Tories have been "deeply, deeply defective" says Rifkind

Up until now the leadership candidates have appeared determined to measure their words very carefully. Particular care has been taken to avoid very strong criticism of the three men that have led the party since 1997. In a very frank interview with The Sunday Telegraph Sir Malcolm Rifkind threw caution aside and savaged the party's recent history:

"The choice is whether we continue down the cul-de-sac of the last eight years or whether we choose an alternative conservative tradition... The last eight years have been deeply, deeply defective. There is no excuse that is convincing as to why a party that has been in opposition for eight years should be flat-lining in the way we are.... To have seen no increase in the Conservative share of the vote, despite eight years in opposition and despite the intense unpopularity of the Government, is indefensible."

Sir Malcolm encouraged the Tories to focus on "gut" issues of crime and public services. We should not focus on the "classic Right-wing Conservative issues" of, for example, asylum and Europe.

Sir Malcolm used the interview to reiterate his opposition to the Iraq war but, again, he chose much tougher and more direct language:

"I believe it was a wrong war, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. The war was an extremely foolish and unnecessary one. The consequence has been to create a political vacuum in Iraq itself. Terrorists are operating within Iraq in a way we didn't have in the past, so the war has certainly assisted international terrorism in Iraq. If you destroy an existing regime - however evil it may be - you create a political vacuum."

Sir Malcolm identified his first priority as the need to reconnect the party with professional voters:

"I would spend the first 18 months bringing to the party the vast expertise of the country as a whole. We have to win over the professionals. We haven't done that in the past."

Click here to read the endorsement of Sir Malcolm written by Crispin Blunt MP for conservativehome.com.

Comments

[Sean Fear]

Someone else who's ashamed to be a Conservative, and, thus, unfitted to be leader.

[James Hellyer]

Rifkind's blunt assessment doesn't say anything new. I think everyone has twigged that running on a "Europe and Immigration" platform isn't an election winner. but he doesn't tell us what is.

[Graeme Archer]

I bought the Times this morning rather than the Telegraph so I haven't read all of Sir Malcolm's article - but I wonder how to differentiate between "gut" issues of crime and public services, and "classic" right-wing issues like asylum and immigration. To my inner-London mind, the reason that crime is up and the public services are failing is not totally disconnected with government failure to get a grip on asylum, and societal failure of nerve to deal properly with the consequences of immigration. In particular, the utter disaster of the middle-class liberal "policy" of multiculturalism (though calling a practice of ignoring an issue, because it doesn't trouble the tree-lined streets you live in a "policy" is perhaps too generous) is a daily fact that working-class Londoners of all hues have to deal with.

I am grateful to Sir Malcolm for at least being honest about the disaster that has been the Tory narrative for the last eight years. I think that the construction of a valid (by which I mean face validity, a narrative that doesn't crumble when faced with working-class reality) and coherent (by which I mean having policies that cohere around an intellectual centre) narrative is the most urgent task for the centre-right in the UK today. If we fail now then there will be no intellectual weapon with which to confront, on the one hand, the ghastly "community" (ie ghetto) based politics of the left - which bring us an erosion of liberty and what I think of as the Nazi-Soviet pact being practised by Liberal Democrats and Muslim community leaders - and on the other hand, the nihilistic, anti-democratic politics of the radical Islamicist, which brought us the election of the "honourable member" for Bethnal Green and Bow. I never thought I'd see the day when posters were plastered over my bus and tube stops ordering British citizens not to participate in the "infidels" election, or when a black, female, Jewish and superlatively honourable Labour member (Oona King) would be subject to vile abuse for taking part in a second world war commeroration ceremony. What is the Tory response to this?

[Sean Fear]

Malcolm Rifkind's answer is to try to outflank Labour from the Left.

[malcolm]

I agree with James.Rifkinds comments are most certainly right but he will only become interesting when he makes some proposals as to what to do about it.
Let's hope that soon he and other candidates show us their ideas it's starting to be a long wait!

[James Hellyer]

"Malcolm Rifkind's answer is to try to outflank Labour from the Left."

And you base this assertion on what, Sean? There's certainly nothing that indicates that's his position in the interview or his earlier speeches.

[James Hellyer]

"Rifkind's comments are most certainly right but he will only become interesting when he makes some proposals as to what to do about it.

Exactly, Malcolm. He says he'll use his expertise to win over professionals, but doesn't say how he proposes to do that!

while it is a step forward to have people openly declare their candidacy, they need to go further and actually set out their platform.

