A change is taking place in the economic weather; and change in the political weather must follow. To suit an altering climate over Britain the Official Opposition needs a change of focus, of message and of tone. The key Tory messages of cuddliness and generosity should now leave the spotlight.
The new Conservative language should be about waste, maladministration, extravagance, incompetence and drift. The new idea should be the need in hard times for rigour, severity and unsentimentality. Sheer necessity should be part of the backdrop to every Tory speech about the economy and public services.
The whole ethos surrounding a party leadership with ambitions to topple the present Government must be of a ruthlessly businesslike instinct to cut the fat, strip waste, sack the incompetent and pare down public administration to its essentials. David Cameron, George Osborne and their team should present themselves as a hit squad of top-flight company doctors, sent in to rescue a flabby and flailing corporation on the verge of insolvency. Tories should not fear or duck the implication that there will be victims, sacrifices and cuts. Shadow ministers should not shrink from the impression that some people are going to hate this new Tory government's guts.
The public are ready for this. Guessing the shape of tomorrow, a shrewd Opposition today would breathe its impatience to make a bonfire of new Labour vanities. Unsqueamishness would become the new cool. The cartoonist Martin Rowson's image of David Cameron as a flower-picking, chubby, lace-cuffed, purple-pantalooned butterfly-chaser is potentially fatal, and exactly the picture he needs to disavow. A shard of austerity must enter the Tory leadership's aura.
If I were in charge of shaping the new Conservative message I should within six months be wanting to hear from focus groups that if the Tory party were a sauce it would be Tabasco; if it were a garment it would be a hair shirt; if it were a physic it would be smelling salts; and if it were weather it would be a bracing northerly breeze.
Mr Cameron and his team have shown enough heart already for a sense of essential decency to have sunk in among those disposed to give him a hearing. Now for head. Now for unsentimentality. This is not the same as unfairness. Younger Tories may forget that a burning public resentment at the perceived unfairness of Labour Britain was what drove millions of non-unionised, non-council-subsidised, non-inflation-proofed British voters of all classes into the voting booths in support of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. State generosity was unfair.
Let me offer instances. The Shadow Cabinet should arm itself with a shortish list of big and unfair wastes of taxpayers' money, and big failures of public administration, and hammer their contents home until we can almost recite them - just as in 1978-79 people recited Tory mantra about the Winter of Discontent, the unburied dead, the Spanish practices of public sector unions and the subsidy of state housing.
What might be their equivalents today? Gordon Brown's tax-credit system; the abuse of incapacity benefit; the New Deal programme; the near-doubling (to such modest effect) of spending on the NHS; the proliferation in central and local government of advisers, consultants, inclusivity officers, media teams, communications experts and tin-headed, jargon-spouting Directors of Strategic Narrative; the legion of students pursuing pointless courses in woolly disciplines; the complete failure of the national drug-rehabilitation programme; the dissipation of the Department for International Development's too-swiftly expanded budget into a thousand pointless club-class officials' flights to and from Third World capitals. The staggering failures of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
To these could be added a new critique that the Conservative Party is ideally placed to develop: the ruinous waste of public money on private sector contracts. As the party that (it could claim) understands business, the Tories should be offering a devastating account of the way naive Brownite ministers who don't understand the City have been hoodwinked into parting with vast sums of money for dubious deals offered by canny operators who saw these gulls coming.
Mr Cameron should talk about Metronet to his backbencher Richard Bacon on the Commons Public Accounts Committee. The whole PFI story is riddled with scandal and the Tories could make a virtue of being the party who thought up the idea, understand it and now see it - and the taxpayer - abused because Labour ministers don't.
Tory spokesmen may protest that they do raise these criticisms; and it's true that most have had a mention, though the party's failure to confront the scandal of 21st-century PFIs head on is fairly disgraceful. But time and again the opposition case is muffled - as when a speaker places his hand over his mouth - by the Tories' nervousness about suggesting that they would ever take anything away from anyone. An unspoken disclaimer heads every opposition pronouncement on government waste: “Although we're the cuddly party and wouldn't dream of hurting anyone...” The disclaimer blunts whatever attack follows. Prefacing the attack with “Because we're the cruel-to-be-kind party, and there can be no gain without pain...” would sharpen it. Nor should the taxpayer be exempt. If money is tight there can be no handing taxes back either.
Those who think that in the current climate the electorate are likely to admire open-handedness in politicians are simply wrong; time will prove it. A better case against my argument can be made by those who maintain that mere frugality can never be the driving force of a programme for economic survival and regeneration. If in opposition the Tories cannot develop different and more cost-effective structures for delivering good public services, then snipping costs around the margins will not rescue them.
