Heseltine’s great, misguided speech

On Monday in the Lords, Michael Heseltine, 90 next month, orated (I employ that Welsh usage because it fits him so well) in favour of the European single market. He regarded its regulations as ‘one of the most successful concepts ever developed by humankind’. He deplored the fact that the government is trying, post-Brexit, to escape them. He attacked Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black and compared Jacob Rees-Mogg to Robespierre. His stirring words reminded me of another great nonagenarian performance in the upper house – Harold Macmillan’s maiden speech as Earl of Stockton in November 1984, which I watched from the gallery. The old actor rose slowly and totteringly, but quickly gained strength as he praised the gold standard, Keynesianism and his own achievements as prime minister for more than half an hour. The peroration was quite something, involving faith, hope, charity and St Paul and Arthur Scargill’s miners’ strike which was being carried on, he said, by ‘the best men in the world’. These men ‘beat the Kaiser’s army and they beat Hitler’s army’. They ‘never gave in’. Many of us wept. However, four months later, those men did (thank goodness) give in to Margaret Thatcher. Quite soon, I suspect, EU regulations will have to give in to the logic of Brexit. Macmillan then, Heseltine nearly 40 years on – great, misguided orators, perfect examples of 1066 And All That’s famous characterisation of the Cavaliers – ‘wrong, but wromantic’.

One thing strikers’ leaders say is ‘We don’t want the public to suffer’. Another is ‘We have no choice’. Both remarks are untrue. If the public did not suffer, public-service strikes would be ineffective. And if it is the case that strikers have no choice, what about the many people who vote not to strike? In a free country, there is always a choice whether to strike and, in 99 cases out of a hundred, the more decent people choose not to.