House Magazine - Staying Focused
Sir Patrick Cormack has witnessed enough political upsets to resist counting Conservative chickens, and says the party must reach out to all parts of the country, and remain united, to convince voters that it deserves a return to office.
Being anywhere for a long time does, I think, give one a sense of perspective. It certainly cautions against undue optimism – or undue pessimism for that matter either. It underlines the truth of dear Willie Whitelaw’s famous observation in 1974, that “things are never as good or as bad as they seem”.
I well remember when I fought the ‘safe’ Labour seat of Cannock in 1970, being told by a former MP helper, just a week before polling day, that Wilson was 12 per cent ahead in the polls and was bound to win. I really ought to be prepared for an early resumption of my career as a schoolmaster.
On June 18, Waterloo Day, Heath won a comfortable victory. On the 19th, after a mid-morning count, I was proclaimed as the new Member for Cannock. Jennie Lee and her supporters went forlorn to their ‘victory’ party lunch.
I also remember the disintegration of that Heath premiership during the miners’ strike in 1974, and the predictions, after two election defeats in a year, that this was the end of the Tory party as the natural party of government. I remember that tense night in March 1979 when Michael Foot accused the Scottish and Welsh nationalists of behaving like turkeys voting for an early Christmas, and the Callaghan government fell by one vote.
And after the Falklands and Margaret Thatcher’s second, and massive, majority in 1983 (and the splitting of the Labour Party, as well as the emergence of the SDP), I remember the obituaries of the Labour Party that appeared in almost every paper.
I remember what most of those same papers said after the fall of Thatcher in 1990 as they predicted that a Kinnock premiership would follow a brief Major one. But it didn’t. What followed, after 1992’s euphoric moment of victory, was the gradual unravelling of the Tory party in government, culminating in Blair’s great triumph, a triumph that was followed by more scribbling by the political obituarists.
So now, at the beginning of August (magazine deadlines mean that party conference pieces have to be written a long time ahead), as I look out over the garden and across to the trees that beautifully flank the other side of the valley, I reflect on what has certainly been one of the most remarkable years of my political lifetime.
Twelve months ago, the new prime minister was enjoying a brief political honeymoon. There seemed no reason to doubt his proclaimed dislike of gimmicks and of spin. He had cut down his 14-day holiday by 13 days and 20 hours, in order to deal with the Foot and Mouth outbreak.
He was making suitably firm assurances on what would be done to deal with the floods: neither Stalin, nor yet Mr Bean, but a passable imitation of Noah. And his comments after the attempted terrorist outrages at Glasgow struck just the right note. ‘This man is going to be difficult to beat’ was the refrain wherever two or three Tories gathered together.
As the conference season approached, all the talk was of a forthcoming general election. I did not meet anyone, inside or outside the party, who thought that we would win it.
If Mr Brown had gone to his conference and made a passionate speech about wanting his own mandate, he would have been able to dress expediency in the clothes of probity. He would have scuppered our conference, reducing it to a makeshift rally. As it was, he stripped expediency (and prudence too) of every vestige of modest clothing and went to Iraq – as David Cameron delivered the speech of his life, calling for a general election whilst all the time fervently hoping that it would not happen.
It didn’t. When Parliament resumed a few days later Brown was on the back foot, pilloried and caricatured as the ditherer with no bottle, and David Cameron was firmly camped on the moral high ground.
And so it has remained as the government has consolidated its reputation for bungling ineptitude – whether over Northern Rock, or 42 days, or the handling of the Embryology Bill, or of the Planning Bill – one could go on – and week after week, the more compassionate watchers of prime minister’s questions have almost longed for the Speaker to emulate the more considerate of boxing referees and call time.
Where does this place us now? I would not put money on it but my hunch is that Brown will remain prime minister, and lead his party into the next general election.
If he does (and almost certainly if he doesn’t), we will start as odds-on favourites to win – as Mr Wilson did in 1970, and Mr Heath in 1974, and Mr Kinnock in 1992.
I am not suggesting the circumstances will be anything like they were in those years. The global credit crunch alone will see to that. But we should not be counting chickens. The worst thing any politician, or any political party, can do is to underestimate an opponent. Nevertheless, I believe that, as things stand, we will win, and win handsomely – and, what is more, win deservedly.
However, there are a number of things we must remember as we move towards the 2010 election. Our leader has been very astute in following the Disraeli maxim that the Tory party is a national party or it is nothing. He has rightly reached out to renew contact with those with whom we had lost it over the 1990s. In England – and to a degree in Wales – he has largely succeeded. In Scotland there is still much to do.
Secondly, we have no need to be embarrassed or apologetic about the achievements of Tory governments in the past. Without their leadership Britain’s position in Europe, and the world, would be a very different one.
Without the domestic achievements of the Thatcher years our economy would be in no state to withstand global pressures, and our industrial relations would be far worse than the sick joke they were in the winter of discontent.
Thirdly, in reaching out beyond those who have supported the party in the past we must be careful that we do not alienate those who have always been true to the Conservative philosophy: upholding the freedom of the individual, maintaining the institutions of our country, and meeting our obligations in the world.
Finally, whilst we must set forth our policies as clearly and unambiguously as we can, we must not, in order to appear ‘modern’, espouse or advance policies which are fundamentally alien to the Tory way of life and mode of thought.
Let me give just one example. On the two occasions when it has been put to the vote in recent years, the party’s ‘official policy’ of creating an 80 per cent elected second chamber to replace the House of Lords has been voted against by more Conservative MPs than voted for it.
In the House of Lords, perhaps not altogether surprisingly, the vote against the official line has been massive and overwhelming. And so, whilst it is entirely consistent with the Conservative view of Parliament to say that we will look at the role and composition of both Houses, in order to make Parliament more effective, there is no sense at all in having a manifesto commitment to abolish the House of Lords.
Not only is there precious little support in the party for such a proposition, there is no demand in the country for it either. It used to be said, with some justice, that the Tory party’s secret weapon was unity. So let it be at the next general election, and let there be nothing in our manifesto that can weaken that unity.
A week is indeed a long time in politics. Two years is significantly longer. Furthermore, as Harold Macmillan famously remarked, it is “events, dear boy, events” that influence what happens.
But so long as we can keep together behind a leader who has a very commanding position in Parliament and in the polls, we should be poised to write one of the most exciting chapters in the history of the oldest major political party in the free world.
