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Tories in 2005
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Transcript of Tories in 2005
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There are five roads the Tories must avoid: Fortress Britain, Libertarian Paradise,
Thatcherism Revisited, Local Everything and Scepticism Rediscovered. Success lies
in a partial emulation of New Labour
Tim Hames
Tim Hames is an assistant editor, columnist and chief leader writer at the "Times"
Almost four years ago I wrote on these pages about the future of the Tory party as it
seemed set for a second crushing defeat at the 2001 election. The article asserted that the
emerging alliance between the libertarian right and the "one nation" left was the most
interesting development in Tory politics since 1997, and that Michael Portillo, then
shadow chancellor, personified the emergence of a "new centre." The piece concluded by
asking: "To whom else but Portillo can the Tories turn?"
Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard turned out to be the unexpected answers. Yet as
the 2005 campaign approaches, the party appears to be no nearer, and possibly even
further, from returning to office than then. After my lamentable efforts at prophecy last
time, it is charitable of the editor to allow me a second stab at the subject.
My argument here will be made from a different perspective. Four years
ago, I was still rather proud that Polly Toynbee had once described me in print as a
"Conservative theorist." I might consult my lawyers if she did the same today. I could not
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stomach, and would not vote for, the political formula that William Hague offered in
2001. I find the 2005 version no more palatable. There will be those in Tory circles,
therefore, who see no virtue in a thesis made from this quarter. I would reply that as a lot
of people once backed the Tories but no longer do, and as there is no route back to No 10
unless such voters can be induced to return, my case might have merit. If nothing else,
my thoughts are offered for old times' sake.
To start negatively, the Tory party needs to appreciate what roads should not be taken.
There are five blueprints in circulation that are best avoided, and I will deal with them
briefly. They are: Fortress Britain, Libertarian Paradise, Thatcherism Revisited, Local
Everything and Scepticism Rediscovered.
Fortress Britain would see the Tories adopt an even more vigorously nationalist stance on
such issues as Europe, asylum and immigration, combined with an unreconstructed
conservatism on social and cultural matters. In theory, there is a market for such ideas,
but it relies on the improbable project of detaching a vast swathe of working-class
support from Labour without matching the economic inducements for sticking with the
left that Labour continues to offer. In reality, the result would be a yet larger defection of
middle-class voters from the Toriesthis is implicit in various British Social Attitudes
surveys undertaken in the past few years.
There are some Tories who favour a more sophisticated twist on this approach. They
contend that "after Blair," the Labour party will shift towards the Guardian on matters of
international terrorism and national security, allowing the Tories to paint a "dark skies"
scenario on these questions and mobilise their historic credentials on such mattersmuch
as the Republicans seemed to have done in the US. This, too, seems to me to be a very
far-fetched notion.
The Libertarian Paradise is a blueprint that I myself once endorsed. Aspects of it could
and should certainly be salvaged. The full package, nonetheless, is deeply inadvisable. It
would require the Tories to press for a drastic reduction in the size of the state in
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economic terms and advocate a much more laissez-faire approach to how individuals
conduct their lifestyles. This has a satisfying philosophical purity to it. But the sad truth is
that the constituency for undiluted freedom in a modern democracy is not all that it might
be. I admire many continental liberal parties, such as the Free Democrats in Germany. It
should also be noted how few votes they secure.
An alternative would be simply to return to the formula of the 1980s. Thatcherism
Revisited contends that the tunes written back then still work, but that the Tories have not
found anyone capable of emulating Margaret Thatcher in belting out the words loudly
and confidently enough to appeal to a mass audience. So much is so wrong with this
notion that one barely knows where to start. Thatcherism addressed a Britain in which
economic crisis was endemic (and in which the Tories were still the economic
competence party); a country which belonged to a European Community that was little
more than a trading association, and which functioned in a world whose structure was
defined by the cold war. Attempting to recreate the politics of this period is mad. Yet it is
a depressing reflection on current Tory discussions that this is the option with which most
party members identify. It is time to move on.
