Tory modernisers' best hope is an Ed Miliband victory

Piece for NewStatesman
--
Tory modernisers' best hope is an Ed Miliband victory 

The British Conservative Party needs shock therapy. It may still scrape back into government in next year's general election but if it does, barring a miracle, it will be on a smaller share of the national vote than in 2010. This has been the case every time its been victorious since 1950. As a growing number within the party recognise, it's reaching a point where things have become unsustainable. Forty per cent of voters now say they wouldn’t even consider voting Conservative, while the party has little base among ethnic minority and working class voters, especially in the north. Once-proud Tory heartlands like Sheffield and Manchester now have not even a single Conservative councillor. As the impressive David Skelton of Renewal has argued, voting Conservative in these parts has become counter-cultural.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the left was forced into a reckoning. It had suffered successive electoral defeats but it had also been intellectually defeated, with the end of the Cold War and shifts in the country's social fabric. The Conservatives have never really undergone such a reckoning, largely because Thatcher was never defeated at the ballot box, mostly thanks to a divided opposition. And so a mythology has grown up and still has hold over the party: that her brand of free market triumphalism won over the whole country, benefited the whole country, and can do so again.

This was always dubious – but has sustained itself even as the impact of her legacy on country and party sews division and resentment, especially in the deindustrialised north, and the "party of the rich" image has been baked in. As a creed, Thatcherism has come to rest on public deference to business elites, a faith that whatever their excesses, their inherent superiority will benefit us all in the end, which has been severely undermined by the financial crisis and flatlining wages.

Moreover, Britain may be a conservative country, with many attracted to Thatcher's ethics of self-reliance and discipline. But few outside the south-east ever shared the values of break-neck economic liberalism to which those ethics gave rise. A lot of people don't like to be made to feel powerless to forces shaping their lives, or like losers for not wanting to be self-made billionaires.

And yet Thatcherism remains the default instinct for much of the party – any departure is usually tactical or skin deep (with the notable exception of gay rights). Contrary to what many on the left think, the Conservative tradition is rich and long pre-dates the neoliberal era, encompassing communitarian and even social democratic schools of thought. Yet these days, any thinking in its ranks which entails fundamentally challenging the Thatcherite comfort zone is tossed aside. If the party get back in to power in 2015, this sleepwalking will continue, even if in its obliviousness it further erodes the electoral ground on which they can be returned.

Increasingly it seems that the only thing that can reverse the trend is Ed Miliband, smiling from the steps of 10 Downing Street. If this sounds like preposterous accelerationist tosh, think about it. Being beaten after just one term by a man the party's leading lights have long deemed unelectable would provoke huge internal recriminations. In this post-mortem there will open up space for those who understand the need to reinvent the party, from top to bottom both ideologically and organisationally; a project that Cameron initially grasped and then retreated from.Even if the initial leadership contest doesn't produce such a candidate, Labour may still rescue the Conservatives with their spell in government – though only if Miliband is as successful as he intends to be.

Unlike his predecessors, the Labour leader has made clear his desire to rework the political economy that Thatcher brought into place and New Labour left largely in tact. If (and it's still a huge if) he is successful, it would re-wire the rules of British politics: towards intervention in markets to make them work for consumers; towards active industrial policy and economic populism. Living standards and wages – reform of the economy to make it deliver for ordinary people - would become the central issues of British politics.

Such ground is the only place from which Conservative renewal can be fought, given the kind of votes they need to win. Were they to move onto it, combined with already potent messages on welfare and crime, they would be a formidable threat. Yet they seem incapable of doing so of their own accord. It's almost certainly too late in this Parliament, having already surrendered so much ground Labour in favour of a much narrower agenda. Increasingly, it seems, they will have to be forced there.

This may still be a little sunny, admittedly. Defeat for the Conservatives could well just result in a prolonged turn to the right and doubling-down, as it did last time. But unlike before, there's a range of intelligent and interesting people in Conservative ranks who understand what the party needs to do to broaden its appeal, and have placed reforming capitalism at the heart of their pitch. Jesse Norman, Skelton at Renewal, and Rob Halfon are just a few. Though currently fighting an uphill battle, they have already laid down a marker for any future battle to come. And who knows, their ascent may yet end up being Miliband's biggest threat, and greatest achievement.

