POLITICS: The anti-Rozza roadshow
The 2003 leadership election starts here
How many Portilloites does it take to break a light bulb?
Occasionally the God does thunder in vain. It has not as yet quite come to that, that The Times newspaper can say to the Prime Minister: Do thou so — or failing it, retire at once into obscurity, back benches, small type, and the third person. Nor has the Queen as yet been constrained to admit into her councils all writers of leading articles whom the newspaper may choose to put forward for such an honour. It may be, however, that such power may yet be gained. The battle for it is very great. The measures taken are well considered. The forethought shown is very excellent . . . It may be that Downing Street will ultimately knock under, and that a man ambitious of the name of a British statesman will have to seek it by commencing with small newspaper effusions. Let us hope that such disgrace is not prepared for us. As yet there is hope.— Anthony Trollope, The New Zealander (1856)
In British politics in the 1990s the biggest single event was the triumph of Thatcherism. What the decade saw was the achievement of Mrs Thatcher’s most provocative dream: socialism was killed off. Progressive, radical, liberal and downright Marxist urges still abound in British politics, but as the animating spirit of the Labour party, socialism was snuffed out long ago. And when your God dies, what do you do? Some Labour politicians did what cynics have done throughout the ages, and stopped believing in anything. It wasn’t a long or difficult journey for some. For most, however, of those who were in the Labour movement when socialism died, what they did was compensate by believing, and with such intensity, in New Politics. Blairism, in truth, wasn’t new, but it was convenient. Like all the best replacement theologies, it claimed to grow out of the old religion, contained within it plenty of accessible ceremonies, and was sublimely, almost dismissively confident of its own unimpeachable virtue. The modernisers inside the Conservative party have seen this process, and they wish to repeat it. Their mistake is that our God lives.
‘Modernisers’ momentarily still within the Tory party want us — in most cases for reasons rooted more in psychosis than politics per se — to undergo a ‘transformative act’ comparable to that which Labour have gone through. Just as Labour, the party after all in office, have renounced their previous beliefs and acquired new ones (and thus, it follows, acquired power), so too must the Tories. But as we have nothing to renounce in the manner of a failed ideology, we instead are merely directed to perform the rituals of change. We have to show the outward signs that we have changed. Once we have been seen to have changed, then we too can taste office again. This analysis is, though, fatally flawed.
The consistent problem with the Portilloite answer to the party’s misfortunes can be summed up by the following question: how do the people who are ‘up in the polls’ gain that status? It is cock-eyed to talk solely about Tory failings, and then to erect a comprehensive analytical account on the basis of that, if, at the same time, one entirely fails to attempt to explain the great Labour lead of the last decade. How do we account for that? What is our analysis of the Labour platform, of Blairite appeal? Generally — even from Portilloites — ‘New Labour’ are condemned by Conservatives as meretricious hucksters. Yet since they are in office, and presumably on the back of what they have done, is this what the modernisers would have the Tory party become? Of course it isn’t, but since Tories being down, and Labour being up in the polls, are matters which are inextricably linked, the fundamentally fraudulent nature of Portilloism revealed by this explanatory absence is as stark as ever.
Labour’s lead will collapse: our task is to stay standing until it does. Our next leader, our Kinnock, will ensure that we’re still around when the tide turns. This simple goal will be unmet solely in the unlikely circumstance that the party decides to listen to the Portilloites.
Catch it while you can
‘We are the problem’ mewls the legend halfway through Andrew Cooper and Michael Gove’s travelling slideshow on this subject. So far the Cchange (and Populus) circus has rolled into the Harrogate fringe, a Cchange meeting, and most recently, inside Central Office itself. There, at a post-GENEVA session, unwisely chaired by Dirk Hazell, London activists got the chance to hear and see why they’re the affront to electability the Portilloite analysis pronounces them to be. Wider attention was gained for the argument by Michael Gove’s recent piece, ‘It’s still the nasty party’, in The Spectator. There are hopes that this performance art will extend its run as far as party conference in October, but just in case it doesn’t, let us look in some detail at this, the most detailed amplification of the Portilloite essence that the party may ever see.
There’s the usual admixture of Christian common sense — unexceptional urgings like, let’s honestly appreciate why we’re in this mess, let’s eschew snake-oil remedies, and so on — stirred in with Dalek-voiced demands that we ‘transform the way we operate’. Portilloism is nothing if not rhetorically predictable. Indeed, one might almost suspect that repetition is the key. But before we get to the stage where a modernised party starts issuing all the constituency collectives with little blue books, or starts painting simple slogans on the side of Smith Square, the poor old Portilloites have to keep fighting in the trenches of the mind. Their latest secret weapon — manufactured by Populus, Michael Simmonds and Andrew Cooper’s new polling firm — is, statistics. Will this win the war for them? Not hardly.
