After a ten-year hiatus, the Tory party has finally rediscovered its heritage. With the election of David Cameron as Conservative leader, the party looks like its back in the business of trying to win elections. So, Labour too must look to the past to ensure it learns how to keep down a resurgent conservatism. But it might find as many lessons in recent times as ancient history.
Despite the monumental political success of Thatcherism, the lady and her legacy was an aberration within the Conservative movement. Thatcherism constituted an aggressive ideology built around a personality cult. The lineaments of that ideology, combined with the regicide-like nature of her deposition, ensured that Tory party politics during the 1990s spiralled towards intellectual isolation buoyed along by parliamentary fratricide. The party lurched to the right while MPs set about settling old scores through an endless succession of leadership contests. Many on the left of the party were clear where the fault lay. As Chris Patten has remarked of the Iron Lady, ‘She destroyed the Conservative party.’
Prior to their recent disarray, the Tories displayed four key strengths that ensured the 20th century was the Conservative century. The first was an unashamed desire for office. As Alan Clark put it, ‘the motivation of the Conservative party at all times…is their appetite for power.’ Or, as Lionel Trilling subtly suggested, ‘the Liberals believe in legislation, the Tories in administration.’ This stood in contrast to the Labour movement which too often regarded itself as standing above and beyond ministerial office. For many within Labour circles, government was just one part of a broader social, cultural and moral calling.
Second, the Tories had the advantage of the endless intangibility of conservatism. Whereas Labour hopelessly tied itself in knots with Clause IV, official resolutions, and sacrosanct party resolutions, the nature of conservatism was wonderfully adaptable to the new realities of economic, cultural and social change. In Michael Oakeshott’s apposite codification, British conservatism represents a ‘disposition’ rather than a doctrinaire ideology. Ironically, such malleability has proved a hindrance for recent Tory leaders as they have in vain sought a Clause IV moment in order to confront the party’s past demons.
With these ill-defined political contours has come a brilliant historical capacity for intellectual and administrative re-invention. The problem the Tories faced in the 1990s was that Thatcher had boxed them into an ideological corner. Traditionally, their success was built on a tremendous capacity for going with the intellectual flow – be it liberalism, corporatism, monetarism, or even Euro-scepticism. And, at the same time, adopting the latest advances in management, marketing and street politics techniques. This capacity for internal rejuvenation was one of the most important lessons Tony Blair took from Tory party politics.
Finally, the Conservatives have traditionally shown a remarkable degree of political loyalty and unity. They might have been the ‘stupid party’, but they weren’t the silly party. Unlike Nye Bevan or Tony Benn, the Tories knew instinctively that political divisions cost elections. Keeping the show on the road was a far greater calling than some form of ideological martyrdom. But, once again, such sensibilities were thrown to the wind during the 1990s when – in a decision which must have made Willie Whitelaw turn in his grave – the Tories selected serial Maastricht rebel Iain Duncan Smith as leader. That, surely, was the signal that loyalty no longer counted in the modern Conservative party.
These strengths have ensured that time and again the Tory party has risen from the grave to reclaim its title as the most successful political party in history. After the 1906 Liberal landslide – which reduced the Conservative-Unionists to 157 MPs – the party set about renewing itself by a series of internal reforms (including the creation of the post of party chairman), a healing of intellectual fissures within the party over free trade, the replacing of Arthur Balfour with Andrew Bonar Law, and a full frontal assault on the radical agenda behind Liberal rhetoric.
More pertinent is the Tory revival following the 1945 to 1951 Attlee administration. Again, party re-organisation proved vital as Tory chairman Lord Woolton improved campaigning tactics and overhauled constituency associations. At the same time, Rab Butler, Reginald Maudling and Iain Macleod displayed the perennial flexibility of conservatism by moving to the left on welfare, economics and even industrial relations. And all the while the party stayed loyal to Winston Churchill (despite numerous provocations from the great man) as Labour embarked on its crippling Gaitskellite/Bevanite feud.
Similar divisions within the Labour movement proved even more helpful for the Tory party revival of the later 1970s. While it might be historically pleasing to suggest the Keith Joseph-inspired transformation of conservatism led the party to victory in 1979, in truth, the electorate seemed keener to throw out a government than install an opposition. But what the move to monetarism did provide was an ideological road-map to sustain the Thatcher government during the early 1980s. Nonetheless, the old Tory tunes of party loyalty, intellectual malleability (remember, Jim Callaghan first adopted monetarism in his 1976 conference speech), and marketing skill (‘Labour isn’t working’) did the trick.
