The Lib Dem tail is wagging the Tory dog – and the guts of the dog don’t like it
DAVID CAMERON appears to be enjoying a bright start to 2012. His Conservatives are riding high in the polls, his Government is seen to have won the economic argument, and the public overwhelmingly backs his welfare reforms.
Even the resignation of Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, and the spectre of a double-dip recession seem unlikely to stop the Prime Minister in his tracks.
But among the rank and file of his party there is growing anxiety that the Coalition is not delivering enough of a Conservative agenda.
Many of the party faithful understood that while the Tories were in opposition, it made strategic sense to move to the Left, flaunt his green credentials and even speak of “hugging a hoody”. To many activists, to have a leader who talked freely of gay marriages seemed only reasonable if it helped ditch the Tories’ “nasty party” image.
But after nearly two years of power – albeit in a coalition – these supporters wonder if this is an administration, and a prime minister, that is more yellow than blue.
The Sunday Telegraph has canvassed a cross-section of Conservative members in recent days – ranging from grandees to young activists and business backers to association chairmen.
While we found many supporters who believe the Prime Minister is doing a good job, there are many Conservative members who have increasing doubts about just how true blue he really is.
1. BUSINESSES BACKERS
LORD WOLFSON OF ASPLEY GUISE The chief executive of Next and a prominent Tory peer who donated personally to Mr Cameron’s leadership campaign THE TWO cases of Stephen Hester and Fred Goodwin, one after the other, show a willingness to pick on unpopular businessmen for political advantage. One of these men had done nothing wrong, which sets a slightly dangerous precedent.
Mr Hester was hung out to dry; this did much to undermine business’s confidence in Mr Cameron’s government and, more importantly, nothing to address the real issue of excessive risk-taking in the banking sector.
Previously, the only time someone was dishonoured was if they were convicted of a crime, which, for all his faults, Mr Goodwin was not.
He should not have received his knighthood in the first place, but [Mr Cameron’s] action smacks of an arbitrary and political shaming system. It lacks the measured reason you’d expect from a just and fair government.
To heap so much public humiliation upon just one individual seems rather cynical, an act more worthy of a school bully than a government. I am afraid, it’s an empty gesture designed to appease public anger – certainly not a serious attempt to tackle the interrelated issues of the excessive risk-taking and disproportionate rewards within the banking sector. HUGH OSMOND, The entrepreneur who founded Punch Taverns and floated Pizza Express and who has given substantial sums to the Conservatives FROM A business perspective, he is doing a hell of a lot better at managing the public finances than Labour, but Mr Cameron has underperformed expectations in my view.
He is being far too populist at bashing banks and bonuses. There’s no need for it.
There is not a general election for another three years. If he was more supportive of businesses, it would help the economy – and that would surely help him at the ballot box in the longer term.
I understand he can’t do more to cut taxes at the moment, but he still could have got rid of the 50 per cent top rate. It raises so little money.
He’s made the right noises about cutting health and safety rules and other regulations, but he’s not delivered so far, and he’s running out of time to do it.
He should have done more to keep Vince Cable under control at the Department for Business.
The man is an idiot. To be honest, I think George Osborne [the Chancellor] has done much better in power than Mr Cameron. LORD HARRIS OF PECKHAM The chairman of the retailer Carpetright. He donated to Mr Cameron’s 2005 leadership campaign I THINK it was completely wrong of Mr Cameron to make that judgment on [Stephen] Hester, though the pressure was piled on by Labour.
He was taken on to do the job; it was a bonus for doing that job well, which he did. So there’s no reason he shouldn’t keep it.
He would have received a million pound bonus, but £500,000 of that would have gone straight back to the taxpayer, so it was very shortsighted. I feel very, very sorry for him [Mr Hester]. The bank was lucky to get him onboard.
Mr Cameron does probably allow in too many Lib Dem policies, but it’s a coalition and concessions will be made. He faces more obstacles than previous Tory PMS.
If the Prime Minister thinks [Fred] Goodwin’s knighthood should be withdrawn, then there’s quite a lot of other people that should follow.
