Will The Tories Ever Learn?
Howard’s restatement of Thatcherism shows nothing has been learnt since 1997.
The honeymoon is well and truly over. If the Tories’ continued poor performance in the polls were not enough to give Michael Howard a headache, then their disastrous recent by-election results certainly will. The leader’s poor show in the debate concerning the Butler Report led to some personal criticism, but surely the roots of this are much deeper than one bad afternoon in the Commons. Up against a PM whose trust ratings are in freefall, is widely hated by both Left and Right and is regularly portrayed as a liar, it seems remarkable that the Tories are in no better shape than in 1997.
In the early days of the Blair government, Tory MPs, supporters and commentators could regularly be heard making optimistic noises about the party’s ability to bounce back. After 18 years, people had simply come to the conclusion that it was ‘time for a change’. Initially, it seemed there was a complacency that people would ‘see through’ Tony Blair and that people would return to the Tories in 2001 after their flirtation away from the natural party of government. I doubt many commentators on May 2nd 1997 would have predicted an almost identical result in 2001, let alone the present situation.
It seems as if Conservatives have been obsessed with the leadership question for an eternity, while rarely asking themselves the deeper questions concerning their malaise. Perhaps it is to be expected from a party that emphasises the action of individuals and seems adamant that ‘there is no such thing as society”. As New Labour strolled effortlessly towards their second victory, it was William Hague’s personality – in particular his alleged inability to communicate on television - that was blamed in Tory circles for the party’s inability to recover.
Following Hague’s resignation after the 2001 defeat, the party completely failed to show any improvement in the polls despite the government’s obvious unpopularity and again MPs decided all that was needed was another change at the top. The hapless IDS, another one supposedly plagued by a lack of charisma, was duly knifed in the back. Cue Michael Howard, everything Tories could want in a leader. Brilliant at the despatch box, media savvy and with impeccable Thatcherite credentials earned in his many years serving at the highest levels of government, here was an individual of sufficient authority to restore the party to its rightful place. From the early euphoria that greeted his anointment, parliamentary observers could be forgiven for thinking a return to government was imminent.
Yet as Howard approaches the end of his first year, the Conservatives have made no headway whatsoever. As New Labour and Blair in particular flounder in a sea of controversy over the war in Iraq and tuition fees, the Tories are in no better state in the polls than a year ago and have finished a very embarrassing third place in 2 recent by-elections, both notable for the collapse in the Labour vote. The question is will the party now finally move beyond the largely superficial issues of personality and concentrate on the real reason behind its collapse, Thatcherism.
Without question, personality matters. Without a leader who retains public credibility it is impossible for a party to transmit its message, its ideas and policy. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Thatcherism was the strength and extraordinary ability of that particular leader to force through radical and controversial policies that lesser individuals would have been unable to. But voting behaviour and political affiliation are far more complex than mere popularity contests. If popularity was everything, then why did Winston Churchill receive such a battering in 1945? The reality is that policy and its effects play a huge role, along with events and leadership qualities, in defining both government and opposition. Though the minute details may be of interest to only a small minority, policy can serve to give the party a ‘brand’ that the wider public can relate to.
In their despair and confusion, the one thing the current generation of Tories never seemed to have doubted, is the strength of their Thatcherite policies and rhetoric. Most of them cut their political teeth in the 1980s when Thatcher was winning landslides and seem to have developed an arrogant certainty about their views as a result. The reality is that the 1997 election result was primarily a case of the voters wanting to kick out a government that they saw as nasty, incompetent and corrupt. 18 years of Thatcherism had completely rebranded the Conservative Party from its traditional, one-nation predecessor and, by 1997, the brand had gone badly out of fashion.
Of course Blair and his rebranding of the Labour Party helped the cause but it is a very one-sided view of recent political history that overestimates its effect. The Blair thesis falls down on the fact that Labour’s dominance in the polls pre-dates his becoming leader. Few people doubt that John Smith would have become PM had he lived. Opinion polls show clearly that the Tories fell to earth on Black Wednesday and became entrenched during the rail privatisation and sleaze years. Their opponents successfully rebranded them as a corrupt, self-serving bunch keen on lecturing the public on moral standards that they were completely incapable of living up to. Hated policies like the poll tax had come to define the party in many Britons’ eyes. Whats more, years of party conference jibes against the poor (single mothers in particular) , gays and their lack of concern about the rise in homelessness, unemployment and poverty under Thatcher all now combined to rebrand the Tories as the ‘nasty party’ as even Theresa May later admitted.
More importantly the tried and trusted attacks on Labour no longer seemed relevant. How could a party that had presided over Black Wednesday, two recessions and over 3m unemployed lay a claim to economic competence? Equally, where Blair and his ‘New’ Labour allies were important to the Tory demise was in gradually removing the obstacles to voting Labour.
