The Tories’ slogan, ‘Change to Win’, was picked because focus groups said their brand was discredited, associated with failure and economic collapse. Repositioning a brand means eradicating associations with its past. Cameron hopes pictures with Mandela or on an icecap will suggest he’s different and a break with the past. One day the Tories say they care about the NHS, then Cameron says he’s not a Thatcherite or that he cares about poverty.
But for all the headlines, pictures and celebrity, politicians in Britain face tougher tests. PR and marketing aren’t enough. Serious politics is about more than just positioning your party. Policies must be credible, based on coherent philosophy and values.
We should know. We tried rebranding in the1980s. Peter Mandelson won campaigns with new logos and marketing, but we lost elections because we were not trusted and our policies not popular. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown spent a decade’s painstaking work getting the underlying philosophy and then policies right but the Tories have still not grasped the enormity of the changes to the Labour party. They don’t understand that change is more than skin deep.
We finally won not just because the Tories were out of touch, distrusted and discredited, and not just because Tony Blair was an attractive leader. We won because people believed we had changed and agreed with what we offered. No one would say we’d changed if Tony Benn had been put in charge of economic policy, yet Cameron’s picked John Redwood who wants to slash spending and is associated more than anyone with the past.
Iain Duncan Smith wants the state to provide ‘no more than a national minimum’ and has been put in charge on social justice. Cameron talks about tackling child poverty – but it is just an ‘aspiration’ not a commitment and he fought us every step, saying tax credits are a ‘waste of money’ and child support should be cut.
That’s because – as a matter of ideology, based on his values – Cameron doesn’t believe in the responsibility we all have to act together, collectively as a community and deliver social justice and opportunity for all. Public investment is ‘fiscal irresponsibility’ and the ‘Proceeds of Growth rule’ means cuts every year. Replacing public services for the poor with a ‘profound increase in voluntary and community support’ is the same old Conservative ideology of small state and spending cuts, leaving the vulnerable relying on charity.
Oliver Letwin declares there will be ‘no limit’ to privatisation of the National Health Service, showing they still believe ‘private sector good, public sector bad’ and would end of free healthcare as we know it. George Osborne’s top priority is abolishing stamp duty on merchant bankers’ share deals. Cameron’s first pledge was to pull out of the EPP – a policy previously rejected as too extreme by Michael Howard
And just when we need to boost skills, Cameron would abolish the New Deal. Today’s Tories claim to have gone green but oppose the climate change levy. Time and again, he uses moderate compassionate language to mask traditional Tory positions.
So the dividing line is between Cameron’s Conservatives who do not believe in collective responsibility and would cut spending, cutting support for the vulnerable so charities fill the gap; and progressives promoting rights and responsibilities, strong communities, enabling government and a strengthened voluntary sector guaranteeing fairness for all.
Change for us was real and hard won, but all these issues show that for Cameron, change is cosmetic. No wonder he could assure the Telegraph he is ‘Conservative to the core.’ So instead of welcoming his so-called changes with approval, we should show how he is not really changing at all and demonstrate how he will claim anything – but doesn’t believe a word of it.
Election success is determined by who the public thinks has the best answers on the future challenges. Contrast the Tories’ shallow positioning with the way Labour is coming up with the answers on issues like terrorism and liberty, child-care and skills, climate change, access to housing and public service reform.
But the dangerous thing – the one thing that must be avoided – is the claim that New Labour is at risk and finishes when Tony Blair stands down, or that the rest of us cannot be trusted to run a sensible, modernising, New Labour government. The broad mainstream of the Labour party does not want a return to old Labour. It wants a stable and orderly process that unites the Labour party and wins back the trust of the British people.
No previous government has got right the transition from one leader to another. The Tories still suffer from the splits caused when Margaret Thatcher went, but we’re in a much stronger position than the Tories were. We have a strong economy where previous governments have invariably fallen apart during periods of economic failure.
Past governments have failed when ideological divides – over trade union power in the 1970s for Labour or Europe in the 1990s for the Tories, for example – became unbridgeable.
Today’s Labour party is neither ideologically split nor fundamentally divided on principles. It is untrue to claim there are fundamental divides between so-called modernisers and consolidators, or reformers and the rest. And if we stay united and continue to reform, we can be the first party in history to get it right and that is how we’ll defeat David Cameron.