Cameron strikes some nice notes, but plays the wrong tune

Post for Shifting Grounds

Cameron strikes some nice notes, but plays the wrong tune

There’s no doubt that David Cameron’s speech to Tory party conference yesterday was one of his better ones since becoming Prime Minister. In some ways it was his most Presidential, not just in the personal touches woven in throughout, but in his attempts to transcend national politics and sketch out a vision of a new frontier – in this case, the new global economy – and place Britain at the heart of it  (sometimes called a ‘moon shot’ in US politics). We are, he said, in a “global race” with new countries on the rise, “sink or swim. Do or decline”.

Cameron also had strong dividing lines on welfare and schools – two issues Labour has no settled position on, but will clearly need to have in the next few years.

But the speech had a fatal weakness. At its core was a diagnosis of a country full of budding businessmen and women and ‘can do’ creatives, being held back by a bloated state and unreformed public services. The solutions that flowed from this were predictable enough – hack back the state, reform welfare, get the deficit down, liberalise school provision. Growth will naturally follow.

But this fundamentally misreads British politics today. Most people won’t become ‘entrepreneurs’, and most don’t want to. They just want to get on, get a good job, earn decent money, provide for their family, and lead happy and fulfilling social lives. The biggest impediment to this in 2012 is not the welfare system or planning laws, but an enormous squeeze in living standards and an economy that only works for those at the top. Wages are stagnating, jobs hollowed out, yet utility bills, rents, train fares, tuition fees and mortgage deposits are all rising (this is the true face of ‘Britain on the rise’ under the Tories). And so are bankers’ bonuses and executive pay, all the while SMEs – a real engine of jobs – can’t get access to finance, and young couples can’t get on the property ladder.

Even those traditionally upwardly mobile parts of the population – at whom the speech was clearly aimed – are suffering from this squeeze. Polling for Southern Discomfort Again showed that between 41%-47% of floating voters in key middle class marginals say they are now not confident they have enough money to make ends meet. As Lord Ashcroft’s polling shows, a key feature of the ‘suspicious strivers’ group he identified is economic insecurity and precariousness.  The squeeze is also having obvious effects on demand and consumer confidence – without which all the “diplomatic showrooms” and ankle flashed to multinationals matters not one jot. Economically and electorally, post-crash Britain is defined more by strugglers than it is by strivers.

To this backdrop, a speech about the ‘global race’ in the new world economy, or unleashing a nation of Steve Jobs style entrepreneurs, is a little arid and far off. It’s not irrelevant, it’s just remote; a bit mid-1990s. On the real day-to-day challenges and anxiety facing people already in work, Cameron had little to say. Bank reform did not feature once in his speech, nor energy companies, or even the words ‘bills’ or ’wages’. The Prime Minister may have struck some nice notes along the way, but he played the wrong tune.

The truth is, most of the obstacles holding back prosperity in the UK and our place in the world come not from an unreformed public sector, but an unreformed private sector. That a Conservative Prime Minister, who came to political maturity in the age of neoliberalism, feels uncomfortable talking to that challenge is not surprising. But it ultimately leaves him unable to connect with the lives of people he needs to reach to win.

It is this divide that Labour needs to put the Tories on the other side of. The party needs to find a consistent line on welfare and schools, but it can’t allow the election be fought on this ground. They need to make 2015 an election about living standards and the squeezed middle; who wants an economy which puts money in the pockets of ordinary people, and who only looks out for the top 1%. Making banks and energy companies work for people, an active industrial strategy, even tax cuts at the bottom or middle paid in part by rises at the top – all, among others, have a role to play. On this divide, the Tories are extremely vulnerable – because they simply don’t grasp Britain’s living standards crisis to begin with. However eloquently delivered, David Cameron’s speech yesterday proved that.

The 'modernisers' of British politics are in retreat

Post for Shifting Grounds. Hopi Sen wrote an interesting response on his blog here.

The 'modernisers' of British politics are in retreat

Since the summer reshuffle, a lot of discussion has been devoted to the right-ward shift of the Conservative party. As Stewart Wood writes, the Tories detoxification strategy seems like a “distant memory”.

But arguably the fading of the Cameron project is just one piece of a broader picture, which is the fall from grace of a sub-sect within the political class which once reigned supreme in all parties: the so-called ‘moderniser’.

