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Tory Party re-branding comedy
AS A POLITICAL force Britain’s Tory Party has rarely been
weaker. Consistently well below New Labour in the opinion polls, recently the
main role the Tories have been playing is as a comedy sideshow in the media,
distracting attention from the real political debates in Britain.
Can the Tories recover? The ‘modernisers’, with whom
Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith appeared to side at their recent conference, are
looking for a ‘defining issue’ they can use to stake their claim to the
party in the same way as Blair did when he won the battle to delete the Labour
Party’s socialist clause four from its constitution.
But in fact this search shows how little even the more
far-sighted and flexible Tories understand the roots of their own crisis. Blair
fought successfully to complete the transformation of Labour into a centre-right
party representing the interests of big business. The scrapping of clause four
was a powerful symbol of the huge ideological shift between Labour and ‘New
Labour’.
There is no major ideological difference, however, between
the different wings of the Tory Party. The arguments between the ‘modernisers’
and the ‘traditionalists’ are a struggle between pragmatic and cynical
career politicians who will do or say anything to get back into power, and the
unwillingness of many Tory activists and MPs to give up their pet prejudices in
order to do so.
There is no substantial ideological difference between the
Tory Party and New Labour either. New Labour’s success in stealing and
re-packaging Thatcherism is the real root cause of the Tories’ crisis. The
unpleasant truth for the Tories is that New Labour is much better at
implementing the Tories’ policies than the Tory Party themselves.
This situation has created the current crisis in the Tory
Party. Membership is down from 1.5 million in 1975 to around 300,000 today. The
average age of Tory Party members is 67 (two thirds of Tory Party member are
retired) and half the membership think that the party has no clear direction,
according to a recent survey (The Guardian, 7 October). Last year the Tories
attracted their lowest vote for decades (8.4 million). There is a clear prospect
that Iain Duncan Smith could be challenged as party leader if the Tories lose
more than 100 council seats in the local elections next May.
At the recent Tory Party conference, Duncan Smith and
members of the Tory shadow cabinet unveiled their plan for a new ‘compassionate
Conservatism’. Oliver Letwin, shadow home secretary, attacked his Labour
counter-part David Blunkett for "giving ground to the extremists" and
"fanning the flames" of far-right politicians with his stance on
asylum: "he is playing with fire… how do you explain the fact that at the
last election we [the Tories] had the strongest language on asylum in this
generation and very strong language on Europe and we were annihilated".
Letwin added: "We are not going to talk that way. We are not going to
demonise asylum-seekers" (The Guardian, 10 October).
David Willetts, Tory shadow secretary for work and pensions,
announced that "we are concentrating our attention on how we can best help
vulnerable people… the Tory war on lone parents is over… too often [lone
parents] are struggling in a hostile environment. When they are not being
ignored, they are being blamed" (Financial Times, 10 October). At the same
time, though, he threw a crust to the Tory old guard by emphasising that he
thought the evidence that children did better when brought up by their two
parents in a stable marriage was ‘overwhelming’.
Ironically, while Duncan Smith and his shadow cabinet were
trying to establish their new credentials as campaigners for social justice, the
Tory leader was also pledging to continue the ‘unfinished Thatcher revolution’
that consistently attacked single parents, asylum-seekers, the welfare state and
everything else that the Tories now ‘care’ about so deeply.
The Tory leader is desperately trying to hold his party
together. The ‘modernisers’ hope to achieve a symbolic sacrifice – whether
this is the feverishly-discussed idea of expelling the former Thatcher cabinet
member, Norman Tebbit, or disciplinary action against a slightly lower-profile
Tory supporter (such as Jim Davidson, the ‘comedian’, who joked at a Tory
fund-raising dinner that he hoped the East European waiters had not had too far
to walk from the Channel tunnel). But this type of ‘defining issue’, while
it wouldn’t have the impact of the scrapping of clause four, would risk a
split in the Tory Party. If the ‘modernisers’ – the ones prepared to say
anything to get closer to power – are to succeed in their attempts to ‘re-brand’
then a split may be necessary. But at the moment they still appear to be
clinging to the idea that they can recreate the Tory Party of the past and this
ties them to the ‘traditionalists’.
The core Tory vote is still solid, which gives them an
advantage in the increasing number of elections where turnout is low. This was
the secret of their ‘successes’ in the 1999 Euro elections and again in this
year’s local elections, when they recorded a higher national share of the vote
than the Labour Party.
In some areas Tory candidates have got good election results
by rejecting traditional Tory ideas and running an unashamedly populist
campaign, like Stephen Norris in the 2000 election for the London mayor. His
campaign openly criticised ‘party politics’, cashing in on the cynicism
towards the main three parties, praised the multicultural nature of London, and
supported gay rights. In the current fragmented political scene, where
traditional voter allegiances are breaking down, this type of campaign can gain
an echo.
The Tories have shown some glimmers of a new populist
approach that could tap some of the discontent against New Labour. Their attack
on Labour’s proposal to limit council tenants’ ‘right to buy’ their
homes in London and the South East, for example, were effectively done. Labour,
who have been forcing through the selling off of remaining council housing
stocks to housing associations and trying to introduce ‘market rents’ into
social housing have suddenly found a form of privatisation they oppose: one
where working class people can buy their homes at affordable prices, instead of
public funds being used to subsidise the profits of private companies.
While the Tories’ plans (to open up the right to buy for
more housing association tenants) are not any kind of solution to the housing
crisis, these type of criticisms can strike a chord with a layer. The Tories
succeeded for a few moments in posing as the champions of ordinary people in a
way that they haven’t managed for a long time.
Even anti-corporate rhetoric has made a brief appearance,
though tinged with nationalism. In an article in The Spectator John Hayes, Tory
shadow agriculture minister, attacked "soulless and rootless big businesses
[which] demonstrate little loyalty to local producers and only the minimum
necessary commitment to consumers. The ubiquity fostered by multinationals is an
aesthetic disaster" (12 October).
But is the Tory Party nationally capable of adapting into a
new populist opposition to New Labour? The chances are very slim. Most of the
Tory activists are too attached to their outdated world-view to connect to the
discontent many people feel under New Labour, particularly among younger voters
of whom only 18% are prepared to vote Tory.
Most of the 25 new policies unveiled with much fuss at Tory
Party conference are open attempts to subsidise the private sector in health and
education at the expense of public services. The idea of government ‘contributions’
towards the cost of private operations, for example, only serves as a reminder
of the Tories’ privatisation policies. The class hatred felt towards the
Tories is still an extremely strong obstacle to their recovery and these
policies won’t help.
There are two likely directions in which the Tory Party
could develop: the populist (socially liberal but economically pro-capitalist)
approach outlined above; or by moving further right and appealing to ‘Little
Englander’ nationalism, racism and other reactionary moods, competing with the
far-right for votes. But unless they split it will be virtually impossible for
one wing within the Tory Party to silence the other. Until the Tories resign
themselves to their reduced importance within the establishment in Britain and
split, the suppressed civil war within their party is likely to continue to tear
them to bits in public.
Naomi Byron
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