He did make mistakes but there’s quite a few others who have made mistakes as well. I thought it was the utterly wrong decision. SIR MARTIN SORRELL The chief executive of WPP, the advertising giant, who is also a donor to the Conservatives I ORGANISED an event at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos and Mr Cameron spoke to us. One of the attendees came up to me afterwards and said the Prime Minister should lead a reverse takeover of the European Union – he was that impressed
I am very supportive of the deficit reduction plan, but have two main worries.
The populism of bankerbashing and bonus bashing is not good for business. It may be political savvy and win votes, but it is not necessarily the same thing as what the business world wants to hear.
Does it discourage success? Should I be embarrassed about the fact that we’ve had a good year? The world needs more WPPS – not less.
The Prime Minister also needs to say more and do more on growth.
We did not get nearly enough on this in last year’s Autumn Statement on making the economy grow. He needs to set out more on his technology policy, tax policy and infrastructure spending. But he does feel like a Conservative prime minister and there is time to turn these things around.
2. ASSOCIATION CHAIRMAN
RICHARD PARRY Chairman of Sevenoaks Conservative Association in Kent I THINK Mr Cameron’s making quite a good fist of what was a very mixed – and somewhere between bad and truly awful – inheritance.
He hasn’t got everything right but he’s got most things right, and, of course, he doesn’t have a free hand because he has to compromise his ideals and principles to accommodate his partners in the coalition. I think he hasn’t truly gauged the mood of the British people and that there is, in the recent past, a tendency to play for the headlines – and I look at the bankers issue.
On HS2 [High Speed 2 rail link], I think that as an objective is a good objective. My quarrel with it is, is it the right thing to spend your money on at this time? There are other rail infrastructures which would show a much better return in my opinion.
I think his direction in improving the service and change in the ethos of the NHS is good, but I think at the moment the execution is not as good as it should be. KEITH MORRIS, Chairman of Dover and Deal Conservative Association in Kent MR CAMERON hasn’t moved away from the values he had at the time of the election, but he’s not giving us everything we would want to see as Conservatives.
The cutting of budget for the Armed Forces while increasing international aid are two policy decisions that do press a button with me.
I’m ex-military myself and I wouldn’t like the budget to be cut to a point where the Forces are denuded, and the overseas budget seems an odd thing to increase when waiting times [in NHS hospitals] are going up. He should be focusing on home first.
He has become more of a centrist, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The middle ground might be where the voters are now and so he has to try to reach them there.
I don’t agree that Fred the Shred’s knighthood should have been revoked. Deplorable as what happened may seem in hindsight, it was a different time then, with different regulations. I think there’s a little bit too much revisionism going on, and to remove his knighthood now seemed to be about appeasing public opinion rather than about anything real.
[Stephen] Hester’s bonus was also a terrible decision. If your remuneration is in an agreed package and you do well, and by almost all his targets he did have a good year, then he should get paid. I think Mr Cameron lost the lead on that, he shouldn’t have bowed to Labour pressure. MICHAEL ORTON-JONES Chairman of Northampton Central Conservatives Association THERE ARE and will be, I’m afraid, people in our party who won’t be happy with the course that Mr Cameron is steering.
There is certainly the feeling among Conservatives here that he is overindulging the Liberal Democrats, especially on issues like wind farms, where the economic case just does not stack up.
Here in Northamptonshire, we are close to the High Speed 2 rail route, and with that Mr Cameron seems to have upset half the county.
Coalitions are not easy – it is very hard to keep everyone happy. But, all in all, I think he is doing a good job. Perhaps, he’s being a bit too mean to poor Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, who appears to be having a very hard time. STEPHEN HARALDSEN Chairman of Copeland Conservative Association in Cumbria DAVID CAMERON was noticeably more quiet on Conservative issues at the start of the coalition. He has started to be a bit more vocal on these core issues like Europe lately and I think that is important.
The best thing he could do for this area would be to give firmer backing to nuclear energy, which his government has not done so far. Nuclear is important for us. Sellafield is on our doorstep and there are a lot of jobs that could be had for this industry.
