Courage is not enough for leadership; you need luck
There was an outstanding side to the Prime Minister’s speech closing the Conservative Party Conference: her courage. Everything was going wrong for her. A filthy cold was robbing her of her voice. A prankster got onto the platform to offer her a P45. Then the lettering began to fall from the slogan on the backdrop behind her. The whole affair began to look like a tragedy. She was physically almost unable to continue to the end – but she made it.
Leadership demands courage, but courage is not enough. It was Napoleon who said that he wanted his generals to be lucky. Another French phrase – “Les choses sont contre nous” – came to sum up the philosophy that the world is against us. Events in Manchester underlined the truth in those adages. Her problems of yesterday were not new. They sprang both from her personality and her political beliefs. She has relied far too much on advice from people lacking in both experience and ability. She has never heeded that great comment of Margaret Thatcher that “Every prime minister needs a Willie” – referring, of course, to Willie Whitelaw, who was her deputy prime minister, a master political fixer, devoid of political ambition, masterfully loyal and adept at crisis management.
The party’s situation now evokes memories of the plight of Ted Heath in the Seventies as he increasingly turned his back on the clear blue Conservatism of the “Selsdon Manifesto” and moved on to the middle ground, subsequently losing office and party leadership.
Back in those days Conservative members of parliament were older, more cohesive and shared more common experience outside Westminster, much of it in military service. But as the political skies darkened there were plenty of factions, dining clubs and groups of like-minded friends to search for consensus on what was to be done to save the Conservative Party from electoral oblivion. It was through just such a group that I came to know Airey Neave. Airey’s group’s unlikely but firm conclusion was that only Margaret Thatcher, the former education secretary, had the courage, skill and political convictions to lead the Conservative Party to victory over Wilson, Callaghan and the trades union barons who had brought down Heath.
Neave had no political ambition to lead the party himself, which gave him great strength, but he was a master plotter. I am sure that there are such groups at work in the House of Commons today, but I doubt if any of them have a man so clear-eyed and unselfish as Airey Neave to guide them. By their very nature, they are not under the control of the Prime Minister, but she does not lack weapons of her own, not least the power of patronage and perhaps most importantly today the chairmanship of the Conservative Party is in her gift.
Sadly her choice, Patrick Mcloughlin, despite being a very brave man who was a working miner during Scargill’s coal strike, is not the man for the job today, and all too much falls on to the shoulders of Gavin Williamson, her able Chief Whip.
The other key post now is outside Mrs May’s gift. It is the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee. That committee remains open only to all backbenchers. The present chairman, Graham Brady, is one of the best for many years and if the inner circle of the 1922 should conclude that the Prime Minister had lost the confidence of the parliamentary party, it would be he that would go to tell her that was so. Then it would be the 1922 that would organise the election, by all Conservative MPS, of the new leader.
Sadly, that process is no longer as clear cut as it was. Instead of the vote of the parliamentary party being final as it used to be, the names of two leading candidates are now put to the whole membership of the party nationally to make the final decision, with all the possibility of a new leader lacking the confidence of the parliamentary party.
Sad to say, the Tories are not yet in sight of the end of the woods, let alone out of it.