FIVE DAYS ago on this page my fellow columnist Tim Hames was kind enough to say he loved me. He went on to disagree sharply with my view of Conservative prospects and priorities. So never mind our feelings for each other: let us cut to the chase and ask where the Tories should be going. With this Parliament’s final Budget behind us and a general election imminent, it is time to consider what the Tory party is for.
As a columnist Tim speaks for a collection of people and attitudes that I suppose you could call modernist. He was a keen supporter of Michael Portillo’s bid for the party leadership. His natural allies among leading Tories today would be MPs like Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, the Tory Treasury spokesman, or David Cameron, the policy co-ordinator.
Such politicians are talked about as part of a loose group rather grandly dubbed the “Notting Hill” set. They are the sort of Tory you would be happy for your daughter to invite for the weekend: young, moderate, rather metropolitan, nicely presented and eminently sane. They are smooth rather than inflammatory: the Classic FM of the music of politics. They adore the word “mainstream”. They love metaphors about “common ground”. They refer to Tony Blair ’s former communications chief as Alastair. They know all about polling and the science of psephology but they would never be boring about it at dinner. They are hugely caring and compassionate. They do not cut themselves when shaving, as other men do. They are, in short, delightful and clever young men. And they talk a load of balls.
So soothing is the mood-music which Tim and the modernisers seem to be confusing with a tune, that it is hard to record a Tory moderniser saying anything with which it is possible to disagree; but keep your wits about you and you may catch them out. They are betrayed more by their fears than their enthusiasms, because their tongues are governed by a keener sense of what they don’t want to come across as, than any focused sense of what they do. Here is an example.
This week, I was half-listening to George Osborne being interviewed about Gordon Brown’s Budget. Mr Osborne’s interviewer invited him to confirm that Conservatives believe in smaller government. This was when my jaw dropped.
Mr Osborne declined to confirm it. He hesitated, then changed the subject, heading off in a different direction. The phrase “smaller government” scared him.
Now do not misunderstand him or me. Given time for reflection there is no doubt that Mr Osborne can find the words to say how he does believe in smaller government — bolting tightly on to any such sentence a qualifying clause about the smaller government being better government too, etc. But what was revealing about that radio moment was his instinctive fear of the whole territory.
Tory modernisers like him will have been quite needlessly worried by TV pictures of Thursday’s riverside farce in London when the separate lives of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown intersected for an edgy moment in front of a facile yellow and black poster screaming “£35 billion Tory Cuts” — or somesuch. It will not have occurred to a Tory moderniser or a new Labour ad man that many voters might warm to the idea that a Conservative government would spend less.
Another key panic-raiser among modernisers is the word “ideological”. In his recent and beautifully composed Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture at the Centre for Policy Studies, David Cameron railed against “ideological” politics and in favour of “pragmatic” Conservatism.
Well, sure. We’re all for that — hooray! Pragmatism is what works. But show me any ideologue who has ever argued that his ideology would not work. An “ideology” in politics is a theory about the unseen levers in human affairs and human natures. An ideology instils in those who embrace it a confidence that certain arrangements will have certain results, whether or not this is immediate or obvious.
It is ideology which tells us that if you have two shops competing side by side you can expect from them better service and lower prices (though you are duplicating costs and labour) than from a single, merged business enjoying economies of scale.
The ruling ideology of any era, however, tends to be mistaken for common sense or “pragmatism”, so thanks to the courage of ideologues like the late Keith Joseph Mr Cameron is able to imagine that all a modern Tory needs for his economic policy is “pragmatism”. In social questions, however, it is now “pragmatic” to put public services at the centre of the Tory message.
But Tory modernisers are latching on to a new idea just as it begins to droop, just as the philosophy of big promises to “deliver” public services, and big government spending to pay for it, is beginning to be questioned. Like new Labour itself, Tory moderates are looking dreadfully 20th-century. How clearly I remember Michael Portillo’s leadership campaign launch at a fashionably cool restaurant in St James’s called Avenue, with an @ sign hanging on a flag outside, and plates of nano-hamburgers and Buck’s Fizz within. It all seems so dated now.
But I can hear Tim Hames grinding his teeth. His hope (he expresses it in the latest Prospect magazine) is for a Tory party which sees its role as “offering constructive criticism of the manner in which a Labour Government had sought economic efficiency with social reform, and offering . . . an alternative based on more and better of both . . .”.
Tim’s fear (he expressed it on this page) is that a strong Tory result in the general election, bringing Labour limping back with a brutally reduced majority, will encourage people like me to declare that “modernising” the Conservatives was a blind alley.
But fear not, Tim, I shall never do that. The Tories need their modernisers. I would go further: we need them at the helm. I hope that one day one of them may even become leader. We have a habit of choosing people who are not proper Tories as our leaders and they serve us well. Cleverer and nicer than most of the party’s neanderthals, Letwin, Cameron, Osborne and co are useful idiots, putting a caring and optimistic face on the old Tory dog — and coming up with excellent wheezes for saving money and squeezing more from what is spent.
Meanwhile the old Tory dog must grind on in pursuit of its timeless destiny, as “modern” today as it was in 1951 or 1979 — growing, indeed, more modern as new Labour’s hopes of 1997 burn out in the ashes of 2005.
The old Tory dog is eternally sceptical of government schemes for the improvement of humanity. The old dog thinks the apparatus of state will absorb as much gold as you throw at it, and still cry for more. The old dog thinks people do not like to pay taxes. The old dog thinks politics is not only about renaissance and reform, but also about the clash of interests, and that you can’t please everybody. The old dog distrusts whiz-bang politics.
Are you thinking what the old dog’s thinking? The Tories’ latest slogan — “are you thinking what we’re thinking?” — is a piece of inspired dog-whistling, for Tim is right in his judgment that a 21st-century electorate is not quite reconciled to the old dog within, not quite ready to applaud politicians who acknowledge the old dog too shamelessly. But the old dog is there; sensed beneath every argument I hear; waiting for a political party which knows the secret frequency on which to whistle: and which can establish a private line to the old dog in each of us.
Britain is no longer looking for politicians who promise more. We are looking for politicians who cost less. Out there in the suburbs, Tim, the old dog’s growling, and you are missing it.
