The 'get Major' game is for real

ARE WE all going mad? Consider this: an obscure-sounding parliamentary amendment about a little-understood opt-out from a treaty which is itself of no interest to most of the population, and is becoming steadily less relevant to them, could force the Prime Minister out.

No, we are not going mad. This is Europe and this is the British Conservative Party. We are dealing with a different order of reality, an alien space-time zone where proportion doesn't exist and logic struggles fitfully for a hearing.

There have been scares like this before and John Major has survived them. No one knows whether this latest political assassination machine, a procedural robot travelling under the innocuous alias of New Clause 75, will get its man. All the various groups - ministers, whips, rebels, the opposition parties - think they are radioing NC75 secret instructions. None are, really. The thing is out of control.

An exaggeration? Let's start with something we think we know. John Major will not sign the Social Chapter of the Maastricht treaty. He got Britain an opt-out from this 'socialist' measure.

If New Clause 75 is passed (as it could well be) there has to be a separate vote on a motion about this Social Chapter before any powers can be transferred from Westminster to the European Community. The hard-core Tory rebels are tempted to ensure that Mr Major loses such a vote, not because they like the Social Chapter but because the clause prevents the transfer of powers. If he did he would have to resign, or ignore the Commons, or sign up.

Government supporters now say privately that perhaps Mr Major would sign the Social Chapter. The Tory rebels hate the idea: if he did so, forced into it by their rebellion, they would be damned as socialist running-dogs and incompetent conspirators. So, by implying that he might sign it (even if he wouldn't), Mr Major reduces the chances of his being defeated and having to sign. Or, of course, not. All clear, still?

The rebels, meanwhile, must imply that they would vote against the Government on the second Social Chapter motion to stop the transfer of powers. They hope that Mr Major would be unable to sign the Social Chapter because of the virulent words he has used against it so often and would therefore have to resign. In that case, they speculate, perhaps Douglas Hurd would emerge as the new leader and offer a referendum.

At least you might expect that these manoeuvrings in the Commons were over issues both sides believed were fundamental. But, here again, the real game is hidden under symbols whose real effect on the humdrum world is unclear. Certainly the Social Chapter is disliked by many British bosses. Others, though, including Continental companies, think the whole thing has been overstated.

It is mostly a high-minded essay on the rights of employees, with little legal meaning. Some experts on these matters think there is nothing that the EC could do with the Social Chapter that it cannot already do under existing legislation.

It commits the Community to things like 'the development of human resources with a view to lasting high employment and the combating of exclusion'. Might that mean the Bundesbank pursuing a high-growth, inflationary strategy? You have to be joking. It wants to integrate 'persons excluded from the labour market'. Like foreigners? Like the unemployed? Er, no. Who, then? It doesn't say.

It doesn't say much. It allows the European Council to introduce minimum standards on working conditions, and the consultation of workers. This is what Mr Major means when he says it will destroy jobs. But these changes can only come about with regard to 'the conditions and technical rules obtaining in each of the member states' and in such a way that they don't burden small and medium-sized companies.

Actually, the Social Chapter does matter, but more on a symbolic level than a practical one. It matters to the left as a symbol that there is more to the Community than free trade. It matters to the Tory party because opting out of it draws a symbolic line in the sand against further EC power and old-style corporatism at a time when European costs are dangerously high. It matters, above all, to Mr Major as a symbol of his negotiating ability and toughness.

Here, says the opt-out, is a man who cares about party unity as well as about Europe, who knows when to say enough is enough. It is Mr Major's political virility symbol, his chieftain's feathers, the emblem of his fitness to rule.

Destroy the symbol and you remove the chieftain's potency. For this, finally, is the point of the whole abstruse exercise, the true struggle going on inside the wilderness of mirrors. Labour and the Liberal Democrats do not believe Mr Major could survive a defeat on the Social Chapter.

He could not sign, he could not ignore the will of the Commons, he could not reject Maastricht itself. In the unlikely event that he did sign, they would have achieved a lesser (symbolic) objective. But they are in the hunt for a kill. Who knows what would happen then? But, they feel, a kill would be good, anyway.

Some leading Tory rebels, too, now find Mr Major dispensible. They don't think that New Clause 75 will of itself kill the treaty but they reckon that if the Prime Minister was destroyed by it the ensuing mayhem might produce a referendum.

And Mr Major? Well, he, too, knows that, however silly and bizarre-sounding the intricacies of New Clause 75 seem, its consequences could be deadly. His friends have long spoken of a well-organised plot to get rid of him. 'Plot' is a hard word to justify, but something is certainly going on. There have been, for instance, leaks hand-crafted to demoralise his close advisers.

Recently, Mr Major has had a series of private weekly meetings with Lady Thatcher's old adviser Sir Gordon Reece and others with the Thatcherite PR man Sir Tim Bell. A sign of nervousness or a deliberate ploy to entice other enemies in from the cold? Either way, his post-Thatcherite circle must be hoping Number 10 possesses a rather long spoon.

If this is all in vain and he does fall, then everyone will be gifted with 20-20 hindsight, immaculately wise after the event. Just wait for the articles explaining how it had been 'inevitable for many months'.

I don't believe it. This is a genuine fight, involving many sides and many layers of deception, a slippery thing to follow and a hard one even to understand. Mr Major seems desperately weak, but he has escaped, with some agility, from plenty of tight scrapes before. He has run through, I would guess, six or seven of his nine lives but I think he may make it yet. The political assassination machine may crunch harmlessly into a procedural dead-end. Trying to follow its track can daze the finest minds. But it's worth doing: the game is for real.