A more voguish concept is Local Everything. Long passionately promoted by Simon
Jenkins, among others, this lobby would disband the state as a large-scale army and
return to a world of Edmund Burke's "little platoons." Schools, hospitals and crime
prevention would all be drastically decentralised. I was also enticed by this fashion at one
stage in the late 1990s. I now wonder where all the valiant heroes who would transform
social services if only they were offered the chance would come from. I fear that it would
prove less "little platoons" than Dad's Army. It is possible that the electorate might be
persuaded to back the plan once, but 20 minutes later it would be clamouring to reverse
it. The public is completely at sea on this matter. Opinion polls demonstrate that localism
is popular in principle, but not when it delivers highly diverse outcomes, usually
described as a "postcode lottery." But what would be the point of localism if it did not
result in different, innately "unequal," or at a minimum "non-equal," results? Besides, if
there is any freehold to this dubious minefield, the Liberal Dem-ocrats already own it.
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Finally, there is Scepticism Revisited. A good book by Keiron O'Hara, After Blair:
Conservatism beyond Thatcher, has recently attracted attention by insisting that the
Tories should return to their pre-Thatcherite roots and articulate a deep scepticism of
intellectualism and social engineering. The party should become the bastion of
gradualism and the guardian of that most noble placethe "community." I do not think
that this is a practical proposition. The pace of the modern world does, I concede, create a
possible "coalition of the wailing," but it would be destined for disappointment. It would
descend into sticking-plaster protectionism, the British version of Chiracism. This is not
meant as a compliment.
Conservatives should instead draw from a different lesson of their history. In the past,
Tory recoveries have largely occurred when the party has been willing to look seriously
at what its victorious opponents have been doing and why it is working. The source of
salvation is thus clear. It has to come from a partial emulation of New Labour.
To state this is instantly to invite derision. My colleague on the Times, Matthew Parris,
for example, recently took the Tory party to task for what he viewed as the dire instincts
of the current leadership. These people, he fumed, "want to be like New Labour, they
want to talk like New Labour and they want to win like New Labour. They want to party
with New Labour and sleep with New Labour." His last point has the charm of making
the Blunkett/Spectator business appear more rational, but Matthew is hostile to the
enterprise. "The highest levels of the Conservative party," he almost spat at the poor
readers, "are becoming a failed subculture of Blairism."
For me, the key word in that sentence is "failed." I fundamentally disagree with Matthew
in that I do think the Tories should crave to be like New Labour. The trouble is that they
are not very good at this endeavour because they do not understand New Labour. They
have swallowed their own propagandaand that of the old leftand have concluded that
the essence of New Labour is the application of modern presentational methods to
politics. They really think that Tony Blair is the second wizard of Oz. That is why they
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are a "failed" subculture of Blairism.
The Tory party needs to appreciate that New Labour works because behind the alteration
in style there is an enormous change in substance. They also need to grasp how
fundamental were the forces that created the conditions for New Labour: the end of the
cold war, the radical shift in the social attitudes of the affluent (often with mass higher
education as the catalyst), and the most underestimated factor, the death of inflation as a
political issue and with it the old "zero sum" class politics.
What, then, is the essence of the New Labour idea that confronts the Conservatives? It
has three parts. The first is that there is no necessary contradiction between economic
efficiency (steady and benign growth) and social reform ("social justice" in Labour-
speak). The second is that the record of the Labour government between 1997 and 2005
provides practical weight to this claim. The third is that by combining market methods
with some state activism, this progress can be sustained and extended on a measured, if
not revolutionary, basis indefinitely.
Put like that, it is surely obvious that the Tories have to play on the same pitch as New
Labour. What part of "economic efficiency with social reform" is any political party in
Britain going to mobilise 40 per cent plus of the voters to oppose? How will the Tories
demonstrate that these are inherently incompatible objectives when the evidence in front
of the eyes of the electorate is that they are not? Are there any policy matters that Tories
think they could exploit which would outflank personal prosperity and collective progress
in the minds of most ordinary citizens? A Conservative alternative has to explicitly
accept the ends of the New Labour programme and base its objections on the means
alone.