At present Rifkind has experience on his side (albeit with few noteworthy achievments to distinguish him). He needs to say a lot more to convince us he has the answers and is not simply a Major-era throwback.

[AnotherNick]

I think much of what Sir Malcolm says is true, but I want to see the leadership contenders moving forward. We all know mistakes were made, but it does no good to criticise your own party's past. While Rifkind's comments are far less ridiculous than those of Alan Duncan, lets get away from saying what has gone wrong and move on to what we will do correctly from now on.

[Wat Tyler]

Yes, surely by now we're all fed up with our MPs and peers wringing their hands and telling us how things have gone disastrously wrong- we can get quite enough of that from the likes of Peter Hitchins and Bruce Anderson.

What we expect from our leadership contenders is strength and a positive lead into the future.

And as for "I would spend the first 18 months bringing to the party the vast expertise of the country as a whole."- I'm afraid that sounds like The Big Conversation by another name.

[Oberon Houston]

The crucial problem the party faces is that those on the Right see the emergence of New Labour as an opportunity to move Conservative policy firmly onto their ground. However the fundamentalist attitude of these people clouds judgement. They cannot see that the ordinary voters Tories need to attract do not want this. To confuse matters further, they continually point to the Thatcherite era as some justification for their position, conveniently forgetting that the winter of discontent is a long way from the current situation in the Britain today.

Malcolm Rifkind and many others are correct to point out that it is not enough just to appeal to those within the party, if the majority of Britons do not share this view. Similarly, it is not enough to elect a leader of the opposition, we need to elect a future PM.

I have spent some time looking at the tactics used by New Labour in 1997, and I have been impressed with the way they presented their manifesto. Simply put, the headline items were:

1. No increases in direct taxation
2. Smaller class sizes
3. Shorter waiting lists

However, along with this they developed two other relationships with the voters, one being trust, and the other was a positive outlook for the future. The opposite to this is distrust (Howard Flight), and a negative campaign (are you thinking what we're thinking?) focusing on areas of policy people feel uncomfortable with.

What was never mentioned, but was enacted? Devolution for Scotland, the Charter on Human Rights, Euro, Hunting with Hounds, Regional Assemblies etc.. Staying out of the weeds was the golden rule for all Labour politicians in 1997.

Finally, one of the pillars of conservative theory flies in the face of the radical agenda proposed by the right. That is the natural dislike of rapid change (theory of scepticism) and the view that the outcomes of change are not always predictable, therefore must be treated with care. Most people in the country feel this, and chose to vote New Labour in May.

[James Hellyer]

"Malcolm Rifkind and many others are correct to point out that it is not enough just to appeal to those within the party, if the majority of Britons do not share this view. Similarly, it is not enough to elect a leader of the opposition, we need to elect a future PM."

Can you tell me which leadership candidate hasn't said we need to reach out broaden our support? What's disputed is not the need to do so, but the best means of doing so.

1. No increases in direct taxation
2. Smaller class sizes
3. Shorter waiting lists

They're meaningless slogans. No party was campaigning on promises of tax increases, larger classes and longer waiting lists. Yes, these were positive, but were little different to our 2005 pledges.

[Oberon Houston]

We are in the world of politics here, campaigning is about broadening your appeal to voters that do not have a partisan outlook. The Conservative Party has been guilty in previous campaigns of focusing on those that already vote conservative, instead of the much bigger voter base that currently vote Labour. The point I am making is not that the focus of New Labours campaign in 1997 was light, because it was. The point is their tactics gained them a majority of 178. To ignore this is crazy.

[James Hellyer]

"The point is their tactics gained them a majority of 178. To ignore this is crazy."

To ignore that this also involved a Conservative government completely screwing up is crazy. Would Labour's fluffiness have delivered a huge victory if Major's government hadn't created a huge recession and been mired in sleaze?

[Editor]

"Our fundamental problem today is that people attribute to us [Tories], values that are not good values."

Those words from Francis Maude - in an interview for ePolitix.com - suggest that the Tory Chairman agrees with Malcolm Rifkind's concern at the seriousness of the Tory plight. Chairman Maude also says:

"[Voters] still think that we principally want to help the rich, that we are rather intolerant and preachy of how people live their lives and they still think that our approach to public services is more about helping people to escape from them not improving them... They don't think we're in touch with modern Britain, or understand modern Britain or like modern Britain."

Mr Maude is Chairman of C Change and I've posted that think tank's analysis of the Tory plight on the new ten things blog.

[James Hellyer]

Tim, I think almost everyone shares Sir Malcolm's concerns. Quite frankly only a fool wouldn't.

