I don’t like the Tory Party’s braying toffs but what terrifies me is their Eurosceptics
TAGE Erlander governed Sweden as prime minister for an uninterrupted 23 years, from 1946 to 1969. In the late 1950s, then Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell inquired as to the secret of his electoral success. ‘Don’t ask me,’ replied Erlander. ‘Ask the opposition parties.’
David Cameron is no Tage Erlander: he will only have served a comparatively modest nine years as PM when, as is all but certain, he stands down in 2019. But they do have two things in common. First, Mr Cameron’s party is likely to remain in office for a very considerable period; second, he can largely thank the opposition parties for that.
Actually, the two men share something else. Although Erlander was a father of the modern Swedish social democracy so beloved by British Lefties, he was also an arch-pragmatist, both by practice and inclination. Even while expanding his country’s public sector, he cannily sought to create a ‘big tent’ politics by building up the armed forces and holding down income tax. Similarly, Mr Cameron’s government is one of the most pragmatic in British history. His favoured successor, George Osborne, is its key strategist.
At the Tory conference in Manchester this week, we see both the Conservative opportunity and the Conservative problem. The former was set out by the Prime Minister in an interview yesterday, in response to demands that he use the selfimmolation of Labour to shift Tory policy sharply to the Right. ‘That’s not why I decided to try and lead our party and become Prime Minister and everything else,’ he said. ‘That’s not what I spent the last ten years doing and that’s not what we’re going to do now.’
The party must use the current Parliament to show voters ‘we’re not a bunch of ideologues. We’ve got to 37 per cent [of the vote]. I want us to get to 43, 44. I want us to push on into winning over people that we haven’t previously won over on the basis that the alternatives are totally unrealistic and self- obsessed and have given up on representing the aspirations of ordinary people and that the Conservative Party are right there for you.’
That’s the opportunity. Now for the problem: in Manchester over the next few days, the Conservative Party will indeed be right there for us, in all its white-haired, Rotarytied, twinset awfulness, with an added dash of toothy, bug- eyed youth. You can be sure that whenever you see the PM or the Chancellor, they will be carefully surrounded by attractive young men and women from diverse ethnic backgrounds. It’s only when the camera pans back that reality comes into shot. It ain’t pretty.
The Tory conference remains packed with people who hold what we might call ‘firm views’ on issues such as immigration, Europe and gay marriage. They are as liberal on economics – ‘Just bloody well cut our taxes’ – as they are conservative on everything else. It remains an unappealing brew to most of those Mr Cameron would love to ‘win over’.
Loopy
It is perhaps unfair to single out the Tories in this way. Most parties – even, these days, the SNP – have a similar set-up: a pod of reasonable, civilised people at the top who understand the necessary rules of the game and moderate their behaviour accordingly, backed by a loopy army of voluntary activists and supporters who want to hang shoplifters/the rich/Tony Blair/the English (delete as applicable). The exceptions to this are Ukip, which was set up by nutters for nutters, and now, incredibly, Labour, which has been taken over by them.
In Brighton last week, the Trots, once deservedly banished to the fringes of Labour’s annual bash in the sun, carried themselves with a swagger, their beards glinting from that morning’s celebratory extra dose of Head and Shoulders: the party’s new ruling class. The moderates were exiled to peripheral bars and restaurants where they could be seen exchanging consoling hugs or staring at their shoes.
In Manchester, there is a feeling that the natural order of things has been restored: an overall majority, a plummy Tory in No 10, Labour once more howling at the Moon. The champagne sales always spike when the Conservatives heave into town – but even by those standards, this week will be a bumper one for Pol Roger.
I’ve arrived in this great city as a Centrist, moderate voter – the kind who still happily describes himself as a Blairite – who has wished my Labour friends a safe journey back to 1983 and is now pondering his future options. I know from many conversations I had in Brighton last week that I’m not a alone. There is much about Mr Cameron’s g government that I support.
His announcement yesterday of a new c contract for GPs that will require seven-day working is exactly the kind of challenge to vested interests that good government is a about; his education policy is bold, right and working; the philosophy behind his welfare reforms is admirable; his desire to intervene in Syria at a much earlier stage was, as events have shown us, bang on.
But then there’s the rest. Immigration, for example, which the Tories have horribly allowed to become a toxic, dehumanised issue driven by irrational public sentiment. There is also the baffling refusal to address the damaging impact that reform of tax credits will have on the poorest.
And, of course, there is Europe. An almighty scrap looms over the UK’s membership of the EU, which won’t be pleasant and will produce a nail-bitingly close result.
‘For the first time, I think we’re going to win,’ a Tory friend who favours Brexit told me last week. ‘It’s shifting.’
The audience in Manchester certainly contains a majority for leaving and there are plenty in the Cabinet who hold the same view. They hold it in the full knowledge Brexit would likely mean Scotland leaving the UK – and regard that as a price worth paying.
Let’s be clear: this is an extreme and reckless position. It would push pro-EU, Unionist Scots like me towards supporting independence; it would have grotesque consequences for Britain’s standing in the world; it would force the Prime Minister to resign; the newly empowered Tory Right would swing against the kind of pragmatism and incrementalism that has been championed by Mr Cameron.
This issue, more than any other, sits like a fat bullfrog in the path of Mr Cameron’s ambition to make the Tories a great Centrist force. That is a shame, because it is what Britain needs. Instead, we are stuck with a tired and outdated political party structure that offers little solace to those of us who are something other than batty.