That is probably true. But I'm not sure how interested (or trusting) the voters are in opposition ideas for structural reform. Shadow Cabinets must develop such policies but they may not get much attention in the shop window. Neither Margaret Thatcher nor Tony Blair won power with a very clearly defined manifesto. What was better defined was the instinct and personality of the aspirant leadership.
Mr Cameron has done enough - and he had to - to make his party appear more amiable. He has gone a long way to banish a spiteful Tory image, standing him in good stead if he now explains that his party has some harder things to say. He must prepare to disappoint the liberal press and a handful of new-found friends in saying them. A vocal minority will yell that the mask is off and the old Tory Adam is out.
The rest, who do not doubt his liberalism, will lay aside with relief their doubts about his hard-headedness. Lean and mean are the watchwords, and it is time to harden up.
Well, indeed so, Mr. Parris. I recall the words of an international corporate turn-around spercialist, saying "The first thing I look for is a 'Mission Statement' nailed to a reception area wall, because that tells me that at least one person, perhaps several, in the organisation have nothing better to do"
David Cameron: are you listening?
David Lodge, London, England
TO CONTINUE...as MP says, Secretaries of State get 'turned over' regularly and it costs the taxpayer enormous sums. We contend that when MPs salaries rise - as they will do when the renumeration system is put on a proper footing - a new higher standard must be imposed. Nobody aspiring to a ministerial post and responsible for spending public money should be less competent in the area of finance and management than a director of a small public company. Before being appointed to such a position any candidate should be scrutinised by independent management consultants. Revolutionary thinking? YES! Necessary given the last 11 years of incompetence? YOU BET! This will not exclude former Trade Unionists, Polytechnic Lecturers, mediocre solicitors - or any of the other categories prefered by the Labour party (in particular) - but it will keep the duffers from getting their hands on OUR money and futures!
THE ESSEX BOYS, N.E.ESSEX,
Good stuff, but don't forget that a new government should be scrapping all the PC nonsense we're increasingly suffering from, subjected to and paying through the nose for.
alan, Glasgow,
What I find most worrying is that it takes Mathew Parris to artriculate this and that David Cameron cannot manage it.
David Raynes, Bath, UK
Or just plain Tory perhaps ?!!!
Ian Payne, WALSALL,
Hmmm . . . Matthew, your commentators hit the right notes. Your analysis of Labour is spot on, but there is great doubt as to whether the Tories have the understanding and the guts to put things right. There is also a very big question whether the public are prepared to vote for hard times - they'll get them any way - but will they vote for them? I have another point which is - getting rid of all 'the jobs for the (rich) boys'. But I have an idea that the Tories would not want to lose their powers of patronage. Alas there are no signs of moral standards with them either.
Les, Ramsgate, Kent
Output per hour has increased in u k manufacturing by 50% in the last ten years, public sector productivity fell by probably close to 20% during the same period, despite huge investment. This is a management problem.
A message could be “you do more with less, so why do they do less with more†or simply “this is a management problemâ€
Russell Wheeler, Chandlers Ford,
The trouble is that Cameroon has had to be TOLD to do this. The leader we need to get us out of the pile of ordure that Nulab will leave behind would have recognised their incompetence and the bribery of the electorate with the NHS mess of pottage years ago - as also Mickey Mouse 'employment' in the 'public' services. He would have been so incensed as to have said so years ago. Cameroon hasn't noticed. He won't have a clue how to clean it up. The Tories have got to find someone who will - and quickly. And anyone who thinks he can avoid any 'uncaring' consequences whoever is in power is living in dreamland.
john cornford, Arundel, W Sussex
What's the point? Brussels rules. OK?
Colin Pritchard, Brackley, England
Mathew, you're my last hope. Could you tell us what the Budget is? Is it £300 Bn., £350 Bn. £450 Bn. or what? I've been through the Budget speech line by line; through Cameron's response, line by line, but no mention of THE BUDGET - the projected total spend for the coming year. Doesn't anybody know- or even care?
Until someone in this grotesquely innumerate country shows the slightest interest in what things are going to cost (and what they should cost), they can whistle for my vote.
Ken Leyland, Liverpool, U.K.
The really simple and perhaps courageous solution for the Tory Party to adopt to show they are different to others and that they really do listen to people isto include in their manifesto the promise that they will have areferendum for the people decide on an English Parliament,
In this way we can decide our futures on Education etc etc.
Ray Brooke, Leven, England
We went through the early 70s during the Heath years being lean and mean, then we had even worst luck going through another lean and mean period when the Tories were last in.
Please do not let your memory lapse into fond memories which did not exist for alot of people, Matthew!
