From the timing of Michael Crick’s book on the Leader of the Opposition we can surmise that the author, like most of the rest of us, has made his mind up already about the result of the imminent election. There will be nothing significant to add after 5 May. The Tory party will not win the coming contest, and Michael Howard will not be prime minister. So best to get this unauthorised biography out on the shelves now, when at least its subject is doing something interesting. Even though the Tories seem placed to do better than in the last two debacles, there is unlikely to be such consistent publicity for this work in a month’s time.
Mr Crick is usually a careful journalist — there is one exception to that, and an important one, to which I shall come later — and this book is a work of careful journalism. It is thorough and well-researched, in some respects exceptionally so. Not only does it chart the life of Michael Howard through its many vicissitudes; it also traces the far more complex story of his antecedents. Those who know Mr Howard will recognise him clearly from the picture Crick paints of him. That is not least because he is as enigmatic, inconsistent and puzzling in real life as he is in these pages.
Aspects of Crick’s work on this book seriously rattled the Leader of the Opposition, who professed to begin with to be ‘relaxed’ about this interim work of biography. Relaxation changed to concern when Crick managed to establish that Howard’s grandfather, one Morris Wurz- berger, had lived here as an illegal immigrant for almost the last 20 years of his life. Indeed, when Howard’s father, Bernat Hecht, and his aunt (a survivor of Auschwitz) applied for naturalisation in the late 1940s, they both claimed their father was dead. This turns out to have been a lie, and it is part of a detailed but not necessarily consequential picture that Crick paints of the Howard family sailing close to the wind when expediency dictates in order to get on in life.
The author charts his subject’s progress from Llanelli, through grammar school where after surprisingly good ‘O’ levels Michael decided to try for Cambridge, where he eventually found a college that would take him. Once at university a career in politics attracted Howard and he hacked away in both the Conservative Association and the Union. He resigned from the former after a disagreement with Kenneth Clarke about his future cabinet colleague’s decision to invite Oswald Mosley to speak to CUCA, but became (by Crick’s account) an unimpressive president of the latter. The author, quite fairly, illustrates the ambitious nature of Howard’s rise. He was driven not least by the success of his Cambridge contemporaries, all of whom got into parliament and government before him — Clarke, Brittan, Fowler, Gummer and Lamont — and a stereo- typically 1960s addiction to being rather flash. Bernard Howard (he had changed his name by deed poll on becoming British) by this time ran a successful clothing store in Llanelli, and his son was always immaculately turned out. Michael Howard liked to have a smart car and was never short of an attractive girlfriend. He secured a pupillage under Sir Elwyn Jones, an old boy of his grammar school, and prospered at the Bar; but his attempts to enter parliament were repeatedly confounded.
He fought Liverpool Edge Hill in the 1966 and 1970 elections, the second time because he could find nothing better. In neither of the 1974 elections nor in 1979 could he find a seat at all, but managed to secure the candidacy for Folkestone in time for 1983. He won, was a parliamentary private secretary within months, and in the government within a couple of years. At the time he left Cambridge he was a leftish, Heathite Tory, so far to the left that he thought of joining the Labour party. By the time he reached the Thatcher government he had moved sharply to the right, though, as Crick suggests from time to time, his views were negotiable.
As one ploughs through all this carefully accumulated detail, however, one does begin to get rather bored. Unlike Crick’s interesting book on Lord Archer, this one tells us very little that is new and less still that is fascinating. Indeed, by the end, as we race through recent history and the first 18 months or so of the Howard leadership, it becomes a bit of a pot-boiler. There are no weighty conclusions, because the conclusion (however predictable it might seem) has not yet happened. Certainly Crick’s story about Howard’s grandfather is interesting, not least in the light of the Leader of the Opposition’s forthright opposition to illegal immigrants now. But for the most part familiar tales are used to highlight either Howard’s occasionally dodgy judgment, or, more interestingly, his bouts of irrationality caused by his foul temper and his control freakery. So we hear all about the preposterous accusations made by Mohamed Fayed, that Tiny Rowland had bribed Howard £1m to make life difficult for Fayed. We hear how various of Howard’s distant relations have fallen foul of the law. And, of course, there is much analysis of the stand-off between Howard, when home secretary, and Derek Lewis, whom he eventually sacked from running the prison service. The author tells this story extremely well, with its celebrated Newsnight interview two years after the events — when Jeremy Paxman asked Howard the same question about his handling of Lewis 13 times — and Ann Widdecombe’s ‘something of the night’ remark.
Much of the rest of the detail is, frankly, tedious and will enthral only political anoraks. The book is too long and gives the impression of having been thrown together from a mass of research material. Michael Howard has not, in fact, had that interesting a political career, however much significance Crick tries to attach to his role in the poll tax, or in the Maastricht settlement. One of Crick’s most interesting themes — the Howard temper and his ruthlessness in protecting himself — is, though, if anything underplayed. It was no fault of Crick’s that this character flaw should have manifested itself so importantly in the last fortnight, with the Leader of the Opposition’s lack of judgment, impetuousness and penchant for panic shining through in the Howard Flight case. The demented decision by Howard to act unjustly towards Flight, thereby prolonging the agony his former vice-chairman had caused and upsetting a huge swathe of the voluntary party, is of a piece with various other acts of minor hysteria perpetrated by Howard during his career.
Crick points out his subject’s weakness under pressure, but presumably because he is so convinced that Howard will never be prime minister he does not speculate on what consequences for the country might stem from this flaw. The psychological side of Howard, which, to be fair to Crick, he does explore from time to time, will be rich territory for any future biographer. So, too, will the limitations Howard has placed upon himself, and the offence he has caused to countless colleagues, interviewers, opponents and officials by being the aggressive barrister in circumstances where he should have been the persuasive and compelling politician. Those of us who know Howard can testify to his courtesy in private, his generosity, his charm, his charisma. Why it so rarely emerges in public is presumably due to a mixture of insecurity and self-obsession, and, above all, a need at all times to be right and to appear impregnable. What we never get to the bottom of is why such a seemingly blameless man with a nice wife should appear as one who seems constantly in fear of having his collar felt.
One feature of this book that will irritate some readers is its tone. While he is broadly fair to Howard — which means occasionally admitting his subject’s strengths and virtues — the author imposes his own personality very heavily on certain p arts of his book, and it is not always charming. It will surprise many readers that, on the dust-jacket, credit should be claimed for the part Crick played in the ‘downfall’ of Iain Duncan Smith. It will be beyond most people why the author should want to brag about an episode that he seems not to realise has tarnished his own hitherto serious reputation as an investigative journalist. Crick did break the ‘story’ of how Duncan Smith had allegedly paid his wife for doing work she did not actually do. This was subsequently found to be untrue, and both Mr and Mrs Duncan Smith have emerged without a stain on their characters. Crick had been mis- informed by two disaffected former Tory officials who were looking for a means to get the then leader out. Given that much of his book on Michael Howard seeks to highlight the present Leader of the Opposition’s errors of judgment, Crick might like to recall what they say about stones and glass houses.
Simon Heffer is a columnist for the Daily Mail.
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