The pursuit of (1) ‘core vote issues’ like Europe, tax and crime, (2) social libertarianism, and (3) one nation policies have all been proposed as paths back to electoral success for Britain’s Tories.
The Tories haven’t won a General Election since 1992 – shortly after which Britain crashed out of the ERM and John Major forfeited his party’s reputation for economic competence. Since then the Tories have flatlined at, or around, 30% to 33% in the polls.
But at the 1997 elections it even underperformed its unpopularity because of tactical voting. Tactical voting to get Tory MPs ousted – or to stop Tories from winning – saw huge numbers of Labour supporters vote for LibDem candidates and vice versa. For 55% to 65% of Britain’s voters the Conservatives were Britain’s third choice party.
Three main paths back to power have been recommended to the Conservative Party:
The core vote strategy
This first path was followed by William Hague in 2001 (and remains popular with the most diehard of Thatcherites) and Michael Howard in 2005. The campaigns focused on ‘core vote’ issues like Europe, crime, tax, asylum and immigration. The Tories hardly improved on their 1997 vote share.
The other two paths back to victory are ‘modernising’ paths – one stressing social (or permissive) liberalism and the other emphasising compassionate conservatism.
The social libertarian (or 'Soho') agenda
The Conservative Party’s social liberals have been ahead of the curve in their understanding of the need for the Tories to change. But their recipe for change has been flawed. The ‘libertarian modernisers’ have invested necessary efforts in candidate diversity but also in finding ‘modern’ positions on Section 28, civil partnerships and even drugs. However, while hateful attitudes to minority groups should certainly be abandoned, the modernisers’ mistake was to believe that the general public wants social libertarianism. The Section 28 campaign was typical of the social libertarians’ approach to modernisation. The social libertarians believed that the abolition of Section 28 (which prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools) would put the party back in touch with modern Britain. Although Section 28 was hated by the Liberati it was always popular with Britain’s conservative majority - which remains particularly concerned about the protection of children from ‘adult influences’.
The compassionate conservatism (or Easterhouse) agenda
The third path – emphasising one nation principles - has never enjoyed the consistent support of a powerful constituency within the Conservative Party. William Hague established the Renewing One Nation unit within Conservative HQ in order to begin a search for more socially just policies but it was Iain Duncan Smith’s brief leadership that put what he called ‘fairness’ at the heart of Tory politics.
A YouGov survey for the Centre for Social Justice suggested that a caring conservatism made more political sense than a libertarian conservatism. The survey found an overwhelming concern – across all ages and regions – about the vulnerability of pensioners and children. The minorities so courted by the modernisers hardly registered in the survey. YouGov also found strong support for families built around traditional values and schools rooted in strong disciplinary codes.
Compassionate conservatism has been actively pursued by Republican politicians in America. Their school choice and zero tolerance policing policies have benefited all Americans but the poorest Americans have been most helped. It is ironic that compassionate conservatism has made less progress under President George W Bush – the man who gave the previously unnamed trends in US conservatism their branding.
Unlike ‘libertarian modernisation’, ‘compassionate modernisation’ doesn’t require an abandonment of ‘core vote’ positions. Using the ‘And theory of conservatism’ compassionate conservatives link traditional Tory positions with new and broader positions on issues like inner city renewal, sex trafficking, action against domestic violence and the arms trade. A belief in a more progressive tax system – underpinned by tax cuts for the poorest families – could be a flagship for compassionate Toryism. This could be accompanied by New York-style policing and anti-drug policies for Britain’s hardest-pressed neighbourhoods. These and other policies – pursued vigorously over years - rather than in a tick box politics kind of way - wouldn’t require an abandonment of ‘core’ Conservative beliefs on crime, immigration and Europe. On the contrary, quality of life policies would provide the seasoning to make those core beliefs palatable to a greater number of people. At long last the prosperous voters who abandoned the Tories in 1997 could again find their hearts and heads telling them that voting Conservative is the right thing to do.
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