If the rumours are to be believed, Michael Howard’s office is not a happy place. Tempers are frayed. Staff feel downtrodden and depressed. Decision-making is erratic and reactive. Policy is more likely to follow that day’s editorials than a predetermined strategy.
This is all a far cry from the optimism that followed Howard’s unopposed election to the leadership. After Iain Duncan Smith’s forgettable two years at the top, the Tories believed they finally had someone with the presence and intellect to take on Tony Blair. They might not win the next election, but they could hope to make some progress.
The mood is far less optimistic now, and Howard’s tenure seems destined to be even shorter than Duncan Smith’s. What went wrong? And is there anything Howard can do to recover the situation?
The principal explanation for Howard’s difficulties lies in his failure to put in place a clear strategy for his leadership when he took office. No fundamental change was needed, it was assumed. Competent leadership would be enough.
In retrospect, Howard compares less favourably to Duncan Smith than many Tories supposed at the time. It is not just that the Tories under Howard have, if anything, lost public support since IDS was deposed. Unlike Howard, Duncan Smith had a rudimentary strategy for getting the party back on its feet, focusing heavily on policy development so that the party had something solid to say come the general election. Since Howard took over, that work has stalled, and the party increasingly measures its progress in column inches rather than workable policies.
This lack of strategic direction has led to both policy and presentational drift. In his first speech as leader, Howard promised to focus on mainstream issues, claiming that his party was ‘passionately committed to the transformation of our schools, hospitals, transport and policing’. He also promised to be inclusive. ‘I want us to be a party for all Britain and all Britons’, he said.
One year on, the party’s agenda looks rather different. John Redwood has been drafted back into the shadow cabinet in the newly created deregulation portfolio. Leading modernisers such as John Bercow, Julie Kirkbride and Damian Green have returned to the backbenches. Health and education have vanished from the party’s priority list, replaced by comfort blanket issues like crime, asylum, red tape and Europe.
Even where the Tories appear on the surface to be making progress, the underlying picture is less rosy. For example, the party’s newly discovered interest in childcare policy seems to be focused largely on subsidising stay-at-home mothers. Despite claiming when he became leader that ‘21st-century Conservatives must show they understand 21st-century Britain’, Michael Howard’s message is that women should sit at home and look after the children instead of pursuing careers.
Having failed to broaden the Tories’ appeal, the challenge for Howard is now to make the most of the remaining time before the general election to compensate for the wasted opportunities of the past twelve months. Figures on the right of the party, such as Dr Liam Fox, are keen to learn from successful right-of-centre leaders in other countries, notably President George Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The recovery programme consists of three interlocking dimensions, all of which are now in evidence.
The first dimension is a return to the core vote strategy pursued by William Hague. While this strategy may have failed in 2001, there are good reasons to think it might be more successful in future. One reason is that in a low-turnout election, the party that is most successful at mobilising its core supporters can potentially enjoy a significant electoral advantage. For example, although the Tory share of the vote was two per cent higher in 2001 than in 1997, the total number of votes the Tories achieved was actually 1,237,416 lower. If they had turned out the same number of voters in 2001 as they had in 1997, they could have slashed Labour’s majority by 100.
So, with many traditional Labour voters disillusioned about the war and less likely to vote, the Conservatives are pinning their hopes on a highly motivated base of support. And they are putting in place the organisational structures to achieve this, having hired Lynton Crosby, John Howard’s former election strategist. Crosby will oversee a new network of call centres targeting marginal constituencies, and will apply aggressive rightwing campaign strategies such as push-polling in an attempt to galvanise Conservative support. The Tories are also applying new technology, having imported Voter Vault, the sophisticated database that underpinned George Bush’s grassroots re-election effort.
The second dimension of the recovery strategy is a British version of George Bush’s successful ‘American Quilt Strategy’. Rather than developing a single, coherent political message directed at the electorate as a whole, this strategy works by identifying issues that would not normally be regarded as mainstream, but which particularly motivate certain sections of the electorate. A winning coalition is formed by stitching these disparate issues together into a single patchwork of policy.
This has been a defining characteristic of Bush’s electoral strategy. In the words of Al From and Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council, ‘no White House has ever sold its soul in so many niche markets’. Notable examples include the multi-billion dollar prescription drug benefit, calculated to attract the votes of older voters in key states like Florida and Arizona, and the 2002 tariffs designed to appeal to steelworkers in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The most egregious example was the way that the Bush campaign deliberately stoked public opposition to gay marriage.
The Conservatives applied this strategy with considerable zeal earlier this year, with a series of announcements intended to dominate the summer news agenda. They sharpened their appeal to motorists by turning their fire on irritants such as speed cameras and traffic wardens. By adopting a nimbyistic position on windfarms, phone masts and even house-building, they attempted to pick up the votes of those who live near to proposed developments. And with their pronouncements on inheritance tax, hardly a major issue for most voters, they targeted key south-eastern seats where house prices have risen most rapidly. They even tried to start a British culture war, with vocal attacks on ‘political correctness’.
The final dimension of the strategy is to move towards the kind of bold conservative agenda that characterised the Bush campaign. One of the most striking aspects of Bush’s election victory was the ease with which he sidestepped questions about his management of the US economy. Despite running up a record budget deficit, the result of unsustainable tax cuts and spending commitments, Bush has not been punished by the voters.
The lesson the Tories are likely to draw from this is that having a clear policy message matters more than making the sums add up. As a result, the Tories are already dropping heavy hints about tax cuts, coupled with an increasing number of unfunded spending commitments – for example, the new policy on childcare.
None of this yet adds up to a winning strategy, and the evidence from recent polls is that the Conservatives are slipping even further behind. But there is still plenty of uncertainty about the forthcoming election. How well will the Liberal Democrats perform, and which party will they hurt most: Labour or the Tories? What will happen to turnout? Which party will be most effective at mobilising its supporters? And will patterns of tactical voting change?
All these factors contribute to increasing electoral volatility, and create a potential opening for the Tories. Michael Howard knows that this will be his last roll of the dice. Is it too soon to write such a wily politician off?