In this article, I suggested that the platform of 2005-2010 was really a variant strategy of that pursued in 1997-2001 and 2003-2005, in which one seeks to avoid talking about the economy, public services reform or renegotiation of Britain's place in the EU, since the leadership believed that the Party 75% core's views on these topics would be seen as unelectable, and instead one tried to shift the debate onto some other issues - asylum-seekers, immigration, green issues, gay rights - where the leadership believed one had a better chance of challenging Labour on equal terms.
Certain commenters wondered on what basis I could assert that the mainstream of the Party (for that's all I mean by the "75% core") believed in the things I suggested. I'm rather mystified by this question, since I'd have thought what I said was pretty uncontestable, but let's spell it out. I said that the mainstream of the Conservative Party
"wanted to introduce market forces into health and education - perhaps even privatising parts of them; certainly allowing more demand-side reforms to enhance choice and enable people to top up state provision with their own money. They wanted to privatise things like Royal Mail. They might even have wanted to privatise parts of benefits provision (many a pamphlet was written in the 1990s about workfare or private unemployment insurance). They wanted to keep public spending down to the levels of the late 1980s or late 1990s. They wanted to offer large rises in the income tax threshold to remove many of the poor from income tax altogether. They wanted to renegotiate our position within the European Union. They liked prison, but would have preferred more focus on traditional English civil liberties."
OK. So which bits of this do you doubt were the views of the mainstream of the Conservative Party in the late 1990s and early 2000s? Are you suggesting that the mainstream Party at the time didn't want introduce market forces into health and education and welfare? Do you doubt that they wanted to explore privatising more things? Did you think they were happy about public spending rising rapidly? Would the Party have been unhappy about raising the income tax threshold? Would there have been widespread opposition to renegotiation? Did the Party dislike prison, then, or think there should be less focus on civil liberties?
More fundamentally, do you really dispute that these were the issues that most interested Conservatives at this time? Of course, some people were much more interested in asylum-seekers and gypsies and immigrants and dirty hospitals than these things. I'm not saying that no-one in the Conservative Party was happy with the 2001 and 2005 platforms. But do any of you seriously want to claim that the 2001 and 2005 platforms were authentic statements of the 75% core mainstream Conservative Party's priorities and beliefs?
To be sure, once one looked into the detail, at the actual policies regarding the economy, public services reform, and the EU, there was much to commend our manifestos of 2001, 2005 and 2010. I don't doubt that the modernisers - whether in their current guise or those of 2001 and 2005 - are actually fairly mainstream Conservatives. There was much one might complain about, also - lack of ambition in certain areas, lack of imagination in others, lack of detail often. But the main problem was not the manifestos - it was always the priorities between manifestos, between General Election campaigns. Aside from 2001-3 and during the summer of 2007, and then in response to force majeure from June to December 2009, the leadership tried just about everything it could think of to avoid discussing the economy or public spending or the reform of public services or EU renegotiation.
Two or three exceptions aside, there is no doubt that the modernisers are mainstream Conservatives. My main concern is not with their political beliefs; it is with their campaigning tactics. They have consistently veered between "poor" and "useless" for the past thirteen years. Contrary to certain interpretations of events, the fact that their desperate attempts to conceal the true views of the mainstream Conservative Party throughout this time have led to three defeats is not an indication that they did not conceal those views well enough! And as for the idea that the poor performance at the Elections shows that "if even these policies were not attractive to the voters, then an offering closer to the mainstream Party's beliefs would have been crushed", all I can say is this: the fact that being inauthentic did badly is not a proof that being authentic would have done even worse!