For that to become a political reality, the Tories have to make three changes. But they are
not easy ones for most parliamentarians to heed, never mind the Conservative party
activists.
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First, they must recognise that the condition of the public services is the established
battleground of British politics. There is no point in aspiring to move the policy fight to
different territory. Furthermore, this is a contest over the quality of public services as
public services, not a competition as to who can conceive of novel schemes to privatise
them, or allow the relatively rich to escape from them.
There are some within Tory circles who would insist that this might have been true for
1997 and 2001 but is now less convincing. They would highlight the fact that when
voters are asked in polls which issues they consider to be the most important, the
proportions identifying education and health have been falling over the past two or three
years. Public services might be becoming pass.
This is to misread these statistics. The numbers telling pollsters that the most important
issues facing the country are inflation, unemployment or interest rates are very low
indeed. Does that mean that the economy and perceptions of competence in economic
management will be inconsequential in the 2005 election? Of course not. In terms of
what matters to voters, these are crucial questions, on which the Labour party is now seen
as much more plausible than its chief rivals. If the public services are being mentioned
less in opinion surveys, it is probably because there is a grudging recognition that the
huge sums of money spent since 2000 have had an impact. If the Tories are not deemed
capable of at least maintaining and, better, building on the advance that has been made,
then they will not be viable contenders for office.
Second, the Conservative party needs to come out from behind the wrong side of the
barricades on social and cultural controversies. An association with sexism, racism and
homophobia does not do much to entice the professional class electorate back to the
Tories. They do not pass the dinner party test. Unconditional surrender in all these realms
is the only logical outcome. This is more true for the economic status of women than any
other dimensionafter all; there are many more working women in Britain than either
male members of ethnic minorities or homosexuals. The lamentable failure of the party to
select remotely adequate numbers of female parliamentary candidates highlights an
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institutional indifference to the whole realm of equality of opportunity. It is symbolism
that has become substance.
Finally, the Tories need to embrace a new discourse. There is only one antidote to the
corrosive levels of cynicism currently felt about politics and politicians, and that is
unrelenting candour. The distortion and hyperbole that are the nitrogen and oxygen of the
Westminster atmosphere have become pure poison outside of it. The biggest change that
the Tories could make to their public image would be to become the market leader in a
different sort of language. This course has been preached by only one Tory MP since
1997: Nick Gibb. The response of many of his colleagues has been to treat him as if he
were training for the priesthood, not a parliamentarian. They are wrong.
Nor is this terra incognita. There are models from the US to duplicate. A recast
Conservative party could be the combination of Rudy Giuliani on public services, Arnold
Schwarzenegger on social values and John McCain on straight talking.
Armed with such a critique, the Conservatives could enter New Labour's "big tent" and
be in a position to argue that the sleeping bags and some of the furniture should be
rearranged in a more effective manner. They could make a lucid case that the tax and
regulatory regime of Gordon Brown has begun to approach the level where it might
inflict serious damage on his economic stewardship. They could plausibly pursue an anti-
poverty crusade of their own based on the contention that, for instance, boosting the
incomes of the poor directly via tax cuts is preferable to a bewilderingly complicated
network of tax credits. The Tories could agree that the state is part of the solution, not the
problem, in the public services, that the creation of pseudo-markets has been a vast
detour, and that the real need is to create management structures within the public sector
that enjoy the autonomy, creativity and flexibility of the best of the private sector.
These themes could then be fleshed out further. A different form of Tory party could
indeed advance the cause of personal liberty on matters ranging from fox-hunting to the
right to smoke in public places without looking like the hapless stooge of the Countryside
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Alliance or the tobacco industry. It could, and should, be tough on crime, but,
emboldened by the zeal to tell it how it is, could move away from "our police are
wonderful" to "our police are terrible and the struggle to reduce crime starts with a root-
and-branch overhaul of them." It could respond to the poor job that the government has
done in implementing often overdue constitutional reforms with the logical conclusion
that only a full-blown written constitution can now provide the necessary framework. It
could move on from the frequently Neanderthal reflex of being "Eurosceptic" to being
"Eurodubious," a more astute position to take in an EU of 25 states in which it should be
easier for a fleet-footed British government to build up fruitful alliances.
