On my way to work in Manchester city centre at the moment I have to pass by two large banners which loudly proclaim: ‘Ready For Change’. There’s been lots of discussion in my office about this. What, exactly, is this actually saying? Should it be read with an implied question mark, as if to enquire: ‘Are you ready for change?’ Or is it more of a directive, as in: ‘Get ready for change, people of the North?’. Maybe it’s deliberately vague, like David Cameron. Whatever it means, if their choice of a conference slogan isn’t bold, their choice of conference venue certainly is.
The fact is the Tories aren’t that popular in Manchester. They have only one member of the city council, and he was elected as a Lib-Dem. I couldn’t even be bothered to look up the last time they actually won a seat. During the recent European elections, hardly a good night for Labour, they came a distant fourth in the city – beaten not just by Labour and the Lib-Dems, but also by the Greens.
This makes their decision to come to Manchester this year fascinating. Because although it can’t be ignored that the Tories have begun to do much better in the North, with last May’s county council results a particular high point, few would disagree that the Tories experience a Northern discomfort which is every bit as pronounced as Labour’s difficulties in the South.
And in a conference which is all about how different the Conservatives are today to the Conservatives of just a few years ago, this is interesting. If the Tories really have changed, could the North learn to love them?
Unsurprisingly I think not. Mention the 1980s to most Conservatives and you will see a happy grin appear on their face, as they relive glorious memories of Thatcherism rolling back the state, crushing the unions, and single-handedly defeating the Soviet Union. You’ll not get the same response if you mention the 80s to a local in a Manchester pub. I can put it no better than Tory frontbencher Michael Gove, when he described the feeling of living in Scotland during this era as ‘more like being one of Thatcher’s orphans than Thatcher’s children’.
Now, I’ve never been one of those Labour supporters who pretends that a Labour government in the 1980s wouldn’t have had to address difficult issues like trade union power, inflation, and uneconomic nationalised industries. But the way in which the Tories went about implementing Thatcherism created so much pain and collateral damage that you can still see the scars, and nowhere is this more pronounced than in the North. The institutions upon which the culture, dignity and social cohesion of the North were built around were almost entirely destroyed, and much of what depended on them was swept away too. During this time the Tories did little, or nothing, to mitigate the immense changes that they brought about. There was no attempt to cushion the blow for those hardest hit. The best they could offer was to move thousands of people off the unemployment lines to a life on incapacity benefit until they hit retirement age. Most of them are still there.
This brings us to the real issue of this year’s Conservative conference. Despite signs of recovery, we’re still very much in a recession. If the Tories really are ready to change then we should see it in their response to this recession. A Tory party that really has changed would show that it won’t allow people, and indeed whole parts of the country, to be entirely written off without opportunity or hope ever again. There’s not much sign of that. It feels more like some of the Tories here welcome the opportunity the recession has presented to them, allowing them to pursue the agenda they’ve always wanted from the beginning. Ready for change? Braced, would be more apt.