Toryism: A Political Dialogue
A: What a ten years it has been! Four lost elections, four years of the new finance.
E: And yet the pendulum will not swing
E: I doubt if the Party are giving it any assistance
A: the fact that I find so disconcerting is the extraordinary apathy of modern politics. We pipe to them and they will not dance.
E: And they won't until you call a different tune.
B: Let us be honest with ourselves: the old Toryism is dead. The old Toryism is one of the outworn beliefs that hang on to cumber a newborn earth. What place shall we find for it in an age of unrest, scepticism, speed, experiment? Tell me that, and I will hold fast to it.
That is the opening of 'Toryism: A Political Dialogue.' It was by the Tory historian Keith Feiling back in 1913. Yet nearly a century later it captures the kind of conversations that Conservatives have after heavy defeats. They have been going on for several years now in the privacy of think-tanks and party meetings. After our third heavy defeat the debate has to be out in the open. It was supposed to happen after Michael Howard announced his resignation. But where is it? We desperately need a grown-up discussion about why the Conservative Party keeps losing and how we are to renew ourselves and our purpose.
We must not allow ourselves to be distracted from the debate we ought to have by the debate too many in our Party would like to have. Of course it is much easier just to focus just on the next leadership contest for the leadership. Is so and so "Too old," "too young," "good on TV," "bad on TV", "bad at the Dispatch Box,". We have even managed to find another subject fascinating only to ourselves - our own internal organisation, whether it is "too decentralised"," too centralised", " too amateurish", " too professionalized"]. But all of these inconclusive conversations avoid the crucial issue. If the next Conservative Leader turns out to be the most charismatic politician since Lloyd George, if they preside over an organisation more efficient than Tesco's, we still won't win the next election unless we can answer two fundamental questions: "what does Conservatism stand for in the Britain of the 21st century?" and "why should many more people than today feel the need to have a Conservative Government instead of the alternative.?" If we use the time ahead of us to debate these questions honestly and to answer them clearly and convincingly, we might even find that the decisions about our next Leader and our organisation follow more easily.
After the 1945 landslide defeat one Party official described the mood of the subsequent Party Conference as: 'Much facile revolt and much aimless candour, a cry that the Party should march somewhere, though few could suggest where.' Sometimes it seems much the same today except we all say we should "modernise." We are all modernisers now. I confidently predict that when it comes to the Conservative Party election every candidate will claim they are a moderniser. But what will they mean?
My aim today is to try to cut through this confusion with your own cut out and keep guide to the Tory modernisation debate. The Party needs to look outwards, not inwards. Our Party will only really make progress when it looks outwards and engages more energetically with all those problems out there in the real world. But we can't turn to that without some sort of intellectual framework of what the Party stands for, how we have to change and why. So first we do need to sort out this confused debate about modernisation. It is a tough job, but someone has to do it. Here goes.
We can distinguish three different approaches to modernising the Party. Each has important insights. One of the reasons why the Party has not made more progress in the past eight years is that the case for change, has been fragmented between these three different schools of thought and we have ended up in a stalemate. We have not created a synthesis between these three strands of thought that is coherent, rigorous, and that might command sufficient assent across the Party to be delivered. But I do believe we now have our best opportunity since 1997 of achieving this. That it is now within our grasp: that is why the next six months are so crucial.
Page 2: The First Strand: Rolling back the state ()
The First Strand: Rolling back the state
The conventional wisdom is that the Conservative Party stands for more personal freedom in a smaller state and there is no better measure than the amount the state taxes and spends. We just need to tune the TV to get rid of the fuzziness so that people can see the picture more clearly. There are many outside observers who are desperate for the Party to make this case with the greatest possible vigour. With Gordon Brown quite possibly facing his come-uppance in the next few years it seems the ideal time to attack this territory.
Sometimes this argument is expressed as if it is not just a matter of economic and political strategy but almost biological determinism. Tax cuts and a small state are supposed to be in our DNA. It is true that freedom is an idea that runs deep through our national history and culture. But liberal economics didn't really enter the mainstream of the Party for quite a while. The Marquess of Salisbury cast a typically beady eye over the Conservative Party's attitude to the free market. His assessment in 1892 was that about half the Conservative Party was committed to free trade, notably:
"1.The representatives of commercial constituencies;
2. The political economists of whom we have a sprinkling; and
3. Those, mainly young men, who are sensitive to the reproach of belonging to the stupid party."
