It is common when doing opinion research to ask a focus group, “If a political party were a car, what sort would it be?” At one time the public saw the Tories as a Jaguar, efficient and fashionable, or at least they invested the party with the solidity of a Morris Oxford. Nowadays it’s “the Conservative party is like a car in someone’s scruffy front garden. The wheels are off and it’s sitting on bricks”. It is extraordinary how far a brand can slip in a few years.
The Tory brand has become a negative. In a recent poll 62% of interviewees agreed that Britain should have a firm but fair immigration policy. However, when asked whether they agreed with the Conservative party that Britain should have a firm but fair immigration policy, support for the proposition fell to 30%.
The Conservatives should not need to spend money on opinion research, since in the past three elections they have been hammered. But on each occasion a large part of the parliamentary party has argued that the Tories lost by not being radical enough. If only they had established clear blue water between themselves and Labour, things might have been different.
When David Cameron wins the party leadership this week he will find that debate still raging. Conservative politicians spend too much time talking to people like themselves: members of their constituency party or well-heeled donors. To such people it is common sense that taxes should be cut. They take it for granted that the National Health Service is a shambles which can be improved only by using incentives to encourage patients to opt out. To them it seems self-evident that education will fail our children until the government issues parents with a voucher that they can spend in the school of their choice.
Arguing against such Tories is difficult because those policies have strong merits. The problem is that the negative Tory brand means that advocating such ideas now would arouse public suspicion and lose the party votes. For example, the Conservatives are widely perceived as being hostile or at least indifferent to the NHS. They voted against it when it was set up and most are thought to use private healthcare.
So people do not believe that a scheme that helped some to escape the queues by using a little of their own money would increase medical funding and improve healthcare for all. They think it would help the rich and undermine the service.
During his campaign Cameron has been talking about the brand. Single-handedly he has shifted perceptions. Here is a Tory who speaks about schooling and childcare as though he understands them and cares about them. The huge public interest that he has attracted shows that the approach succeeds.
Now comes the difficult part. From now on he cannot do things single-handedly. He must institutionalise the new outlook across the shadow cabinet. The brand cannot be improved if some senior figures sound modern and others reactionary.
The party always calls for unity. But the word has two meanings. It can imply constructing a broad church in which the many different views are represented. Or it can signify delivering one clear message. In the latter sort of unity (the kind that Tony Blair imposed on Labour) the dissenting voices are not accommodated but excluded.
Cameron knows that he needs a clear message but he will be very tempted to build a broad church. It will seem only sporting to give important posts to David Davis and Liam Fox, especially since the latter gave his support to Cameron after being eliminated from the leadership election. But if Fox (who presented himself as the most right-wing candidate) is to become, say, the shadow home secretary, the shadow cabinet is not going to broadcast an unambiguous signal that the party is changing.
It is true that during her first five years as leader Margaret Thatcher was surrounded by men who did not agree with her. Nonetheless she became prime minister because the Labour government collapsed and thereafter she used the power of Downing Street to get her way. This Labour government is not collapsing. It will be strengthened when Gordon Brown takes over and Cameron will need two terms to win against him. So Cameron needs his own people around him from the start much more than Thatcher did.
All this assumes that Cameron really is a Tory moderniser. Like Blair this chameleon has appeared in different hues across the years. He was Michael Howard’s right-hand man during his mean-spirited general election campaign earlier this year. Cameron will take another leaf from Blair’s book. When the prime minister first arrived in Downing Street he said, “We have campaigned as new Labour and we will govern as new Labour.” Equally Cameron, having campaigned as a moderniser, seems obliged to lead as one.
His three predecessors started their reigns by flirting with modernisation. When they found that they were making no progress in the opinion polls, they were panicked by the leader’s entourage and fell back on reactionary scraps (such as immigration) that they could feed to the right-wing press. Let us hope that Cameron, having seen it happen three times already, will not succumb to that temptation.
This is a nervous time for Tory modernisers like me. For years we have argued that a project to change the personality of the party would put it on the road to improvement. Now the theory is to be tested. But what precisely is the new leader to do? Blair seized on clause 4 of Labour’s constitution, which committed it to taking control of the commanding heights of the economy. It had ceased to have any effect on Labour policy, but by winning the battle to discard it Blair showed that he was in control and that the party had changed. The Tory party has no such shibboleth to abolish.
Cameron must make do with changes to the party’s tone and focus and by reforming the selection of parliamentary candidates. He has shown some sympathy for affirmative action that would help more women to be chosen. But the problem is broader. Selection committees dominated by women in northern marginal seats often choose the smooth-talking southern male investment banker in preference to the local teacher or nurse.
The constituency parties fiercely defend their right to make poor choices and the leader faces opposition at the centre from the party’s board. He will prevail only by threatening to resign — which in his case will give him potent leverage.
The new leader will encounter dissent from many of the party’s parliamentary backwoodsmen, too. At first the media will give them air time and to some extent that will help Cameron. Bluster from pinstriped has-beens helps to convince media sympathisers that Cameron is making progress.
When Blair was leader of the opposition he was able to dispatch some of his old guard by promising them seats in the Lords; he then filled their seats with candidates moulded in his image. Few Tory MPs will give up their places because they will not be confident that Cameron will soon be in Downing Street dispensing patronage. But over time he can marginalise such people. They become less interesting to the media if they are seen to be at the fringes, irrelevant to the party’s future.
Cameron’s success with the media is remarkable. Even right-wing commentators and titles support him (some through gritted teeth). The broadcasters admire a good-humoured performer whose surefootedness belies his limited parliamentary experience. They do not find him grubby as they did his predecessors when they resorted to bashing Europe or immigrants. For the first time in two decades a Tory leader will have many media supporters and Cameron will cultivate them assiduously.
The years ahead will be tough. Cameron is already accused of being just a Blair copy and lacking in substance. In future he must endure criticism that his policies are indistinguishable from Blair’s, except that Cameron’s are less radical.
He must bear those attacks because rebuilding the Conservative brand comes first. One day it will be time to put the Tory vehicle through its paces. For now the task is to get the wheels back on.
