TELL ME that by-elections don’t matter. Tell me they’re misleading, special, one-offs. Tell me there’s froth and hype at by-election time but that within days we shall be waking to discover that the Earth continues in its orbit. Tell me that, come the next general election, the natural political order will reassert itself. Tell me any of this and I am forced to reply that there’s truth in what you say: that you are almost right.
Almost. But were yesterday morning’s results really no more than chaff in the political wind? Here were two very different parts of England: parliamentary constituencies whose names had been, for most of the last century, bywords for rock-solid voter-allegiance to each of our two great political parties. So if one of them — now called Blaenau Gwent — maintains its recent refusal to elect a Labour MP, and the other — now called Bromley and Chislehurst — can scarcely bring itself to replace one deceased Conservative MP with a live one — then we shouldn’t we at least consider the possibility that the voters were trying to say something? In Blaenau the Labour Party spent heavily, and sent a barrage of literature, and Gordon Brown, to reinforce their appeal. They offered the voters (incensed at the general election at the imposition of an all- woman shortlist) a male candidate to vote for. And they lost decisively to Dai Davies, a man with no political affiliations, no prior political experience, no national manifesto that he has any chance of delivering and no funds: he had spent just £6,000 of his own money on the whole campaign.
In Bromley the Conservative Party were offering a shiny new look, a shiny new leader, a candidate with first-class local experience, an excuse for a pleasant walk on a sunny day to a nearby polling station — and a chance for voters to show an unpopular Government that its only serious challenger was poised to knock it from its pedestal at the next general election.
And what did these voters do? Some 60 per cent of them stayed at home. Of those who did shuffle to the polls, nearly half voted for minority parties with no prospect of forming the next government. The Liberal Democrats almost won.
For the Labour Party, its chairman has “dismissed” the Blaenau defeat. How can we put it politely to Hazel Blears that it is not within the power even of the National Chairman of the Labour Party to “dismiss” the result of an election? No, the voters of Blaenau have dismissed Ms Blears.
Rhodri Morgan, Labour’s leader in the Welsh Assembly, has remarked that, though they may need a little time, the voters of Blaenau will eventually revert to their natural party because deep down and in their hearts they are Labour supporters. Go on and have a good cry, dear, and it’ll all seem better in the morning. Well, maybe.
“Progress not protest,” Mr Morgan says, is “what the Valleys need.” He should consider the possibility that this result indicates not that the voters want something they haven’t got and which it lies within his power to give them, but they just don’t like his party. They like neither sight nor sound nor smell of it.
I think the operative word is “smell”. Whatever other conclusions may be drawn from the Welsh result, Labour’s leadership must now accept that the reconciliation between the party and its former supporters cannot begin until Tony Blair has gone. There’s no point in Labour’s attempting any kind of rebranding, until he goes. They’d just have to do it all over again after he does. There must be a limit to the number of product relaunches the market will bear. Labour had better save theirs for their next leader.
As for the present one, having been saying the same thing about this transparent fantasist since I reported his victory speech as incoming party leader in May 1994, I become bored with repeating myself; but whether we see his travails today as his just deserts or as unlucky accidents, surely everyone can now agree that for the present Prime Minister — and in the immortal words of Roy Orbison — it’s over?
For David Cameron it has hardly begun. Indeed the Bromley and Chiselhurst result invests that remark with an ominous quality. How many more icebergs have to melt, how many more huskies have to strain in their harnesses, how many more toe-curling embarrassments do Jonathan Ross’s audience have to endure, before the magic that works so well with the political classes and among shoppers at Fresh & Wild in Notting Hill begins to cast its spell on the Middle Britain that actually swings results at elections?
I remain convinced Mr Cameron can do it, but this by-election provides no evidence for that view. It is true that an idiotic local Tory party made little use of the new leader or his image, thought they knew best, selected a candidate who proved an easy target for an unscrupulous Lib-Dem campaign and smugly overlooked the precariousness of their position; and if there is one useful lesson that the party can draw, it is that Conservative Central Office needs urgently to get a grip. But senior Tories who had started thinking already about the décor for their ministerial offices at Westminster need to think again.They should ask themselves what it is about the “changed” Tory party that places like Bromley still don’t get.
As the grandson of the late proprietor of a shop once familiar to Bromley shoppers — F. W. Parris, High Class Family Butchers — may I venture a suggestion? Like much of Britain, Bromley has yet to get a sense of what Cameron Conservatism is for. Ignore Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph: most potential supporters are desperately relaxed about huskies, tree-hugging, more women MPs, gay-friendly policies, cycling, recycling, open-necked shirts . . . the whole package. No problem. Jolly good stuff. Got to get with it. Be modern, and all that.
That’s the shop front; and as F. W. Parris always knew (and it is David Cameron’s genius to know too) shop fronts matter tremendously. In Bromley, Beckenham, Sydenham and Penge, my grandparents took pride in theirs. But if the phrase “Where’s the beef?” had been current, it would have been Grandpa’s catchphrase. His business philosophy began and ended with the product. Grandpa believed that customers will pay good money for good meat. The philosophy worked for F. W. Parris in Bromley, and it will work for D. W. D. Cameron nationally.
Mr Cameron need lose little sleep over the Liberal Democrats. It would be better if Conservative Central Office were quicker on its feet at responding to disgraceful campaigns, but for the Lib-Dems, playing it cheap is an ultimately self-limiting strategy: it may be what they have to do to stay in contention, but the aura it attracts will in the end confine them. Mr Cameron should be preoccupied less with the voters he might win or lose than with the thousands in Bromley who are nominally his already, but who couldn’t be bothered to vote.
Grandpa had started as a butcher’s boy. He and Grandma ended their days in a semi-detached mock-Tudor house with a lovingly tended garden in Village Way, just off the high street in neighbouring Beckenham, another “safe” Conservative seat. Grandpa, who was shyly aspirational, joined the golf club and the freemasons, voted Conservative, drove a Riley Elf and insisted that their address was Beckenham, Kent — not SE London.
Village Way is still there, little-changed. It is perhaps 12 miles from Notting Hill, and yet a world away from Mr Cameron’s life, and perhaps from the outlook of many Cameron Conservatives. He needs to think about the people, young and old, who live in Village Way now. He needs to start the sentence “the next Tory Government will . . .” and consider how to complete it with (say) 20 words that the grandchildren of Grandpa’s customers in Village Way would believe, approve and remember.