Its very tempting to read too much into election results. When a party wins, it doesn’t necessarily imply that the public agree with everything or even most of what it says and does.- as we see at present with a deeply unpopular government and leader continuing to dominate the polls. Likewise, because a party is thumped, it doesn’t necessarily mean the electorate would disagree with all of their ideas. Its more that certain deeply unpopular issues contrive to dominate that party’s image. To an extent, many people are voting for a party they feel ‘safe’ with, or even for the lesser of two evils.
During Labour’s long period of opposition, 3 factors in particular sent millions of voters into the arms of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Firstly, the record of the previous Callaghan Labour government, especially with its relationship to the trade unions and the Winter Of Discontent. This last event ingrained such a sense of gross incompetence into the party’s image that the Tories were still exploiting it in the 1992 campaign and even tried in vain in 1997 to resurrect the sceptre of the dead being left unburied. Secondly, there was Labour’s relationship with CND and the hard-Left. In the middle of the Cold War, with many sensing a genuine threat of nuclear war, Labour’s pacifism was a disastrous electoral strategy. And finally of course, there was the widespread unpopularity of its leaders, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.
Yet even despite these massive electoral handicaps and the suicidal split in the anti-Tory vote between Labour and the Alliance, somehow Labour managed to build massive leads in between 1980s elections before eventually losing, such was the controversy surrounding many of Thatcher’s policies. In fact in-depth polls show Labour was perceived better on a range of issues throughout the 1980s. According to MORI, at no point since 1980 have the Tories been perceived to have better policies on employment. Indeed since the early 1990s, Labour have maintained a lead of at least 20% and up to 40%. On health the polls tell a similar story with Labour’s lead hardly ever dipping below double-digits and topping 50% on occasion. Though education was split more or less 50/50 in the 1980s, throughout the 1990s Labour have built up a similar massive lead. Reading the polls it is quite clear that the phenomenal success of Thatcher and Major owed much to their party’s favourable reputation for defence, economic competence and maintaining law and order. Even here the experience of 2 recessions and a doubling in crime led to the Tories’ ratings declining badly.
So when Labour approached the 1997 election with their usual big lead, they were determined to learn from past mistakes and subsequently New Labour was as far removed as possible from the Labour Party of 1983 that the CND-supporting Tony Blair had once been a member of. In the first instance it worked as voters gambled that Labour could be trusted on the economy and defence but it was in government that Labour managed to truly redraw voting lines. The way New Labour has governed has assured that nobody confuses it with its predecessor. Gordon Brown’s ‘prudent’ economic stewardship means Labour now has roughly a 20% lead over the Tories on economic competence (where it once trailed by 20) while surely there is no living soul that thinks Blair is a pacifist!
Yet, incredibly, the Tories seem to have learned nothing. Barring some half-baked gestures to show a more tolerant approach towards gays and ethnic minorities, the present policy agenda could have been written in 1979! Despite all the evidence pointing to the popularity of the NHS (or at least the concept), Howard is threatening to take money out of the NHS to give to consumers for use in the private sector. Just as Blair is in serious trouble with his own party for imposing quasi-Thatcherite health reforms, Howard comes up with an even more right-wing idea! Ditto schools where the same logic is used to give schools ‘freedom’, just as William Hague offered them in 2001. So far it has been easy for Labour and the Lib Dems to portray these measures as designed to favour the rich and run down public services for the poor. Whether fair or not, it serves to reinforce the Tories’‘nasty’ image.
The truth is most people are not particularly interested in who owns public services rather than the quality and consistency of service. When 94% of children are sent to state-owned schools, who exactly is the semi-privatisation of education aimed at? What seems certain is that these messages will make no headway whatsoever for the party in Scotland, Wales, the north of England and the major urban areas. 18 years of what Thatcher’s former minister Lord Gilmour has called “One-Nation in the South-East Conservatism” has reduced the party’s support to middle-class suburbia and the shires.
There’s also a huge lesson in all of this for New Labour. Their obsession with distancing itself from ‘Old’ Labour has dominated so much of its rhetoric and policy that it has alienated its own supporters and many of the moderates that brought it to power. As the 2 main parties flounder whilst revisiting the politics of the 1980s, the Lib Dems are consistently picking up support, almost by default. The British electorate has traditionally backed parties characterised for their competence and moderation. It is the main reason the 20th Century was dominated by One-Nation Conservatism and also why Blair chose to ape it. If the Conservative Party has any intention on repairing its public standing then it is time for the Tories to put Thatcherism to bed and finally begin to develop a coherent alternative to this deeply unpopular government.
