Election reports:
Trusted Conservative aides are in ‘lockdown’ to create a manifesto aimed at winning over Labour heartlands, but Cabinet ministers and MPs are left out of the loop
SEEN through television screens, the election campaign at times looked more like a coronation this week as Theresa May toured Labour heartlands poised to turn blue.
From rallies in South Wales to speeches in Scotland, the Prime Minister has shown the scale of her ambition to win the biggest Tory majority since the days of Margaret Thatcher.
Yet away from the cameras in Westminster, a battle just as significant has been playing out – one for the soul of the Conservative Party.
The Prime Minister’s closest aides have been in “bunker mode” creating an election manifesto they hope will finally define “Mayism” for voters.
What they decide will become the blueprint for how the country is governed for the next five years, if the polls are to be believed. They have just days left to choose.
A tiny group of trusted aides has been put in charge. John Godfrey, a former executive at financiers Legal & General, is leading government ministers in his role as Mrs May’s director of policy.
Ben Gummer, the Cabinet Office minister, is helping liaise with departments, while George Freeman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s policy board, has collated MP submissions.
Overseeing the operation is Nick Timothy, one of Mrs May’s two chiefs of staff, who advised her at the Home Office and is known as “Theresa’s brain” by some.
Secrecy has become the watchword in recent days, with those familiar with discussions spooked when asked questions. “It is very much on lockdown. I can’t talk about it,” says one. “It is really, really sensitive,” adds another.
A Westminster source explained: “It creates plausible deniability. Not that many people know about it. Tory campaign headquarters has obviously been told to dampen down speculation and just to say, ‘When it’s released, it’s released.’” Even Cabinet ministers appear out of the loop. “I know what I’ve put into the mix, but I don’t know what’s going to come out of the other end,” admitted one.
Away from the slick campaign rallies and “strong and stable” sound bites, this is where the real Conservative action now lies.
The Prime Minister’s team is preparing the most interventionist Tory economic pitch to voters for at least 40 years – certainly since the days of Sir Edward Heath.
An energy price cap – compared to socialism by Tory critics when it was proposed by Ed Miliband – will form the heart of a retail pitch to those “just about managing”. A shareholder veto over executive salaries and a demand for companies to publish pay ratios are expected to be included, too.
Forcing property developers to use planning permission quicker could also get the nod – despite Boris Johnson likening a similar Labour policy to “Mugabe-style” land grabs.
No wonder Mr Miliband took to social media to express his exasperation this week, tweeting: “Marxist madness, anti-business, back to 70s...”
Mrs May is unrepentant. “People who are just managing – just getting by – don’t need a government that will get out of the way,” she wrote in this newspaper in January.
“They need an active government that will step up and champion the things that matter to them.”
But are her backbenchers on board? A host of policies submitted to Number 10 for the manifesto this week struck a markedly different tone.
One would see trade unions banned from striking on “critical infrastructure” without High Court judge approval – an idea Mrs May blocked during the Southern Rail debacle.
Another would give people the legal right to have superfast broadband of up to 30mps – far higher than 10mps promised in 2015.
Limiting overseas investors from buying UK properties and reforming stamp duty are all suggestions – direct pitches to the Tory grassroots.
Yet Tory MPs who have submitted the ideas hold out little hope that they will make the cut, feeling their pitch to the middle classes is out of step with the focus on Labour heartlands.
As one Treasury figure said about concerns a row over tax rises might trigger a backlash from the party faithful: “Who else are these people going to vote for?”
Speculation that the capital gains tax exemption on family houses could be scrapped will not have calmed nerves, though Number 10 has moved to shut down the speculation.
Some Tories also disapprove of protecting the promise to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid.
However, offers from Mrs May on other manifesto areas – keeping pledges on defence spending and cutting immigration, lifting a ban on new grammar schools, and of course delivering Brexit – will help assuage many Tories.
But there is also another manifesto battle brewing – over the death of Cameron Conservatism. A bonfire of the exTory leader’s 2015 promises could be on the way. David Cameron and his closest ally George Osborne – both now ex-MPs less than two years after securing a shock Tory majority – shaped the last pitch in their own image.
Around 650 pledges, many ingenious ways of skewering political opponents, were made to the electorate. Yet recent government analysis suggests only around 80 have been achieved. “The thinking is that it will be like the 1979 manifesto – very short; tells a story; clear about the problems that will be solved,” said a senior Whitehall source. “It will be more thematic. It’s more of a philosophy; a prospectus. We need to seize this moment to be really honest about the scale of the challenge as well as the opportunities.”
The 1979 manifesto, which propelled Thatcher into office and kick-started 18 years of Tory rule, was just 32 pages and 8,696 words long. Mr Cameron’s was 84 pages and more than 30,000 words. So out will go the “tax lock”; a promise not to raise VAT, income tax and national insurance, according to backbench fears and cabinet minister indications.
The pensions “triple lock”, which guaranteed a 2.5 per cent annual increase whatever happened to wages and prices, may also be jettisoned.
Smaller pledges, from a promise to plant 11million trees to reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600, could also quietly be left behind.
A simple check of the polls explains the political rationale. With a doubledigit lead, the party is less pressed to make promises to secure votes.
The big reveal is not far away now. May 8 has been pencilled into the campaign’s “grid” as manifesto day, though it could slip to later that week.
A Labour heartlands location is being scouted, with “two or three” venues already in consideration, to issue a statement of intent.
That leaves little over a week to finalise the most important policy pitch Mrs May has ever made.
On offer is a historic victory that destroys Labour’s strongholds in the North and Wales; at risk, sowing the seeds of doubt in Tory shires currently besotted with their new leader. Just be sure to watch for what’s left out.