Michael Howard is a not a stupid man. He is too clever not to realise that, for the majority of people, Labour has delivered. He is too clever to nail the Conservatives to an anti-Euro or tax-cutting agenda. He is clever enough to know when to stick the knife in and when to stand aside and let someone else do it.
Michael Howard knows that his chances of selling Tory policies to the electorate are slim. He knows he will never be Prime Minister. So he has taken an alternative route. Instead he wants to be the man who destroyed Tony Blair. He is the Tory Terminator – sent from the past in a time machine to destroy the future.
And the worst thing is, the public have been itching for someone to take Blair down a peg or two. Not to finish him off – he is still respected – but to give him a bloody nose. Michael Howard, the playground bully of the Commons, is the perfect man for the job.
If you want to get a picture of how Michael Howard operates, it is worth looking back at the process by which he became Tory leader. Howard, you will recall, came fourth in the 1997 leadership election and afterwards announced his ‘retirement’ from frontbench politics. Closely associated with the ‘nasty’ image of the party following the Labour election victory and the subject of a very public attack from Ann Widdecombe (‘something of the night about him’), Howard was never in a real position to mount a serious challenge. He moved back into the shadows at the edge of politics.
But in opposition, people began to forget the negative associations and to associate Howard not with a failed government but with the fact that he was in government at all. As shadow chancellor under IDS, Howard was one of the few spokesmen inflicting any damage on the government. Tory MPs – the key group in any leadership contest – rallied round him. When Howard was at the dispatch box they felt proud. When IDS was there they felt vulnerable. Howard’s experience and IDS’s lack of experience was beginning to tell. He was beginning to come out of the dark and into the political spotlight. At the same time, Tory fortunes continued to drop as the Liberal Democrats ate into Conservative territory. The last straw was the Brent East by-election, where the Tories dropped to a poor third in a seat which an opposition party would have expected to win.
With Hurd, Heseltine and Portillo out of the running, Howard and Ken Clarke were the only potential Tory leaders with experience of the great offices of state. All that remained was to remove IDS. Howard’s strategy was a surgical strike, turning IDS’s own people against him.
Tory MPs at the end of 2003 were reported to be surprised that the whips’ office was apparently encouraging backbenchers to write letters calling for a leadership contest. The chief whip, David Maclean, was implicated – he had been Howard’s deputy at the Home Office. When the ballot was triggered, Maclean resigned.
As we all know, IDS did better than expected but failed to achieve the support of his party. The Howard machine went into action, presenting him as the unity candidate and nobbling every potential opponent. His friends in the whip’s office had served him well with intelligence and organisation. As the main rivals fell into place behind him, only Ken Clarke held out for long and even he could read the numbers. Howard was installed unopposed – and reinstated Maclean as one of his first tasks.
Howard then set about surrounding himself with a ‘kitchen cabinet’ of clever Tories. Stephen Sherbourne, former Political Secretary to Mrs Thatcher and a Director of PR company Chime, who is seen as a reforming Portillista, was brought in as chief of staff. It was a clever move, providing balance to Howard’s right wing background.
Rising stars such as Boris Johnson MP, David Cameron MP and George Osbourne MP were promoted to campaigning and party organisation jobs. Guy Black, the well-liked and well-known Director of the Press Complaints Commission, was appointed press secretary.
Howard then set about a quiet modernisation of the Tory party machinery. Without putting in controversial quotas or all-women shortlists, the word had already gone out under IDS for local conservative associations to encourage women and ethnic minorities to become parliamentary candidates in winnable seats. Media savvy, younger, more attractive potential MPs like Adam Afriyi, Esther McVey, Fiona Bruce, Penny Mordaunt, Haroon Rashid and Mark Fox have been installed in marginal seats.
In the battle between the Tories and Labour, Howard faced a more difficult task. He took over a party seen as incompetent, unprincipled, weak, divided and ‘nasty’. Few members of the public would recognise the frontbench. Labour, on the other hand, was seen as competent but with issues concerning trust and how far reforms and investment in public services had delivered.
Howard’s messaging has been right on the button. His election itself and the way in which the party rallied around him have handled the unity issue. His surer touch at Prime Minister’s Questions has dealt with the issue of weak leadership. A re-structuring of the frontbench under twelve shadow cabinet members should at least raise the relative profile of the top team.
Howard has begun to tackle the ‘nasty’ and extreme tags by distancing himself from policies and organisations which have tarnished the Tories’ image. In January, he signalled a change in Conservative policy towards Europe that, while maintaining its sceptical line, has become considerably softer since the issue of the Euro disappeared over the horizon.
In February, he launched an attack on the BNP and despite the protestations of local Labour figures, did it in Burnley, where the BNP is the second largest group on the council.
In effect he is playing a difficult line, trying to maintain the coalition of support on the right for the Conservatives while trying to woo some of the swing voters.
Meanwhile, the Tories have realised that they do not need to beat Labour on the issues. Instead, there has been an all-out assault on the Prime Minister, branding him untrustworthy and trying to create splits within the government and between government and backbenchers. To have an impact and create the platform for a the following election, all Michael Howard needs to do is maintain the Tory core vote and to put people off voting Labour. He doesn’t need to win people over – that is a job for the next leader.
Evidence from local council by-elections so far suggests that the Howard strategy is having an effect. Conservatives are winning seats back from Labour and the Lib Dems around the country. People are no longer embarrassed to vote Tory.
The big test will be in June with local, London and European elections. If Howard can create enough momentum, then he can use it as a springboard into 2005. If Labour can stop or slow him down now, we can keep the Conservatives out for a generation.
He’ll be back? Not likely.