01/06/07 -
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Robin Harris: why does David Cameron despise the Tories?
As head of the Tory Research Department and a member of the No 10
policy unit under Margaret Thatcher, Robin Harris was one of the most
influential Conservatives of his age, whose policies helped transform
Britain from an economic basket case into Europe's most dynamic
economy. Here, in a devastating personal critique, he accuses David
Cameron - who, ironically, he talent spotted - of betraying everything
the party should stand for... The great Tory grammar school fiasco has
served a purpose.
It was not intended as a Conservative Clause Four moment - the
equivalent of Tony Blair's famous break with old Labour when he
scrapped his party's commitment to nationalisation. But it has been a
moment of illumination for large numbers of Conservative supporters
who, despite the evidence, had still believed their party was led by a
Tory.
This week, it resulted in David Cameron's first frontbench resignation
when Graham Brady, his stubbornly principled Europe spokesman, made
clear he intended to defy the party line and fight for grammar schools
from the backbenches.
No one had heard of Mr Brady, but now his many supporters in the
constituencies will not forget him quickly. Today's Conservative Party
is in a strange mood, quite unlike the moods with which we coped in the
Eighties.
I was then director of the party's research department, before moving
to the No 10 policy unit, where I planned the manifesto for Mrs
Thatcher's intended fourth term - before, finally, and without too many
regrets, going down with the ship.
The last crisis was merely the worst of many. During the Thatcher
years, there were plenty of rows, far more, indeed, than in today's
emasculated politics. Yet there was a strong sense of mission, and it
was good to be a Tory.
Everyone knew the party had clear goals, a strong leader and a stirring
vision for the future. Even those who disliked the goals, loathed the
leader and did not wish to be stirred were impressed. This, in turn,
imparted a momentum, a sense of inevitability, before which opposing
phalanxes crumbled. It was an exhilarating experience.
The feeling today is very different. People who say that the
Conservative Party is once again in rude health mistake the symptoms.
An opinion poll lead is certainly much better than the opposite. David
Cameron has wooed the BBC and the Guardian with aplomb. We can all
safely be nasty about Gordon Brown.
But this is thin, unappetising gruel, if one has tasted something
better. In the Eighties, the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher
was obsessive about changing Britain. Today, the Conservative Party is
merely obsessive about changing itself.
The introspection of parties, like that of individuals, is essentially
unhealthy, particularly when it is accompanied by a gnawing
preoccupation with what your detractors think.
The syndrome may somewhere have a longer name. But Mrs Thatcher had her
own short word for it: 'frit'.
Fear is what lies behind the grammar school imbroglio. The Party
leadership is afraid to tell the truth that the concomitant of liberty
is always inequality. If some are to succeed, others must fail. The
failure need not be permanent or absolute, and the overall effect of
free competition is to force up standards, from which everyone
ultimately benefits.
Most people know this. But spelling it out takes moral courage, which
the present leadership lacks. Mr Cameron's wider strategy involves
publicly distancing himself from the party members who elected him.
Many senior politicians privately despise those who work and vote for
them. But it is generally a bad idea to show it.
The Duke of Wellington thought his men were 'the scum of the earth'.
But he was not foolish enough to tell them that before a battle. Mr
Cameron's reaction to criticism of his education policy has been
arrogant and insulting. He has asserted that his opponents on grammar
schools are 'delusional' (not a pleasant word to use about his
predecessor and patron, Michael Howard).
But the Conservative grammar school disaster is merely the latest in a
series of announcements intended to demonstrate that Cameron's
Conservative Party is not conservative at all. Mr Cameron has, so far,
ridiculed the case for lower income tax, proposed higher taxes on air
travel, denounced the Government's modest health reforms as 'frenetic',
suggested that hoodies need to be 'loved' (though not, now it seems,
hugged), campaigned against public expenditure control, down-played the
Atlantic Alliance and refused to back the overwhelming case for nuclear
power. The party's self-hatred is truly amazing. It has gone to such
extraordinary lengths to express regret that it has even re-written
history in the process.
Mr Cameron has apologised to the Scots for imposing the poll tax north
of the border in 1989 before it was applied to the rest of Britain,
despite the fact that Scottish ministers insisted on having it there
first. He has apologised for subsidising private health insurance, even
though it was designed to relieve the pressure that the elderly place
on an overstretched NHS.
