City-loving, leftie-bashing Michael Heseltine is just the man Cameron needs in the critical year ahead
He's back: the hero of the Tory jungle who never quite goes away. Lord Heseltine, the government's "growth tsar" has declared irresponsible City behaviour exists only "at the fringes". It's the sort of Hug a Hedgefunder remark that makes banker-bashers reach for their regulatory weapons and Lib Dems feel faint.
Nothing happens on the Cameronian grid by accident. Heseltine's sally is the Tory leader's year-end present to his confused troops. In the wake of Vince Cable's over-eventful constituency surgery, twitchiness in the Tory camp has hardened into resentfulness. The failure to sack the business secretary for a breach of loyalty that would have seen any senior Conservative out on his ear, has rankled throughout the recess.
"Is Cameron still a Tory leader?" a party elder asked me. Strange question, perhaps, of a man who will preside over unprecedented public sector cuts, but many Conservatives fret that the main purpose of the Cleggeron duopoly is to secure the continued existence of the coalition, not to further Tory aims.
Here's where Hezzer comes in. He has emerged in retirement as a defender of centre-right economic orthodoxies, without the illiberal liabilities of ur-Thatcherites like Lord Tebbit. Shoring up faith in the financial services is a message many Tories think has been insufficiently clear from the coalition. Clegg tuts about "imbalance" towards the City, Osborne emphasises no return to big bonuses. Only Boris Johnson unashamedly woos the Square Mile.
It doesn't matter whether politicians bash bankers. The City only cares about regulations imposed, not the windy rhetoric attached. But Heseltine's intervention is part of a canny Cameron strategy to introduce a figure of heft and reputation into the public domain in a critical year. Hezzer is more palatable to the media than Osborne, less accident prone than Cable. So we shall see more of him taking the flak in 2011. The man schooled in 1980s recession is now in charge of the �1.4bn growth fund, intended to take up some of the role of the doomed Regional Development Agencies. His task is to promote private enterprise areas dependent on public sector employment: the political equivalent of turning water to wine. We might wonder why this task does not fall into the now emptier in-tray of the existing business secretary: the rise of Heseltine can only mean a further edging out of Cable.
"Back to the future!" critics of Hezzer will cry. But as a pro-European and social liberal, he can't easily be branded as backward-looking. Certainly, he's unashamedly wealthy. (I know a grandee who once bid against him for a country pile. As bidding edged up to silly levels, Hezzer withdrew, leaving the message, "It's too small".)
He is, however, also a thoughtful politician, who produced blueprints for urban regeneration in Liverpool and London's Docklands in the 80s that have become templates. Political longevity is his consolation for the real goal unfulfilled: his daughter Annabel recently told me she would "never forgive Mrs Thatcher" for barring his succession. Nearing 78, he's a lot more energetic than most of his mid-life colleagues. Have a look at the YouTube of his Newsnight bout with Ken Loach, in which Hezzer denounces the film-maker for "crypto-communist claptrap". It makes you realise why he and not Ken Clarke is the classy Tory revival. Tarzan remains sharp and dangerous, whereas dear old Ken is a saggy velvet jacket of a politician. You can disagree with the City-loving, leftie-bashing veteran, but he's a classy pugilist for the year of grand battles ahead.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/29/michael-heseltine-conservatives
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