The Guardian view on Tory election plans: the mask is slipping already
An early casualty of any general election campaign is perspective. News cycles accelerate, the volume goes up and it becomes difficult to detect a clear signal about what is happening amid the noise. Those caveats must accompany the observation that the Conservative campaign has had an inauspicious start.
Among the items making headlines: Downing Street obstructing the release of a report on Russian interference in British elections, raising suspicion that its contents compromise the Conservatives; Jacob Rees-Mogg causing distress by suggesting that victims of the Grenfell Tower fire defied “common sense” in following fire service advice; Tory backbench MP Andrew Bridgen aggravating the offence, implying that Mr Rees-Mogg’s comments express the superiority of his intellect.
Meanwhile, chancellor Sajid Javid had planned to seize the agenda with a document attacking Labour’s economic plans, using research carried out by the Treasury. He was thwarted by the cabinet secretary on grounds of civil service impartiality. That attack had been lined up for the morning of Boris Johnson’s official campaign launch. By lunchtime, the Welsh secretary, Alun Cairns, had resigned over his association with a Tory Welsh assembly candidate accused of sabotaging a rape trial to help the defendant.
These setbacks would challenge the sang-froid of the most confident candidate. But Mr Johnson is an experienced campaigner and – belying his disorderly appearance – a disciplined one. His method is to affect a loose, spontaneous style without, in reality, deviating from a strategically focused script. The message, delivered in front of No 10 on Wednesday, is that parliament has thwarted Brexit but the Conservatives will unblock it – and a bounty of investment. There would follow “moderate and compassionate one-nation Conservative government”.
That is surely the shrewd place for a Tory candidate to stand, but that doesn’t mean Mr Johnson can hold the ground. A small rash of bad headlines might not swing many votes on 12 December, but they highlight the big strategic challenge for the prime minister, which is that the party he leads does not look like the one described in his campaign. It keeps declaring itself instead to be immoderate, lacking in compassion, and indifferent to the views and experiences of much of the nation.
The callous, arrogant remarks made by Mr Rees-Mogg will match many voters’ intuitive sense of who the Tories are – and whose side they are on – better than anything Mr Johnson claims they want to be. MPs who are truer to the party’s one-nation tradition have been standing down. The next intake has been selected by local associations with instincts closer to the hardline agenda pioneered by Mr Rees-Mogg. It is reasonable for the electorate to expect that those values and priorities, not a more moderate manifesto, will shape the Downing Street agenda under a Tory majority government.
That expectation exposes another contradiction in Mr Johnson’s position. His campaign is based on the idea that Brexit can be “done” swiftly, acknowledging that voters are fed up with the whole thing. But Brexit is also the consuming passion of his party – its animating purpose since 2016. When the prime minister recognises that the public is sick of Brexit he is admitting, unwittingly perhaps, that many are sick of the Tories too. It is risky for an incumbent to call so directly for a change of national tune.
With five more weeks yet to run, it is impossible to foresee the trajectory of the campaign. Mr Johnson is not in control of events, as the past week has shown. He might well fulfil the high expectations set by a pattern of opinion poll leads. But if he fails, hindsight will find the flaws and contradictions that weakened his candidacy well advertised in the opening days of his campaign.