To the casual observer, they look as threatening as a trussed-up turkey and as effective as a Santa strike in June. The Tories haven’t been in such a parlous state since the days of, er, William Hague. But John Reid reckons he knows better. Labour’s canny chairman is about to make a big speech claiming that we must all be on our guard for a big Conservative revival.
This means one of two things. Either Dr Reid has lost the plot. Which he hasn’t. Or things are looking grimmer than we thought for the Project. Tony Blair’s transformation of Labour, from ditching Clause IV to flirting with tuition fees, has been forced on the party with the threat that if it isn’t swallowed, the alternative is a Tory government. It is pragmatism for a purpose. But if there’s no opposition then there’s no purpose.
The Conservatives are marooned at 30 percent in the polls, feuding along their new liberal-versus-authoritarian fault line, and lumbered with a leader even more unpopular among his MPs than he is in the country. Westminster hacks speculate about a leadership challenge next year. Hardly the base for a push at winning the next election.
So Labour has had to make its own opposition, with unions swinging to the left and backed by rebellious backbench MPs on issues such as higher education funding, public sector pay and Iraq. The government appears more isolated from the Labour movement than at any time since 1997. Which is where Dr Reid comes in. Since he replaced Charles Clarke as chairman, the academic Scot has been reading the history books and studying the psephology to reach a conclusion on the prospects for the main parties.
And within weeks, I hear from a well-placed source, he will reveal his finding: that the Tories can bounce right back. It may take years not months. It may require a change of leader. It will certainly need a root-and-branch reform of the kind which Neil Kinnock subjected Labour to in the 1980s (with Dr Reid as one of his key lieutenants) – plight acknowledged, policies ditched, extremists humiliated.
But the Tory Party, according to Labour’s chairman, is not over. So Charles Kennedy’s claims that the Lib Dems are on the way to becoming the main opposition will amount to nought. The whole exercise will see Reid emulate Australia’s cricket captain Steve Waugh, who tries to keep his men motivated against the hapless England touring team by instructing them to imagine they are playing the world-beating West Indies side of the 1980s.
Dr Reid’s speech will be good knockabout stuff, and the chance to poke fun at the Tories when they’re down. But the message to the unions and the Labour left will be serious. We won as New Labour, we govern as New Labour.
Tony Blair is skilled in the art of addressing different audiences in the language each understands. But he excelled himself when Labour’s NEC met during the November eight-day fire strike, by delivering two messages at once. Leftwing delegates emerged believing the PM had pledged to reward the firefighters for years of low-paid toil. Those on the side of the government and employers came away thinking the main message had been one of standing firm against the strikers.
It was the conversion on the road to City Hall. I bumped into Amanda Platell at the glitzy launch of a bid by Nikki Page, one time model and now aide to John Redwood, to become Tory mayor of London. I asked William Hague’s former press chief whether she was there to support Mrs Page. Oh no, she said. She was just observing. As a journalist, not a political groupie. But by the end of the speeches, she was leading the ovation and praising the candidate for the TV cameras. And now she has climbed aboard as a key aide on the Nikki bandwagon.