Los Angeles Times Interview : Michael Portillo : The Flamboyant Great Right Hope of British Politics

LONDON â€”  Will Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo become the Newt Gingrich of Britain? That’s perhaps among the top questions here as Prime Minister John Major’s government begins its march toward national elections, which must take place no later than 20 months from now, against the reinvigorated Labor Party of Tony Blair.

Polls indicate that Major cannot win the election for the Tories, but maybe someone else can. Is that someone Portillo? At 43--about the age of Blair--this Cambridge-educated fireball could inherit the conservative leadership, should Major falter.

That won’t happen overnight. The Prime Minister is still basking in his successful defense of a challenge to his party leadership last month. But as the months tick by and the polls reinforce Labor’s inevitability, the pressure could grow for someone like Portillo, who after the leadership vote in July, was given the Cabinet post of defense minister, a reward for not challenging Major.

As one British political writer summed it up the morning after the July 4 leadership vote for Major, “Portillo was then anointed the Tory heir-apparent. . . . This is the real significance of what happened yesterday. . . . Now Portillo will try to do what Newt Gingrich, leader of America’s new right, had done to bring the Republicans back from the dead.�

Perhaps this darling of the right--skeptical of the movement toward European unity, fiercely determined to continue the welfare-state downsizing begun by his patron, Margaret Thatcher--must only bide his time.

Portillo, who is married to Carolyn C. Eadie (they have no children), was politically ambitious even as a youth, once worrying whether his Spanish surname would prove a political handicap. But in his interview, held in his wood-paneled office at the Ministry of Defense in Whitehall, the center of government in London, the defense minister downplayed any disadvantage: “I don’t think I’ve suffered from it at all.�

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Question: Isn’t the Tory hope of reelection almost nonexistent?

Answer: The task has been made more difficult by the Labor Party’s effectively pretending to be a conservative party. I draw some reassurance in that line. It’s clear that anybody who wants to be elected has to accept our conservative values. . . . We can expose Labor as, at best, having a very shallow belief in these principles. I mean, Tony Blair has now changed his mind upon everything. Once he favored unilateral nuclear disarmament. But not now. Once he was in favor of getting out of the Common Market. But not now. Once he was against people being able to elect the schools that they could send their children to. He’s now changed his mind on all these issues. And we have to show that if people are indeed into conservative values, are interested in incentives for self-improvement and the development of self-esteem, we are their only choice.

Q: In California, Gov. Pete Wilson came from behind to gain reelection. His methodology was to concentrate on two or three issues, in particular, immigration and crime, and to stay on message. Is that likely to be the Conservative approach, two or three issues? And what would they be?

A: Well, taking the first part of your analogy: John Major constantly astonishes the world and press. He was reckoned to be on his way to election defeat in ‘92, but he actually won. His recent gamble to put his leadership on the line was thought by the press to be a disastrous move. He was actually successful. So we’re dealing here with a leader who has, on several occasions, completely confounded the conventional wisdom.

I think the main election issue will be the integrity of the United Kingdom, because Labor is pandering to nationalism in Scotland with proposals to break up the United Kingdom, effectively, into separate assemblies in England and Scotland. The continuing sovereignty of the United Kingdom is the issue, because again Labor has proposals to surrender our veto in the European Parliament in Brussels. We reject all changes which would reduce our ability to govern ourselves.

And, I think basic economic issues will reassert themselves. It is true that we now face a Tony Blair who is talking about no borrowing, no taxing, no spending. But every instinct of [his] party is toward the traditional policies of an inflated public sector, increased role of government and the idea that the problems can be solved if only the government were to tax and spend more.

Q: You were thought in the press to be the chief challenger for the leadership of the party on the right . Is the left-right split as large in the Conservative Party as it seems to us in the United States?

A: No, the split is really all around one issue, which is the European question. And perhaps I can put it to you like this: 95% of the Conservative Party doesn’t wish to lead Britain to a single European currency or nation. It doesn’t wish to proceed to a federal Europe, to a United States of Europe. Where we’re divided--the real bone of contention--is around the single currency. And it is whether you view that as the logical development of the single market, or whether you regard it as the foundation of a political union. There are still differing opinions on that in the Conservative Party. . . .