The honeymoon is well and truly over. If the Tories’ continued poor performance in the polls were not enough to give Michael Howard a headache, then their disastrous recent by-election results certainly will. The leader’s poor show in the debate concerning the Butler Report led to some personal criticism, but surely the roots of this are much deeper than one bad afternoon in the Commons. Up against a PM whose trust ratings are in freefall, is widely hated by both Left and Right and is regularly portrayed as a liar, it seems remarkable that the Tories are in no better shape than in 1997.
In the early days of the Blair government, Tory MPs, supporters and commentators could regularly be heard making optimistic noises about the party’s ability to bounce back. After 18 years, people had simply come to the conclusion that it was ‘time for a change’. Initially, it seemed there was a complacency that people would ‘see through’ Tony Blair and that people would return to the Tories in 2001 after their flirtation away from the natural party of government. I doubt many commentators on May 2nd 1997 would have predicted an almost identical result in 2001, let alone the present situation.
It seems as if Conservatives have been obsessed with the leadership question for an eternity, while rarely asking themselves the deeper questions concerning their malaise. Perhaps it is to be expected from a party that emphasises the action of individuals and seems adamant that ‘there is no such thing as society”. As New Labour strolled effortlessly towards their second victory, it was William Hague’s personality – in particular his alleged inability to communicate on television - that was blamed in Tory circles for the party’s inability to recover.
Following Hague’s resignation after the 2001 defeat, the party completely failed to show any improvement in the polls despite the government’s obvious unpopularity and again MPs decided all that was needed was another change at the top. The hapless IDS, another one supposedly plagued by a lack of charisma, was duly knifed in the back. Cue Michael Howard, everything Tories could want in a leader. Brilliant at the despatch box, media savvy and with impeccable Thatcherite credentials earned in his many years serving at the highest levels of government, here was an individual of sufficient authority to restore the party to its rightful place. From the early euphoria that greeted his anointment, parliamentary observers could be forgiven for thinking a return to government was imminent.
Yet as Howard approaches the end of his first year, the Conservatives have made no headway whatsoever. As New Labour and Blair in particular flounder in a sea of controversy over the war in Iraq and tuition fees, the Tories are in no better state in the polls than a year ago and have finished a very embarrassing third place in 2 recent by-elections, both notable for the collapse in the Labour vote. The question is will the party now finally move beyond the largely superficial issues of personality and concentrate on the real reason behind its collapse, Thatcherism.
Without question, personality matters. Without a leader who retains public credibility it is impossible for a party to transmit its message, its ideas and policy. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Thatcherism was the strength and extraordinary ability of that particular leader to force through radical and controversial policies that lesser individuals would have been unable to. But voting behaviour and political affiliation are far more complex than mere popularity contests. If popularity was everything, then why did Winston Churchill receive such a battering in 1945? The reality is that policy and its effects play a huge role, along with events and leadership qualities, in defining both government and opposition. Though the minute details may be of interest to only a small minority, policy can serve to give the party a ‘brand’ that the wider public can relate to.
In their despair and confusion, the one thing the current generation of Tories never seemed to have doubted, is the strength of their Thatcherite policies and rhetoric. Most of them cut their political teeth in the 1980s when Thatcher was winning landslides and seem to have developed an arrogant certainty about their views as a result. The reality is that the 1997 election result was primarily a case of the voters wanting to kick out a government that they saw as nasty, incompetent and corrupt. 18 years of Thatcherism had completely rebranded the Conservative Party from its traditional, one-nation predecessor and, by 1997, the brand had gone badly out of fashion.
Of course Blair and his rebranding of the Labour Party helped the cause but it is a very one-sided view of recent political history that overestimates its effect. The Blair thesis falls down on the fact that Labour’s dominance in the polls pre-dates his becoming leader. Few people doubt that John Smith would have become PM had he lived. Opinion polls show clearly that the Tories fell to earth on Black Wednesday and became entrenched during the rail privatisation and sleaze years. Their opponents successfully rebranded them as a corrupt, self-serving bunch keen on lecturing the public on moral standards that they were completely incapable of living up to. Hated policies like the poll tax had come to define the party in many Britons’ eyes. Whats more, years of party conference jibes against the poor (single mothers in particular) , gays and their lack of concern about the rise in homelessness, unemployment and poverty under Thatcher all now combined to rebrand the Tories as the ‘nasty party’ as even Theresa May later admitted.
More importantly the tried and trusted attacks on Labour no longer seemed relevant. How could a party that had presided over Black Wednesday, two recessions and over 3m unemployed lay a claim to economic competence? Equally, where Blair and his ‘New’ Labour allies were important to the Tory demise was in gradually removing the obstacles to voting Labour.
