Slap in the face

All those panicking Tories are right. The PM does need to do something drastic. She needs to give her whole terrified party a...

WHATEVER happens at this week’ s Conservative Party Conference, it’s safe to say there will be no Acid Mayism – the equivalent of the Acid Corbynism seminar and rave event at the Labour gathering.

While Jeremy Corbyn toured the bars and nightclubs of Brighton, basking in the idolatry of his young admirers, the Prime Minister is reverting stubbornly to type. ‘She’ll be spending Saturday night having a quiet dinner in her room with Philip,’ an adviser informed me. ‘ She wants a bit of calm before the storm.’

The storm is definitely coming. Less than four months ago, the Tories marched confidently into the General Election behind the slogan ‘strong and stable’. This morning they are wetting themselves.

Corbyn has got into their heads. The spectacle of the massed ranks of socialist White Walkers marching along the seafront has paralysed them. Panic is in the air.

When I asked one normally phlegmatic Minister what May needed to do in her speech, his response was almost pleading. ‘ Don’t say, “I’m getting on with the job,” ’ he begged. ‘That won’t be enough!’

Everywhere you look, the heirs of Churchill and Thatcher are doing their best impression of Corporal Jones. This has to be the week Mrs May completely reforms capitalism, some insist.

Rubbish, others say. She has to stop apologising for capitalism, and start defending it. She has to put rocket-boosters on t he Cameron reform agenda. She has to return to basic Tory principles. No, forget all that, she has to arrive on stage on a unicycle, while shaking a set of maracas and singing God Save The Queen.

The Prime Minister does not need to do any of those things. What she does need to do is give her party a firm slap around the face, and tell it to get a grip.

If there were a General Election tomorrow, the Conservatives would lose. But there is not going to be an Election tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Or next year. Or the year after that. Or any year before 2022, unless they want one.

So one of her priorities is to make her party realise time is their friend. The energy, enthusiasm – and borderline hysteria – of Brighton was real. But it is also unsustainable. Labour MPs and activists are already tiring of being on a ‘permanent Election footing’. As, I suspect, are voters being subjected to the spectacle of a victory rally from a party they just rejected at the ballot box.

I’m told Mrs May is planning to acknowledge her own failings in the Election, but will also remind her conference that they received their highest vote share since 1983. This will not please those hoping for a prolonged period of self-flagellation. But it will represent an important corrective.

One of the problems with the post-Election analysis is that it is being constructed around a narrative that states everything Labour did in June was stunningly successful, while everything the Tories did was a monumental catastrophe. If that were the case, Mr Corbyn would currently be sitting in Downing Street, and Mrs May would be sitting in a Swiss chalet working on her memoirs.

‘It’s clear our attacks on Corbyn didn’t work,’ one Minister told me last week. Wrong. They did work. Despite the hype, Labour’s Achilles heel remains its leader. His personal ratings lag behind his party, and below those of Mrs May on most key leadership attributes. Yes, the critique of him needs to be refined beyond ‘he once had a Guinness with Gerry Adams’. But given the anti-Semitism, sexism and harassment on display at Brighton, there is plenty of fresh ammunition.

ANOTHER misapprehension is that Conservatism has been ideologically vanquished. ‘We have lost the argument,’ is the most popular phrase on the lips of Ministers, activists and commentators. But the problem isn’t that the Tories have lost the argument, it’s that they haven’t been making it in the first place.

The Election was framed as a referendum on Corbynism, rather than a choice between competing political visions. The post-Election period has involved navel-gazing, Brexit-gazing and self-indulgent leadership manoeuvring.

Mrs May will apparently use her address on Wednesday to begin to fill this vacuum. We can expect populist announcements on tuition fees, transport and housing. And while there will be an acknowledgment of the need to make capitalism work for everyone, there will be less of a warmed-up Milibandism feel to her economic offer. ‘Our anti-business rhetoric has been creating a safe space for Corbynism,’ one Minister complained.

All of which will disappoint those hoping for a dynamic and radical recasting of the Tory message. And the Prime Minister is right to disappoint them.

At some point between now and 2022, Conservatism will have to reinvent itself. But this is not the week to begin that journey – nor is Mrs May the person to lead it.

Political renewal has to be accompanied by a flash of lightning and crack of thunder. As the Election proved, such showmanship is beyond her. So for now, her party must have the patience to let her play to her strengths. A commitment to ‘a balanced approach’ and ‘fairness’ – both of which will feature heavily in Mrs May’s speech – will not generate many choruses of ‘Oh, Theresa May!’ But it will help edge the Tories hesitantly towards the political centre-ground – the real political centre, as opposed to the Venezuelan wasteland identified by Corbyn in his own rambling, Castro-type address.

There are no shortcuts to salvation for the Conservatives. Their job this week is not to seek out the magic phrase or earth-shattering policy announcement that will transform their fortunes. It is to regroup and unify. And if Boris Johnson can be persuaded to leave his ego at home, to demonstrate to the public they are not turning into a self-serving rabble.

Strength and stability is what Mrs May needs to communicate.

I wonder why no one thought of it before.