The future of conservatism, Sunder Katwala

Sunder Katwala — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:43:18 +0100

David Cameron and George Osborne have been joined at the hip in their faltering project to return the Conservatives to power. So George Osborne's decision to distance himself from Tory 'uber-modernisers' on the eve of the party conference will inevitably be viewed as an extraordinary and thinly veiled attack by the shadow chancellor on his own leader.

Still, Cameron and Osborne did want to be the Blair and Brown of their generation.

The Spectator's Fraser Nelson writes that "a phalanx of senior Tories are quietly preparing themselves for the ritual slaying of yet another leader" in Blackpool. But the party should pull together, seeking to project a confidence that it does not feel. As Iain Dale argues, there is an imperative to unite or die.

But this fear of public division means that the Conservative Party cannot, this week, hold the debate which it needs. Whistling a happy tune will not resolve the party's strategic dilemma. It is easy to see how to reunify an anxious Conservative Party but it is a prescription which points in the opposite direction to the one the party needs, if it is to reach out to the voters. 'Rebalancing' the modernising message with more emphasis on true-blue themes may play well internally, but risks simply reinforcing the 'flip-flop' image which seems to have stuck with the public.

David Cameron's core insight is spot on - that his party must come to terms with modern Britain in a modern 'global' world, if it is to contend seriously for power. His real problem is not the 'ubermodernising' agenda but that there are so few, if any, bright ubermodernisers at all apart from Zac Goldsmith. Where are the organised voices on the centre-right who are ahead of the party leadership, helping to create the intellectual and political space in which a modern centre-right agenda might be defined? A party can not be changed solely from the top.

Those Tory modernisers who use Philip Gould's book as a set text, accept his narcissistic description of New Labour being the creation of five people. This misses the battles fought by Labour's modernisers for over a decade before Blair. Neil Kinnock confronted the Militant tendency. Internally, John Smith (supported by Prescott) reformed the party voting system and externally he embraced constitutional reform and human rights. A new generation of women symbolised the cultural shift while the Party moved from being anti to be pro-Europe. Crucially, there was the intellectual rethinking of social justice by David Miliband and Patricia Hewitt at IPPR, consistent with the political strategy for tackling Labour's 'Southern Discomfort' as set out in Giles Radice's Fabian pamphlet series. The new leadership was then able to change gear on all fronts - replacing a "how much must we change if we want to win" mentality with a "breakout strategy" rewarded by the scale of Labour's two landslides. Blair's 'clause four' moment was a tactical masterstroke - but it was also the conclusion to the real work of change.

By contrast, Cameron had to start from scratch, and may face his moment of judgment after two years. The project has been too shallow with no defining idea, beyond electability, as to what the modernising project is or who it is for. There has been no clear argument as to what this would offer the country, or, beyond the Tory political class seeking a route back to power, no social group that can hear its concerns articulated by the modernising message.

The Tory think-tanks have struggled to contribute because the intellectual energy on the right remains devoted to the big idea of the last 30 years: less State. Cameron's electoral project points in the opposite direction.

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The future of conservatism, Sunder Katwala