Its very tempting to read too much into election results. When a party wins, it doesn’t necessarily imply that the public agree with everything or even most of what it says and does.- as we see at present with a deeply unpopular government and leader continuing to dominate the polls. Likewise, because a party is thumped, it doesn’t necessarily mean the electorate would disagree with all of their ideas. Its more that certain deeply unpopular issues contrive to dominate that party’s image. To an extent, many people are voting for a party they feel ‘safe’ with, or even for the lesser of two evils.
During Labour’s long period of opposition, 3 factors in particular sent millions of voters into the arms of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Firstly, the record of the previous Callaghan Labour government, especially with its relationship to the trade unions and the Winter Of Discontent. This last event ingrained such a sense of gross incompetence into the party’s image that the Tories were still exploiting it in the 1992 campaign and even tried in vain in 1997 to resurrect the sceptre of the dead being left unburied. Secondly, there was Labour’s relationship with CND and the hard-Left. In the middle of the Cold War, with many sensing a genuine threat of nuclear war, Labour’s pacifism was a disastrous electoral strategy. And finally of course, there was the widespread unpopularity of its leaders, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.
Yet even despite these massive electoral handicaps and the suicidal split in the anti-Tory vote between Labour and the Alliance, somehow Labour managed to build massive leads in between 1980s elections before eventually losing, such was the controversy surrounding many of Thatcher’s policies. In fact in-depth polls show Labour was perceived better on a range of issues throughout the 1980s. According to MORI, at no point since 1980 have the Tories been perceived to have better policies on employment. Indeed since the early 1990s, Labour have maintained a lead of at least 20% and up to 40%. On health the polls tell a similar story with Labour’s lead hardly ever dipping below double-digits and topping 50% on occasion. Though education was split more or less 50/50 in the 1980s, throughout the 1990s Labour have built up a similar massive lead. Reading the polls it is quite clear that the phenomenal success of Thatcher and Major owed much to their party’s favourable reputation for defence, economic competence and maintaining law and order. Even here the experience of 2 recessions and a doubling in crime led to the Tories’ ratings declining badly.
So when Labour approached the 1997 election with their usual big lead, they were determined to learn from past mistakes and subsequently New Labour was as far removed as possible from the Labour Party of 1983 that the CND-supporting Tony Blair had once been a member of. In the first instance it worked as voters gambled that Labour could be trusted on the economy and defence but it was in government that Labour managed to truly redraw voting lines. The way New Labour has governed has assured that nobody confuses it with its predecessor. Gordon Brown’s ‘prudent’ economic stewardship means Labour now has roughly a 20% lead over the Tories on economic competence (where it once trailed by 20) while surely there is no living soul that thinks Blair is a pacifist!
Yet, incredibly, the Tories seem to have learned nothing. Barring some half-baked gestures to show a more tolerant approach towards gays and ethnic minorities, the present policy agenda could have been written in 1979! Despite all the evidence pointing to the popularity of the NHS (or at least the concept), Howard is threatening to take money out of the NHS to give to consumers for use in the private sector. Just as Blair is in serious trouble with his own party for imposing quasi-Thatcherite health reforms, Howard comes up with an even more right-wing idea! Ditto schools where the same logic is used to give schools ‘freedom’, just as William Hague offered them in 2001. So far it has been easy for Labour and the Lib Dems to portray these measures as designed to favour the rich and run down public services for the poor. Whether fair or not, it serves to reinforce the Tories’‘nasty’ image.
The truth is most people are not particularly interested in who owns public services rather than the quality and consistency of service. When 94% of children are sent to state-owned schools, who exactly is the semi-privatisation of education aimed at? What seems certain is that these messages will make no headway whatsoever for the party in Scotland, Wales, the north of England and the major urban areas. 18 years of what Thatcher’s former minister Lord Gilmour has called “One-Nation in the South-East Conservatism” has reduced the party’s support to middle-class suburbia and the shires.
There’s also a huge lesson in all of this for New Labour. Their obsession with distancing itself from ‘Old’ Labour has dominated so much of its rhetoric and policy that it has alienated its own supporters and many of the moderates that brought it to power. As the 2 main parties flounder whilst revisiting the politics of the 1980s, the Lib Dems are consistently picking up support, almost by default. The British electorate has traditionally backed parties characterised for their competence and moderation. It is the main reason the 20th Century was dominated by One-Nation Conservatism and also why Blair chose to ape it. If the Conservative Party has any intention on repairing its public standing then it is time for the Tories to put Thatcherism to bed and finally begin to develop a coherent alternative to this deeply unpopular government.
posted by Paul Krishnamurty at 3:28 PM
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