A bogus ‘important issues’ chart is at the heart of the first barrage. This is meant to demonstrate that what matters to the public has changed over the last few decades, whilst the Tory party has retained a Julian Lewis-like obsession in the irrelevant. So while (can you credit it?) nuclear weapons and stuff were rated as jolly important in 1984, they don't seem to have quite the same constituency of interest today. This presumably illuminates the wider failings of the Conservative party because whilst we, broadly, still believe now what we believed then on this subject, so too do Labour today believe, er, what we did then. The other (for Mr Cooper and Mr Gove) signal issue from this period is, inevitably, tax. Though surely if there is one polling lesson to be learnt about the British public, it’s that they’re quite capable of making windy declarations to pollsters as to what they consider the ‘important issues’ to be, yet then going out and not necessarily voting that way? The only importance in this specious observation lies in what it tells us about ongoing debates. More exactly, the Portilloites support those who decry the contemporary importance of tax-cutting rhetoric. Which, on the important ‘with friends like those’ principle, will turn out to be bad news for Michael Howard.
Today polling says that the public thinks the important issues are: the NHS (51%); education (31%); law and order (28%); and defence (25%). Political utility demands only one thing from these (let’s be kind) facts — which of them are ‘tilt issues’? In other words, where is there meaningful give available for us to be able to exploit? This, for the sake of simplicity, can be called the Euro test. It means in practice: in which of these areas, if Tory arguments suddenly became the most appealing to the electorate, would it matter? Who would change their party affiliation, based significantly upon the issue to hand, and, is it an issue where anyway we already have the support of all those who are anyway bothered by it? The ‘NHS’, to use Cchange’s term, is a perfect illustration of this dilemma i.e. that in some areas, depending on how you define the problem, it will never be worth a party’s while altering its stance to attempt to gain support it will never get. The pain wouldn’t be worth the non-existent gain; and a failure to appreciate that stems chiefly from the statistically induced delusion that in politics ‘issues’ are discrete rather than interconnected.
If 51% of people say ‘the NHS’ (rather than, for instance, ‘health care’) is the most important issue, does this vitiate Liam Fox’s estimable agenda? Does it mean that the electorate are here simply instructing politicians, ‘give the NHS more money until it works?’ The statistic, such as it is, doesn’t tell us.
Begging the question
‘How we came to be seen as the nasty party’ is one of those ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ questions liable to get an answer. In the world of Cchange and Populus, this apparently accurate and important label was earned by the party being sleazy, ‘disreputable’, divided, and ‘out of touch with ordinary people’. But as ever, it’s what’s missing that’s truly telling. Two obvious rejoinders to this schema are, what was the role of the people presently advancing this agenda in getting us that status? and, what is the comparison with Labour? In the case of the latter, as none is ever advanced, we must assume that the Portilloite explanation for why these things don't seem to matter as far as Labour is concerned is that, well maybe they do, but we’re worse. For the former, you really do have to wonder who the guilty men actually are (or were). Although Michael Gove worries about the shrill, strident, oppositionalist character assassins that confront the electorate from the Tory frontbench today, he shames not a one. His magnanimity is to be admired, but let us try and accomplish the job he leaves undone. Who are the voter-toxic sewers amongst that easy-to-assess class, the Tory politicians the public recognises? Does Mr Gove have in mind, as being off-putting to the public, milord Ancram, or Mr Yeo, or Mr Green, or Dr Letwin, or Ms. May, or even Captain Duncan Smith? I’d argue that the only frontline Tory the unprompted public actively loathe is Michael Howard. Is it in fact all his fault? This would be improbably extensive anti-semitism.
There’s a lot in truth that’s missing from this argument, and most of all, it is its application to present circumstances. In his Spectator article the elephant in the attic was surely Mr Gove’s utter disinclination to apply any of these teachings to the small matter of the war in Iraq? Every test he applies for the party’s future recovery — connecting with the public, speaking their language, echoing their concerns, ought to have inclined the determined moderniser to an antiwar position, and towards denunciation of Mr Duncan Smith’s fanatical, unbending Atlanticism. There being, after all, no point in putting one’s own personal and traditional and sincere beliefs ahead of the policies (opinion polls show to be) necessary to put the party of the right side of the British people again, is there? That would verge on self-indulgence.