Q: And your position has been pretty unwavering on that, right?

A: Well, fortunately, the prospect of having to make an actual national decision [about a single currency] is receding --certainly as time goes on, and possibly altogether. The European Community has already decided that its initial date of 1997 for a single currency was unrealistic. Now it has been put back to 1999. I wouldn’t be surprised if that goes back again. Now, the July leadership election in the Conservative Party has had a cathartic effect. We’re going to into the next century with John Major as our leader. No one doubts that, and the corollary of that is his view of how we should handle the European question: He has said the single-currency issue is not one on which the party needs to take a formal position at this time.

Q: The image we have in America is of Labor Party leader Blair and deputy Labor Party leader John Prescott chortling on the sidelines, watching the Conservatives divide and beat themselves.

A: They’ve been given a long honeymoon since Blair was elected last year. He has been able to step back and watch the divisions in the Conservative Party. It could be that that will now change. The first thing is that the leadership election in the Conservative Party has focused attention upon us. People are now interested in what Conservatives have to say. And Blair has been somewhat the lone man in the Labor Party.

Q: Are you saying that the ideological differences between, say, you on the right and Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine, on the left, are less than the differences between Blair and Prescott?

A: Yes, I would. Because, within the Conservative Party, generally, it really is only Europe that we have all been arguing about. . . .

Q: You are sometimes referred to in America as the Newt Gingrich of Britain. Is that accurate?

A: I think the answer is no. . . . Our situations . . . are very different. The nature of our politics is different. I don’t deny, though, that political cycles, which are observable in the United States, are sometimes observable here.

Q: As conservative as the right wing of the Tory Party appears to be, it doesn’t call for abolition of welfare. Is that because in Britain, there is a rough consensus on social issues and that consensus would be moderate in terms of American politics?

A: I think it would be fair to characterize it as moderate by comparison. Nonetheless, let me make it clear we are all very concerned about the rate at which the world, biologically, is growing. . . . We must have a welfare system that we can afford, which will mean giving greater attention to directing the welfare program toward its primary purposes and its intended beneficiaries. Now, that having been said, I think we can look to a gradual process of reining back some of the benefits and altering the entitlement programs of others. But I think all of us in Britain believe that at the end of the day, we will still have a pretty substantial welfare program in this country.

Q: In your new position as secretary of state for defense, are there one or two issues or points you want to make?

A: First of all, let me say that I value the relationship with the United States very much indeed. We are two countries that share a tremendous amount in common. We both have global reach. We are interested in the promotion of the same sort of ideas. We in Britain do not have the same capabilities as the United States, but we are members of the United Nations Security Council. And we take our obligations and duties deriving from that very seriously.

It is my aim that we should be able to work alongside the United States as closely as possible in a number of theaters, including Bosnia. Bosnia is a difficult area in which we have not seen eye-to-eye. But I hope that there can be understanding on both sides. There are deep-running sensitivities in the United States, and there’s a strong feeling that Bosnia is part of a European community . . . and all of that has to be recognized. On the other hand, we now find ourselves with large numbers of troops on the ground, and naturally one of our prime concerns has to be the safety of our people in a foreign land. And policies that we follow must be directed toward the saving of life, the humanitarian effort, at least for as long as those goals remain viable propositions.

Q: The U.S. government promised many months ago to help out with up to 25,000 American troops if there were a British and French troop evacuation from Bosnia. But the U.S. Congress has made the ground under the President shaky on almost any sort of involvement in Bosnia. Does your government find this rather irritating?

A: No, we understand the situation in the United States. But let me say that we have valued enormously the commitment that the President gave, and we have derived great comfort from it. We don’t look forward to withdrawing from Bosnia. We believe there’s good work to be done there . . . But clearly we have to have an understanding about what would happen if we found that the operation became unviable. . . . Obviously, we very much hope that neither the Congress nor anybody else would put the President in a difficult situation in being able to help us out if the urgent need arose.*