Negative equity and all the other negative uncaring Tory decisions wounded more people than you realise.
Come on pull the other one, we need more of a paradigm shift than that to win!!
Mrs Maggie Snook, Wool , Wareham, Dorset UK
The best government is the least government.
HC, London,
Spot on....
I for one am sick and tired of handing over large dollops of tax only to see the waste, inefficiency and incompetence in public sector organisations.
We could do with a government that first allowed us some say in where the money actually goes... Do we really want to be fighting wars around the world for the good of man or should we be spending our hard earned cash on a great education system or a brilliant NHS.
Then once there was some clarity about that, the government made sure that every department/service (whether central or local) is delivering real value for money and that on a regular basis we get to know how well they are all doing.
The real problem is not the government, but the Civil Service and the system. We don't need another government that fiddles around at the edges, we need one that overhauls the system of government and uses its power wit and energy to break the inertia and resistance to change in the Civil Service.
Andy, Welwyn, UK
Well said and hurrah. The Tories need a narative that speaks to the the large voting classes that think there is no hope of correcting the waste, wrong headedness and relentless spread of this government's tentacles. Speak to people at bus stops, in the supermarket, anywhere, and they have all gone to sleep as they cannot see a way out of this unpleasant creeping bureaucracy which is taking more of their money, interfering more in their lives and delivering rotten value for money.
The Liberals talk of lowering tax on "Smoothies" , the Tories of adding tax to "certain alcoholic drinks" and the Labour Party speaks of "plastic bags" For heavens sake where are our STATESMEN.
The green lobby is totally populated by the left wing. The anti-reaction to all this green nonsense is growing and the Tories should start talking practical common sense on all these issues and stop appeasing the doommongers.
Come Tories get a grip of the REAL issues.
Colin
Colin MacMillan, Redditch, Worcs
Are Tories allowed to get 'lean and mean' on immigration and crime as well Matthew? As in - the main concerns of the vast majority of the public ?
But then you with your three houses and your privileged financial position and your daily hob-nobbing with the Great and the Good are isolated from the ill effects of both scourges - as are the majority of the Etonian trustafarian Shadow Cabinet who have never done a serious day's work ( bag carrying for MPs and 'research' in Party HQ are not work ) in their ridiculous self-serving, unprincipled lives.
riv, Newcastle,
Lean and mean, eh Matthew? Well, we know who will suffer because of that ... thousands of ordinary public sector workers... and all because of the greed of the bankers and the government. And who will do the cutting away of the dead wood? Oh, the same kind of people who have put us in this sorry state - it's not exactly grounds for optimism. Thatcherism was a disaster for Britain. This Labour Government has been a disaster. They have both been centralising forces offering national policy solutions to perceived problems for political reasons. One possible solution - drastically reduce the power of central government and give some real power back to local government. The direction of travel has been one way since 1945 and the only really enlightened step has been devolution for the blessed Scots and Welsh.
Gordon Herbert, Huddersfield, Yorkshire
Yes, certainly time for the policies now, and some good ones -- no more of the "no more grammar schools" or "higher taxes for all middle class carbon emissions" or "we're no friend of big business" or "hug a hoodie" type please. Mr Cameron really needs to get a grip of what people want from the Conservative party, rather than coming up with his own ideas about what people should want -- these seem to be two very different things.
hall, Sheffield, UK
If Cameron starts on the waste in the commons he will get my vote. Cameron should start his drive on value for money closer to home. Although the savings would be relatively small, reducing the number of MPs and their nonsensical list of expenses must be top of his list. To have any credibility, a leader must put their own house in order before telling other people how to run their business. MPs plead massive amounts of mail from their constituents as proof for such large numbers of MPs. It would be interesting to establish the total cost to the local constituents of their MPs against what they actually achieve. Why MPs need a home in London to sit smugly every Wednesday listening to the drivel called PMQs is a scandal and should be ended immediately. Not being allowed to follow up a question makes a mockery of accountability, proof that most of them view Wednesday as a boozy, lunch and dinner freeby day out.
sid, derby,
Matthew Parris puts his finger on a little noticed and key change in political practice which has paralysed effective action by government concerning almost everything.
The Tories balk at suggesting anything which might be seen as taking away anything from anyone. Think about that. How can any reform by made which will not raise a complaint by someone that they don't like it and have been disadvantaged?
Employment is a key example. Withdrawing benefits and getting people into work would benefit society in the long-run. But in the short-run few affected will like it.
Welfare economics defines the change in practice in this manner. The principle used to be utlitarianism - the greatest benefit of the greatest number. It is now Paretian welfare maximisation. Any action must leave everyone better off or at least as well off. That is what the Tories are saying.
