We could be within days of a general election being called, so this is a time to be constructive. How to be constructive when the polls are so gloomy for the Conservatives? Simple: all people are capable of changing their minds, so all elections are winnable. But that means Cameron’s people changing their minds too.
No, not by lurching to the left or right. Cameron has been clear that he will do neither, and he’s absolutely right. I’m not suggesting any weakening of the modernising message. I have always, from well before the rise of DC, argued that the Conservatives needed to fundamentally shift their image, from people who wax lyrical about General Pinochet to people who admire Mandela; from wallowing in nostalgia to appreciating today’s dynamic cultural diversity; from talking about privatisation to talking about social justice. On this front, Cameron has certainly succeeded.
The change that Team Cameron must now urgently make is to focus all their efforts on connecting with ordinary people. At the beginning, Team Cameron staked a great deal on their conviction that everything depended on winning over the commentariat - that a subtle chain-reaction would thus be set off, a trickle-down effect that would work its way from the Grays Inn Road to the Boston Stump. I think that was a mistake. It will never happen. Elections are bottom-up, voters don’t take their lead from pundits.
Mark Penn, the brilliant pollster to Clinton the First and now pollster to Clinton the Second, talks of the ‘impressionable elites’. They are the chatterers in the professional classes who are so comfortable in their daily lives, so free from the survival issues faced by the majority of society, that they can afford to become obsessed with the drama of personality played out in their own special theatre, rather than real policy that creates real change.
“The so-called herd in America,” he says, “is better educated and more issue-focused than ever. Today’s elites are like perpetual college students, far removed from the experiences and struggles shaping everyday life. And so it is a lot easier to spin America’s elites than it is to spin the voters.”
Positive mood music – rebranding and all that – is enough to win an election only if the electorate have firmly rejected the incumbents and have started looking around to see if the opposition might be acceptable. But if the public haven’t yet rejected the incumbents, then the opposition must offer much, much more.
Thinking that Brown would be easy meat because he lacks charisma was the serious strategic blunder that led the Conservatives into their current difficulties. As Penn says:
“'Buddy potential’ is way overrated. It’s not who you want to have a beer with, it’s who you want to have as president or prime minister. The Margaret Thatcher experience showed pretty clearly how the Conservative Party did so much better with strength and leadership. In the US people realise increasingly that running for president is not an American Idol-like contest, especially with the war and the global economy.”
The really frightening polling figures from last week appeared in the Guardian: not only did David Cameron get the lowest rating of the three party leaders, he was less approved by his own party supporters than the other two, and by a big margin: Gordon Brown scored a net positive rating of 73 points among Labour voters, Ming Campbell managed net 48 among Lib Dem voters, and David Cameron got 25.
Why is that so important? Surely Conservative voters have nowhere else to go? Why appeal to them? Well, disdain for your own supporters is a very dangerous game. Remember, those mysterious voters out there in the sticks, they talk to each other. And if their conservative-minded friends are lukewarm about the Conservative leader, and their friends who are Labour are enthusiastic for their one, which way are they more likely to swing?
David Cameron can still win. It will obviously be very difficult, but it’s definitely possible. However, it will require him and his team to focus on the people who really matter - the uncool majority.
That uncool majority, the swathes of petty suburbia with which the Conservative Party once connected so naturally, is highly risk-averse, and they now find themselves in a world full of new risks and new threats. So what can we expect them to do? The cost-benefit of Brown is well known to them, but the cost-benefit of Cameron must seem an almost impossible calculation. They will therefore be inclined against him at the moment of decision.
Cameron can still get their attention, and then their vote, if he has something direct and advantageous to say to them. He must therefore reject those who tell him that a broad branding message is enough. Instead, he must get very explicit with what he is really offering the public, besides his own charm. The electorate must know precisely what the deal is, and why it’s better than Brown’s.
It’s not all about money, in the sense of tax cuts, but for most people in shaky times, it is all about survival: who will best preserve – maybe even enhance - their ability to carve out a liveable life? Who will leave them with more money in their pockets and better value from public services? Who will protect them from hooligans and terrorists?
If there is nothing new on offer from the Conservatives, nothing bankable, then the natural choice for the cautious voter will be Brown. But David Cameron is exceptionally talented, and so is the team around him; they still have time to get the voter’s attention – and support – if they get real.
This lauding of Pinochet will not do. The great Mario Vargas Llosa summed it up best when he told the AEI two years ago:
"Those who believed that General Pinochet was the exception to the rule [about the importance of private property and the rule of law being ignored in South America] because his regime enjoyed economic success have now discovered, with the revelations of murder and torture, secret accounts and millions of dollars abroad, that the Chilean dictator, like all of his Latin American counterparts, was a murderer and a thief."
Posted by: Iain Murray | September 24, 2007 at 06:22 PM
Brown has many failings, and the Labour party are decidedly below average in their capability in Government - the quality of ministers for example is woeful. However Brown is spot on with his analysis of the current political climate. The tories have alienated themselves from a huge section of the vote by continually focusing on areas of policy that the electorate do not like. This is in contrast to Brown, who has conceeded many areas of policy in order to win power. Cameron has been applauded for 'talking tory' again by many in the party, and his polling has been awful as a result. The slight trust he had built up is fragile and has evapourated.
Posted by: Oberon Houston | September 24, 2007 at 06:43 PM
"the quality of ministers for example is woeful"
Oberon Houston, I think you have hit the nail on the head asto why this government are so incompetent.
If we compare this batch of ministers with ministers of previous governments both Labour and Conservative, there is a clear decline in standards. It has often been said that a lot of people got elected in 1997 who should never have been elected and we are seeing the consequences of that today.
Same goes for Labour's Euro MPs too. Did you see that pathetic performance by Gary Titley earlier today? How on earth did that man ever get selected? Yet another case of a big fish in a small tank.
Posted by: Tony Makara | September 24, 2007 at 09:24 PM
Estelle Morris was the only honest one!
Posted by: Oberon Houston | September 25, 2007 at 01:12 PM
OneNationTory, my phrase 'the uncool majority' was certainly not contemptuous: I've never managed to be cool myself, and you must surely realise that this and my previous pieces for this site have been deeply out of sympathy with those who misunderstand the true strengths of the people both within and outside of London.
Posted by: stephan shakespeare | September 25, 2007 at 05:33 PM
It's really simple, offer freedoms to the majority and they'll vote for you. Thatcher knew this. I thought Cameron was getting it and then up pops Gummer and co. from the Major era promising the opposite. So so stupid. I hope I'm wrong but right now I don't think Cameron has the political intelligence to turn it around.
Posted by: fieldnorth | September 25, 2007 at 07:58 PM