To save Progress readers the agony of attending Tory conference, I can tell you now who the lions of the gathering will be, whose names will fill up any room they are speaking in. It won’t be those who ran the national campaign – most will have realised by then that their advance in seats was largely a product of a swing to the Lib Dems. It will be people like Grant Shapps who will never have to buy their own drink.
Who? Grant Shapps, the new member of parliament for Welwyn Hatfield. He will be lionised for achieving a swing of 9.2 per cent against Labour. This in an election where many Tories failed to overturn even the tiniest Labour majority (as low as 153 votes in Dorset South) and where many who did win target seats hold them only by the smallest margin. So what was different in Welwyn Hatfield, and what lessons will Grant Shapps be pouring into the ear of eager Tory MPs manqué?
Shapps’ politics nationally are what you would expect of any Tory MP. Locally, it’s a different matter; he fought to keep open a children’s A&E ward and to quieten the A1(M). He set up websites for these two campaigns: www.scan24.org and www.quieter-a1m.com. The latter even offers mobile phone ring tones sampled from the road. These websites do not completely hide the fact that he was the Conservative candidate – but neither do they trumpet it. Their colours and design are neutral. He may have collected as many as ten thousand names on these petitions.
Shapps is part of a new species: ‘Tory Libdemus’. They call themselves local campaigners. Brooks Newmark (who managed a six per cent swing to capture Braintree) is another. He campaigned on the A120 and stopping Stansted’s expansion. Or there’s David Burrowes, who destroyed Stephen Twigg’s majority by talking about mobile phone masts and widening the North Circular. They call the Labour candidate ‘Blair’s man or woman’ and talk themselves up as local campaigners.
Of course, a Tory government could never honour the countless promises of new roads and hospitals these local candidates are making. This discrepancy was something Gordon Brown belaboured Howard with over the campaign repeatedly and to good effect. But Tory Libdemus doesn’t care. They will cannibalise their own national campaign to win a seat. And after hearing Grant Shapps speak at conference, Tories, who have been sitting out opposition in the merchant banks, will realise that with time and money they can win a seat ahead of a national Tory revival. They just need three years as a run-up to embed themselves as local campaigners. They are coming to a seat near you – soon.