toryleadership

The Davis-Willetts dream ticket?

Writing on the Social Affairs Unit blog - here, 'Watlington' recommends a Davis-Willetts dream ticket. Here are excerpts from Watlington's interesting post:

"Whilst much of the Tory tribe in the Westminster village is focusing on the Conservative leadership election, there is a far more interesting contest going on: those jockeying for a senior position in the Shadow Cabinet. So far around 10% of the Conservative Parliamentary Party has hinted that they would like to stand for leadership of the Conservative Party, but what these individuals are really standing for are the positions of Deputy Leader, Shadow Chancellor and Foreign Secretary....

Of all the leadership contestants, there is one person who fits this bill: David Willetts MP. David Willetts is one of the few people in the Conservative Party who is respected by right and left alike. Although described as "two brains" he is more than an intellectual because he is one of the few who is able to narrate a story about Conservatism, bringing together the threads of laissez faire and traditional Toryism. He understands that Conservatives need to reclaim the mantle of social justice from the left, thus preventing Labour from having the monopoly on compassion. He is also a very decent man. And therein lies the problem. Genuine decency does not often win leadership elections and if it does it means weak leadership. One who learnt that lesson all too well was Iain Duncan Smith. IDS's world was one in which every man's word is his bond. In the harshest way possible he was to find out that that world died a long time ago.

But, returning to David Willetts, he is one of the candidates for the new Shadow Cabinet to have real weight behind him. So far the talk is that he has the support of 20 MPs. He also has the backing from younger, more thoughtful Conservatives, many of whom know he won't make it as Leader but will provide intellectual ballast to a winning candidate. He has a number of other pluses too. Mr Willetts comes from a humble background and does not have the "I have a divine right to rule" attitude that afflicts so many of the Notting Hill set.

Enter David Davis. One of the few leadership candidates who is really standing for leader, he is said to have 80 MPs behind him. His strength lies in his personal story of aspiration and hard work and the fact that he was brought up in a South London council estate far away from the cosy confines of Notting Hill. But his critics slate his ruthlessness and lack of intellectual ballast. Does this matter? Not really. But just think how much better it would be if in a second round of a leadership contest, Mr Davis were able to bring David Willetts on board saying that Mr Willetts would be Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor in a Davis Shadow Cabinet. This would show the Parliamentary Party that Davis was being backed by someone who was thoughtful, nice and well respected. At a stroke, David Davis would be transformed into a leader who can attract the very brightest and very best. And it is most likely - because the kind of people who support Willetts (such as David Lidington MP) would do so out of admiration - that Willetts would be able to guarantee to bring his supporters over to Davis.

Of course, the Davis team might worry that Willetts might sneak through the middle and actually become leader, but given all the stop David Davis candidates, this is most implausible. Davis and Willetts would be a highly potent cocktail. Davis would supply the ruthlessness and ambition needed to be leader, whilst Mr Willetts would provide the intellectual framework and the story of compassionate conservatism for the next election. Bringing a thoughtful moderniser on board like Mr Willetts would show the Party that Davis can attract the centre ground (or common ground as he prefers to call it), without kow-towing to the Notting Hill set. There would be a real chance that we would have a Tory leadership based on merit and intellect rather than one based on privilege and patronage."

Peter Oborne attacks Davis camp for plotting, praises Willetts for thinking

Peter Oborne uses his Spectator column to add to the questioning of David Davis.

After attacking the emptiness of the Tory Party's cosmetic modernisers Mr Oborne writes:

"Davis’s campaign is as empty of intellectual content as the modernisers are. It has made up for this important omission by briefing to the press about his escapades during his tough council-estate boyhood in south London. This tactic is working well. The Davis campaign has been led by a small group of hatchet men who have been sticking the knife, with unconcealed enjoyment, into both the party leader Michael Howard and fellow candidates."

Mr Oborne reports that one Sunday newspaper was offered an op-ed piece by a Davis supporter that would have urged Michael Howard to quit by the summer. The offer was apparently withdrawn at the last minute when it became clear that the anti-Howard campaign might blow up in David Davis' face.

If Peter Oborne is unimpressed with the Davis campaign he is impressed by David Willetts:

"There is only one potential candidate for the Tory leadership who is conducting himself in the way Michael Howard envisaged when he opened the door for a six-month-long leadership contest, and that is the trade and industry spokesman David Willetts. While other Conservatives have been plotting, Willetts has been thinking. While other candidates have been sticking the knife in each others’ backs, Willetts has put pen to paper... Only Willetts has so far shown himself capable — as his speech to the Social Market Foundation this week shows — of reminding us why it’s still rather splendid to be a Conservative."

