toryleadership

Editorial: Portillo argues that Cameron's success should be measured by the blood he spills

A couple of weeks ago this blog noted talk of a 25% strategy.  "One leading supporter" of Mr Cameron was said to be hoping for a war on The 'Hate' Mail and The Mail on Sunday.  The party would be fundamentally changed, the supporter hoped, and in the transition from the old to the new party Tory support might fall to 25% but it would be an interim price - well worth paying.  One visitor to the site - 'AnotherNick' - dismissed the story as "just silly, possibly the work of another campaign, but more likely just an anti-Cameronite".

There's a lot of reasons to believe that 'AnotherNick' might be right.  With the exception of ambiguity on drugs policy Mr Cameron has shown no inclinations to uber-modernisation.  He has said that he wants to use the tax system to support marriage and he has rejected the idea of all-women shortlists.  He has talked much more about poverty (at home and abroad) than lifestyle choice issues during the campaign - suggesting that he's more of an Easterhouse moderniser than a Soho moderniser.

In today's Sunday Telegraph Janet Daley hopes that the modernisers around Mr Cameron will make peace with the Conservative Party's past and abandon what she thinks is a futile search for a Clause IV moment.  She hopes that they will reject 'Tory Modernisation Theology' and realise that there is "nothing in the Tory liturgy that was remotely as fatuous and electorally suicidal as Labour's promise to nationalise every wealth-producing mechanism in the land".

It would appear that Michael Portillo is still a disciple of Tory Modernisation Theology.  Mr Portillo compares Mr Cameron's rise to that of Chauncey Gardiner in Hal Ashby's Being There film: 

"In his film Being There, Peter Sellers played a simpleton, Chance, a gardener. He smiles sweetly and speaks softly. His only conversation is about seeds, plants, seasons and the like. By a series of accidents he is mistaken for a wise man who has chosen to speak only in metaphors. When he says that we reap in the autumn what we plant in the spring, sages nod their heads admiringly. Before long he has become a national hero, a familiar figure on television chat shows, a man whose counsel is sought by the president."

Mr Portillo hopes that Mr Cameron will stick with this Chauncey-like imprecision for the time-being.  Mr Cameron's fundamental task, suggests the defeated 2001 leadership hopeful, is to change the Conservative party as fundamentally as Tony Blair changed the Labour party.  Mr Portillo:

"If tax cuts, stable families and Euroscepticism do not fit the new Conservative project, whatever sentimental attachment Cameron may have to them, they also must be torn up..."

"The Tory benches are full of repellent figures whose faces, demeanour and speech turn voters from the party. They have to be dealt with.  Cameron’s success will not be judged by whether he can lead a quiet life. It will be measured by the blood that he spills. If he is brutal enough, the silly questioning about his policies will go away."

David Davis is the safer bet in this leadership contest.  We know what he believes.  We know that he's an authentic conservative with a powerful personal biography.  He would be a good leader for the party but his uninspirational campaign suggests that he would not be an exceptional leader.  David Cameron could be an exceptional leader.  He, not Mr Davis, appears to be the Heineken candidate with the ability to reach parts of Britain that have long been closed territory for our party.  But he would be a disastrous leader if he ignites the internal feuding that would inevitably result from accepting Mr Portillo's extraordinarily bad counsel.  I do not believe that Mr Cameron is a Portillista but it would be helpful if he soon distanced himself from Mr Portillo's Modernisation Ideology.  Mr Portillo may be happy for Chauncey Gardiner vagueness.  I, for one, would prefer a little more colour in Mr Cameron's Big Picture Conservatism.      

From mass membership Conservatism in the 1950s to mass connections Conservatism today

In today's leader column The Times warns the Tories' money men to 'back off'.  It is responding to suggestions from Lord Kalms and Stuart Wheeler that a Clarke leadership would be unacceptable.  Stuart Wheeler, in particular, has provided crucial underpinning for the Tories' strained finances over recent years and the party should be very grateful.  When donors say that Ken Clarke's views are unacceptable they should be listened to... but they should certainly not enjoy a veto.  The Times urges the creation "of a party which can win the support of many small financial contributions and not merely a few extremely large ones".

