Ridley’s speech finished, the main problem – as one boring cliché-ridden speech followed another and dull-egate followed dull-egate – was to keep awake. Everyone harped on the caring theme. Mrs T looked enchanted. I looked at her ministers. When I did a piece on parliament about ten years ago, I found the Tory men great fun, drinking like fishes, and exchanging sizzling eye-meets with any pretty girl that came along. Alas, Sarah Keays has had the same inhibiting effect on them as AIDs has on Hollywood. Now when they were not exuding compassion on the platform, they gazed stonily ahead, terrified of catching a lady delegate’s eye, ignoring the odd bits of Central Office crumpet passing by.
There was a distinct shortage of pretty girls at the conference generally. ‘All the good-looking ones have defected to the SDP,’ said a photographer in disgust.
The Tory Party not only seems to have gone very downmarket (the ringing voices, the hats and the pin-striped smugness have almost entirely disappeared) but also grown much older. The overwhelming impression was a hall full of favourite aunts and uncles enduring faulty microphones, forty minute queues in icy winds, because they were seriously worried about riots, unemployment, the North and the Inner Cities.
Despite these problems, and a poll saying fifty-one per cent of the electorate think Mrs T ought to be replaced before the next election, she seemed very chipper.
Speculation, however, is endless about her successor. On the one hand there are the Hair Apparents: Douglas Hurd, with his white woolly mop and pepper-grinder voice, and Geoffrey Howe of the silver curls. Sir Geoffrey’s really perked up since he’s become Foreign Secretary and presumably escaped abroad from Nanny Thatcher. Chief of the Hair Apparents, however, is the conference darling, the amazingly sleek Michael Heseltine. No one delivers clichés with more aplomb, but he does make the audience roar with much-needed laughter. His blond locks flopped about so much that I expected a lady delegate to rush up and lend him a Kirby grip. I suspect that, although gentlewomen prefer blonds, they tend to end up with brunettes, and both the party and Mrs T will settle for the Not-Much-Hair Apparent: Norman Tebbit.
Until he smiles, the excellent Norman looks like the second murderer in Macbeth. The perfect lugubrious stand-up comic, his forte is ripping apart the Opposition and Mrs Thatcher’s enemies within the party. Once Tebbitten, twice shy. The conference was enchanted to see him back on such vitriolic form after his appalling ordeal at Brighton. Mrs Thatcher awarded him even warmer glances than Mr Ridley. ‘Wave Norman,’ she whispered, as the delegates cheered.
I don’t think Norman Fowler has leadership potential. I fell asleep during his speech. His claim, that his caring Social Services Ministry had raised single parent allowances to the highest level, didn’t seem to carry much weight with Miss Keays. Ironically, her ludicrous revelations in the Mirror cheered up the delegates enormously. Nothing unites the Tory Party like a good bitch. It’s also terrifying when one reads of Cecil’s vacillations to think he might easily have been the next leader. Perhaps Miss Keays ought to adopt ‘Serving the Tories’ as her new motto.
While Mr Fowler banged on, yet another would-be leader, Ted Heath, sat sulking and huffed up like a great gelded tom cat whose mistress had forgotten the Whiskas.
The Wets, in fact, are so ghastly I can’t see them posing any threat to Mrs T at all. Mr Pym stood sourly watching speeches from the gallery. Mr Walker of the mean collie eyes and the suspect vowel sounds keeps needling Mrs T about unemployment, but seems to care only about his own advancement. A fellow minister told me scathingly that Margaret thought by giving Peter Energy, she was sending him to Siberia. But the salt mines suddenly turned into the gold mines of the miners’ strike.
On Wednesday, when Norman Tebbit made a second speech urging the conference to greater efforts to win the next election, he looked much less a leader. He fluffed several punchlines, and seemed as uncomfortable as Bernard Manning trying to play Brown Owl.
‘We must play as a team,’ he exhorted the delegates. ‘We must revitalise every organ in the party.’
‘Not Cecil’s for God’s sake,’ muttered a delegate.
In the evening, there were plenty of parties, but they were all rather subdued. At the Institute of Directors’ bash, the urbane Ronald Allison, Mrs Thatcher’s speech-writer, had been given the night off because Mrs T had gone bopping with the Young Conservatives. He expected substantial rewrites on the big speech in the morning, he said. Mrs T, like all stars, got very strung up beforehand, but the more nervous she was, the better she spoke.
‘I had terrible problems at Brighton last year,’ he sighed. ‘I’d written a viciously anti-Kinnock speech, but Kinnock was so nice and sympathetic about the bomb I had to rewrite it from start to finish, cutting out all the beastly things we’d said about him.’
On to dinner with Julian Critchley, Tory rebel, and Bill Rodgers from the SDP, who was covering the conference for the BBC. A beady Tory whip at the next table looked at us very suspiciously, speculating on what we were up to. Talk inevitably got round to Cecil Parkinson.
‘The trouble with Cecil,’ said Mr Critchley, ‘is that he always says what you want to hear. When I was causing trouble, and he was Party Chairman, he would always put his hand on my arm, sigh deeply, and say: “What a waste.” The thing I couldn’t cope with was the way he was always slagging off Mrs Thatcher behind her back.’
Outside in the foyer, the hotel was offering two videos; one of Mary Poppins, the other of a horror film called Christina – ‘She’ll Possess You, She’ll Destroy you, She’s Death on Wheels,’ which seems to sum up both the loyalists’ and the Wets’ views of Mrs Thatcher.
On balance, the people who deserved the standing ovation were the delegates, but generally I was far more impressed by Maggie’s ministers than I expected to be. If they could add curing to caring, I might even vote for them.