All this, of course, was abandoned by John Major’s heirs. The ideological and personal fault lines with which Thatcher left the party undermined its core virtues. A position only exacerbated by William Hague’s woefully misguided leadership. As a spectator to Black Wednesday and special advisor to Michael Howard, David Cameron must have learnt from this ugly debacle. Hence his policy-light, centre-ground guided, masterfully marketed, and power-hungry leadership campaign. We will wait and see if loyalty and unity follow.
So, what should Labour’s response be? What party managers need desperately to avoid is an emerging narrative which pits the new, young, dynamic politics of David Cameron’s ‘sunshine conservatism’ against the tired, administrative, governmental politics of Gordon Brown’s Labour. It is the hardest challenge a governing party faces, but intellectual and cultural renewal within office is essential if Labour is going to see off the Cameron challenge and embed the progressive consensus.
On the positive side, the benefit of a renewed Conservative party is that it will once again focus attention upon the Tory threat. Hopefully, some of the more self-indulgent Labour MPs will realise they are part of a broader political purpose which requires discipline to deliver change. As Liam Byrne usefully reminded us in a recent Fabian pamphlet, 88 out of the top 100 Labour marginals face a Tory rather than Liberal Democrat threat. That means the answer does not lie in a swing to the left to re-establish clear red water between ourselves and the Conservatives.
Rather, it demands a renewed campaign to control the centre ground. Many on the left remain wary about any strategy to occupy the political heartlands. But, like middle England, the centre ground is an ideological construct which we need constantly to redefine and re-defend. Labour needs now to establish the progressive contours of the centre ground and make Cameron come to us. Anything that appeals to his base – vouchers, the flat tax, Euro-extremism – has to be depicted as politically beyond the pale.
More aggressively, Labour needs to push Cameron not just on his values but also his judgement. Is the bright young thing to be trusted with our economy and security? Moreover, we need to warn the British public that George W Bush similarly campaigned left but governed right. ‘Compassionate conservatism’ is more often than not a smokescreen for unsustainable tax-cutting, benefit-curtailing, anti-statist policies, inimical to the modern progressive consensus.
However, Labour also needs to get its own house in order. With a divided opposition, the government has failed to see just how far it is exposed in numerous policy areas. On the environment, big government (where are those Gershon cuts?), public sector pensions, asylum and welfare, the party position looks vulnerable. Which is why it is all the more vital the reform agenda is sustained.
Not least because previous Labour governments have often balked at reforms which successive Tory governments have then delivered with savage consequences. The trade union reforms proposed by ‘In Place of Strife’ were dropped by Wilson only to be introduced by Norman Tebbit; the Callaghan government actively debated the sale of council houses only to see this policy become a central tenet of Thatcherism. In both cases, the policies were eventually delivered by the Tories without the accompanying safety-nets or social considerations. As matters currently stand, the education white paper looks like heading in a similar direction.
In this context, it is perhaps instructive to look not to past British history but recent American politics. In 2000, Vice-President Al Gore was standing as the incumbent favourite against the relatively untried and untested George W Bush. The Democrats should have been in a strong position. The retiring president remained highly popular despite all that the Republicans and right-wing press had thrown at him, while the American economy, the single most important electoral factor, was thriving. The disaster for the Democrats was that they threw away power by failing to embed the political legacy of the Clinton presidency.
Rather than running on the highly successful Clinton-Gore record in office and promising to deliver similar growth and reform as president, Gore swung to the left in order to differentiate himself from both Bush and Clinton. The result was a disaster, as Gore appeared both embarrassed by the Clinton achievements and too radical for a generally conservative electorate.
As a keen student of American politics, Gordon Brown will be well aware of such dangers. The challenge remains staying true to the Blairite legacy, while also pursuing the kind of challenging, inquiring discourse about the party and its record which is essential to renewal. We must both construct a narrative of governmental achievement (which is all too easily forgotten) and at the same time continue to show our anger at the social immobility, variable life chances and unacceptable poverty in 21st century Britain. We cannot and must not be the party of the status quo: socialism has always been driven by a profound sense of disquiet about the power distribution and inequality of modern society. That passion and fury must remain even within office.
As such, the solution lies with us as much as David Cameron’s Tories. But we might be humble enough to take some lessons from successful Conservative tactics. A belief in the politics of power; intellectual rejuvenation; unity and loyalty; and a commitment to party renewal and modernisation made the 20th century the Conservative century. Let’s make the same tactics – but very different ideals – turn the 21st century into the progressive epoch.