The Tories have lost the art of communication

It was reported on Saturday that there are 23,000 jihadis in Britain. Of these, 3,000 are thought to pose a current threat. Ben Wallace, the security minister, gave out these official figures to show how difficult the task for the security services is. But the numbers may also prompt voters to demand much more be done. Otherwise, we are creeping towards “an acceptable level of violence”, as in the Northern Irish troubles.

At the height of IRA terrorism, the comparable figure of those posing a current threat was less than 400, with fewer than 50 on the British mainland. So while 3,000 is a tiny proportion of British Muslims, it is an historically enormous number of deadly foes to have within one’s borders.

When, as I still believe will happen, the Conservatives win this election, they must sort out how they present themselves to the world for the next five years. The campaign has revealed they are doing it wrong.

You can always raise a cheer by attacking “spin”, but no modern government can succeed without being highly professional in the management of its messages. The only British governments which dominated the media in the past 40 years were Margaret Thatcher’s and Tony Blair’s (both declining, inevitably, in their third terms). It is no coincidence that their communications chiefs – Bernard Ingham (for her) and Alastair Campbell (for him) – were, in their very different ways, geniuses. Both had a preternatural ability to encapsulate the mission in headline style, and tell the leader frankly when she/he was making mistakes.

Both leaders also had a few senior Cabinet colleagues – Geoffrey Howe as Chancellor, Norman Tebbit, Nigel Lawson; Gordon Brown, David Blunkett, even the ghastly John Prescott – who could dominate the airwaves in their own right. The recent long-term care U-turn and the Manchester bombing reaction have painfully exposed the lack of such people in Mrs May’s team.

I’m afraid I cannot even remember the name of her communications chief. Sir Lynton Crosby, who runs the campaign itself, is a master of the simple message endlessly repeated, but is not a permanent feature of the Tory kitchen, so he has to cook with ingredients inadequately prepared by others. As for her senior political colleagues, Mrs May emanates a sense that she wants to see the back of her two most senior ministers – Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond. So their talents – merry combat in Boris’s case, sober realism in Mr Hammond’s – have been neglected.

Mrs May’s closest adviser, Nick Timothy, is a very able man, but her obsession with holding everything so close means he is shockingly overworked. Last week, both on the doorsteps and at the top, party workers were asking “What are we supposed to be doing?”, and weren’t getting an answer.

There is always a wobble in the middle of any Tory campaign. Usually it shocks the party into getting it right. My guess is that the same applies this time. But Mrs May urgently needs to see communication as an essential, daily function of government. At present, she seems to regard it as rare and unpleasant, like going to the dentist.

In these glorious late May days, I have gone for several country walks. On one of them, I heard church bells. Although a few complain because they can be noisy next to your window, most would surely agree that there are few more benign sounds made by man. Even for wholly nonreligious people, they speak of our country’s history and of peace to all.

I couldn’t help comparing them with the Muslim call to prayer. This too is an invitation to worship the one God, but its connotations, particularly when electronically amplified (which church bells aren’t), are quite different. It starts by declaring “Allahu akbar [God is the greatest]”, which is what Islamist terrorists often shout as they attack. Despite the good intentions of 99.9 per cent of those who follow that call, the sound is linked in our ears with unsought extremism and violence. How on earth can that change?

The civil case for alleged child abuse against the late Lord Janner has collapsed. After the disclosure of Leicester council social services files revealed nothing against Lord Janner and quite a lot about some of those who were complaining, the claimants have withdrawn. Lawyers who fish in these waters often urge their clients to fight because the people they are suing will want to settle out of court. Congratulations to the Janner family for facing down the threats of the solicitors, Slater and Gordon, and defending their father’s good name.

Two questions arise. The first is “Why is the Janner case still a strand of the Jay inquiry into historical child abuse?” No evidence against him has stood up, and he – like Field Marshal Lord Bramall and the late Lord Brittan and Sir Edward Heath – was a victim of the discredited fantasist “Nick”.

The second is why, when everyone is worried about the shortage of police officers, are so many still pursuing uncritically accepted sex-abuse allegations (often against people who are dead, and therefore beyond the criminal law). When the police searched the flat of Lord Janner, by then senile, they sent 16 officers. Wouldn’t watching out for terrorists be a better use of their skills?

“I became more humble the longer I was in office”: Barack Obama in Saturday’s Guardian. Next week: “Why I am the most modest person I know.”