Political Commentary: Major's luck may be changing

SIR ALAN WALTERS has forgotten about Lord Derby. On Friday, as the country's leading specialist in anti-Chancellor warfare, Professor Walters fired his opening salvo against Kenneth Clarke with the apparently wounding claim that 'Mr Clarke has very little knowledge of economics and finance and seems proud of it'.

This is puzzling because Sir Alan certainly does not believe that knowledge of economics is a sufficient condition for being a successful Chancellor. Not even he would have accused his bete noire, Nigel Lawson, of not knowing enough economics. But as Lord Derby understood perfectly, and Sir Alan apparently does not, knowledge of economics may not even be a necessary condition. When Derby unexpectedly asked Disraeli to become Chancellor in 1857, the latter was reluctant, protesting that he knew little of the subject. Famously, Derby told him: 'You know as much as Mr Canning did. They give you the figures.'

This may all be very painful to Sir Alan, but not, I suspect, to the general public, who are rather relieved that Mr Clarke does not blind them with M0, the MTFS and suchlike. Lord Lawson - who incidentally admired Mr Clarke for his 'robustness' on public spending - was every bit as self-confident as Mr Clarke in television interviews but his approach was in the 'all this is clever stuff. I'm a clever chap so leave it to me' category. That works very well when the economy is booming but would scarcely be right at present.

One of Mr Clarke's attractions, on show in his BBC 2 Newsnight interview with Peter Snow on Wednesday, is precisely that he uses ordinary language which strikes a chord with viewers, bruised and confused by prolonged recession. The extent to which he avoids Treasury-speak was illustrated when Mr Snow asked him whether mortgage interest tax relief was not a 'middle-class perk' that needed to be abolished. Try telling that to a not particularly well-off young couple setting about buying their first home, said Mr Clarke. He is not a Vulcan. He does not speak in strangulated tones. He doesn't have a peculiar haircut. Indeed, in common with Nigel Lawson, he doesn't seem to have many haircuts of any kind.

There is something reassuringly, if not old-fashioned, at least pre-Thatcherite about Mr Clarke. He does not tell voters they should not be complaining, nor indeed that they should be proud to be casualties in the holy war against inflation. He is aware that it irritated voters in Newbury to be told that the economy had turned the corner when they had seen few concrete signs of it. More than once last week he said simply that the economy was recovering 'slightly'. For the first time since Denis Healey, or possibly even Reginald Maudling, Middle England has its own representative at the Treasury.

Tens of thousands of words have already been written on the proposition that all this - described a shade clinically by Downing Street as 'presentational skills' - means that Mr Clarke will take over, possibly sooner rather than later, from Mr Major. Being Chancellor is not necessarily a stepping stone to No 10. Neither Margaret Thatcher nor Harold Wilson were Treasury ministers (the then Mr Wilson startled Denzil Davies when he appointed him as Minister of State in 1975 by telling him he 'envied' him for going to the Treasury). Conversely, the most economically brilliant Chancellors of recent times, Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins and Nigel Lawson, never became Prime Minister. The two that did, James Callaghan and John Major, were not front-ranking Chancellors.

Nevertheless, the conventional and persuasive wisdom is that Mr Major weakened his position by a reshuffle which was forced on him before he was ready, the main feature of which was the promotion to the Treasury of his chief potential rival. Moreover, there is now evidence that Mr Major was planning a much wider reshuffle for December, or just possibly July, which could have seen off Peter Brooke, John Gummer and Peter Lilley, perhaps with a switch of portfolio for John Patten, but that he was not ready to do it when the party managers told him Mr Lamont would have to go. It is an irony that the sacking of Mr Lamont may have saved the jobs of others for the time being. This underlines the extent to which Mr Major's hand was forced.

Let us leave all this to one side, however, and take our cue from the Sun, which on Friday congratulated John Major on the healthy economic news and suggested that the Government's fortunes 'may, just may, be turning the corner'. With breathtaking understatement, the Sun prefaced this cheering analysis by admitting that it had never 'pulled its punches with John Major'. This is the paper that eight days earlier carried a front-page headline: 'Major is finished as Lamont plunges knife' and went on to say that Mr Lamont's resignation speech destroyed 'his hopes of hanging on to office'.

Last week saw several hopeful signs for Mr Major, beside important economic indicators. First, the endorsement of Lady Thatcher may not be wholehearted; but it gives the lie to reports that Clarke already has the backing of the Tory right wing for the leadership. Important elements on the right still want Mr Major to hang on at least until Michael Portillo, Thatcher's 'white hope', is ready. Second, even a defeat at Christchurch might not be the catastrophe it once looked if, as now seems likely, it takes place at the end of July when the House has risen and MPs have little opportunity to plot. Third, Mr Major is about to embark on a period of summiteering, at which he is already a past-master. Fourth, ministers have some real decisions to take, for example on Rosyth and on regional aid. This may take their minds off issues of leadership. Finally, it may be no more than the cooler weather, but the atmosphere on the Commons terrace was last week a good deal less feverish than it had been the previous week.

None of this means that Mr Major is not facing great hazards in the next 12 months, culminating in the European elections. Mr Lamont is still an ominous presence on the backbenches (Mr Major will have noticed that the Japanese prime minister has just fallen at the hands of his former finance minister). In addition, if the economy recovers but the Tories' political fortunes fail to do so too, then Mr Clarke could well be unstoppable. But it is worth reflecting for a moment that Mr Major could recover, could win the election - a prospect which many Labour politicians still fear deep down, despite their poll lead - and that the next Tory party leader, in about the year 2000, could be Mr Portillo or, as likely a prospect, Stephen Dorrell.

Some Tory MPs still believe that Mr Clarke will sink or swim with Mr Major, pointing out that Denis Healey's leadership chances were damaged by being James Callaghan's Chancellor. On the other hand, he could be a Roy Jenkins (who shrank at the last moment from seeking to replace Harold Wilson in the late Sixties) but without Lord Jenkins' fastidiousness. No one, including Mr Major and Mr Clarke, knows the answer. Either way, we should not pay too much attention to Sir Alan Walters' gibes about Mr Clarke not being a trained economist. Disraeli went on to have rather a distinguished career.