The latest bid by David Cameron to modernise the Tories’ image – promising the dawn of a ‘new, modern, compassionate conservatism’ in Britain – is the drive to find ‘100 policy ideas’ from activists throughout the country on the Tory website, ConservativeHome. This might well be an exemplary effort to revive grassroots conservatism. But the list makes compelling reading, for it provides real evidence that, at heart, the Tories since the 1980s simply have not changed.
Cameron’s tactic since becoming leader was to eschew detailed policy formulation, proving that his party has at last got in touch with modern Britain. It is worth remembering, however, that the Tories’ advance in this year’s local elections was distinctly unimpressive. ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ made little or no electoral impact in the big northern cities where the party was all but wiped out in 1997.
So the Cameron strategy has been two-fold. First, avoid wherever possible making any detailed policy commitments. Set the terms of the electoral contest not as policy substance, but personality presentation. Second, where policies are required, use them to symbolically convey the Tories’ ‘post-Thatcherite’ agenda. Cameron projects he is in touch with policy-free positioning on chocolate oranges, fruit in supermarkets and the decency of children’s clothing.
In neither sense is the strategy persuasive. If Labour sets the terms of political argument again, policy will inevitably prevail. The government needs to escape the hold of momentum politics and the daily cycle of spin. Instead, it must seek to win the big debates of the day, from tax and redistribution to Europe. Here, the Conservatives are weak because they do not know what it is they really stand for on the big questions, from economic management to the modernisation of Britain’s public services. They remain vulnerable to the charge of lacking a consistent strategy. Over time, Cameron will be increasingly exposed.
Neither does the attempt to convey moderation through symbolic policy ideas stack up. At heart, today’s Tories are really the same Conservative party that governed Britain in the 1980s and early 1990s. For one, the Tories are already pledged to divide the proceeds of growth between tax cuts and additional public spending. This will not reassure voters fearful of their real commitment to public services. Sustained improvement in education and health requires spending to rise consistently ahead of the trend rate of growth in the economy. The Tory impulse to cut taxes remains an ideological obsession.
Cameron may have tried to bring the Conservatives into the mainstream, but the instincts of most Tory MPs and members remain robustly Thatcherite. A cursory glance on the ‘100 policy ideas’ blog on ConservativeHome underlines this.
The Tories, first of all, are perfectly relaxed to see inequalities of income and wealth in Britain rise, hence the proposal to abolish inheritance tax and the continuing flirtation with a flat tax. Like the Republican party in the United States, the rhetoric is moderate, but the reality is very different: tax cuts for the rich, sharp cuts in public investment, and rising levels of poverty and unemployment.
Iain Duncan Smith, who is leading the Conservative policy group on social justice, recently argued: ‘I accept that the state has a role in all of this which is to guarantee … the safety net … their minimum guarantee which is that we will never allow people to fall below the level that allows them to sustain a basic quality of life. But the problem for the state is that beyond that it is too broad an instrument to be able to deal with individuals.’ So the explicit agenda is to slim down the welfare state, and allow voluntary sector organisations to fill the gap.
In public services, the Conservatives are focussed on helping a minority to escape, instead of helping the majority to get on. The education ideas proposed on ConservativeHome are concerned with allowing every school to opt out of local democratic control and the abolition of LEAs, triggering a ‘free for all’ over admissions and the return to selection.
Finally, on crime, the old Tory impulses are intact, hence their commitment to ensure ‘prisoners should serve full sentences’. Their main pledges on crime are to ‘double prison places’ and ‘legalise prostitution’, hardly a sensible or coherent criminal justice agenda.
In their heads, Cameron’s Tories are energetically trying to shift to the centre. But in their hearts, most grassroots members, activists and Tory MPs remain committed to a fundamentally right-wing agenda. That is why their ‘modernisation’ will only ever be skin-deep – in contrast to Labour under Kinnock, Smith and Blair.
As Douglas Alexander has argued, there is ‘an irreconcilable tension between the instincts and beliefs of today’s Tories, and the marketing strategy they are pursuing’. It is Tory values and the policy instincts flowing from them that remain the Conservatives’ central problem. Exposing that contradiction is crucial for Labour’s future success.