He has apologised for Mrs Thatcher's policy towards South Africa, even
though no world leader did more to have Nelson Mandela freed. He has
not yet apologised for the slave trade. But William Hague's forthcoming
biography of Wilberforce may provide an opportunity. Since Mr Cameron
became leader, there is no piece of fashionable nonsense he has not
embraced, whether it's the pursuit of 'general wellbeing', or
'work-life balance', or an Armageddon view of climate change.
His policy chief, Oliver Letwin, has solemnly declared in
unintelligible language that Cameron conservatism is all about a
'socio-centric paradigm', that debate today should be 'how to make
better lives' for people, and that economic arguments are passé.
The analysis is as false as the conclusion. Most people want happy
lives. But they are still very interested in money and want to earn
more of it, so as to pay off mortgages, take holidays, escape the
horrors of sub-standard hospitals and sink schools, or make up for
Gordon Brown's multi-billion-pound pensions grab.
Only those born not with a silver spoon, but a whole silver service in
their mouths could seriously doubt this. The proper Conservative view
is that it is for individuals - for in this sense there is, to quote
Margaret Thatcher, 'no such thing as society' - to make their own
decisions about how they want to live with the money they earn. That is
not just the British Conservative view. The recent presidential
election in France pitted a radical conservative candidate against an
elegant Leftwing airhead. The airhead lost.
Nicolas Sarkozy is not a classic British- style Conservative: what
Frenchman could be? But his central themes were equally applicable on
this side of the Channel - reward hard work, cut tax, reduce
regulation, control immigration, reinforce nationhood, clamp down on
crime. Most strikingly, he called for a clean break, a 'rupture', with
the past.
Mr Cameron understands none of this. His only rupture is with
conservatism itself. In the case of Britain, he accepts the status quo.
He has said as much. In his victory speech in December 2005, he warned
his party: "No more grumbling about modern Britain!" But many, despite
this injunction, feel there is much to grumble about. About the fact
that taxation is high and rising, while elsewhere in Europe it is
falling.
About a pervasive drug and gun culture; about town centres turned into
vomit-stained, needle-strewn, no-go areas; about ill-managed,
overflowing prisons. About an NHS characterised by filthy hospitals and
a swollen bureaucracy, that consumes ever more of the taxpayers' money.
About schools that don't teach and children who won't learn, who then
become adults who don't work.
About a preoccupation with human rights, which precludes concern for
national security. About uncontrolled immigration which jeopardises
stability and identity. About overseas entanglements, which do not
reflect the national interest. If these - along with inflation,
mortgage rates, benefit fraud, traffic congestion, regulatory
intrusion, and closure of police stations and post offices - don't
provide occasions for grumbling, then Britain's consumption of banned
hallucinatory substances must have increased even further than evidence
suggests.
Yet Mr Cameron seems to see nothing fundamentally wrong, certainly
nothing that needs a Conservative revolution. Instead, having given up
on reversing the effects of Tony Blair's decade of socialism by
stealth, he declares himself the heir to Blair. Accordingly, he seeks
not to challenge, but to nurture the vested interests that obstruct
change and improvement.
So no more grammar schools, to please the teaching unions. No change to
the tax-based financing of the NHS, to reassure the health workers. No
championing of nuclear power, to woo the eco-warriors. No support for
radical benefit changes, so as to soothe the feckless, thriftless and
habitually dependent.
There is another way, and that is to use the undoubted skills of modern
Tories - if not of Tory modernisers - to sell the Tory message in a
fresh and more seductive manner. And in terms of values and principles,
the right approach is not so different from the past.
The party should challenge the inevitability of the state taking
greater control of people's lives. It should restrict the role of
government to the functions which private individuals and volunteers
cannot perform adequately themselves. It should insist that people have
the right to fulfil their talents and the duty to provide for
themselves and their families. It should take a firm stand on national
identity, security and interest.
A Tory Opposition should not only be recognisably Tory - which it
currently is not - it should also be recognisably an opposition.
Opposition is a serious business, not just a hiatus between bouts of
Government. It is thankless, but not useless, an opportunity to argue
for what is true and right - if you are interested in doing so. Above
all, it provides a chance to set out principles, though not too many
detailed policies, well in advance of a General Election, and to
crusade for them.
That is what the Conservative Opposition under Mrs Thatcher did in the
Seventies, addressing hard arguments when so many said it was utter
madness. This risky boldness gave her a powerful mandate for change:
the country knew what to expect. But what can it expect of David
Cameron?
Find this story at
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?
in_article_id=459352&in_page_id=1787
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