Conservatives (UK) in legal battle vs conservative newspaper

February 06, 2005

Comment: Michael Portillo: Populist policies fail to move a blue brand off the shelves


The Tory party is always divided. During the 19th century protectionists struggled against free traders. In Margaret Thatcher's day the demarcation was between wets and dries. More recently Eurosceptics have slugged it out with Europhiles and liberals have tussled with authoritarians. The new division is between the "get its" and the "don't get its".

Those who claim to "get it", that is to understand how much Britain has changed since the Tories last won an election, contend that the Conservative brand is, to borrow a technical term from the advertising industry, "knackered". The evidence is that the party lost the last two elections by huge majorities. The electorate, like the customer, is always right. It is not an option to tell the voters that they made a mistake twice. Instead a political party has to accept their verdict and can win only if it convinces the public that the brand has been transformed.

Those who "don't get it" believe that the two defeats were an aberration. Maybe people were temporarily mesmerised by Tony Blair. The Tories lost because they were too timid, offering wishy-washy policies that were indistinct. In any case voters are waking up now to the folly of electing Labour, and with the collapse in trust in the prime minister over the Iraq war, things will swing back to the Conservatives.

The "get it" group favours enormous changes. In policy terms their prescriptions would move the party to the centre. They would like it to focus more than it does on public services and overseas aid. They want it to embrace socially liberal positions with enthusiasm.

Non-policy changes are seen as just as important. "Get its" favour less party-political point scoring. They want MPs who look and sound as though they inhabit the real world, not just the Westminster village. That requires managing candidate selection so that a wider variety of people can become Conservative MPs and appeal to a broader sweep of the public.

The "don't get it" faction looks to establish clearer blue water between Conservative and Labour positions. Blair, by moving to the right, has signalled his belief that Britain is essentially Tory. The Conservatives must therefore offer robust right-of-centre policies to shore up their position and lure support from Labour. The idea of reforming the Tory party reeks of political correctness. Manipulating the candidate list to increase diversity is what Labour did, proving that it must be a bad idea.

The two groups wrestle for Thatcher's mantle. The "don't get it" persuasion wants to stick to her winning policies. Cutting taxes and being hostile to the European Union brought her three election victories. But the "get it" fraternity see that as a misreading of history.

The important thing about Thatcher was that she was at the cutting edge of change. She courted the Asian vote. Being led by a woman in the 1970s in itself put the Tories at the forefront of social progress.

Monetarism and privatisation helped her to win because they were new. Key to her first victory was that by 1979 she had made the party unrecognisably different from Edward Heath's government, defeated five years before.

Today's Tory leadership can be seduced by the "get it" view of the universe, but only temporarily. William Hague was so keen to change the party's fusty image that he donned a baseball cap. The stunt misfired and made him fearful of modernisation.

Iain Duncan Smith was elected as the reactionary candidate, but on a visit to a sink housing estate he suddenly seemed to get it, becoming convinced that the party had to reach out to urban areas where it presently holds no parliamentary seats. Michael Howard's first speech as leader (at the Saatchi Gallery) took up that baton, pledging that there would be no no-go areas for the Conservatives.

Each of those leaders has been cautious about being seen to get it too much. There is, after all, no proof that reworking the Tory brand would bring success. It is useless with most Conservatives to argue that the party needs to change now as much as Labour did during the 1980s and 1990s. The response is that the policies Labour ditched ?- being against the police and nuclear deterrence and for the trade unions ?- were unpopular. Conservative policies ?- being against Europe and immigration and for tax cuts ?- are popular.

In any case the party has done much that the "get-its" demanded. It accepts same-sex civil unions. Gay candidates are in place to fight winnable seats and the leadership has backed them when local Tory activists have tried to unseat them. The party has worked hard to promote women as candidates. After the election the party should have a black MP in Windsor.

Much of the party therefore takes the view that the "get-its" have been appeased quite enough. All that political correctness has put a strain on Conservative core voters. Now is the time to reassure them by fighting the election on familiar Tory themes.

The Conservatives are certainly doing unusually well in attracting news coverage. In recent weeks their plans for immigration control and for public spending and taxes have been thoroughly reported. To judge by what London cabbies tell me, the Conservatives are getting themselves heard.

Perhaps the recent policy statements will raise the party's level of support. But I doubt it because voters are now so sceptical. Even if they like what they hear they have to think that the party means what it says and that things would change if it were elected.

In fact those who feel strongly about immigration tend to believe that the whole political establishment has connived to bring about a multicultural Britain without consulting the voters. They are in no mood to believe what the main parties promise and may give their vote to UK Independence or to Veritas, Robert Kilroy-Silk's new party. More liberal voters are repelled by Conservative policy.

I accept that Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, has done well to produce a mass of work to show how the Tories would balance the books at lower levels of taxation. The risk is that Labour will focus the election campaign on whether the Conservatives' plans "add up". That would provide a welcome diversion from discussing why Gordon Brown has devastated our pension funds or why Blair took us to war on a false prospectus.

It is too late this side of the election for the Tories to reconsider strategy. They have settled on their policies. Tactics, however, can still be debated.

There is supposed to be a row between Lynton Crosby, the campaign expert imported by the party from Australia, and Lord Saatchi, the Tory co-chairman. The issue is how the Conservatives should deploy their resources in the election. Should they play to win, spreading their money and people over all the seats that would be needed to achieve a majority (Saatchi) or accept that they can hope only for limited gains and so focus on a small number of constituencies (Crosby)? This is a no-brainer even for "don't get its". No party has enough resources to provide intensive support to more than a few seats. If the electoral tide is sweeping the party towards victory (as it carried Labour in 1997) then there is no need to worry much about identifying the swing seats. However, things do not look quite so rosy for the Tories today. What they must ensure, as best they can, is that they gain some seats. If the party turned in a result this May similar to the last two elections, then its survival would be in doubt.

Most Tory strategists are baffled. Both anecdotal evidence (which they adore) and focus group testing (which they despise) tell them that their chosen mix of policies should be popular. Yet the polls show the party trailing.

One explanation is that the Conservatives are taking a risk that they cannot perceive. They are fighting in 2005 on the same platform as 2001. By returning to its familiar themes the party emphasises that the brand has not changed. Voters may receive the subliminal message that this is the same product they rejected at two previous elections. The public is not being given a reason to reassess the brand and switch allegiance. A pity, because it does indeed like some Tory policies.

That paradox is difficult to grasp. Not everybody gets it.