That doesn't give us solutions though. Fortunately they are blindingly obvious (and will therefore be ignored by our masters).

As Lord Tebbit has observed, a lot of core issues are popular with the general public. We must confidently espouse those views, to energise the party's base and make our convictions clear to the wider public...

... who think we're nasty and selfisg. That's why we must show our policies will help the most vulnerable in society...

... and we have to start now. Waiting until the month before an election is too late. People's minds will already have been made up.

[Mark O'Brien]

"The point I am making is not that the focus of New Labours campaign in 1997 was light, because it was. The point is their tactics gained them a majority of 178. To ignore this is crazy."

Good institutions learn the lessons of past campaigns. Great institutions make new lessons of their own. The number of comparisons to 1997 and 1979 I have seen by people who fear that if we craft too radical a vision, put together too bold a platform, because Thatcher and Blair were both elected on a rather timid manifesto, are missing the fact that we have a big opportunity to advocate real change. We shouldn't be scared to put together a big plan for reform. After all, Thatcher and Blair might have been too scared to be bold, but if we look even further back, Attlee wasn't too scared in 1945. And if comparisons to 1945 don't convince anybody, then let's ignore all the comparisons.

Successful opposition parties take advantage of events and declines in the governing party to win an election. But parties which do not back down because of some abstract and unproved fear of unpopularity change society forever. We can't be scared of opposition, because everybody has opponents. And we can't be scared of the people, because they're the ones we're trying to help. We have nothing to fear but fear itself!

[Editor]

I love what you have just written, Mark - "Good institutions learn the lessons of past campaigns. Great institutions make new lessons of their own. "

***

I've just watched George Osborne on Newsnight. He appeared unhappy with the introspection of Rifkind and Maude and urged the party to start focusing on Britain's problems and the party's problems would then take care of themselves.

I was impressed with him. He was on the programme to discuss the fact that Brown cannot meet his growth targets for '05 without an unprecedented spurt over the next few months. He declined to endorse John Redwood's call for petrol tax cuts. He appears weighty for someone so young. The restoration of economic competence is essential for the Tories and GO understands that that tax policy is but a subset of economic policy.

[Simon C]

I caught the end of Newsnight as well. It proved the point made elsewhere on this site at length, and very effectively by David Cameron, that we get nowhere by trashing the brand.

The only people it benefits are our political opponents, and the media. So Kirsty Wark was able to say to Osborne words to the effect of: "Look, even senior people in your party think that you are deeply defective, intolerant and preachy."

This must stop. How can we ever persuade the country that our values are its values if people at the very top of our Party spend their time saying the opposite?

[Mark O'Brien]

As soon as we get a new leader and put together a platform for government which has a positive outlook and is presented correctly, all this self-loathing and introspection will go away. After all, if we had a new leader and if we were starting to present some new policies for government, nobody at the top of the party would have the time, opportunity or the reason to keep on moaning about how awful we are!

I agree Simon, this has to stop. No more articles in the press; no more competition between the candidates about who can make the most biting attack on their own party; let's get the candidates seen and heard, and let them talk about their ideas and their plans, not their rants and their moans.

[Jonathan Sheppard]

Absolutely correct. I remember a certain Lord who spent some time at Her Majesty's pleasure commenting that it was about time the party focussed its guns outwards on the real enemy rather than taking pot shots at each other.

Brown is fiddling the books.
Alcohol related crime is up.
Unemployment is up, in spite of the hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs created.
The transport system is no better than when the Labour Government took over.

We need to spend every waking hour pointing out these problems - AND MORE IMPORTANTLY - offering real solutions.

It took Labour several years to realise that when you our out of power you have cannot effectively influence the direction a country is moving in. As soon as we accept that - we can start moving in the right direction.

[Simon C]

It seems to me that we are getting close to establishing some ground rules for candidates in this race:

1) We have had endless analysis of the problems facing the Party and could probably reach broad agreement on what they are. Enough is enough. Therefore:

2) Any candidate who focuses on a problem facing the Party without proposing a specific solution can be disregarded as being a self-evident lightweight. Rifkind, you have been warned.

3) Any candidate who indulges in gratuitous criticism of the Party should be invited to withdraw from the race (after all if they were applying to join the Candidates' list they would probably be expelled) and sent to spend a weekend with John Bercow.

4) Any candidate who sets out a vision for the Party, rather than a vision for the Country, should be required to write out in long-hand every posting on this Blog.

Any more suggestions? There are some serious points here, admist the deterrents.