16 OCTOBER 2004, Page 34

The Tories' sub-Marxist economic determinism won't win them office

Conc.erning the state of the Conservatives, a few remarks. First, their 'analysis' is probably wrong. 'Analysis' does not here

mean the Conservatives' diverse and contradictory public pronouncements suggesting that, say, Mr Redwood had to be brought back in order to counter Ukip, that the party should move to the centre to trump the Liberal Democrats; that lower income tax should be promised; that the present government's spending on this or that allegedly popular cause should be adhered to. All those recommendations have their merits.

But there remains the more interesting, privately stated analysis: one which cannot be mentioned to a party conference, in the Commons or on television. It is that the Tories will lose the next general election, but will recover when 'the economy goes wrong'. Thus the Conservative party has embraced a kind of sub-Marxist, or materialist, economic determinism.

It is reasonable to assume that the economy will 'go wrong' eventually. Economies always have. But this economy is taking an unconscionably long time doing so. That is because of something about which Conservatives should be pleased. Mr Brown handed monetary policy — which with fiscal policy is one of a chancellor's two important functions — to the capitalist Bank of England, just as many an old Thatcherite had urged. Kenneth Clarke was against it; Lord Lamont was for it.

Handing monetary policy to the Bank is one of the reasons — perhaps the most important — why we now enjoy both low unemployment and low inflation, two blessings which previous generations of politicians and Whitehall officials thought incompatible. If you are a good monetarist, you should not believe that the economy will easily 'go wrong'. In any case, there is something disagreeable about a political party whose entire 'strategy' consists of sitting there waiting for economic hardship to befall one's country, and hoping that it does. In exchange for high employment and low inflation, most of us — Tory or not — should be prepared to endure Mr Blair and Mr Brown lording it over us. The latest opinion polls suggest that most Britons are,

A broader purpose here, however, is to argue that the Conservatives might not be the beneficiaries even if the economy, before or more probably after the next elec tion, 'goes wrong'. There is no evidence that voters live by economics alone. The Clinton campaign 'strategist' in the 1992 presidential election who said that it was 'the economy, stupid' has something to answer for. By election day, 1992, the American economy was doing well, Mr Clinton won for reasons other than the economy. He amused, reassured and interested voters as a campaigner, and was of humble origin. Above all, he came from the south, and so could win back to the Democrats those many southerners who had voted for the similarly amusing, reassuring, interesting and low-born Reagan. President Bush Sr, unlike his son today. had no appeal to the south.

If all this is correct, the Tories cannot expect to win again even if the economy 'goes wrong'. Rather, is it possible that they are the victims of broader forces? If so, the broadest of such forces is the middle class. Only the middle class now votes in large numbers. The old blue-collar class voted Labour in their millions, producing vast turnouts in 1950 and 1951, even though in the later election the Tories won. By a quirk of the electoral system, it may be remembered, in 1951 Labour piled up useless votes in safe seats which it would win in any case, while the Tories won many marginals. That election produced a seldom-mentioned aspect of Churchill's career: as Tory leader, he never won a majority of votes, neither in 1945 nor 1950 when he lost, nor in 1951 when he won.

That old blue-collar working class has more or less disappeared. Many of those who in previous generations would have constituted it are now — because of the decline of apprenticeships and factories — in the 'underclass'. Thus they do not vote.

One Tory reaction to this is: excellent, only the middle class now counts; that must, in the medium term, be good for us. On present evidence, that will not be the case. For the middle class is becoming more and proletarianised, and a tendency among proletarians is to assume that

Tories are rich or toffs. It does not matter that, say, Mr David Davis, the shadow home secretary, is of far more humble origin than any Blairite MP; the newly proletarianised middle class probably think him grand simply because he is Tory.

We can argue about what has caused this proletarianisation. Television must be one of the reasons: among other things, television relieves much of the middle class of the obligation to read books. The fall of the grammar schools must be another.

In 1956, Anthony Crosland published his The Future of Socialism, the gist of which was that affluence had made the working class more like the middle class, so Labour had to appeal to middle-class values in order to win. After Labour's next defeat, in 1959, the sociologist Mark Abrams published Must Labour Lose?, which argued the same. The Daily Mirror group believed all that. The Mirror became more serious: the group then turned the old Labour Daily Herald into the relatively 'upmarket' first Sun. The latter quickly lost circulation and was sold at a knock-down price to Mr Murdoch, who did not believe in this bourgeois working class. His Sun soon overtook the Mirror.

Thus the opposite has happened to what Crosland, Abrams and the rest of the highminded predicted. Today's middle class, especially in its opinion of the Tories and its tastes in entertainment and culture, has become more like the old working class. Today's middle class watches Big Brother as much as the under class does. At the moment, the Tory answer is to identify with proletarianised middle-class taste. The party produced that conference film in which successive shadow Cabinet ministers revealed, among other things, their musical tastes. A musical ensemble called Busted announced its support for the Conservatives. We can imagine various uncool Tories having to acquiesce in this attempt to be cool.

Lord Saatchi: Now look here, Soames, you've got to be a fan of Busted, got that'?'

Mr Nicholas Soames: 'Busty, eh? Sounds good to me.'

A young, modernising Tory imagebuilder: 'Er, Busted, actually.'

Mr Soames: 'Busted! Isn't that what the police do to people on drugs? Christ, has the party come to that'?'

For New Labour will always beat the Tories in appealing to the proletarianised middle class.