Parties wishing to maintain a pretence that everyone can be better off all the time are forced to lie or do nothing.
Mike Newland, London, England
I wish the Conservatives would support the middle classes. All those people who work but who are quite ordinary.
Labour only seems to support the very rich and the very poor. The Conservatives should support Grammer Schools not the vast Comps that do and will bring down all to the level of the least able. I wish the Tories would put forward ideas of personal responsibility and unselfishness. Behaving in a criminal manner is not OK Nearly killing someone should get more than 8 years ( the burglar who stabbed a Mother in her own home and the child who defended her). Having lots of children we then have to pay for is not OK. Benefits as a way of life is not OK
I wish the Conservatives would really support Defence not just speak with forked tongue about it.
In other words who is there to vote for? The Conservatives now just seem to be "not quite Nu Labour". I don't care how "nice"
they are I want them to have clear ideas however little money there is in the pot.
Jill, Tonbridge, UK
The Conservative Party has consistently failed as an effective opposition party and believe that the only way it can get in to power is by imitation. It seems content to ride the wave of profligacy and waste, although, as pointed out, the need for austerity measures are obvious. It doesn't take a genius to see that, but there aren't many of those lounging around the halls of Westminster, apparently.
The necessary house cleaning needs to start at Westminster. While some all-party initiatives are underway, the Conservatives can tighten up much further. Unilaterally, if need be, for now. They also need to urgently review and reallign Conservative Party funding and spending.
The Conservative Party need not wait for a General Election. It would be fairly impressive at the polls if completing these measures satisfactorily, they can promise spending-cuts with evidence that they are 20% less per capita than a Labour MP!
Sue, Felpham,
The big problem is the demeanour and personality of Cameron himself. How can he change public perceptions that he is as glib, shallow & oleaginous as Blair himself ?
Chris, chesterfield, uk
I would love David Cameron to ask Gordon Brown at the next PMQs whether he has yet got a 'vision for Britain' (the reason why he cancelled the election last Autumn).
MarkS, Leeds,
It might sound good on the surface, but leaving the EU would be a total disaster for Britain. We would lose the City overnight. Foreign investment would dry up. Tariff barriers set up. International companies would look elsewhere in Europe for their gateway to the world's largest single marketplace. We would be cutting off our noses in a big way, and merely because of all the guff we have been fed by the media for two decades to fuel our insular xenophobia.
Mike Mitchell, Spalding, England
Dear Matthew, When are you going to wake up to the fact that the Consevertives have been in power for the last 10 years.The only things that change are the personalities.The last Labour Governmemt ended in 195!
gerald cochrane, North Walsham, norfolk
The article still shows how it is the 'image' that is more important than the substance.
ANY party more concerned with 'wining' votes rather than upholding principle will throw away the principle to win the vote .Far better to stand on a sound principle and wait for peolple to come around freely to your way of thinking.Than to promise everythign and anything to win the vote but lose finally the confidence of the voter!
Winston Churchill long before it was popular spoke the truth concerning Germany .and lost the 'vote' for a number of years.But facts are stubborn things when the truth was finally undestood he was the only one QUALIFIED to lead the country.
A party more interested in wining the vote will sell the truth for it and will never be fit or qualified for office.Though they might win the vote do so.
The time is long gone when this country can afford parties or MPS who'sonly aim is to win power..Do we have men of principle or party?
G Blezard, London, uk
I agree completely, but I think also that we'll get nowhere if the "new" philosophy is that the efficiency drive has become desirable just as a response to a reduction in available resource.
The message must be got across that good housekeeping, cost-consciousness, value based decision-making - call it what you like - is the IMPERATIVE of the public sector. And that it will remain so through good times and bad, because it is morally repugnant for the state to operate in any other way.
We could do worse than to start by taking every aspect of the public sector, and require the commissioning authority to demonstrate that there is no alternative use of the required funding that will produce a greater benefit to society. It's just not enough to be able to show that spending will produce SOME benefit - it needs to be shown, also, that it cannot be improved upon.
Simon Stephenson, Windermere, UK
Matthew Parris for Prime Minister
Pam Smith, Hutton Rudby, Yarm, North Yorkshire
The Tories are locked into the consensus, there's no escape, paralysis is gripping a whole clutch of global problems, the only way forward is implosion, which is just beginning, the whole stinking edifice is beginning to flake.
Jake, UK,
Could it be Cameron is reneguing on his pledge to "Hug a Hoodie" or is he waiting for them to be joined by "The Posse" from his old school ?
Peter Hughes, Burnham, Bucks
I like that: 'the tories should criticise PFI... because they invented it.'
