Stephan Shakespeare: The Tory surge was 90% policy and only 10% speechifying

What a fabulous week for Conservatives: not only have the prospects for the party turned around 180 degrees, they have done so for fully conservative reasons. My one fear – just a little one - is that in all the excitement, party strategists might wrongly ascribe this fundamental shift in opinion to the stage performance on Wednesday and not sufficiently to the policy announcement. The reversal in fortunes is no more than 10 percent down to speechifying; it is 90 down to the policy. Whether the party, in its euphoria, can stay clinically focused on the important stuff and distinguish it from the fluff will make the difference between a temporary fillip and a proper victory.

I don’t tire of repeating it: Voters need a reason to vote; swing voters need a reason to swing.

I’ve argued in these columns that the internal narrative of the Conservative Party is of little interest to the electorate - that the brand management approach of the last year or two could be of sustained interest only to the media class, and they really don’t matter. Instead, I argued, you need to offer the electorate a hard-edged, bankable deal. You can therefore imagine my relief when last week, the British people were offered exactly that: vote Conservative and taxes will come down. Crucially, those tax cuts were explicitly defined, easy to understand, and unambiguously beneficial.

People care about all kinds of thing. They care about society, about the environment, and about Africa. They care about schools and hospitals. And they care about their pocket-books. Always, every day, in rain or shine, awake or asleep, they care about their pocket-books. Insecurity is the biggest, most constant driver of human behaviour. Any politician who forgets that is doomed. Any political strategists who forget that deserve to be doomed.

It had seemed as if the Conservatives had forgotten. They remembered just in time. And then they acted, and with precision. The proposed inheritance tax cut mainlines on the genetically coded drive of parents to make things better for their children. The cut in stamp duty appeals directly to those struggling to move on in life. Both are to be funded without taking any money from anywhere else it’s needed – it doesn’t come from public service spending but from the people who can easily afford it, the non-doms. It’s simple, credible, and beneficial. Bingo.

In my previous column I teased those who see politics as a TV psycho-soap, those who think it’s all about lifestyle messaging instead of real policies that help people in their daily lives. But I hoped Cameron could appeal on both fronts – that he could ‘get real’ and still do the nice fuzzy stuff on stage. That’s exactly what he did last week. He continued the ‘modern’ message, while also going directly for the pocket-book. That’s a winning combination. Voters are generally rational, and that means they make their choice in their own best interests; but it certainly helps if that choice can also make them feel warm inside. This, I take it, is what David Cameron means by ‘rebalancing’.

So: no return to sentimentalism. Don’t ever again get lost in the mush. We are all heartily sick of all those politicos who dream up new ways to manipulate us. The British people are crying out for a political leader who treats them with respect.

Comments

[Chad Noble]

"Does this retain the policy balance?" should be the first question CCHQ asks itself before making any future announcements.

The sums don't add up re non-doms imho, but more importantly (as the totals are quite small in the whole budget), this first attempt at policy fusion, a simultaneous release of two complimentary but offsetting policies (ie appeal to left and right at the same time) is electoral dynamite.

[Matt Wright]

Stephan says - "Voters are generally rational, and that means they make their choice in their own best interests; but it certainly helps if that choice can also make them feel warm inside".

Spot on. This is the key, especially for swing voters - make people feel good about voting. They do have self interest but they also want to feel like they are doing good for their neighbours.

Classic example - taxes are being wasted, we will cut bureaucrats and red tape but also spend the savings on a childrens hospital.

[Chad Noble]

Exactly Matt.

With the excellent news that another Tory MP, Peter Bone, has just signed up to BOO, the question Tories should start asking, is 'what better way would we spend the money?' - not just in red tape saving as you note, but also contributions to the EU?

Was giving 100 billion to the eu over ten years as Peter notes, the best way to spend our money?

Of course not, so let's tell the people not just what we could save by leaving the EU, but identify and highlight the projects that can be funded with the savings.

[Henry Mayhew - Ukipper]

This left and right punch thing is OK as far as it goes - and argues for demanding the referendum Blair promised - good move on the Opposition Day debate.

Constitutional issues concerning the EU and other European institutions are, of course, out in a league of their own. But after them the Tories would serve us best by getting to grips with the structural problems that are neither left nor right: Pensions, non-property savings vs. means-tested welfare, the NHS, the Police, rights to nationality,. The Wisconsin welfare policy is an excellent step in the right direction, as are the rules for new schools.

More of the same is hugely necessary. Gordon's not going to come back and neither are Balls, Darling, and the rest of them, so the time to do this stuff is now.