‘Labour’s failings won’t save us’ is the assurance of the Cchange/Populus analysis. This is because polling statistics have no consequence for, no bearing on, and no ability to explain Labour’s success. Polling only explains Tory failure. Whether intentionally or not, the exclusive concentration on what these statistics imply for the Conservative party, without any reference to what they must equally mean for the Labour party, suggests more a care with justifying pursuit of policies already decided upon on the basis of their merits qua policies, and not in terms of disinterested vote-winning utilitarianism. Michael Gove tells us that ‘the messages that core Tory voters enjoy hearing simply don’t connect with the people the party must win over’. What message does he think is, or was, connecting with the people Labour have won over? Why, when it certainly obscures the solution, this perpetual desire only to see one half of the problem?
There is also the problem that this research simply isn’t very good — certainly as regards its totally context-free presentation, it’s next to meaningless. Footnotes would explain, for one, the following ‘fact’: ‘68% of Tory voters are “certain to go and vote” [whereas only] 53% of Labour voters are’. When exactly are they? This was cited as being ‘good news’, but placing the modernist tambourine to one side, here’s a fear: what if the sacred polling for this fact was conducted in relation to, say, the local elections? For you see, our metaphysical problem with this ‘fact’ would then be that, were it ‘true’, it would be ‘astonishing’, in that it would entail a turnout rate roughly twice the historical rate. Can lies tell the truth? My how difficult the public are to understand.
Another deficiency to the ‘facts’ carefully garnered by this analysis is immanent in the chief topic its authors are concerned with: a low Tory rating in the opinion polls (and at general elections of course). Statistics drawn from a generally low level of Conservative support are reverse-engineered to extrapolate a teleological explanation of that low support. When, in fact, the ‘statistics’ are always and in every instance the consequence of that low support rather than the cause of it. So it’s no more than chicken-and-eggery to exclaim, ‘look! the Tories are at 30% in the polls, and only 12% of first time Prospect readers/users of W2 drug-rehabilitation clinics/Surrey supporters support them’. It’s precisely because the Tories are only at 30% in the polls that their scores are so relatively low in any of the selected sub-groups. One does not, in isolation, cause the other: both sets of statistical observations, the party’s overall poll standing, and its ghettoised break-down of support, are part of the same problematic whole. That Portilloites don't see this is due in large part to their adoption of the same ‘group think’ assumptions that riddle New Labour thinking.
Begging your pardon
At root this stuff — the frantic ‘do or die’ tone that pervades the entire modernising project — is at one with the ranks of fatuous books which wondered, from the mid 1980s to early 1990s, ‘can Labour ever win again?’ There was, of course, much more justification for Labour panic: at their worst (in terms of votes cast), they did worse than us, and, still more dangerously, they had at their throats a mortal challenge to their very existence as a party of state. No thanks to the Lib Dem unit, but no one seriously can claim that the Liberals currently present that sort of challenge to us. Are there any merits, even if we disagree as to the best methodological and historical understandings of the party’s present situation, to the solutions the modernisers offer up? Here’s the Cchange roadmap to success in full, so judge for yourself:
1. Always try to see ourselves through the voters’ eyes.2. Talk about the issues that matter to voters, (not the issues that we’re most at home with).
3. Use the language of people, not the language of politicians.
4. Tell people what we stand for — not (just) what is wrong with Labour. Unless we give voters new reasons to support us they won’t.
5. Remember Tim Bell’s rule: ‘if they haven’t heard it, you haven’t said it’ so repetition is vital.
6. Respect modern Britain. If we seem not to like Britain today, the feeling will surely be reciprocated.
7. Don’t be shrill or strident — that’s not how normal civilised people behave.
8. Remember that whatever we are talking about, the most important message is what we are saying about ourselves.
9. Face the fact that we lost people’s trust because of how we behave (and sound), as well as what we do.
10. Focus on the voters we have to win, don’t preach to the converted.
11. Be disciplined and consistent.
More than anything else, this manifesto would appear to be by Carole Caplin out of the mouth of Ali G, ‘respec! Whatevva yo say, ya’s rilly talkin about yew’. You fear someone has been hanging round for too long with skateboarding children in Westbourne Grove. Accepting that provision #11 is meant to be ironic, and that most of it is unexceptionably bland, does it tell us anything of any use? It tells us that therapy speak is still the preferred declamatory voice of Portilloism. It strongly suggests (especially when the sustained ‘dissing’ of the Romford effect is taken into account) an arrogant, metropolitan, non-political refusal to learn from what the party has got right. Because assuredly that includes lessons we shouldn’t dream of learning. But most of all, and how this takes one back to the summer of 2001, it’s ‘we’re all guilty’ all over again
Maybe modernisers are peculiarly guilty of some malodorous moral delinquency which requires frequent, self-obsessed and tediously public flagellation, but then again, maybe they’re not. Whatever the case, it has little to do with their ever-more provisional standing as Conservatives. Each of these points upbraiding the party varies from the weakly observed to redundantly anxious; this is not a condemnation made, it is a feeling emoted.