Also enjoyed the list of labour waste: 'tax credits, new deal, doubling health spending.' You know, the kind of stuff that helps people. There will be none of that kind of waste under a Tory government.
Alan Brownfield, Dartford, Kent
All Cameron has to say to win the next election hands down is
'we're leaving the EU' , and 'British citizens are born, not
made' .
F Kimbal Johnson, Louth,Lincs, uk
Matthew Parris avoids commenting on the biggest issue that merits the population's concern -Immigration.
tobias, London, England
Lean and mean on Labour's grotesque frittering away of our money;
Wise and gentle on how the Tories will govern.
Jeremy James, St. Maurice de Lignon, France
I agree with Matthew Parris -I detect a new and harder mood in the country. I think at last a wide cross section are fed up with all the hew labour arguments about welfare, child poverty , benefits of immigration, need for more money for " better" schools , " better world class" hospitals etc etc. People now question why there are 10's of thousands of people under 30 on long term sick, when sickness is actually rare in young people.
The conservatives should sharpen up on these issues before UKIP and the BNP pick up the conservative vote amongst the middle classes and working classes respectively.
Andrew, Canterbury,
Dear Matthew, you forgot the run on the pound sterling. Sitting here in Athens I watch the pound sliding against the euro almost every day and wonder if Gordon Brown is now thinking the unthinkable, ie bringing the UK into the eurozone! This crypto-strategy is worth at least a reference by both yourself and David Cameron. Ironically, as we move towards a time reminiscent of the Great Depression in 1926 this favours Labour and Gordon Brown and certainly won't be a time for raw capitalism and the free market. Furthermore, since the Conservative party is now mainly an English party its policies will become even more unpopular in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and northern England. It's statistically impossible for it to win the general election of 2009-10 with votes from southern England alone and I seriously doubt if the Lib Dems would go into a coalition with them in such hard times. The Conservatives must make Europe their rallying cry and start to win in June 2009 - or lose again.
Dr David Green, Athens, Greece
twice in 3 weeks i agree with parris, but has he not heard of the tax payers alliance?
this band of thinkers have a list of all the economies that goverment could apply,so perhaps cameron and parris should arrange to acquire a copy
john haydon rowe, javea,
Yes, yes, yes but the trouble is that it's difficult to present a 'lean and mean' message to the country when your back-benchers are caught, at the tax-payers expense, installing John Lewis kitchens in their grace-and-favour manors. To sell this message to the public the Tories are going to have to wear hair-shirts too. Are the Honourable Members ready for that?
Adrian Gilbert, Tonbridge,
If the Conservatives win the next election, the state of public finances will be such that they will have to cut spending and raise taxes. Some appropriate mood music to prepare the public for this over the next year or two is essential.
John Rees, Oxford, UK
A brilliant piece. The growing evidence of Labour's sheer incompetence is the main reason I won't vote for them next time round (as I did in the past). We seem to be paying more and more for less and less. But the Tories are doing a poor job of exploiting a widespread feeling among the public. Here's my slogan for the next election: "Where's Our Money Gone?" -- with some real-life instances [where are the police? what happened to my train? why didn't they look after my mother?]
earl, sidcup, uk
All the Tories have to do is move away from spin and personal attacks and tell the voters the truth and explain why they want to bring in certain policies.
Hamad Lone, London, England
I disagree with the "lean & mean" bit.
Reality and plain speaking ; Ignore NuLabour as an abberation that will disappear under its own obfuscations.
The passion of NuLabour , which in fact was envy verging on hatred, is now clearly little more than self interest laced with spite.
Socialism has lost its raison d`etre. "Our Tony" had the foresight to see that but never the courage to say so outrighjt. Nor for that matter do his successors
Not lean & mean, but `wise and gentle` will win the next race.
Peter Bolt, Redditch, UK
"the near-doubling (to such modest effect) of spending on the NHS" - Matthew - if you actually talk to people on the front line in the NHS they will all say the same thing - with the exception of the GPs very little of this "money" has actually gone into the NHS. It has all gone into the PFI rpojects and shareholders pockets. We are having to actually cut services to meet the repayments demanded by the Private Sector whom we forced to go to by the Government - 40million over 5 years. It's now so bad I wouldn't be surprised if our Trust didn't end up ringing Ocean Finance
Phil, Lancaster, Lancashire
David Cameron is the best thing the Tories have done since it made Margaret Thatcher leader many years ago this country needs him as prime minister now , this country will be on the floor soon under the weight of debt taxes and red tape labour.
we all know that he has limited room to maneuver however I think that the consertivates would by nature have a better grip of the country's finances .
JJ, Suthgate, London