So far, the Government has focused far more on solar, wind and other types of renewable energy. People don’t like wind farms at all here. 3. GRANDEES LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH A business turnaround specialist who was parachuted in by Labour to ensure the Millennium Dome opened on time. He advised the Conservatives on public sector reform while they were in opposition I DON’T think the issue is Mr Cameron being too liberal – it’s being too tabloid driven.
The Government is being too zealous at adopting a position from the newspapers and then sticking to it at all costs.
We saw a great deal of fuss in the papers about last year’s riots. As a result, we saw an overreaction in the sentences when those rioting came to court.
No good has come from that reaction at all.
We’ve seen that too with welfare reform – a policy that is popular in the newspapers and the Government feels it must drive through to the letter.
The Government would not have suffered the revolts in the Lords they did had they been prepared to gently tone down their ideas.
I also cannot understand his enthusiasm for fixed-term parliaments. That won’t end happily, I’m sure.
It’s like cricket. As the captain of the side, you need to have the right to declare your innings. And he should also cut the 50 per cent tax rate. It’s so illogical. He’d raise more money in tax if he cut it. LORD HURD Served as a minister under Baroness Thatcher and Sir John Major I WAS against removing Fred Goodwin’s knighthood. He made a catastrophic mistake, but he did not commit a crime.
The enthusiasm of this government for House of Lords reform is extraordinary to me: that they should want to spend the third year of their term immersed in this topic genuinely baffles me.
This is an issue of no interest to the majority of British people. They will lose in the Lords and may then have to drive it through with the Parliament Act. I cannot understand why they are pursuing this at a time like this.
I do think there is something very good and right about these two parties coming together in the nation’s interest.
There have been ups and downs, but I think Mr Cameron has done well to keep the coalition together. LORD HODGSON A former chairman of the National Union of Conservative Associations who has advised the Coalition on regulatory reform THE PRIME minister is doing pretty well. What we have here is a Government that is centre-right – significantly more to the centre than it would be if we were not in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
I suspect Mr Cameron is a natural centrist and it is possible that being in coalition has moved him further to the centre.
Those who crave a move to the Right, should remember what happened when the Conservatives did so during the late 1990s. It was clearly a mistake.
We are still in very, very choppy water. The storm may die down, but the best that the Government can hope to go into the next election is to effectively sell more drizzle to the electorate.
In such a situation, Tony Blair may have gone around trying to give the impression that everything was fine; it’s very important Mr Cameron is honest and straight with how bad the situation is. LORD TEBBIT Held a number of ministerial positions in Lady Thatcher’s government I recently moved to Bury St Edmunds. It’s a talkative town. People come up and talk to me in the supermarket about the issues that matter to them, like immigration, schools and employment.
Not a single person has come up to me and talked to
me about why we need closer integration with Europe, gay marriages or House of Lords reform. Mr Cameron’s initial position on vetoing the proposed treaty was correct – that the group of European countries who want to embark on closer integration should not be allowed to use the European institutions when doing so. He has now rowed back.
I fear the agenda Mr Cameron is leading us down in government is just not of interest to many of our members. No one in the current leadership appears to understand that if you move to the Left the middle ground moves to the Left too.
Charity begins at home. Can it be right that we give aid to the Indians when they can afford better aircraft carriers than us? I am worried by the loss of some of our military capabilities, such as maritime reconnaissance. We should not forget that the Battle of Britain was nearly lost due a shortage of pilots rather than aircraft.
There is no doubt that the Liberal Democrat tail is wagging the Conservative dog. And the guts of the dog don’t like it.
4. YOUNG ACTIVISTS
RABIA BHATTI
Just 20 when she became the Conservatives’ youngest female councillor in the country last year, in Chesham, Bucks I’D SAY the glass is half full – things can certainly be better. Mr Cameron is doing well, but more needs to be done to help the economy to grow and create jobs. I think Mr Cameron and his ministers should perhaps focus a little less on Europe and more on our country.
