David Cameron
Looking at the praise being heaped on David Cameron lately, you’d think he had done a great deal. Obviously, I have been very critical of Cameron since he first ascended to the leadership, and it seems to me that he still has yet to prove that he can lead the Tories to general election success. It is true that Labour was routed in local council elections (again), and it is true that Brown avoided calling a general election last year out of fear of a severely reduced majority or outright defeat. It is also true that Cameron raked him over the coals in very satisfying fashion in the weeks that followed, and Cameron saved himself from being ousted last year in yet another round of Tory bloodletting by giving a bravura performance at Blackpool. That he was in some real danger of a revolt on the eve of party conference should remind us that the veneer of unity and success that the Tories have at the moment is extremely thin and will not endure many setbacks. Whether or not the “modernisers” in the party are successful in making the Tories electable again (I will believe it when I see it in a general election win), it is much more open to question whether their model has any bearing for Republicans. Brooks thinks that it does, while casually ignoring all those areas in which the Tories are taking positions on the war and crime that might actually help revive the GOP over here if the latter imitated them. Boris Johnson’s fairly remarkable mayoral victory is a good example of the differences between the British and American cases: the sort of candidate who can win the mayoralty of a major European city is not going to translate readily to most parts of America. Meanwhile, Brooks acknowledges:
Some of this is famously gauzy, and Cameron is often disdained as a mere charmer. But politically it works.
Yes, politically it works because for the moment it is still just on paper and has not been tried, and the Tories have the fortune to be facing one of the most unpopular governments in recent decades. Yet what the brief revival in Tory fortunes shows is how much the Tories have simply conceded to the legacy of New Labour, just as the success of Democrats here in closely divided and conservative districts reveals how much they have conceded to cultural conservatism in recruiting their candidates. Me-tooism can and will win elections, at least for a while, but ultimately it leaves no legacy and empowers the other party by endorsing or being seen to endorse its principles.
Where I think Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard continually went wrong was in their absolute insistence on aping most of the worst trends in the Bush Era, particularly as regards foreign policy, and the conscious cultivation of a kind of Tory neoconservatism in some circles. Where Cameron has seemed to go wrong in the last two years is in his obsession with striking poses and engaging in symbolic repudiations of the old Thatcherite model. I can hardly disagree in principle with the goal of “denser social networks” or the promotion of decentralism, assuming that these are what they seem to be and not codes for government initiatives akin to Blair’s devolution and regionalism, but it seems to me that the constant talk about “society” carries within it a misguided hostility to Thatcher and forgets that every half-baked scheme of the left has employed rhetoric about society that prompted Thatcher’s famous rejection of the abstraction.
Filed under: politics
It is in deed true that the Conservative renaissance is a result of a Labour decline rather than a genuine restoration of Tory support in the general public, but what can David Cameron really do?
The best Cameron can hope for is that come election day the public are so fed up with Gordon Brown that they decide to give the Tories a chance. And that is what Cameron offers, the opportunity for voters to actually vote Tory and not feel bad about it.
People may not vote for him, but they won’t vote against him either. In the past with Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard, the public would vote against them on principle.
Any appearance of wanting to pass policies that could have come from Margaret Thatcher will meet with electoral doom. Cameron cannot do any meaningful reform with the NHS; it’s the third rail of British politics. After a decade of small but continuous tax rises under Brown with insufficient improvements to show for them, tax cuts are only beginning to be socially acceptable. Both parties believe in major welfare reform and in terms of crime, which is a major issue in Britain, it’s not as if Labour have looked soft on the issue.
However, it is not as if Cameron has sold out all his convictions to the New Labour consensus, he stands up against ID Cards, and against extending the time that terrorist suspects can be held without charge. He also defends the right to trail by jury. For a time taking these positions were not popular, in deed Tony Blair believed the Tories were vulnerable in their defence of civil liberties.
In regards to the modernising agenda, I see little that the Republicans and Conservatives have in common, as I mentioned above when it comes to civil liberties/terrorism the Republicans have much more in common with the Labour party than their supposed conservative brethren. In terms of the war in Iraq that is now a defunct issue, it has quickly become a forgotten war - neither Brown nor Cameron are associated with it regardless of what position they took. In terms of tax law and marriage there is a conversion between the parties, however again in other social issues such as gay marriage the parties have little in common with the UK being virtually post-Christian.
I fully agree that Cameron will find it hard holding back the ‘non modern’ members of his party, he will only be successful as long as he remains ahead in the polls which looks likely for the time being. But it is crucial that he does, many in the Conservative party truly believe that if they talk about big tax cuts and immigration and Europe they will win, but they won’t. Yes, the political terrain has moved towards them on those issues but nowhere near enough that it will grant victory.
Also something else we must bear in mind, in order for the Conservatives to form a government they need to win big. If they don’t the most likely outcome is a hung parliament where the liberal democrats would hold the keys to power. Tradionally it was assumed they would work with Labour, but their new leader Nick Clegg represents the libertarian side of the party which puts him much closer to Cameron than Brown, or whoever may replace him. A warm and fuzzy sounding Cameron would be much more likely to secure a coalition with Clegg than if he was to talk about the glories of Lady Thatcher.
I can see no way the Tories could ever return to power except through a weak Labour party, but the fact that Cameron is in charge does help their prospects. My real worry is that if he doesn’t quite pull it off in a general election; the Tories destroy themselves again and elect someone who does belong to the right wing of the party and in doing so allows labour and their statist/authoritarian policies to be enacted with no real opposition.
In the end you need to be in power to at least have a chance of a legacy, without adopting the me-tooism of New Labour they will not even get the opportunity. It’s Cameron or nothing.