There is no point, either moral or tactical, in political actors ‘seeing themselves’ through voters’ eyes — the interest of politicians, and their parties, lies in seeing more clearly voters, and what it is that they’re liable to get up to; whilst, for example, Eurosceptic hobbyhorsing is naturally unappealing, there is no point in setting ourselves the goal of only talking about the issues that matter to voters: these change, we should aim not to; there is no such thing as ‘the language of the people’ distinct from ‘the language of the politicians’, there is only the language in which ‘the people’ expect to be spoken to by politicians; Labour won its greatest ever majority by avoiding commitments as far as possible, and being obscure about such intentions for office as it had — as in so many things, we could afford to learn from them; Tim Bell’s rule, that until the public say they are conscious of something, it hasn’t properly been said, runs directly up against the sacerdotal polling fact that, ‘almost everyone [in focus groups of former Tory voters] doesn’t know what [Conservatives] stand for anymore’: if the latter is indeed the case, how can the recent Tory leaderships be faulted for anything, as the public haven’t anyway heard it? as even children know, respect is earned not given, which reminds us yet again of the overweening importance of the ‘character issue’ when it comes to selecting Tory candidates; and while, sure, we doubtless shouldn’t be shrill, Portilloite strictures as to the repressive bourgeois need for normalcy overlook Labour and it freakish face; it is patronising and self-obsessed to assume that whatever one says it is ultimately, more than anything else, about oneself; no-one disputes the fact that the popular verdict handed out in 1997 was off the back of recent Tory conduct — what’s at issue is whether this was a sentence handed out for specific crimes committed, or whether, as Portilloites clearly do, one supposes that, like a nineteenth century criminal race, Tories are now and forever intrinsically guilty, regardless of what they have or have not done; and finally, the driving purpose of the modernisers is without doubt to drive away the few remaining supporters we have: for some incomprehensible reason, they seem to hate them more than any other group on this earth. Or, in summary, as has been said before, in other circumstances, wrong, wrong, wrong!
Just take that sixth instrument of Cchanged salvation: ‘Respect modern Britain. If we seem not to like Britain today, the feeling will surely be reciprocated’. Labour hates Britain. Labour politicians continuously chastise Britain for her moral failings. Racism, sexism, snobbery, on and on it goes, from priggish Blairite boy scouts, through dour and secular Brownite Calvinism, through all the way to the screamed total-critiques of the new left: the Labour movement may have lost its socialism, but it certainly hasn’t lost its profound dislike of the British people and the country they have created. Traditionally the cavalier spirit inherent in Toryism has been a wonderful, and popular, antidote to this puritanical tendency: it is quite typical of the Portilloites that this should be the vice of our opponents they covet most.
Redemption & renewal
Political parties are vanguards, not flotsam. They seek to lead, and should not submit to follow. The Tory party has been punished for the mistakes it made, and is now, more or less, good enough that it shall only have to wait to be rewarded until its opponents make their mistakes. This is what worked for Labour; it’s what will work for us. No doubt, though the sponsoring organisations are liable to have vanished, the modernising analysis won’t commit hara-kiri should it be disproven at the next general election by the party pulling back fifty seats and more. Such a result will be castigated for being ‘glacial’ or ‘misleading’. For modernisers, like ‘Tankie’ Stalinists, evidence is subordinate to ideological necessity. Still, one side’s going to be proved right and the other isn’t. My money’s on the side that’s still going to be here, in the party, on the other side of the election.
Good housekeeping
There have been a series of technical glitches recently as we gear up for the big one — the fun and games soon about to commence, and which will certainly keep us occupied (and content-laden) throughout May and June. To that end, ERO has a new political editor: Adrian Muldrew. Long the émience grise of Cumberland Toryism, and late of the Leader’s Office at CCO, Adrian knows more than most that Toryism’s a matter of tone or it’s nothing. He replaces Kit Kildare who, frankly, is still in some marginal disgrace after allowing himself to be sat upon by sinister establishment forces, and not to share with us all chapters from that wonderful comic novel by Nikki ‘Spike’ Page, Mark MacGregor: my part in his downfall.
I am informed that we need a television critic, so if there is anyone right wing out there who watches television, please apply for the post. And last, and probably least, doctors from the Swiss clinic where he, or she, currently lies, tell me that there is every chance that the Snake is about to pull out of the narcoleptic coma she, or he, slipped into while trying to write up the Euro-selection contests. Apparently Bernard has spent the entire Iraq war at his, or her, bedside reading aloud the sort of speeches he might have delivered, if anyone had allowed him to appear in public during the conflict. So as Trish and Christina prepare their offices for the black binbag of destiny, you know what to do.
, April 25, 2003 10:49 PM