Defeatism breeds defeat. The Labour party resembles Napoleon’s bedraggled army
on its return from Moscow. Ministers and backbenchers have concluded that
the game is up and if they go on thinking that way it probably will be.
That is how we Tories were in 1997, dragging our feet despondently towards the
day of reckoning when the electorate would end the political careers of half
our ranks. We were numb to catastrophe. When it seemed that things could get
no worse, they did. Sleaze and political disasters marched hand in hand, as
they do now for Labour. Peers on the make, the home secretary’s second-home
allowance and bankers’ bonuses vie for the headlines with the latest figures
for unemployment, economic contraction and bank losses.
One difference is that after 1995, when John Major won re-election as party
leader, the succession struggle was put on hold. Today Harriet Harman and Ed
Balls are running barely disguised campaigns. They should save themselves
the trouble. Gordon Brown will not be toppled. If Labour survives the
election there will be no vacancy, and if it loses, to be leader of the
opposition will be hell. They should not expect an early return swing of the
pendulum. Labour’s leader after defeat is unlikely to make it to 10 Downing
Street.
The Conservatives’ luck has changed. Between October and Christmas nobody
would listen as they blamed Brown for our economic woes. Self-evidently we
were in the clutch of a global recession. Voters believed him when he said
Britain was best placed to weather the downturn and he was leading the world
out of the slump.
Now that electorate finds him guilty of negligence. The need for a second
banking package and the likelihood of a third has destroyed its trust. He is
too closely linked to Lloyds TSB’s disastrous takeover of HBOS. Sir James
Crosby was his friend when as chief executive of HBOS he was appointed to
the board of the Financial Services Authority, even though it had already
raised concerns about how he ran his business. The International Monetary
Fund’s prediction that Britain will fare worse than other economies
contradicts Brown’s insular optimism. President Sarkozy’s attack on UK
policy shows that he, at least, is not following Brown’s colours.
Before Christmas the prime minister was playing to his strengths. A decade in
the Treasury had equipped him to grasp the detail of the economic crisis.
The rapid deterioration called for daily initiatives, which are his stock in
trade. His furious pace of activity enabled him to describe the
Conservatives as the “do nothing” party.
Today his activism appears ineffective and the charge against the Tories
sounds lame. Brown’s worst characteristics are to the fore, especially his
belief that he is never wrong. His refusal to acknowledge any responsibility
further links him in the public mind to the bankers with their hollow
apologies. A leader in denial cannot convincingly feel the public’s pain or
offer remedies.
The surge in the Conservatives’ poll lead owes much to the government’s
collapse and little to their own devices. The nitty-gritty of polling data
suggests their advantage is fragile and confidence in the party is lacking.
Public opinion has been volatile and Brown’s autumn recovery was
disconcerting.
The Conservative leadership does not forget that it has fewer seats in the
Commons than Michael Foot had after the 1983 election. It took Labour
another three elections to overturn the Tory landslide. To leap from fewer
than 200 seats to an overall majority would earn David Cameron a place in
the record books, especially as his party needs a higher percentage of the
poll to win than Labour does.
The spectre of Neil Kinnock should haunt the Conservatives. In 1992, after 13
years in office, defeatism gripped Major’s government. A Labour victory over
an unpopular government seemed certain. But though the Tories had done
enough to lose, Labour had done too little to win. Kinnock was not trusted.
A year from now Labour, too, will have been in office for 13 years. Brown,
like Major, will presumably go to the limit of his term. Like Major he may
be the only one who believes he can win and, like Major, he could just be
right.
Cameron must do two things: destroy Labour and offer a credible alternative.
In 1997 Tony Blair reduced the Conservatives to hate figures by dwelling on
sleaze. On the receiving end of that onslaught, I felt that if it were a
boxing match the referee would have stopped the fight. Blair landed punches
long after we were lifeless on the canvas. There is sleaze around today but
Cameron knows how easily an attack could backfire. Few Tory MPs could cast
the first stone at the home secretary. Cameron cannot operate as Blair did.
On the economy Cameron’s options are limited, too. He has brought back Kenneth
Clarke to add weight to the team, demonstrating that he knows the election
is not in the bag. But not even Clarke can articulate an alternative policy
because nobody has the solution. Events move quickly and policy initiatives
are soon outdated. A few weeks ago the Conservatives promised tax cuts for
savers and lower borrowing and spending than Labour. But the numbers have
been dwarfed by the spiralling national debt and the huge second banking
package. Unlike the last two elections, the next one will not be fought over
a difference of a few billion pounds between the parties’ plans. Actually,
that is a lucky escape for the Tories.
The party stands on awkward ideological ground. Financial regulation has
failed and the bonus culture is discredited. That is not good for the party
of deregulation and market forces. Much of the world now favours higher
public spending and lower interest rates. Yet the Tories believe in a
smaller state and rewarding thrift.
In this economic calamity you might not want to be Brown, but being Cameron is
not much better. As the crisis deepens, Brown sinks under the weight of
blame. His economic policy is a target-rich environment for Cameron. But
when it comes to setting out another way the Conservatives can only mumble.
There is no convincing economic strategy and there cannot be one. With
experts in turmoil, voters understand that nobody has the answer. So Cameron
must instead offer vision. The country wants to know that at the end of all
this things will be different.
Life has been palpably unfair. Bankers were supposedly rewarded for risk, but
it was our money, not theirs. Whether they succeeded or failed they were
rewarded massively. Once they had destroyed their banks, taxpayers rescued
them. We can now see that bankers never operated in the private sector at
all because we underwrote their casinos.
The party of private enterprise must describe how it will separate the
gamblers from those who house our money and how it will replace the blind,
box-ticking bureaucrats, who cannot see a broke bank or a fraudster at the
end of their noses, with people who understand markets and have the gumption
to pull the plug on greed. The Conservatives must offer a society that is
more virtuous (despite the pitfalls in that adjective). The banks that
receive our money must be curbed. Those who save and provide for themselves
must be encouraged. The welfare budget must be cut back, because it rewards
the feckless and creates and enslaves the underclass.
Alas, already more than two years into his job Cameron cannot now look as
fresh as Barack Obama did. Nor can an Etonian be seen as a saviour in
Britain as an African-American was in the United States. On Cameron’s
inauguration day, do not expect 2m cheering citizens to crowd the parks of
the capital. But the British people feel disgust as surely as the Americans
did and their yearning for change is reaching a similar pitch. A new start
is what Cameron must offer.
- Martin Ivens returns next week