It is rarely noted that inside the three three main parties sit a relatively small group of people – advisors, MPs, lobbyists mostly – who have far more in common with one another than their own respective party faithful. Their views are distinguished by a metropolitanism and social liberalism. They are intensely relaxed over gay marriage and women’s rights, but also the filthy rich and the City; supportive of public services but besotted with ‘reform’ defined by marketisation; mildly redistributionist but sharers of a faith that increased tax on higher incomes hits aspiration, that the British middle class starts at sixty-grand a year and the working class has been replaced by an underclass. An unswerving commitment to flexible labour markets is likely to make them uncomfortable with anxiety over immigration, while crime is usually addressed through depoliticized phrases like ‘social exclusion’ or ‘problem families’.

As Julian Astle perceptively notes, in one of the few articles written on them, this group will tend to give different emphasis to these views depending on their respective party’s historical weaknesses. Most importantly of all, though, they position and define themselves by a battle with their own more provincial party base.

And for years they won out. This is what came to capture the essence of ‘Blairism’ and many Blairites within the Labour party by the late 1990s. Success at the polls meant their agenda framed British political debate practically unchallenged. Despite ousting Blair himself, ultimately Brown and the people around him couldn’t carve out an alternative to a zeitgeist still going strong within the party and in media circles.

That Cameron came to pick up the Blairite playbook is well known by now; the huskies, the pledges on public spending and overseas aid, the commitment to gay rights and a more open approach to Europe – all key components of the Cameroon project. What is less appreciated is that in retrospect the ascendency of Clegg and co. at the top of the Liberal Democrats was just another variation on a theme, as he moved his party away from the ‘soft leftism’ of Charles Kennedy towards this more fashionable centre. Out went taxing income to better fund public services and opposition to marketisation, in came greater focus on taxing property and pollution, on free schools and on aridly defined ‘fairness’ within existing budgets. Both Cameron and Clegg kept red meat for their base, but their direction of travel became clear enough.

Now, though, it’s a very different story. The Cameron set are well and truly in retreat, ‘in office but not in power’ as the old saying goes. The resignation of Louise Mensch (a politician quietly liked by trendy triangulating types within the other two parties) and emigration of Steve Hilton comes as the Tories prioritise brutal spending cuts and slash tax for millionaires, all the while stalling on gay marriage and trashing any green credentials they once had. Clegg is more secure – the Lib Dems are less factional than commonly thought – but even he has had to tack back towards proposing higher taxes on the rich, and speculation persists that he’ll be ditched for the more leftish Tim Farron.

Meanwhile, the defeat of David Miliband, the departure of Alan Johnson for Ed Balls and the dominance of the likes of Tom Watson has drastically reduced the influence of Blairites or ‘Third Wayers’ over the direction of Labour. This is the real stupidity of the recent GMB motion to ban Progress. Their formal power within the party has never been weaker. The soft-left totally dominate strategy, policy and often selections. And if we can’t make the most of that ascendency, then we have only ourselves to blame, not nonsense conspiracies about plots or coups.

Indeed, there is an opportunity to forge a new consensus amid the rubble of the old one. The old modernising consensus has fallen from favour in all three parties mostly because its playbook was forged at a time when the basic questions of political economy were settled. In this respect, it was broadly in tune with public opinion. But the financial crash and the decline in living standards has incinerated most of those assumptions, and meant the old agenda satisfies neither party rank and file nor voters. Public opinion is much more volatile and harder to capture than before (increased anger at bankers, the rich and inequality but also – sadly – recipients of welfare). It is this which explains what Rafael Behr laments as “the hollow centre of British politics”.

As both Behr and Wood argue, the Tory right has sensed this gap too. They are pushing on with increasingly bold and frightening agenda to plug it. Unlike Brown, Ed Miliband has proved he can operate effectively outside the old ‘modernising’ formula – he has not pointlessly picked fights with his base nor felt the need to match Tory policy or indulge in huskie style stunts.

But there is still a sense of caution to him at times – he recognises the moment British politics finds itself in, but seems reticent to fully follow through on its implications. For the first time as leader, he and the people around him head into conference this week without any real threat, as a chunk of his critics find themselves in the wilderness or fighting their own internal battles. That space needs to be used to match bold critique with bold policy. There may never be a better chance.