This need for a broadly-funded Conservative Party is but one of the opportunities than can flow from last week's rejection of the Howard-Maude-Monbiot reforms.  The alternative to that vision of a Conservative Party with MPs exercising centralised control of the leadership process, in hoc to a few big money men, is a mass participation Conservative Party.  I emphasise participation because the age of mass membership organisations is over.  It's hard to get people to join anything these days but they will sign up to individual campaigns or for targeted email briefings.  Using the internet, in particular, we need to build a mass connections Conservative Party of the kind that George W Bush built for America's Republicans.  1.4 million new volunteers were recruited by Karl Rove's organisation and millions of email contacts were compiled.

Learning from America shouldn't stop there, however.  We should also learn from what America's GOP have done badly.  The whole Tom DeLay affair has exposed the GOP's unhealthy dependence upon big business.  The connections with big business and multitude special interests have driven the porky bloat that now characterises America's fat government and is driving the shocking deterioration in the country's public finances.  UK Conservatives have an opportunity to be different.  It would be good to hear one or two of the candidates talk about how they might build a Conservative Party with connections with every section of society.  Those connections could become flows for policy ideas, volunteers, third money endorsements and, yes, money.    

From slit-your-wrists to wristbands

"Only one in three thinks the Conservative Party shares their own values.

Half think we care about the well-off, not the have-nots.

More than half think we're stuck in the past.

58% think we don't care about ordinary people.

64% think we're opportunistic.

And 67% - two out of three - quite simply think we're out of touch."

This was a section from today's Party Conference speech from Francis Maude.  It has been unfairly portrayed as a very negative speech and the above extract appears to lend weight to that interpretation.  In reality Francis Maude offered many positive insights as well. 

The trouble was that his speech was followed by contributions from Theresa May and Alan Duncan that also emphasised the Tories' electoral difficulties.  One delegate joked that she felt suicidal after hearing the three contributions.

The afternoon ended with much more positive contributions, however.  Sir Malcolm Rifkind delivered a barnstorming performance - re-emphasising his one nation credentials.  Although his speech was very well received it also appeared to be something of an 'exit strategy'.  He appeared to be claiming that his leadership bid had been successful in that all of the other candidates were now using the kind of one nation language that he had employed.  Sir Malcolm was hardly the first Tory to emphasise one nation issues, however, in recent times...

His speech was followed by a contribution from Iain Duncan Smith who talked about the work of his Centre for Social Justice.  IDS received a standing ovation after encouraging the Conservative Party to stand up for the most vulnerable members of society.  He said that Tories must match the passion of the "wristband generation" to serve great causes like tackling global poverty. 

Editorial: Is everyone a Portillista now? No.

Francis Maude will tell today's conference that the Conservative Party must "change or die".  But Mr Maude arrives in Blackpool with his stock very low.  Post-election periods are not happy times for Francis Maude. He was responsible for directing Michael Portillo’s unsuccessful 2001 leadership bid and has just overseen the defeat of Michael Howard’s post-election reforms to party procedure. He appears to be seeking consolation in the idea that he was right in 2001 and that we are all Portillistas now:

Ollie Stone-Lee, reporting for BBCi: “Does [Francis Maude] think the battle for the agenda pursued by Mr Portillo’s [2001] campaign has been won?”

Francis Maude:”I think broadly yes.”

I think broadly ‘no’. Superficially there appears to have been a lot of acceptance of Michael Portillo’s leadership manifesto but on many substantial questions there remains enormous disagreement. Take four key features of Mr Portillo’s thinking, starting with the one where consensus might be thought to be greatest:

Candidate diversity: Nearly all accept the Portillo belief in a candidate selection policy that seeks more people who can ably represent today’s Britain. Whereas MP stressed more blacks, gays and women, today’s leadership contenders are prioritising people from local communities and candidates who have worked in the public services or the voluntary sector. Portillo’s face-deep diversity can only deliver a limited kind of progress if we end up with black barristers, female merchant bankers and gay men who have never worked outside of the Westminster village.