Why would anyone vote for this package? At a minimum, unlike the Tory manifestos of
2001 and 2005, it would not seem like a threat to large numbers of voters. The Tories
would be offering constructive criticism of the manner in which a Labour government
had sought economic efficiency with social reform and would be offering an alternative
based on more and better of both, not less and worse of each. When the inevitable
boredom or disillusion struck, the country could switch horses without the fear that the
new colt would bolt. Conservatives would be relevant. Yet better than that, there would
be a positive case for them. There is a respectable body of evidence behind all of the
themes listed above. It is possible that New Labour, a malleable beast, might beat the
Tories to them. It is equally possible that most of this space will remain open.
This is the how, what and why. The outstanding issue is who. Selling a new
Conservatism to Britain as a whole might be surprisingly straightforward. Retailing it to
the Tories themselves is far harder. It may mean enduring a couple of years of lower
opinion poll ratings after the ultra-right has stalked off in protest, before the professional
classes, in particular, decide that the party is reliable enough again to invite into the
sitting room.
There has been much chatter in the House of Commons about "skipping a generation."
This is usually code for handing the baton to David Cameron (born 1966) or George
Osborne (born 1971). I think this would be madness and I suspect that the two of them
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have deduced this as well. Both these MPs are undoubtedly intelligent, but are untested
and utterly unknown beyond a small Tory fraternity. They would risk the fate endured by
William Hague, only worse: Hague had at least spent two years as a cabinet minister
before having the leadership thrust prematurely on him. It also has to be asked, unfair as
it is, whether the Tory party can be saved by two men born to privilege and educated at
Eton College and St Paul's School respectively. It is not exactly what the marketing
department would recommend.
I think the Tories would be better off with a leadership team a decade older than these
two, but around ten years younger than the cabal of David Davis, Tim Yeo, Michael
Ancram and Malcolm Rifkind, who may be the first to offer themselves in a leadership
ballot. The combination of characters best suited to recognise the changes that need to be
adopted and convince others of their urgency comes, by an odd coincidence of birthdates,
from the class of 1956. It would consist of Andrew Lansley, now shadow health
secretary, as leader; Damian Green, ex-shadow secretary of state for education, as his
deputy, empowered to oversee the policy review; David Willetts, shadow secretary of
state for work and pensions, in the pivotal slot of shadow chancellor; Theresa May, the
ex-party chairman, looking after home affairs; with Oliver Letwin, today shadow
chancellor, at foreign affairs (if he holds his seat).
Lansley is an adept media performer and knows the small intestines of the Tory party
well, but his single greatest virtue is that he has changed his mind. He was a key figure
behind the 2001 Tory election effort, and, to his credit, realised how badly it had
misfired. The contrast with his co-conspirator in that enterprise, the comically partisan
Tim Collins, the shadow secretary of state for education, could not be starker. (On a
similar basis, it would make sense for Lansley to pick John Bercow, another man who
has switched positions, to head central office.) Green is the de facto head of the one-
nation branch of the parliamentary party, and is a shrewd soul, at home with the media.
Willetts has the mind to move beyond conventional Conservative thinking on economics.
May passes the "human being" requirement on television. She would bring fresh thinking
to home affairs and a liberal instinct. Foreign policy under Michael Howard has become
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farcical, with the Tories apparently hostile to the EU and the Bush White House
simultaneously, and obsessed instead with such matters as Zimbabwe and the status of
Gibraltar. Letwin has the intelligence to build a new approach.
If these fiveadmittedly not especially famouscould seize firm control of the party
and steer it towards the waters I have identified, then the Tory obituary notices could yet
prove to be premature. If not, and if the party membership again decides that it is the rest
of the electorate that needs to change, not them, then there is the underestimated
possibility that the Liberal Democrats might yet sideline the official opposition. In the
next parliament, they too should have five figuresMark Oaten, David Laws, Nick
Clegg, Chris Huhne, and Ed Daveywho could take their party into almost exactly the
same spot as the Tories need to seize.