The greater the truth, the greater the gaffe, Mr Clarke

There are certain words one comes across only in newspapers. They are not used in ordinary conversation or, for that matter, in more self-consciously literary productions. They are usually short because they can fit into headlines. One of them is "zany" as in "zany comedienne". Comediennes are always zany, women politicians never, though there have been numerous candidates for the epithet down the years. Another example is "gaffe", a straight lift from the French. My French dictionary tells me it means "blunder, bloomer, howler" and that faire une gaffe is "to put one's foot in it, to drop a brick, to blunder". My English dictionary agrees more briefly, adding that the word first became common in 1909.

As women politicians are never zany, so politicians of both sexes are always prone to commit gaffes. Some, however, are more prone than others. Accordingly - it requires no great strain of language to form the compound adjective - they are gaffe-prone. They form a regular cast of characters, as reliable and predictable as the D'Oyly Carte Opera. One of them is Mr John Prescott. Another is Ms Clare Short. And yet another is Mr Kenneth Clarke.

It would be tedious to enumerate what are supposed to have been Mr Clarke's gaffes since he first joined the Cabinet just over 10 years ago at 45. Still, I should like to mention a few. There was his praise of the steelworks which had long been closed. Anyone could have made that mistake. Then there was his admission that he had never read the Maastricht Treaty. Lord Rees-Mogg took particular exception to this omission in his column in the Times, maintaining that Mr Clarke had demonstrated his unfitness for high office.

The writer's objection, as a I remember, was not so much that Mr Clarke had admitted to not having read the treaty as that he had indeed not read it. In other words, Lord Rees-Mogg's complaint was one of substance rather than of expediency. Most commentators, however, took the opposite position: Mr Clarke's error (made on television with Lord Tebbit) was not supposed to be that he had omitted to read the instrument in question - which, after all, no one else had read either apart from Mr Denzil Davies, myself and one or two others - but, rather, that he had publicly confessed to his neglect. It was this which was Mr Clarke's gaffe.

This is a characteristic that all political gaffes possess these days. It is not that what is said is untrue but that it is considered inexpedient to admit it. To adapt the old saying about libel, the greater the truth, the greater the gaffe. On the scale of gaffes kept permanently in Annie's Bar at Westminster for convenient measurement, Mr Clarke's effort last week comes quite low.

All he did was say on the BBC's Today programme that a leaked Treasury document on the future - or, rather, the lack of future - of the welfare state was the work of some "kids in the office" and was on that account not to be regarded with too much concern.

It turns out that the kids involved are in the 30-40-plus range. At least two of them are described as "high-fliers". But then, in the broadsheet papers, most youngish civil servants are called that anyway, as all students who commit suicide are invariably "brilliant" and "have everything to live for". The kids were reporting to the head of the Treasury, Sir Terry Burns.

For myself, I find it difficult to take with complete seriousness someone who calls himself Sir Terry and supports Queen's Park Rangers. But there we are. No doubt I am mistaken. Sir Terry is a fully paid-up monetarist who began life as an economic forecaster. He was brought into the Treasury by Sir Peter Middleton and preferred by Lord Lawson. He has since risen steadily and, to me, mysteriously. There is much speculation in economic clubland about whether he will survive under new Labour. One view is that he is just the sort of chap Mr Tony Blair and Mr Gordon Brown are looking for.

The society which the kids (as, following the Chancellor, I shall continue to call them) were sketching is praised or deplored according to the political inclinations of those who are doing the pronouncing. Thus Mr John Redwood approves, while Mr Clarke does not. The commentators exhibit a similar division. What everyone in the latter group is, however, agreed upon is that the kids have performed a public service. Their only offence, it seems, is that they did not perform it more openly.

I find myself in a minority. Civil servants have, or ought to have, quite enough to do with their time without the need to engage in speculative and meretricious exercises of this nature. For most predictions turn out to be completely wrong. Sixty years ago intelligent people thought mankind would live under fascism, communism or democratic socialism. None prospers. The last has been abandoned even by the British Labour Party. Again, predictions of population are invariably either too high or too low.

But people are easily taken in by experts who claim to be able to foretell the future. That is because they want to be taken in. Sir Terry Burns is really no different from Mystic Meg. That is certainly the capacity in which he began his successful climb. Nor are his civil servants very different.

Besides, they are not conducting their investigations in a vacuum. All sorts of assumptions are implicit in predictions. And the very act of making a plausible prediction makes it more likely that it will come about. In politics, admittedly, it often works the other way round where individual ministers are concerned. Mr William Waldegrave, Sir Nicholas Lyell and, now, Mr Douglas Hogg continue in paid public employment largely because the papers were so sure they would shortly be out on their ears.

Nevertheless, Mr Brown was perfectly justified in attacking what he alleged were the Government's plans. The trouble was that he did not do it very convincingly. He seemed to be on automatic pilot, in two senses: his manner had, physically, a robotic quality and, in addition, he appeared to be going through the political motions without very much conviction. Nor was this last appearance wholly deceptive, if experience is any guide. Time and again Labour has vigorously attacked the Government's more lunatic proposals - from trade unions at GCHQ through water to the railways - only to accept them quietly once they have been put into effect. And what, one wonders, will new Labour do about Mr Peter Lilley's privatisation of benefits once it is in office?

No, the hero of the week is Mr Clarke. He finds himself in much the same position as Iain Macleod in 1963-64. Macleod was the Conservative Harold Wilson most feared. Today, I learn, Mr Clarke occupies that position with Mr Blair. It is he rather than Mr Michael Heseltine who is feared most by new Labour. But Mr Clarke, like Macleod, will never lead his party.