HOW can one not help feeling sorry for John Major? Seventy eight Eurosceptic Tory MPs vote for Bill Cash's private member's Bill in favour of a referendum against the strong opposition of the party's whips. Major's rebuke to Bill Cash, a relatively obscure MP who has long bored for Britain, for accepting largesse from the billionaire Anglo French grocer, Sir James Goldsmith, who has threatened to run candidates belonging to his Referendum Party against loyalist Conservative MPs, was well deserved. Cash is a tiresome pest.
But it was immediately followed by Lady Thatcher, who promised to make good any money that Cash and his "private foundation" might lose. Hell hath no fury...
Major's curt response, to the effect that Thatcher's money should have been better spent by the Conservative Party which she once led, brings into the open the deep hostility that exists between Major and his predecessor. Once Major was "Dear John"; now he is seen by the Jacobite wing of the party as a traitor to all that Mrs Thatcher stood for. I would sum up Mrs Thatcher's achievements (about which there has been much exaggeration) as one slump, followed by the Lawson boom, followed by a second, and even deeper slump, out of which Britain is just emerging. Margaret, I am afraid, is dead, but refuses to lie down.
The date of the election must have become a prime concern of the Prime Minister and his closest colleagues. He can survive with a majority of one; only if the Ulster Unionists were to vote Labour, hoping for a better deal from Tony Blair's Labour Party, would he be obliged to fight an election at a time not of his own choosing.
Major can continue until April 1997. Next month, a committee which is sitting on MPs' pay and pensions will report. It is expected to increase our salaries from £32,000 to £45,000 a year, and to increase pensions and "golden handshakes" to the same extent. As 61 Tories and something like 40 Labour MPs have announced their intention to retire, 100 MPs are most unlikely to seek a dissolution of parliament before the end of the summer.
This leaves two possible dates: November 1996 and March 97. October is definitely out. It is the party conference season and, although the Tories have the last word, the party cannot be relied upon to present a united front. Michael Portillo will try to overtake John Redwood as leader of the right by making another of his fatuous anti European speeches ("We will not fight for Brussels" and "foreign children buy their educational qualifications").
Peter Lilley will attack the poor, while John Redwood with his shy/sly smile, will peddle his subversive pamphlets around the fringe of the conference. John Major would have to make the speech of his life, Heseltine deliver one of his "specials" and Ken Clarke - the only man who might save our bacon hold out some slight hope of tax cuts in a late October or early November budget.
The conference invariably sees the Conservative Party at its worst. Michael Howard might well announce the return of hanging for some form of theft, to the passionate applause of the party's tools. We would be seen as a divided party, and the experience of the Labour Party over the last decade has shown there is nothing the electorate dislikes more than the sight of a party at odds with itself.
I suspect that Clarke, as Chancellor, has a sweetener or two up his sleeve, without which the morale of Tory MPs and party activists will remain low. The "feelgood factor", so long in coming, is delayed because of the inordinate length of time the Tories have been in power.
The Eurosceptics are not really interested in referendums on such esoteric subjects as a single currency, which, incidentally, would be much to the advantage of British business. They want Britain out of Europe; they believe we could prosper as a kind of off shore Hong Kong, while excluded from our growing markets within Europe, and, by so doing, preserve our sovereignty and identity.
The idea is, of course, nonsense. Sovereignty is like virginity, once lost, it has gone for ever: identity - has anyone ever seen the Welsh play rugger at Cardiff Arms Park? There is no sign whatever of a loss of identity, yet the two countries have been joined together since 1536.
I doubt if Major will hang on to the bitter end. Some of our more simple MPs used to remark how well Sir Alec Home did in 64, but the fact remains that he lost by six seats. Personally, I fancy Thursday, November 14th. The result? The best we can possibly hope for is to be returned with a narrow majority. Our secret fear is that 96 will be another 06 or 45, when we went down to a crushing defeat.
The more cheerful among us and they are not easy to find believe a Labour government with a majority of around 100 to be the more likely eventuality. In, which case, we will have Lady Thatcher and her ally Bill Cash to blame.