After an average 15-point lead in the opinion polls over Labour in September,
the Conservative party conference in Manchester should be a launch pad for
government. David Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne need to
convey a one-word message to the electorate — “ready”.
At this stage in the electoral cycle in 1978, before the Conservatives last
returned to power, Margaret Thatcher’s party trailed behind Labour. Tony
Blair in 1996 was streets ahead of the Tories; Cameron’s lead today is
slenderer and shallower. What the Iron Lady lacked in popularity she more
than made up for in political definition: the voters knew where she was
going and she had made detailed plans to get there. Can her heir make the
same boast?
The conditions are favourable. Labour’s last party conference before the
general election seemed to collapse into a series of media mishaps. The
Sun’s switch of allegiance from new Labour to the Tories was but the most
celebrated. The BBC’s impertinent questions about the state of Gordon
Brown’s mental health seemed vindicated by his foolish on-air outburst at a
Sky interviewer. These incidents could have been copied straight out of the
John Major Bumper Book of Political Disasters.
My colleague Dominic Lawson analyses the importance of The Sun’s shift on the
opposite page. Suffice to say in its aftermath, Mandelson accused the
newspaper’s management of being “a bunch of chumps” — in his sanitised
account of the conversation. Those who have crossed swords with the Prince
of Darkness might think that a bit rich coming from the mother of all
“chumps” himself, but his response reflected the hysteria with which the
defection was greeted.
“The abiding memory of the conference in voters’ minds will be a trade
unionist tearing up a copy of Britain’s most popular paper, after a series
of speeches denouncing the tabloid,” gloats one in Tory high command. In
1998, The Sun, with a nod to Monty Python, stuck an upside-down dead parrot
on its front page upon which was imposed the head of William Hague, then the
Conservative leader. It bore the headline “this party is no more, it has
ceased to be, it is an ex-party”. The Tory party conference was
shell-shocked but Hague refused to sulk.
In Brighton, the prime minister rallied his party’s core vote at the price of
incoherence. Brown tore up his big, strategic (and reluctantly made)
decision of the summer to campaign on a programme of “compassionate”
government cuts. The prime minister appears to find the c-word offensive
too. Instead, he offered a series of billion-pound bribes to the voters,
paid with a post-dated cheque.
Mandelson may have entertained the troops with his vaudeville conference
performance but he, too, was stumped on Newsnight when asked how the health
secretary, Andy Burnham, was going to replace the revenue lost through not
charging for hospital parking. “I have no idea,” he replied. Burnham also
announced that the National Health Service should always be the government’s
“preferred provider” of healthcare.
Alan Milburn, a radical predecessor in the job, despaired: “If we are going to
drive efficiency, productivity and quality on the scale required, the last
thing you do is renew a monopoly and say your existing provider is your
preferred one.” So much for public service reform.
Labour’s prospectus for a fourth term sets the bar low for the Conservatives,
but still they should be aiming high. In preparation for Manchester, Cameron
has been reading Blair’s and Thatcher’s last conference speeches in
opposition. TB’s tone was triumphalist: “Labour’s coming home.” Today,
straitened times argue for sobriety, while the magnitude of Cameron’s
electoral task — to win, the Tories must gain more seats than any party has
achieved since 1931 — dictates humility too. Thatcher’s assessment of the
depth of Britain’s woes is a better starting point than Blair’s.
“The root of the matter is this,” said the lady. “We have been ruled by men
who live by illusions, the illusion that you can spend money you haven’t
earned without eventually going bankrupt or falling into the hands of your
creditors; the illusion that real jobs can be conjured into existence by
government decrees like rabbits out of a hat.” That just about sums up
Osborne’s charge sheet against Brown.
And what of the prime minister’s boast that he has saved Britain? Thatcher had
this to say of Labour’s chancellor, Denis Healey, who had been put on
probation by the International Monetary Fund: “Someone ought to tell him
that you do not give the man who sets fire to your house a medal just
because he phones for the fire brigade.”
Cameron and Osborne, self-styled “deficit hawks”, need a positive thumbs-up
from the voters rather than a victory gained only through weariness with
Brown. If not, they will lack a mandate when the going gets rough. Talk of
tougher issues being matters “for the second term” is presumptuous. If they
don’t tackle some from the start, there will be no second term. Look how
Blair regrets his arid first term in government — and he had the luxury of
the longest boom in peacetime history.
There is popular support out there for savings to state expenditure, but it
will be a dismal conference if the agenda is entirely dominated by cuts. The
Tories should make an opportunity out of the fiscal crisis. Real public
service reforms allow frontline services to be maintained despite the
squeeze, the so-called “more for less” agenda. The shadow cabinet has to
prove it is fizzing with policies. “We are not going to play it safe,”
promises one in the know. I hope they don’t put all their eggs in one
basket. The Swedish model of free schools is attractive, necessary, but not
sufficient to fill out a programme.
“There is such a thing as society,” said Cameron in part-rebuttal of the
sentiments attributed to Thatcher, “it’s just not the same as the state.”
With that he launched his agenda to decentralise powers and services from
Whitehall. Sceptics will be watching hard to see whether he keeps a promise
more honoured in the breach than the observance by politicians of all
parties.
To prove the Tories have a heart and an optimistic agenda too, the early part
of the conference will have a distinctly unTory emphasis on getting the
unemployed back into work. It is politically sensible and above all morally
right to make good the dependency culture that took root under Thatcher and
was neglected by Blair. The Tories must avoid the accusation of abandoning
the weak to the rubbish dump where social disorder breeds. All credit to
their former leader, Iain Duncan Smith, for keeping the unglamorous subject
in the spotlight. If his reward is a future cabinet post, then he deserves
it.
But a party ready for government must be seen to be united. The obvious danger
is Europe. There is a natural Eurosceptic majority in the country but the
voters have had a bellyfull of Tory infighting on the issue. Only ex-parties
address their activists as their sole audience.
In dire economic circumstances the Irish have been successfully blackmailed
into passing the Lisbon treaty at the second attempt. A No result would
effectively have killed Lisbon stone dead. A Yes throws the ball back to
Cameron and the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague. If the Czech
president Vaclav Klaus throws in the towel before our election, the treaty
will be passed.
Until that event the Tory leadership will play its cards close to its chest,
though sorely provoked by the prospect of a President Blair. Better for
Cameron to show his power by playing down Europe during the conference and
sticking to his core themes. It’s not a glorious course but even the Iron
Lady knew when to bend not to break.
Cameron is not measuring the curtains for No 10: he is no chump. But by the
end of his speech on Thursday we must feel that he belongs there.
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