Reefer Madness

National Review Online, October 10, 2000

For the Right Honorable William Hague M.P., leader of Her Majesty's Opposition and heir to Margaret Thatcher, the substance abuse never seems to stop. First there was the beer. In an interview with GQ magazine earlier this year, Mr. Hague revealed that as a young man he would occasionally drink as much as an impressive 14 pints a day. It was an announcement that split the nation. Some Britons chose to believe the Conservative leader, others thought that he was making it up. Either way Mr. Hague was in trouble. To prudes he seemed to be endorsing binge drinking. To the UK's tipplers, however, he was a bar-room Al Gore, boasting about imaginary achievements in a vain attempt to impress the crowd. The controversy lasted for weeks, and allowed Tony Blair's increasingly accident-prone Labour government to regain some political momentum.

And now there is the difficulty over cannabis, a problem that arose, rather surprisingly, in the middle of last week's Conservative party conference. These conferences are an annual British political ritual, a gathering of the faithful for each of the main parties. They bear some resemblance to U.S. political conventions. Labour's event, presided over by a Tony Blair literally sweating with tension had not gone that well. Arguments over too high gas taxes, too low pensions and London's ill-fated, expensive and empty Millennium Dome were capped by the publication of a book detailing the poisonous relationship between Mr. Blair and his finance minister. Incredibly, the Socialists had even fallen behind the Tories in the opinion polls, the first time that this had happened since 1992.

The Conservative conference was designed to build on this Labour weakness and, indeed, to demonstrate the very real progress that the Tories have made since their disastrous 1997 defeat. With an election expected next year, the conference was to be a showcase for William Hague's claim that his party was ready for government. Initially, all went well. Then, fatefully, Ann Widdecombe began to talk about reefer. As she spoke, the chances of a Tory government began to recede, dispersing, it seemed, in a puff of smoke. The showcase had turned into a chamber of horrors.

And Miss Widdecombe was the principal exhibit. For what she has to say is important. She is in charge of the Conservatives' domestic policy, one of the two or three most powerful people in a party that has had a weakness for a strong woman since the days of you know who. The spinsterish Ann Widdecombe is also a truly English eccentric. A diminutive figure with a dress sense borrowed from the Janet Reno House of Style, she has a resemblance to Margaret Rutherford and a pudding-bowl haircut straight out of Laurence Olivier's Henry V. A century ago Miss Widdecombe would have been a missionary in some remote corner of the Empire, and she would have been a good one. Hospitals would have been founded, schools would have been built, ancient cultures would have been destroyed. Clever, determined, and decidedly odd, "Doris Karloff" has turned her unconventional appearance into a political weapon, a useful symbol of her plain-speaking image.

It is an image that she uses to push a fairly standard law and order populism, an agenda which, as she explained to the conference, is going to include zero tolerance for cannabis users. Anyone, even a first-time user, caught in possession of marijuana would be given a mandatory $150 fine and, with it, a criminal record. And that is what caused the trouble. For current practice in the UK is rather more laid-back. Of the 100,000 people charged with cannabis possession last year around half (typically first time users) were "cautioned" (a "caution" is an official "don't do it again" police warning, and does not carry a criminal record).

As she spoke the conference applauded, but they were cheering the way to electoral disaster. In an age of largely consensus politics, relatively trivial issues can assume an iconic importance far greater than they deserve. Within a few hours Miss Widdecombe's hard line on pot had come to be seen as a rejection of recent attempts to build a more inclusive party, a party that would also have more appeal to the young (or even the middle-aged — the average paid-up Tory is over 60 years old). Symbolically too, the speech was seen as a clumsy blow to Mr. Hague's efforts to triangulate between the two distinct traditions, libertarian and paternalist, that co-exist rather uneasily within the modern Conservative party.

Worse, various senior policemen weighed in to criticize the mandatory fines as unworkable, not the most encouraging sign for a law and order initiative. No one appeared to have discussed the new policy with the people who would have had to implement it. It also quickly became obvious that the proposed scheme would criminalize too many people, and too many of those people, realized some of the shrewder Tories, would be the children of electorally critical "Middle England."

Within a few more hours the back-pedaling had begun, hastened along by the sudden confessions of eight members of Mr. Hague's cabinet. All eight, it seems, had inhaled at some time in their distant pasts. The Conservatives' culture spokesman had, excitingly, also once had amyl nitrate thrust up his nose. In a refreshing change from politicians' usual 'I tried it once/it made me feel ill/I couldn't see what the fuss was about' one or two of the eight actually admitted to having enjoyed the weed. Their youthful 'experiments' had, it seemed, been a success.

The Labour party, meanwhile, is saying little and its cabinet is admitting to nothing, not even the viewing of a Cheech and Chong movie. This cannot last, but, for the time being, Prime Minister Blair is, I suspect, just enjoying the fun. For, politics being politics, Tory back-pedaling is being accompanied by Tory back-stabbing. Some are now suggesting that Ann Widdecombe was set up for a fall by a rival faction within the party. Others are using the whole fiasco to question William Hague's leadership abilities. Mr. Hague, meanwhile, is backing Miss Widdecombe "150 percent", which is a number that should make her very uneasy. 100 percent would do, William, if you meant it.

All this, of course, will be punished at the polls by a British electorate that has repeatedly shown that it has zero tolerance for dazed, confused, and divided parties. As for the mandatory fines themselves, well, they are now being compared to speeding tickets, and William Hague is praising his team for "starting the debate about drugs." If those words herald the beginning of a re-examination of this issue within the Conservative party so much the better. The current laws, let alone these recent proposals, give too much power to big government. They also do not work. Those are two good, Conservative, reasons to oppose them, and they are reasons that would fit neatly into a wider critique of a Labour government that is as overbearing as it is incompetent.

Realistically, however, the chances that the Tories would be prepared to take the risk of supporting such an approach are remote. Probably not much more, in fact, than 150 percent.