Most of all I urge David Cameron to reconsider the HS2 rail project. It was a bad Labour policy and one we should not be taking up. It is hugely expensive to our country. The economic and business case just does not stack up and it would also cause a great deal of disruption in this area.” Society WE DIDN’T expect everything because we were going into a coalition, but what is clear is that there are some things at the same time that a lot of us don’t agree with that he’s doing.
The constitutional stuff that he’s changing, elected police commissioners and reform of the House of Lords [are not] particularly popular with those in the party.
We’re not against the idea of elections. What we’re annoyed about is the fact that the [upper] chamber may be reformed so much that those people who actually don’t want to be involved in a certain party may find it a lot harder to get elected. And this idea of a 15-year term is unbelievable.
The idea of police commissioners is another silly idea. Those who actually might be popular may not be the best candidates for that job. Possibly, it works in America but in the UK we do base our police force on ability rather than popularity and I think it should remain that way.
He is holding by his values and he showed with the AV referendum last year that he is willing to take a risk and then still get on with the job. I think we’ve got to be very proud of what we’re doing.
PETER KNIBBS,
Aged 26, the chairman of Somerset Conservative Future I TOTALLY understand the point that if we are to branch out and actually get an overall majority, we do need to appeal to people who wouldn’t be natural Tory voters in the ordinary sense.
I think he could have done more for employment regula- tions, cutting them down far more drastically.
He could also have done more on tax. I know it’s very tough trying to balance the budget and clear the deficit, but I think tax cuts could have come with more spending cuts in the welfare depart- ment. I think in Europe he’s done the best he can because at the end of the day we know what the Liberal Democrats are like – we’ve got two polar opposites on Europe there.
I think we could also have been much tougher on crime, particularly since the riots.
BEN HOWLETT,
Aged 25, the national chairman of Conservative Future (CF) I THINK Mr Cameron is in a pretty difficult situation at the moment because he’s the first prime minister in generations to see [himself] in a sovereign debt crisis.
The last time that happened on this scale was back in the 1920s.
What a lot of us are thinking, and me as the national CF chairman, is that we would like to get back to the nitty gritty of getting on with some really radical policy work that was set out in the manifesto and some of which was put in the Coalition agreement.
There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be pushed out – more so than in the recent weeks – but that’s not because we’re ignoring it but the fact that other events have taken a bit more precedence. Additional Reporting: Edward Malnick and Josie Ensor MATTHEW D’ANCONA: PAGE 24
JANETDALEY: PAGE 24 EDITORIAL COMMENT: PAGE 25
Meet Ed Davey, our next deputy prime minister. Well, conceivably so. On Friday, Davey was promoted from the junior ranks of the Coalition to take the Cabinet seat vacated by Chris Huhne. In his new, politically prominent role as Energy and Climate Change Secretary, he will almost certainly come to be seen as a potential successor to Nick Clegg, whose so-called “Orange Book” brand of Lib Dem politics he shares. If the party performs badly in the general election, Clegg will step aside, and the Lib Dems will then have to decide quickly whether to lurch to the Left under someone such as Tim Farron, or to retain their moorings in the real world with Davey.
I should add that, with increasing anxiety, senior Tory strategists think it entirely possible that the 2015 election will deliver another hung parliament, or a Tory majority so small that Cameron will once again be seeking a pact with the Lib Dems. A new, Left-wing leader such as Farron would never countenance a second deal with the Conservatives. But what about an experienced Cabinet minister, as Davey will be by then? He might well consider continued relevance in government a better option for the Lib Dems than the slide to extinction outside. In which case – bear with me – it is perfectly conceivable that the burly, smiling, anonymous figure you saw bouncing into high office on Friday will be a mere heartbeat away from the prime ministerial bicycle clips by the end of 2015. Today’s political Pooter is tomorrow’s dauphin. Of such minor tweaks of fate is history made.
Within the Coalition, Huhne’s departure to face charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice has spawned a broader range of response than you might think. The most common complaint was always that he had an ambiguous relationship with government, relishing the power but less keen on collective responsibility. According to one colleague: “Chris’s ideal would be to carry a red box, but enjoy the freedom of Opposition.” Tory ministers wearied of his choreographed Cabinet outbursts – over the AV referendum and Cameron’s veto – and the speed with which the news of the Grey Pimpernel’s latest stand reached the media.
