Teddy, the Scottish secretary we needed

The Sunday Times ^ | 8 February 2004 | Peter Clarke

[Kepitalizm]

Thatcher's great ally would have been able to implement her revolution here, says Peter Clarke

What-ifs are tiresome. History is only what the victors did. Yet Scotland’s future altered when in 1979 the voters of Glasgow Cathcart rejected Sir Teddy Taylor at a time when Britain was beginning to warm to the dawn of Thatcherism.

Taylor, who last week announced he would stand down from parliament, would have been a shoo-in as Margaret Thatcher’s secretary of state for Scotland. In his absence, the Conservative cause became muted and was all but obliterated as successively Younger, Rifkind, Lang and Forsyth were captured by the Scottish Office machinery.

I once enjoyed a supper with a far younger Teddy and Sir Keith Joseph. Laughing through what might be done in the first days as secretary of state for Scotland, Teddy agreed he would have abolished all the arts subsidies. The squeals of pain would be a joy. He and Joseph giggled at how every headline would have screamed: “Philistine”.

Erasing the middle-class subsidies was a tactical necessity if you were also to abandon the blue-collar ones. And Taylor knew that farmers’ subsidies were the most wasteful. He saw that they went to the landed estates and not to struggling crofters. As a Tory he was meant to favour the gentry, but he is no friend of the tweedy wing of the Conservative party. He would have de-privileged all the lobbies for agriculture and forestry.

As secretary of state he might well have abolished all new council house construction and the sale or gifting of each home to its tenant. We would certainly have had a poll tax with Taylor in charge, but far earlier and far bolder. His axiom was that council taxes should be pegged to the BBC licence fee and town halls forced to desist from most of their tasks.

Secretary of state Taylor would have created a schools market and removed education from its capture by “producer groups”. Literacy and numeracy would have soared with schooling liberalised. Teachers’ incomes would have trebled — or rather that of the talented ones. The dross would have had to leave.

It pains me to realise how much more fun a Scottish Office would have been under a truly radical minister. Monsters that we take now as part of our landscape would never have existed. Holyrood would still be a brewery instead of a money pit.

The posher Conservatives usually think subsidies are the solution to all topics. Although Taylor is a kindly person, my hunch is that Ravenscraig steelworks, the coal mines and the other rust-bucket industries would have been allowed to die far earlier with him in charge. Their lingering death throes helped nobody.

The only time I spoke to Thatcher about her loss of Taylor in 1979 was at a party to celebrate his knighthood in 1991. I was amazed at her evident pain. She felt Scotland had been lost to the Conservatives.

She knew she had no rapport with the Scots but that Taylor was such a natural populist he would have transformed the possibilities. It is difficult to appreciate that the Conservatives used to expect to hold half Scotland’s seats.

When Taylor first arrived in Westminster we even had a Scottish Tory MP as prime minister. Now that seems fanciful. The Tories have evaporated, holding only a few golf clubhouse redoubts.

Yet if Thatcher had such a high regard for Taylor, why was he never given a job when he returned to the Commons as MP for Southend East? His answer was that he was typecast as only a candidate for Scottish Office roles and none were free. Later he and Thatcher fell out over the single European act.

He recalls: “I shouted at her. The only time I’ve let my anger show. She had been duped by the Foreign Office. She drank poison thinking it was ambrosia.” He detects the whips did not trust him. “They want what they call ‘reliability’. I translate it as obedience. I can’t do obedience.”

The one enduring passion Taylor had was to block membership of the then Common Market. Now it has evolved into the leviathan of the European Union, unrestrained by ballot box or budget. Remember, this is the man who invented the mythical debate of the curvature of the Euro-banana. Even last week he wrung the confession out of Denis MacShane, minister for Europe, that new penalties — fines and imprisonment — for selling fruit that fails to conform to Euro-measurements were imposed without consulting the UK government.

“It sounds footling, but consenting adults can exchange fruit and vegetables without crazy bureaucratic interventions. It is really about banning cheaper non-CAP foods. When will we create a popular revolt against the squalor in Brussels?” he asks.

Oh, it would have been glorious if Taylor had held Cathcart. Without him the Tories have retreated into respectable dullness.

[TaxRelief]

Interesting tidbit *ping*