Social liberalism: The party leadership has moved in a socially liberal direction with support, for example, for gay partnerships but the approach has two main weaknesses. Few voters think it matters. When the Centre for Social Justice/ YouGov asked voters who were society’s most vulnerable members gay people hardly registered. Pensioners, children, people with mental illnesses and those living in crime-ridden inner cities were peoples’ top concerns. The other main weakness is that there can be big tensions between a genuinely compassionate conservatism and a socially liberal conservatism. The Portillistas’ support for drug liberalisation and indifference to the importance of the family are only like to abet socially destructive forces. The fact that all of the leading candidates (except Ken Clarke) are advocating support for marriage and all (except David Cameron) are intolerant of drug use suggests that the party is not so Portillista.

War on terror: Michael Portillo began as a supporter of the war in Iraq but, for last November’s US elections, he ended up advocating a vote for the flip-flopping John ‘Wrong War At The Wrong Time In The Wrong Place’ Kerry. It is now difficult to find any coherent anti-terror strategy in his meandering columns on the subject. The lack of coherence may be the one area where the Conservative Party, as a whole, may, indeed, have become Portillista.

Party discipline: And, finally, let’s hope few Conservatives are adopting the Portillista-approach to “loyalty”. He briefed against John Major throughout the Maastricht years whilst serving as one of his ministers. He battled against William Hague’s strategy when he was Mr Hague’s Shadow Chancellor. He launched broadside attacks on Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership. He used his Sunday Times column to regularly criticise Michael Howard. Many of those criticisms were justified but they were less than helpful in the run-up to an election. And where MP himself was unhelpful his ‘Portillista’ disciples were regularly very corrosive with their constant briefings to journalists.

‘Modernise and die’ warns new Tory group

Speaking on last night’s Westminster Hour Edward Leigh MP warned that liberalism was a virus that had infected the Conservative Party. In a new pamphlet, Mr Leigh argues that the Conservative Party should learn from the way George W Bush emphasised ‘faith, flag and family’ to build a winning conservative coalition. He believes that patriotism, a belief in the family, religious faith and other traditionalist beliefs are the underpinning instincts of Britain’s still-existing - but much-beleaguered – small ‘c’ conservative majority.

Many contributions to the leadership debate have been criticised for their banality. That criticism could not be leveled at Mr Leigh’s paper. It advocates school vouchers, private healthcare, significant tax cuts and repatriation of powers from Brussels. Less predictably Thatcherite is its questioning of free trade solutions to third world poverty.

Mr Leigh is a member of a newly formed ‘Cornerstone’ group of twenty or more Tory MPs. ‘The Conservative Cornerstone’ group’s recent interviews of the leadership candidates were scooped on this blog. Mr Leigh said that the group would be using the next three months to seek a champion for its hard-headed form of compassion. He declined to say if there was an existing candidate who could be that champion.

Tieless, clueless, shoeless

"Tieless, clueless and shoeless" was Tony Blair's recent putdown of the Tory Party's open-necked cosmetic modernisers. The shoeless bit refers to the fact that Francis Maude kicked off his shoes during an FT interview.

Jim White, columnist for the Telegraph, returns to the issue of tie-wearing in this morning's edition. It's so funny - and so accurate - that it is worth quoting at length:

"Revealed on Question Time last week was the new face of the Conservative Party. Or rather its new neck. Whichever of the 47 leadership candidates emerges from election to replace Michael Howard (48 by the time you have read this), it has been suggested that ties should no longer be worn on broadcasting appearances.

From here on in, top buttons will be undone, collars will flap, Adam's apples will be on full view. The Tory throat will be permanently exposed. According to the party's brand managers, this simple sartorial switch will help make the organisation immediately more cool, youthful, up-to-the-minute, swanky, in-touch, vibrant and all those other adjectives it is assumed it is not already. Casual style it will be from now on. It is more approachable, see. Less forbidding. More user-friendly.

There is just one problem with the strategy. And it came in the shape of Francis Maude, the guest on Question Time. True enough, he answered the BBC's call in an entirely tie-free condition. But unfortunately, as a beginner to the dress-down code, he had not matched the rest of his attire to his freshly liberated neck line. He wore a formal suit, his shirt was of a kind that appeared half-finished without a tie, he carried the look of a man who had acted on an urgent summons by pager from Tory HQ and had hurriedly removed the offending item even as the make-up artist was dabbing powder on his nose.

