By Mathew Parris (THE TIMES, 06/05/06):
ARRANGE these three in order of national preference:
(a)A governing party tarnished by a ludicrous sex scandal involving the Deputy Prime Minister; battered by the fallout from a massive blunder at the Home Office; smarting after the Health Secretary is booed by nurses; wearied after an unpopular war; and presided over by a shopsoiled Prime Minister loitering at the exit but refusing to go.
(b)A third party recently taken over by a sexagenarian stop-gap leader after a messy battle to remove a man with a drink problem, and unclear to the point of vapidity on its direction.
(c)A principal Opposition under new management after a long period of unpopularity, increasingly polished in its presentation but still fuzzy about its policies.
As votes were counted in the small hours of yesterday morning it became clear that the obvious had turned out to be true. The order of national preference was (c), (b), (a), but with no overwhelming mandate for any of them.
The fortnight past has proved a perfect storm. All the actors in the play have acted in their natures and all the consequences have been beautifully illustrated in a gripping story with some of the qualities of a parable.
A bully rejoicing in the title of Deputy Prime Minister has sunk in a sea of giggles about office parties and cocktail sausages. A government department, buckling under the weight of eye-catching initiatives on security and terrorism, has come a monumental cropper. A menagerie of targets have begun fighting among themselves, as deportation procedures fall victim to asylum-seeker reductions. Ministers who have lived by Daily Mail headlines have died by Daily Mail headlines.
And in one farcical and sustained volley the Prime Minister has promised to “hassle, harry and hound” foreign criminals out of the country hardly hours before his Home Secretary admitted that the opposite had happened; produced a jewel of illogic exquisite even by his standards as he argued that the reason the Home Secretary should not resign was that he had such a big mess to sort out; then sacked him anyway in a bizarre Cabinet reshuffle designed to distract attention from a local election debacle, which it did not.
That John Prescott, after appearing in newspaper photographs with a lady’s legs wrapped around his massive neck, should be rewarded with the confiscation of everything but the dignified part of his office, is a joy. That Margaret Beckett, after failing comprehensively as an agriculture minister to deliver EU payments to farmers, should be put in charge of the whole of British foreign policy is divine. That Jack Straw, one of the diminishing band of senior ministers who doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong recently, should be the biggest loser, is priceless.
That the Secretary of State for Defence should become the Home Secretary because the former Foreign Secretary has been Home Secretary already and can’t really be Home Secretary again, while he (the Defence Secretary) has already been Health Secretary and can’t be Health Secretary again, and the Leader of the House (who can’t be Defence Secretary because he already has been, but needs to vacate his post so the former Foreign Secretary can have it) has a new “ Europe” portfolio invented for him — and everyone immediately begins arguing about whether he is a Secretary of State for Europe or not — suggests a Cabinet-maker running out of timber. This isn’t a Cabinet, it’s a food fight.
And I worry. I worry because Cameron Conservatism remains somewhat unformed. In yesterday’s election results there are lessons for the new Conservatism that David Cameron is trying to forge. They are different from those that the Tory reformers would (I suspect) like to draw.
So, before setting out these contrarian thoughts, maybe I should say that Mr Cameron was and would still be my enthusiastic choice as leader; that I think he has made a brilliant start; that I have not the least objection to stunts, soft-focus speeches and PR-wise polish as long as they are in an honest cause; and that, notwithstanding this necessary media professionalism, I do not buy the Blair/Alastair Campbell line that Mr Cameron is all style and no substance.
I buy the Gordon Brown line: that Mr Cameron is a real, good old-fashioned Tory underneath. I fervently hope so. Mr Brown should actively fear the possibility, not advertise it. Because what’s needed for the next stage of the Cameron rocket is a blast of good old-fashioned Conservatism. It will do him and his party’s fortunes no end of good.
Let me stand on its head the conventional wisdom that Mr Cameron’s brand of “modern” Conservatism represents a “reaching out” beyond his “core” supporters, to the rest of Britain; and let me stand on its head the corollary, too: that to bang the drum on things like taxes, big government and immigration would represent a “core-vote strategy”: a retreat into holding on to the voters he already has, rather than finding new ones. These views suggest that soft-focus “caring” Conservatism is taking a risk with existing supporters in order to win new ones.
But I doubt that a careful look at the local election results will show that many new voters have yet been won. Results in most cities and in the North of England have been disappointing. Mr Cameron’s great success looks to have consisted not in winning new support in parts of Britain where his party did not have it but in bringing out existing Tory voters wherever they abound, especially in the South.
Existing Tory supporters are hugely relaxed about all this caring, compassionate stuff. Few of us mind Mr Cameron going round hugging huskies and talking about better services. Existing Conservative supporters have for years been struck with the danger that the party might miss the opportunity to regain power.
It’s nonsense, too, to say that grass-roots Tory members are deeply anxious about Tory modernisers. I talk to scores of them. “Good luck to him,” most say. “He must say and do whatever it takes to get back into contention.” Mr Cameron may have hoped for a “Clause 4 moment” in which he wrestled his own diehards to the ground, but his diehards will deny him such a fight. In its present mood he could probably sell his party the idea of an all-asylum-seeker shortlist for parliamentary candidates.
It is the floating voters he could not sell cuddly, soft-focus Toryism to, not the loyalists. It’s the North of England, it’s working rural England, it’s the industrial cities, it’s the white-van voters and the lower middle-class, it’s the millions who have drifted away that “compassionate” Conservatism must take care not to forget. Though “floating” may suggest a middle position, most floating voters are not distinguished by their moderation.
The party has lost millions of them. They are unlikely to vote Conservative because they want to pay higher taxes. Most of them are not racists (though some are) but they are abidingly anxious about a sense of loss of control of our borders. They feel a half-formed fear that there is a near-infinity of potential immigrants waiting to get here. They live closer to social problems than do those in Notting Hill. They do not believe the State does things efficiently and they doubt it ever could.
They do not want a “moderated” Tory message: they want a sharper one.
To reach out to many of those who have drifted away from the Conservative Party, Cameron Conservatism will in time need a harder, not a softer edge. If the new Tory leader wants a motto for the next phase of his fight for Downing Street, it should be not “Look nice” but “Look North”.