Will Tory leader have last laugh?

Published on Friday 8 October 2004 11:48

THE round of political conferences finished this week with the Tories’ Bournemouth bash and it seemed to go swimmingly for Michael Howard.

He gave a confident performance in his main speech and one MSP who was down there told me she was moved to tears when he told the story of his grandmother dying in a Nazi concentration camp.

Viewing it from how it was covered by the telly and reported in the press, it struck me that at long last the Tory hierarchy has woken up to the fact that the reason it lost so badly in 1997 and again in 2001 was that the electorate no longer trusted Tory politicians.

Under Margaret Thatcher, the public knew what to expect. In the main, what she said she would do she went ahead and did. She took some unpopular decisions that weaker leaders before her had shied away from and in so doing, she gained respect, if not popularity. Respect is a far more elusive and therefore valuable asset than popularity, the latter of which can easily be found by agreeing with the majority all the time.

Under John Major, the Tories lost respect and popularity. The received wisdom is that this was because of the corruption and adultery of a few Tory MPs and ministers, but that is a myth conjured up by the Labour Party.

If the nation’s disgust for sleaze was so crucial then why is Labour still ahead in the polls when there has been even more sleaze under Labour in its seven years than during the whole of the Tories’ 18?

The real reason for the evaporation of trust was that John Major said one thing and then did another. It didn’t take long before few were prepared to believe what he said.

John Major said he would cut taxes, but he increased them. He said Sterling would stay in the Exchange Rate Mechanism and he was then forced to take it out. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point.

Now, Michael Howard has recognised that Tony Blair is repeating the same mistakes John Major made.

Blair said we should go to war with Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction and yet we now know there were none. Blair said he would not increase taxes and yet they have increased on more than 70 occasions. Blair said he had 24 hours to save the NHS, and we’re still waiting.

On all the big issues of the day, trust is evaporating from Blair and Howard thinks he can exploit this.

Trust has to be earned, but this is difficult if you are not in power to earn it. As a former Cabinet member of Major’s government, Michael Howard has an even harder job ahead of him. He has to show he has enough bouncebackability to get him into Number Ten.

By this time next year, we should know what he’s made of.

Costs still add up

SO now that we’ve had the Fraser Inquiry published and the MSPs have moved on to open the building, you could be forgiven for thinking that you had heard the last about the cost of the new Holyrood parliament building. Wrong.

This week, I had a Parliamentary Question answered that revealed the budget for the annual maintenance costs of the new building, and it’s a staggering 846,000!

Now, it may be that the parliament will not need to spend so much money to maintain itself, but with our reputation for going over-budget, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Indeed, it would be a fair bet to expect that in years to come the annual costs will grow to a million a year.

To put this in perspective, I should say that the average maintenance cost of the premises at The Mound and George IV Bridge was 350,000 a year - and that was for older buildings that you would expect to be costly. We now have a new parliament, so why should its upkeep cost so much?

Well, when you see window cleaners abseiling down the side of the building or using mobile cranes simply to reach the complicated glazing, you begin to understand why.

Thankfully, the Presiding Officer George Reid is a tough cookie, and I’m sure he will be keeping an eye on these costs. I hope and I pray for the sake of Scotland’s taxpayers and the parliament’s reputation that the estimates are wildly pessimistic; otherwise he has a hard job on his hands.

Soames lets the side down

THE one fly in the ointment for Michael Howard this week was the crass fit of pique the Tory defence spokesman displayed when interviewed about Labour’s defence cuts, which will see the Royal Scots merged with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

Michael Howard and Scots Tory MP Peter Duncan had both said that any regimental cuts would be reversed, were the Tories to win the next General Election.

Nicholas Soames then revealed that this would not be possible if the cuts had been introduced, and anyway he had not been consulted by Michael Howard.

What an amateurish response. Given that it will take a number of years to merge the two regiments, Soames was implying that he does not expect to win the next election.

What a prize prat. Firstly, Howard has been emphasising that he would not make promises that he could not keep, so when one of his chief spokesmen refutes a promise made just 24 hours previously, Howard’s hard work is undone. Secondly, whether or not a regiment can be brought back from the dead is a matter of political will.

It does not matter how long any regiment has been disbanded and what has happened to its facilities or regimental trappings in the meantime. What matters is that a politician pushes for the Royal Scots and King’s Own Scottish Borderers to be re-established in their own right.

If the regimental standard is raised, people will come back to it. If Nicholas Soames does not have the stomach for such a challenge - and he certainly has the constitution of a bull - then he should move over for someone who does.