[Teck]

I am not sure if the details of inheritance tax-stamp duty and non-domicile levy are meant to be the two ends of a balanced financial equation with resultant cost neutrality, and if so, advisers would have worked that one out - [Chad Noble; Oct 08, 2007 at 09:11]. Rather, I suspect these are part of wider calculations, but unveiled at Conference as synergistic policies and not contrapuntal economic considerations. Indeed, such clarity of tax treatment of non-domiciles could paradoxically encourage an influx of new capital, even investment!

On the surge, that could be attributed to a number of factors in addition to those captioned and not necessarily in that proportion. I would add to the those the exposure of Labour's spin machine and failures. As David Cameron pointed out, the public are not fools, certainly those who have seen the errant ways of Labour!

[Tony Makara]

The thing that most stands out about Conservative policies is that they are about real and achievable change. David's speech was inspirational and interwoven with fresh and challenging ideas. In contrast Labour look stale and lack direction. Yes, policy is crucial in winning over voters but there can be no doubt that David Cameron is the vital component in getting that message across.

[Chad Noble]

"I am not sure if the details of inheritance tax-stamp duty and non-domicile levy are meant to be the two ends of a balanced financial equation with resultant cost neutrality,"

Teck, this is from Osborne's speech transcript on conservatives.com

"Costing Summary

Raise Inheritance Tax Threshold to £1 million -£3,100m

Raise stamp duty threshold to £250,000 for first time buyers -£400m

Offshore Domicile Levy +£3,500m"

And Osborne himself repeated this on Question Time, noting to Ruth Kelly that the funding for the tax cuts would not come from "cutting services" but by charging non-doms a 25k levy.

[Simon Denis]

Quite right. As speeches, most of them were pretty feeble - Oprah Winfrey stuff in the case of dear old IDS and auto-cue dullness from George Osborne. What he said, however, was what we needed and wanted to hear. Let Mr Cameron take note - when he said immigration had been too high, his poll ratings rose. When he ditched grammars, the poll ratings fell. Now he is back on tory territory with tax cuts, the polls are up again, and how! The trick is to say it with a smiling, optimistic face. The only strong point in the whole modernising agenda was the cosmetic one. Bitter old blimps put people off. Fair enough, but don't junk the ideology with the pinstripes. Heed Coulson and send Hilton to join Francis Maude in political Limbo. It is obviously where they will be happiest.

[Teck]

Thanks for that, Chad [Oct 08, 2007 at 11:06], I was so riveted by George Osborne's policy speech that I did not note the figures as they seemed right at the time, and still do!

[Bexie]

On the speeches, the art of presentation is a combination of logic, grammar and rhetoric. You need all three.

On the policy stuff, if you recognise that the core of our swing vote is the aspirant working class, classically "white van man", they are the people who benefit most from the proposed tax reforms, suffer most from the dismal public "services" that nuLab is taxing us to the hilt for and are most resentful of the PSP's in their nearly new BMW's and on their long holiday's.

One only has to see the reaction to town hall's deciding to charge us yet again for picking up trash (what precisely do we hand over 10% of our net income to them for in the first place?)

Add to this the effect of nuLab on the individual. An old labour MP once said to me that you can do anything to the people but don't interfere with their pint and fag in a pub on a Friday evening. nuLab seem to have forgotton this basic premis which has not helped their popularity. Their core vote are starting to feel the pain of this interventionist bunch of puritan hypocrites.

It is that swing voter, getting up at 4:30am to drive to London because they can't afford to buy somewhere in 55% social housing Islington.

It is that swing voter, who cannot afford private education, but at least in Kent can get kiddy into the local Grammer if they work hard.

It is that swing voter, who has to fork out to send Granny to Cape Town because the local hospital has a 3 month queue of asylum seakers wanting urgent treatment.

The essence is that the swing voter wants some kind of delivery for the service taxes they are paying for and is now paying twice for theses self same services, once to nuLab to support the PSP's and again privately to actually get the service.

They increasingly recognise that nuLab simply does not deliver, indeed being the party of "do what I say and not what I do". These are the swing voters that are returning to the party that actually delivers.

[Cardinal Pirelli]

The article gets it only half right, it was the welcome policies by Osborne which pulled in the votes - but - it has been the speechifying that made those votes soft enough to switch.

Think back to previous elections, excellent tax cutting policies and not enough people wanted to know because it was those 'inept, nasty Tories'. Now, we are seen as a credible alternative and a party that wants to help others. That's the Cameron effect, to make people happy to switch their votes.