But he was not always the lone wolf of caricature. He tried hard, for instance, to win over George Osborne as a friend,
suggesting matily that the two men had much in common as tough-guy political operators (a hail-fellow-well-met act which, it must be said, does not seem to have moved the Chancellor). Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, went to the theatre with Huhne and his girlfriend. Huhne’s spikiness and ambition made him intermittently unpopular, but not a total pariah.
Cameron and Clegg had agreed in advance that Davey should be Huhne’s successor if he was charged and resigned. The question for the new Energy Secretary is how aggressively he insists upon the green agenda. In his Tory conference speech last year, Osborne made it absolutely clear that, as much as he still believed that “climate change is a man-made disaster” and was proud to have authorised “the world’s first Green Investment Bank”, he was not going to let green tape choke off growth. “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business,” the Chancellor declared. “So let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.” The first question interviewers should put to the new Energy Secretary is whether he agrees with that unambiguous restatement of Coalition priorities.
Certainly, Clegg will feel bolstered by the presence of a close, longtime ally across the Cabinet table. The Deputy Prime Minister went out of his way to be friendly to Huhne on Friday, voicing the hope (unlike Cameron) that he would return to office “to play a key role in government as soon as possible”. But it would be idle to deny or to begrudge Clegg the relief he clearly feels that his most assiduous rival – a man who believed that he was robbed of the leadership in their 2007 contest – will be hors de combat, at least for a while. The broader question raised by the Huhne saga is: who stands to lose? The former Energy Secretary strongly denies transferring speeding points to his then wife, Vicky Pryce, in March 2003. The trial will have a theatrical character quite distinct from its legal content. As one senior Government source puts it: “It’s got the lot, hasn’t it? The scorned wife, the ambitious Cabinet minister, a mistress, cloak and dagger with the press… there’s nothing missing, really.” What the Lib Dems fear is that the whole three-ring circus will revive folk memory of past Liberal scandal: the dark underbelly of the party’s public piety. Remember “Pantsdown”? Then you’ll love “Pointsdown”. Few people recall that Jeremy Thorpe, the former Liberal leader, was acquitted of all charges in 1979. But a great many remember the name of the dog belonging to Norman Scott, Thorpe’s alleged lover: Rinka. The shooting of this Great Dane, and the subsequent trial’s strange brew of the murderous, the prurient and the plain comic, buried the third party in ridicule for years to come.
The Huhne trial will be very different, and certainly much less complicated. But its soap opera will still be compelling to people who normally switch off when they hear the word “politics”. Quite apart from the criminal charges, and the narrow forensic question of guilt and innocence, everyone will have an opinion about Huhne, his ex-wife, his lover and the other protagonists in the story. It is the stuff of water-cooler discussions, school-gate debate, and Twitter trends.
And what will the public see when they read about Huhne’s trial? A Lib Dem – or a former Coalition Cabinet minister? The risk for the Government in this case is what Bill Clinton calls “cellular degeneration”: not a deadly wound – nothing like – but just another appreciable blow to its credibility or, more accurately, the credibility of all governing politicians.
Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a charge of the highest seriousness (and one which, to repeat, Huhne fiercely denies). The Coalition is trying to beat a path through the ethical brambles of “fairness”, necessary austerity and the state’s responsibility to the needy. It deals almost daily with vexed questions of morality: executive pay, the benefit cap, the collapse of “human rights’’ as meaningful values. And now one of its most senior members – a former member, to be precise – is to stand in the dock in a trial without precedent. By the time Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer were charged with their respective offences, the Tories had long left office. In contrast, R versus Huhne will reach court while the Government of which he was a senior member is still very much in power. At best, it will be a lurid distraction. At worst, whether he is acquitted or not, the court of public opinion will look upon Huhne, the political class, its antics, and its hypocrisies – and deliver a furious verdict.