Big ideas

Big ideas can be used to glue smaller policy ideas together.

"Tony Blair has been all talk. He gets swept away with his rhetoric and his dreams. He's told us about the euro being our "destiny". Well, you know, most people don't actually want a date with destiny. They just want a date with a dentist."

- Michael Howard

Michael Howard’s dentist joke to the October 2004 Tory Conference was a strong sign of his political strategy. He, Oliver Letwin and Lord Saatchi had all reportedly read Lord (Philip) Gould’s ‘The Unfinished Revolution’. Gould was Tony Blair’s pollster and ‘The Unfinished Revolution’ was his account of New Labour’s successful 1997 campaign. Gould wrote that “smaller promises that [voters] could believe in… worked better than anything else I have ever tested in politics". This thinking is understood to have led October 2004’s Tories to eschew grand ideas and focus on “small, more credible promises”. David Cameron MP, head of policy for the Conservatives, claimed: "People are crying out for a kind of ‘Ronseal politics’ - they want it to do what it says on the tin."

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but seven days after Michael Howard’s dentist jibe, Tony Blair dismissed the Tories’ “minimalist” strategy:

"There is a sense in these days that it's better for politicians to reject grand visions and great causes and go for what the Tories have done, for what I might call minimalist politics - an offer so bare that its very paucity is meant to give it credibility. However, the big challenges facing the country will not be made by minimalist politics but by bold and far reaching reforms rooted in the values of fairness and social justice."

A ‘big idea’ can glue small, credible policies together

In reality there is no contradiction between small, credible promises and ‘big ideas talk’. In August 2004 the Tory MP David Curry told ePolitix.com that a big “tune” was necessary to connect the Tories’ small-scale policies:

"Michael Howard has done very well with policies on health and other areas but we haven't yet brought everything together into a single simple, resonant message. We haven't yet got a tune that everyone can hum along to when they are disillusioned with Labour”.

Nick Sparrow of the ICM polling organisation also questioned what he called the Tories’ “scatter-gun” approach. Individual policy announcements are quickly forgotten, he suggested, if “a glue” isn’t provided to bind the ideas together.

Big ideas can be political or substantial

A big idea can be political or substantial. It can even be both.

Tony Blair’s big political idea was triangulation. Everything he said and did – particularly as Leader of the Opposition - aimed to position himself between Labour’s old left and the Tory right. All individual policies and soundbites were used to reinforce that positioning.

This website believes that the ‘And theory of conservatism’ could do something as politically effective for the Tory Party. Unlike triangulation, however, the ‘And theory’ must be substantial. Tony Blair’s triangulation produced a weak, split-the-difference centrism. He has not, for example, cut taxes for those on the minimum wage – therefore simultaneously embracing a ‘right-of-centre’ belief in tax relief with a ‘left-wing’ commitment to social justice. Instead he has found half-way positions between old opposites. The ‘And theory’ is much more robust. Strong ‘good for my neighbour’ policies provide permission for deeper ‘core vote’ policies.

Another belief of conservativehome.com is that the Conservative Party must make national security one of its defining ideas. With the international situation so dangerous parties that do not take homeland defence seriously will not prosper. Nor will they deserve to.

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