The Green Shoots of a Conservative Revival? Stephen Ingle

1 The Green Shoots of a Conservative Revival? Stephen Ingle 2004 was a wilderness year, or so I claimed last year, and suggested that 2005, though it was likely to be an election year, offered little prospect of major change in the political climate or indeed of any excitement aroused even by the possibility of such a change.1 In short, from the party political perspective, another wilderness year. This safe prediction proved to be accurate and causes me to refl ect that Andrew Russell’s claim that the general election dominated the year is not one that I would support. It was, in fact, rather like Bunny Clubs of the 1960s, where nothing happened and nothing was supposed to happen. The election aroused little public excitement and, very soon after, it simply ceased to be a topic of conversation. A government that had generally lost the affection and trust of the people, including many of its own supporters, was returned to offi ce largely because, in the public perception, there was simply no viable alternative. Its majority, slashed by nearly 100, was still easily large enough in theory to allow it to complete any legislative programme that enjoyed general party support. On the other hand, this is not to suggest that because the election was almost a non-event for the citizen, the result was without interest to the student of politics. Stirrings in the party system I argued last year that a two-party system, to be effective, requires almost as a sine qua non two relatively charismatic party leaders leading two relatively united parties, and that history suggests that this requirement is met less often than we might suppose. Michael Howard came to the leadership of his party too late and with too much baggage. No one could have seriously entertained at any time before or during the election campaign the notion that he might lead his party to victory. The party’s strapline, ‘Are you thinking 1 2 Palgrave Review of British Politics 2005 what we’re thinking?’, far from offering a stirring call to arms to supporters and potential supporters, was generally considered mildly risible, and the focus of its campaign, on issues relating primarily to immigration and political asylum, was largely static and ineffectual. Nevertheless, the party gained some ground. Importantly, the haemorrhaging of votes to the Liberal Democrats was staunched for the fi rst time since 1992 and more generally the party won back seats in its traditional areas of strength. Indeed, the Conservatives won more votes in England than did Labour. It was taken for granted that Howard would resign and that a leadership contest would take place (though some hoped a change of leader might not necessitate an election). In retrospect, the way of Howard’s going and the campaign and election that eventuated were surprisingly unacrimonious. In fact, so successful was the process that we are inclined to forget that the whole exercise was fraught with the possibility of further acrimony and division, and indeed perhaps complete disintegration. As the contest got underway, few would have predicted the outcome. It was clear that the two ‘big beasts’ who stood, Kenneth Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind, were, whatever their merits, ruled out of serious contention. Clarke had been rejected because of his pro-European stance before. In 2005 he was the same man but older. Rifkind lacked the stature of Clarke and, having been led by one compromise candidate from the Thatcher administration, the party was not looking for a second. That left three candidates in serious contention: Liam Fox, who was seen as representing the party’s right wing; David Davis, the front-runner, who, though also of the right, commanded support from across the party; and the untried David Cameron, who was seen as a moderniser and champion of so-called compassionate conservatism. Not for the fi rst time, a battle for succession was to be initiated at Blackpool, at the annual conference (though in 2005 none took the opportunity of being photographed taking the waters as Quintin Hogg had done in 1963 – perhaps because, after all, he lost!). Most commentators assumed that Davis would take the contest beyond reasonable doubt with a powerful conference speech. In the event, his speech was lacklustre, pedestrian and unimaginative, and compared unfavourably with Cameron’s, which, though largely general in tone and even aphoristic, was delivered convincingly and without notes. One contrast between the two men, which seemed to give Davis a considerable advantage, was their background. Davis was raised by a single parent on a housing estate in one of the less salubrious parts of London: he owed his successes in life to hard work and character. Cameron, on the other hand, came from a wealthy background and was an Old Etonian; the kind of leader the Conservatives had eschewed since the inauguration of leadership elections. In his speech, Davis won applause for alluding to his background, but failed to make what he had to say convincingly relevant. Cameron, on the other hand, using a tactic that would have delighted Napoleon, used his apparent The Green Shoots of a Conservative Revival? 3 disadvantage in this respect to advantage: it really does not matter where we have come from, he said, all that really matters is where we are going. From this point, although the campaign seemed to go on interminably, Cameron’s position only strengthened. One issue alone was raised that might have derailed the Cameron bandwagon, an allegation that he had used drugs as a young man. He steadfastly refused to answer questions on this subject, saying that it was a private matter. Davis did not make this a direct campaign issue – indeed, given the nature of the campaign this would have been unwise to say the least – and though the media chose to focus on it, it did not seem to worry the party faithful unduly. The parliamentary party voted in October and fi rst Clarke and then Fox were eliminated, and Davis and Cameron went forward to the party at large, with the latter well in the lead. Nearly 200,000 members voted and the party declared this to be a turnout of 77 per cent, though with what confi dence we can only surmise. By any measure, though, the party had shrunk alarmingly since its hey-day in the 1950s. Nevertheless, by December the Conservative Party had a new leader and the eyes of the nation were fi xed upon him, especially during his fi rst dispatch-box encounter as leader with the Prime Minister. Just as Blair had showed himself able to raise his game when Michael Howard fi rst brought his forensic skills and direct, splenetic debating style to bear against him, so, once again, he performed masterfully. Perhaps more interesting, however, was the performance of the inexperienced Cameron. He began with an attack on what he called Punch and Judy politics, which nobody wanted, he said, least of all him. Cameron continued by offering his party’s support to the Prime Minister in pushing his education policies through the House, against his own backbenchers. Blair, he said, could be as radical as he wanted to be. It is worth analysing Cameron’s tactics in some detail. First he attacks adversarialism, knowing that the general public always expresses distaste for ‘yah-boo’ politics. Then, in the most robust adversarial fashion, he deftly seeks to exploit divisions in Labour about radical education reform. In his speech to the party conference, Blair had earlier declared that with respect to his previous controversial public sector reforms, he now found himself wishing he had been more radical not less. Cameron was offering Blair the opportunity to be as radical as he wanted, with Conservative support. So by appearing to be non-adversarial, Cameron was seeking to extract the maximum adversarial advantage. More daring yet was his approach to the third party. He openly appealed to Liberal Democrats to defect to the Conservatives to create a truly ‘liberal’ party that could defeat Labour. Nothing, surely, would more directly promote adversarial, Punch and Judy politics than the demise of the third party. Kennedy’s tetchy response did little to disguise the unease that Cameron’s vibrant leadership had caused the Liberal Democrats. In no time at all, informed sources within the party were airing their anxieties to the media concerning their own leader’s continuing low profi le. The public support that he got from his senior colleagues at the time was signifi cantly less than wholehearted. In short, Cameron’s impact 4 Palgrave Review of British Politics 2005 had been instant and dramatic. He spoke of himself as the man of the future and was confi dent that Blair would realise the signifi cance of this, for hadn’t he himself, once upon a time, been seen as the man of the future? As a post- script, by the end of the year the Conservatives had overtaken Labour in most opinion polls. More signifi cant for the longer term, perhaps, were the rather vague policy pronouncements that began to emerge from some of the senior members of Cameron’s inclusive Shadow Cabinet. The Conservatives would defend the interests of ordinary people against those of big business; they would act to lessen the gulf between the rich and the poor; they would ease the burden of legislation from the shoulders of everyone. That these policy preferences were pretty much mutually irreconcilable bothered them not a jot. As for their own party, it would strive to become more representative of the nation, in terms of class, gender and ethnicity.

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