The crowds flocking to see the terracotta warriors at the British Museum’s
blockbuster exhibition pay tribute to the power of the first emperor of
China. A tyrant who put his country on the road to greatness, Ying Zheng has
always divided opinion in his homeland. Mao Tse-tung, the communist
dictator, who sent the last emperor to a camp for “re-education”, adopted
the first as his exemplar because Ying was a real leader, a ruthless man of
conviction.
In like manner Gordon Brown had round to No 10 Lady Thatcher, the Tory dragon
empress, last week to spend the afternoon with our austere first couple.
Brown used to loathe everything she stood for and it is not for the fragile
old lady’s conversation that he courts her. The symbolism was the important
thing: one leader of conviction salutes another. Lightweight David Cameron
was out of step with his party’s greatest living figure. Tory modernisers’
cheeks were coloured as shocking pink with embarrassment as Thatcher’s suit.
Brown is also keen to show that he makes the political weather. His mantra of
“change” implies that he is not leading some fagend Blairite government but
is truly making a break with the past. And who better exemplifies a restless
crusade to transform the country than the Iron Lady?
By paying court to Thatcher the prime minister is seen to be making good on
his promise to consult widely: “a listening prime minister” in the cant
phrase. The day before, Lord Owen, the former Social Democratic party leader
and a fractious partner of the Liberals, was also in No 10. Owen approves of
the return to cabinet government under Brown and thinks he could become “a
better man as prime minister”. But he urged Brown to keep Labour’s European
referendum promise and didn’t discuss jobs. Still, a neat coup on the eve of
the Lib-Democrat conference.
What with wooing of Lib Dems and disaffected Tory MPs Mr Big Tent Brown is
doing a good job of destabilising both opposition parties.
Brown’s tea date has highlighted a growing problem for Cameron. How do you
solve a problem like Maggie if you are Conservative leader? Even in her
twilight she is too powerful a presence to ignore. If you spite her you
inflame the Tory faithful and invite the charge of base ingratitude to
Britain’s 1980s saviour. Yet follow too slavishly and you are accused of
lurching to the right and alienating the Maggie-hating classes. Cameron
surely knows that her contempt for John Major, her successor, helped to
break him. All later Tory leaders have quailed before her.
Cameron has placed as much distance between her and his modernising project as
possible, reflecting his belief that Britain must face the ills of a broken
society. A speech on Conservative philosophy by Oliver Letwin, the policy
chief, earlier this year created the unfortunate impression that the Tory
focus on economic achievements could now be discarded in favour of a
wholesale concentration on social issues - just in time for the mortgage
crisis. Bad luck, guys.
Since the death of Ronald Reagan, Thatcher has also become the greatest symbol
of conservative hope to the American Republican party. Under the auspices of
the Atlantic Bridge, the think tank of Liam Fox, the shadow defence
secretary, Rudolph Giuliani, the Republican frontrunner and mayor of New
York during 9/11, is making a pilgrimage to London on Wednesday just to get
his picture taken with her. Senator Fred Thompson, another hopeful, has been
here too.
In courting the lady, Brown is following in Tony Blair’s footsteps. As a
cheerleader for the Anglo-American alliance, Blair invited the comparisons
between her advocacy of western military intervention abroad to right wrongs
and his own determination to get his friend President Clinton to stand up to
Serbia. His later partnership with President Bush had echoes, too, of
Thatcher’s demand for the first Gulf war against Saddam Hussein.
Although it works for Labour, if Cameron were to abandon his vote-win-ning
journey to the centre by belatedly adopting the Thatcher mantle, he would
invite derision. For decades the Conservative party has been seen in poll
after focus group as the nasty party, with no vision for the public
services. This is Thatcher’s legacy. William Hague was damaged by
association with her. Above all, Cameron cannot be seen to be
opportunistically shifting from left to right and back again according to
the prevailing wind. Brown’s charge that he is a lightweight “prisoner of
factions” is potentially deadly. His greatest weakness is that people are
not clear what he stands for. It is an unconventional mix and he has not yet
defined which bits will be dominant.
That a party leader should have uncomfortable relations with a predecessor is
hardly unknown. Churchill was always worried whether Anthony Eden, his Tory
successor, was up to the job. Alastair Campbell’s diaries reveal how furious
Neil Kinnock became when Tony Blair began to modernise his party: “At one
point he picked up a kettle filled of newly boiled water which I feared was
heading my way.” One of Kinnock’s main complaints was Blair’s praise of
Thatcher’s radicalism. “Radical my arse. That woman f****** killed people,”
he raged.
Blair solved his ex-leader problem by employing charm and cunning. Cleverly he
flattered Kinnock for being the original moderniser: everything that worried
Kinnock about new Labour was inspired by him.
Cameron, perhaps, cannot be so publicly effusive but he can at least try to
detach more reasonable Thatcherites from those who would rather take him out
in a suicide mission than see him win for the Tories.
What the Thatcherites in his party most want is for Cameron to stop dissing
her. One loyalist I met recently bubbled over with fury at Cameron’s
condemnation of her seemingly heartless statement “there is no such thing as
society”, since her following phrase reflected on the roles of individual
men and women and their families. Another Thatcherite sniffs that the Iron
Lady has invited Cameron to tea twice and has been refused both times.
There are complaints at Conservative Central Office that diplomacy is not the
new regime’s forte. If Cameron can’t afford to hymn the Iron Lady’s praises
in public, then he might at least let it be known quietly that he has seen
her and learnt something. Then the message of the Cameroons should ring out:
“Maggie was the solution to the British economic crisis of the 1980s. We are
the solution to today’s new problems.” But that would mean stopping
pretending that she doesn’t exist.
Even so, any reminder of Thatcher poses hard questions for Cameron. What sort
of party are you? What sort of leader are you? What do I stand to gain from
a Tory victory? Brown is all too willing to offer to answer them all
negatively. Cameron can show his leadership qualities by refusing to flap
over policy. He needs to work a lot harder on party management, a balance of
tender loving care and firmness. There are a lot of ruffled egos.
As for the third question, in the 1980s the aspirational working class,
homeowners and City slickers knew what they stood to win from Thatcher’s
victory. Cameron won’t find votes in taxes on air travel and journeys by car
to supermarkets. Yet the differences can be exaggerated. Scratch most of the
Tory modernisers - George Osborne, Michael Gove - and you will find a
Thatcherite underneath. As one of the sons of Thatcherism myself, I used to
mull over the future of the party late into the night with a young Cameron
and I can assure you, he’s no red.
Cameron should refine and amplify the Thatcher of the mind. After all, it was
her scientific background that led to her becoming the first major
politician to accept climate change. Perhaps Cameron in his next speech
should praise her green credentials. And then at party conference he could
cheekily outflank her on the right in one regard.
After all, wasn’t it Nigel Lawson, Thatcher’s chancellor, who helped to
undermine the tax advantages of marriage? We’ve tried that one, he should
say, and it was a mistake. We’re now going to fix the broken society. The
lady, who always believed that family was all, could hardly disapprove.
