"I DO not know whether the Prime Minister is on Ecstasy or whether he had oysters for lunch, but he sure made an pact. He was terrific."
So said Teresa Gorman, a woman who is not as foolish as she sometimes sounds. Mrs Gorman, known as "the Queen of Essex", is one of the more prominent "Eurosceptics" who, have been a constant thorn in, the Prime Minister's flesh. It was her vulgar way of welcoming John Major's so called "war on Europe".
As to BSE, the government has no one but itself to blame. Only two months ago we were told that tens of thousands of people were at risk of an incurable fatal disease, and that it would take about a year before we would have any reliable indication of the extent of the risk. Our sensible policy would be to accept a temporary ban, monitor the medical evidence, take steps to eradicate the reduction of BSE, cease forcing beef down the throats of every visiting dignitary and stop railing against the European Union which is doing no more than we would under similar circumstances. But since when has politics been a rational activity?
Instead we have encouraged media led hysteria, and by shifting the blame onto the European Union, dismayed the pro EU members of the Tory party while delighting the disparate bunch of anti Europeans whose real motive is to take us out of the EU. How can we expect to win an election under such circumstances, and when will that election be?
The parliament can run until next April, but will John Major soldier on to the bitter end? The most important date in the electoral calendar is the end of July, when a select committee of MPs will announce their recommendations on MPs' pay. Rumour has it that the present salary of £34,000 sterling will be raised by £10,000, and benefits such as golden handshakes and pensions will be raised accordingly. Given that over 60 Tory MPs, and something like 40 Labour MPs, have already declared their intention to retire at the end of this parliament, no one is going to be in a hurry to call an election before November at the earliest.
In politics, nothing is certain. Sir George Gardiner, the far right MP for Reigate who faced deselection last night, could carry out his threat to resign by asking for the Chiltern Hundreds (a nominal sinecure). This would rob the government of its majority of one and, were we to lose the resulting by election, make the Major government a minority one, dependent, were there to be a vote of confidence, on Ian Paisley and David Trimble, both of whom have recently made it clear that they cannot be relied upon indefinitely. Under such circumstances the result of the poll would be another 1945, a massive Labour victory.
Given that accidents do not, happen, and that the EU lifts, its ban on British beef later this year, John Major will have a choice between three possible dates. The first is November, after what he would hope would be a successful party conference. This will be hard to measure, as there will be an inevitable public conflict between the more moderate such as the Chancellor Ken Clarke and the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, and demagogues such as Michael Howard (who well merited the attack made on his policies by Lord Taylor this week), Michael "foreigners buy their educational qualification" Portillo, and Peter Lilley.
While the extremists will be cheered to the echo by the more foolish among the party activists (the majority), the overall result in PR terms of the party's seaside conference is not likely to be a good one. The electorate hates political parties that are divided among themselves, and unity will be none too obvious at Brighton.
The chancellor will probably find money for small cuts in direct taxation in a November budget, thus moving the date of the election into 1997. February has memories of Ted Heath's defeat in that month in 1974, and the weather is not conducive to canvassing.
The party chairman will take the temperature of the electorate constantly, and any change in our fortunes will help to restore the morale of the party's rank and file which could not be lower. Seventeen years in power is a long time too long, perhaps, given current disenchantments.
We are thus left with "the bitter end", like that which awaited Sir Alec Douglas Home in 1964. There are those who claimed that he did rather well by running Harold Wilson as close as he did, but the end result was a defeat which led to a decade of Labour government.
There are other imponderables. Will Tony Blair's "charm offensive" begin to falter? Will the spurious unity within the Labour party remain intact until polling day? Will John Major whose principal, some would say only, achievement was victory in 1992 be able to take his soap box around the country as he did so successfully five years ago. I would like to think so, but I do not.
As for John Major himself, he has suffered from bitter attacks from our foreign owned press (63 per cent), and is perceived as a nice guy somewhat out of his depth. The Thatcherites have not forgiven him, and by shifting ground over the EU, he has discouraged his natural supporters in the parliamentary party.
Who will win the election? The Tories could squeeze home with a greatly reduced majority. We could go down to defeat of" 1974 proportions, or, were we forced to go to the polls by the Ulster Unionists, a defeat of 1945 or 1906 proportions.