For Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, to be dubbed mediocre as he was last week was something of a triumph. Since his election as party leader three months ago his performances in the Commons have been more usually described as dreadful.
Some people are puzzled about why Ming evidently finds performing in the chamber terrifying, so unlike Tony Blair and David Cameron, who appear relaxed despite bearing a heavier weight of responsibility.
It is not a mystery. However difficult life is for Blair he goes to the Commons with the credibility that attaches to his office and a formidable reputation built up over 12 years as Labour’s leader. Cameron’s photo opportunities outside the house have boosted his self-confidence, a commodity that is in any case not lacking in Old Etonians. Entering the fray at the beginning of prime minister’s questions, Cameron can choose the theme of the day. Allowed to ask up to six questions, he can choose to keep the pressure on Blair, or to switch mood and topic by opening a second front.
You will never see an iconic image of Campbell on a front page, because he lacks charisma. When Cameron poses with a team of huskies in the Arctic Circle he resembles a Hollywood star. If Campbell tried it he would merely look ridiculous. So his appearances in parliament are almost Campbell’s only opportunity to make an impression. Intervening each week after Cameron, he has to choose whether to rake over the ground already covered by the leader of the opposition or to pick a topic of secondary importance. He is permitted to ask only two questions, which makes it easy for Blair to bat him away. With so many poor Commons performances Campbell must feel the tension horribly. He probably lives all week long dreading the coming Wednesday.
Last week Campbell tried to move the focus away from his unhappy experiences in the chamber by announcing a shift in party policy. Whereas the party used to advocate increasing the top rate of income tax it now promises to cut the basic rate by 2p. Lost revenue will supposedly be made up by taxes on energy and the capital assets of the rich.
In itself the change is nicely calculated. It is wholly incredible, of course, but no more so than other Liberal Democrat promises, or indeed the policies of the other parties. If voters were ever repelled by the old pledge to raise income tax they can now return to the Liberal Democrat fold. The new approach positions the party on green issues just where its natural supporters wish it to be.
But if Campbell believes he can make up for his deficiencies in the house with eye-catching policy announcements he will be disappointed. Charisma is the currency of politics today. A leader who lacks it cannot be redeemed by a clever manifesto.
Voters have little concern for any party’s policies for the good reason that they do not believe what they are promised. The public does not think of the Liberal Democrats as a party of government so its proposals are of still less interest. The party is unlikely even to be in a position to renege on its implausible commitments.
Campbell’s policy U-turn illustrates that each of our three leading political parties is focused on escaping its past. Blair also provided a good example when he told public sector workers they must provide better services, because otherwise voters would withdraw their consent for the huge increases in spending. The tough talk was a ruse. Blair hopes to disguise his government’s incompetence in stuffing the pockets of doctors and other public sector groups without securing any meaningful improvement in productivity. Since the era of huge rises in public spending is over, the government has exhausted what leverage it had. It is now left with spin alone.
Cameron made a speech telling the same workers how much the Conservative party values them. That was sensible since the Tories are widely thought to hate doctors, nurses, teachers, firefighters, postmen, railway workers and policemen. Not to mention gays, single mothers and asylum seekers. Making so many enemies is not good politics. If you repel a million voters here and another million there, before you know it, it adds up to big numbers.
By and large, Cameron’s policy of daily saying the opposite of what you expect a Conservative to say is working well and the opinion polls reflect his success. There remains a single exception: Europe. On that one issue Cameron turns from Jekyll to Hyde, foaming like a Tory reactionary of the old school.
In part that is explained by the paradox that many leading Tory modernisers converted from the party’s right wing. Francis Maude and Michael Gove are examples. As all the party’s intellectual paraphernalia has been heaved overboard, Euroscepticism is the one survivor. The modernisers’ distrust of the European Union’s centralising tendency remains a core emotion, even if it is not always accompanied, as it is in Gove’s case, by admiration for the American neoconservatives.
Euroscepticism also provides the one link between the party leader and that large body of right-wing opinion that did not convert to modernisation. During the Tory leadership contest Cameron promised to withdraw the Tories from the European People’s party (EPP), a grouping in the European parliament that includes French and Germans who are committed federalists. The pledge bought him the votes of Iain Duncan Smith and other unlikely supporters.
That commitment is costing Cameron dear. If he fulfils it, some Conservative MEPs will defy him by remaining in the EPP where they enjoy a measure of prestige (perhaps too strong a word to use in the context of the European parliament). If Cameron reneges, he will lose a high-profile MEP, Daniel Hannan. He cannot now avoid a party split. By blundering into this terrain he will resurrect the party’s reputation for being divided and self-obsessed.
Meanwhile, the woman fast emerging as the key figure in European politics, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, refuses to see Cameron. While she receives Blair and Gordon Brown, supposedly across the political divide, she keeps at bay the Tory leader who is in theory her political soul mate.
Cameron’s great achievement is that he seems normal. But he may start to look odd if across Europe right-of-centre leaders are reluctant to be photographed with him. They are, alas, less compliant than huskies. Things can only get worse as William Hague, sent out to deliver on Cameron’s foolish pledge, courts a Polish party accused of homophobia, an Irish republican and a Lithuanian MEP who is thought to be an extremist. The quest calls to mind Cameron’s description of the UK Independence party as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”.
I hope Cameron recalls Machiavelli’s advice to his prince. “A prudent leader will not and should not observe his promises, when such observance will work against him and when the reasons for making the promise are no longer valid.”
Arch Eurosceptic Freddie Forsyth is bubbling with indignation because he thinks Cameron is about to break his word. I long for him to be right, but last week Hague was still promising to deliver a new European party grouping. He is a Eurosceptic without the mitigation of also being a moderniser.
In his speech last week Hague struggled to avoid the narrow nationalist rhetoric that characterised his leadership of the party. But when chairing the television programme Have I Got News for You, Hague recovered his Basil Fawlty tone, remarking: “If anyone has got a history of making themselves feel at home in other people’s countries, it’s the Germans.” Thus spake the shadow foreign secretary as England fans headed for the World Cup.
With Hague so committed to constructing a fruitcake alliance, an interesting possibility suggests itself. Perhaps Cameron is being cleverer than it appears. So far from being reactionary over Europe, maybe he is building up to his most dramatic demonstration yet that the Tories have broken with their recent history. He could now go back on his promise, which would shatter Hague’s credibility and force him to resign, providing a double disavowal of the party’s past. Now that would be truly Machiavellian.
