Dave rave’, after Cocaine Kate and Doherty, is the latest bout of media hysteria afflicting the more impressionable members of Fleet Street.
But just how much of a serious threat is David Cameron to Labour? And what should the government’s line of attack on him be? These were just some of the questions facing the panel at the Progress event ‘And the winner is…how does Labour respond to the new Tory leader’, held the day after the result was declared.
The work and pensions secretary John Hutton was unconvinced by Cameron’s pledge to change the way the Conservative party ‘looks, thinks and feels’, and saw ‘no change in policy direction to justify any talk of a move to the centre ground’ by the Tories.
Labour, he insisted, should remain on the centre ground and continue as ‘a strong and reforming government’. Above all, it needed to expose the Tories’ ‘superficial veneer’ of modernisation, he said.
The health minister Liam Byrne agreed on the need to expose Cameron’s right-wing beliefs, and saw parallels between the new leader’s modernising rhetoric and George W Bush’s ‘compassionate conservative’ agenda in the 2000 American election. In the US, Bush succeeded in created ‘an illusion of substance’ on social issues that was enough to win round the American electorate, even though it concealed a ‘pretty nasty agenda’ beneath, the minister warned.
Progress vice chair Ed Miliband struck a more optimistic note, suggesting that ‘what happens in the next four years is in Labour’s hands.’
He identified three areas in which Labour had an advantage over the Cameron’s Tories. First, its record in government. Second, Labour’s instincts were in line with the British people. Third, the party’s political leadership was deeper and more thoughtful than that of the Conservatives. Therefore, Labour could afford to be ‘more confident’ in response to Cameron and develop ‘a stronger narrative’, he insisted.
The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee was also anxious not to overplay the significance of Cameron’s election for Labour. The government could overcome the threat of a rejuvenated Tory party through rediscovering ‘a sense of unity and clarity of purpose’, she claimed.
Toynbee also called for ‘an end to triangulation’ as a political tactic. This wouldn’t work against Cameron, she said, as it would put Labour ‘on the back foot’ against him.
It was left to the historian Tristram Hunt to highlight the Tories’ historic ability to bounce back from defeat, and the need for Labour not to abandon the centre ground (see p 18). In general, the panel seemed confident that the latest Conservative leader could be seen off as easily as the last four. However, Toynbee’s assertion that a move left by Cameron would represent ‘a fantastic triumph for the Labour movement’ was perhaps a little too laidback, even by the relaxed standards of the evening.
_______
In the coming months, Progress will endeavour to keep a watchful eye on developments in the Cameron-Tory camp. We are not, however, in the business of giving political advice to the aspiring No 10 occupant.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of the intellectual originators of the New Labour project, Demos. Their new pamphlet, True Blue: How Fair Conservatism can Win the Next Election, suggests the Tories need to win back the support of the ‘generation gap’ voters – those aged 25 to 34 – in order to succeed at the ballot box.
To do this, Cameron needs to develop a ‘Fair Conservatism’, argues the former Conservative front bench advisor and pamphlet author Nicholas Boys Smith. ‘The new Conservatism has to be fair,’ he insists. ‘Fair because Britain is not. Fair because it is a value the British appreciate. Fair because it is a value that is true to the Conservative traditions.’
Smith’s prescription is somewhat ironic given that the period of the Thatcher and Major governments witnessed the greatest increase in economic inequality in modern British history.
Then again – given that the author is currently secretary to the shadow chancellor’s commission on tax reform, actively considering the hugely regressive flat tax as an option for the British people – perhaps the Tory definition of ‘fair’ isn’t the same as everyone else’s.