David Willetts - Britain is the "sick society of Europe"

In perhaps the most far-reaching analysis of the task facing the Tories, following their third defeat, David Willetts MP will use an address to the Social Market Foundation to say that Britain is in danger of becoming the "sick society of Europe".

He will point to "fragile families", "some of the toughest estates", "the most drunken tourists" and "some of the worst problems of crime and drug abuse" as evidence of this sickness.

But Mr Willetts is not without hope. Remembering how the 1970s British economy was the "sick man of Europe", he will say that social decay can be reversed.

Mr Willetts will point to New York's record at reclaiming the streets from petty and serious crime as an inspiration. Writing in The Times he notes:

"We can draw on the deepest insights of Conservatism about how to create order in society by protecting and repairing public space. The decent law-abiding majority should feel that the public realm belongs to them, not to marauders. I do not believe that Britain’s toughest estates are hopeless. We can unpick that dreadful interaction of traditional school catchment areas, poorly managed social housing, ineffective policing and the disappearance of small businesses, which together add up to urban decay. This might well require opening up, for example, school choice."

The Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry concludes that Conservatives need to realise that today's social problems are not going to be solved by a simple rolling back of the state. He also says that social libertarianism isn't cheap. Mr Willetts' analysis echoes that of Iain Duncan Smith, recently made in The Sunday Times. IDS wrote:

"Social mobility — the life chances of the worst-off — has declined over the lifetime of the welfare state. Socialism and its “new” variants are not the way to assist the marginalised and vulnerable. The poorest people have got poorer under new Labour. It is time we Conservatives began to present an alternative."

Small government needs social reform

Interesting stuff from David Willetts in this morning's FT:

"Market reform has given Conservatism its excitement and its cutting edge over the past 25 years, and it can do so again. But that is not enough. By focusing ruthlessly on Britain's economic problems in the 1980s, we became for many people "the economics party". To this day, many Conservatives are most comfortable when we are talking about business, tax and privatisation.

But we should not just think about cutting the supply of government; we should also tackle the demand for government. A society of fragmented families and fractured lives is one in which people will end up turning to the state for more support. Robust families and real neighbourhoods, as well as being good things for themselves, are a condition for reducing the burdens on the state. Here we start getting into difficult territory. A philosopher warned that trying to restore a broken tradition is like trying to repair a cobweb with one's bare hands. But I am not a pessimist. I do not believe there is a law stating that it is inevitable that societies must decay and governments grow to replace them. Inspiring examples, often pioneered by centre-right governments, show it is possible to reduce crime, strengthen families, restore respect for the professions and bring life back to local communities. If we make that our vision we will find that a smaller state becomes not an ideological objective in its own right but the consequence of life getting better for our fellow citizens.

Here are the elements of a renewed Conservatism. It is long-term, not short-term. It is committed to the task of economic reform but sees that this must go hand in hand with social reform. It realises that social reform is not an optional extra to make us "nice". In reality, social reform is a condition for everything else, including the limiting of government. It gives the Conservative party a noble purpose once more."

I'm trying to keep this a 'Newsblog' rather than an opinion-heavy blog but I really think David Willetts 'gets it'.

What about David Willetts?

An interesting article by Mary Ann Sieghart in this morning's Times reviews the difficulties that the Tory modernisers have experienced in finding a candidate.

She reports that, a few days ago, Francis Maude, Stephen Dorrell and Andrew Tyrie appointed themselves as kingmakers and decided Andrew Lansley should be the modernisers' 'Stop Davis' candidate. Mr Dorrell was dispatched to tell other moderniser candidates - Alan Duncan and Damian Green - that Lansley was to be the man. Not surprisingly Ambassador Dorrell was greeted with something like - 'who do you think you are?'.

Mary Ann Sieghart briefly identifies weaknesses with all of the moderniser candidates:

Lansley is a little colourless... Tim Yeo is a blast from the past... Alan Duncan has never impressed colleagues... Damian Green lacks charisma... Osborne and Cameron are just too young...

Sieghart ends up with making something of a case for David Willetts:

"That leaves one candidate who, in my view, receives far too little coverage: Mr Willetts. Erudite he may be, but he is surprisingly normal for a man of such big brain. He has been thinking and writing cogently about the future of Conservatism for rather longer than most of his rivals. He is extremely nice and, as a grammar-school boy whose mother was a teacher and father an engineer, does not suffer from a Tory toff label. Mr Willetts might be thought too reasonable and unaggressive — but was not it those very traits that voters found appealing in Charles Kennedy? Oh yes, and he is bald. But nobody’s perfect. That is the modernisers’ problem."