That bulge in his pocket wasn't because he was pleased to see David Dimbleby: it was his tie. At least that was the assumption of those watching in our house, where every moment he was on screen was spent discussing Maude's uncomfortable tieless demeanour. The poor man could not have looked more ill at ease if he had forgotten his trousers. Consequently we missed everything he actually had to say. Alongside him, in contrast, Peter Hain wore a rather splendid number in a delicate shade of aubergine. He looked entirely unremarkable and thus, without distraction, we listened to his every word. More's the pity."

Steve Hilton (II)

I've been told that I was a little unfair to Steve Hilton in my post of yesterday.

First, I have to confess to some amusement at the fact that I thought that a member of the Notting Hill set - they who had helped devise the 2005 election campaign (which had seen us flatline in share of the vote) - was advising the Tory Party on next steps. I understand, however, that Mr Hilton was not a big part of that campaign and was an advocate of Lord Saatchi's more optimistic brand of politics. For my misunderstanding I must apologise.

Second, I am told that in saying that Tories were not nasty, Mr Hilton was saying that voters weren't interested in the big attempts to paint us as more metropolitan or fashionable. What voters didn't like about us was our perceived selfishness and ruthlessness and, in particular, our attitude to the poor.

Tenth-of-the-way Tories may be selfish and ruthless - but not nasty

Conservative MPs crowded into the Betty Boothroyd Room in Portcullis House yesterday for the first (possibly second?) of their new open fora on the future of the Party.

Steve Hilton of Michael Howard's inner team - one of the architects of the General Election campaign - told MPs about the perception challenges that still stand between Conservatives and Downing Street. His remarks came on the day when Francis Maude told the FT that the Conservatives were only a tenth of the way back to power.

One of Mr Hilton's conclusion was that the Tories were still seen (particularly by target voters) as selfish and ruthless but, said the marketing guru, we must no longer allow people to say that we're nasty. The difference between being selfish and ruthless on the one hand, and nasty on the other, wasn't explained.

14th May coda: see Steve Hilton (II).

The cosmetic, Soho and Easterhouse modernisers

Tim Yeo questions what might be called the cosmetic modernisers in today's Sunday Telegraph:

"The idea that you are a moderniser just because you can appear on television without a tie is wrong. It is not just about not wearing ties. It is actually more about whether the party is ready to address issues that it has not addressed in the past."

In the same paper columnist Matthew D'Ancona appears to agree:

"In the coming contest it will be important to distinguish between those Tory "modernisers" who genuinely believe that the party has a duty to those whom it has not reached in recent years - the less affluent whose need for a lower tax burden, reduced crime and world-class public services is most acute - and those senior Conservatives who simply mouth fashionable platitudes about "change" because they think their generational clique is owed its turn at the helm. Remember: to be young is not the same as to be modern."

Another important distinction between different kinds of modernisers is the distinction between 'Soho' and 'Easterhouse' modernisers. Soho mods tend to emphasise lifestyle freedoms - some exhorting tolerance of soft drug use and sexual freedom. Easterhouse mods tend to emphasise the need to address the poverties that still blight much of Britain. Unfortunately the two forms of modernisation are not easy bedfellows. The Easterhousers worry that the Soho group's tolerance of soft drug use and chaotic family structure threatens the achievement of social justice. The need for these two groups to reach a settlement is examined within Part (V) of conservativehome.com's 44% Manifesto.

Michael Howard humiliates John Bercow in front of MPs

The London Evening Standard reports Michael Howard's unprecedented response to John Bercow’s attack on Conservative immigration policy, and criticism of Liam Fox from Ian Taylor MP. Mr Taylor had said of Dr Fox, a former GP: "Liam Fox is somebody I would hesitate to go and have medical appointment with let alone a political appointment."

Mrs Howard once told a TV programme that her husband didn't so much have a short fuse as no fuse. The absence of a fuse was apparent in his harsh sacking of Howard Flight before the election. At a meeting of Conservative MPs a furious Mr Howard demanded an end to public bloodletting. He is reported to have said "I feel so strongly about this I'm going to name names. Specifically Ian Taylor's criticisms of a Shadow Cabinet colleague and John Bercow's description of our immigration policy as 'repellent'".

It is certainly an interesting paradox that modernisers like John Bercow who argue for more measured criticism of Labour's failings can get so vivid in their description of internal failings.