What the Tories need is not another Thatcher but another Major
BRUCE ANDERSON
Athough the two main parties would appear to be at opposite ends of the popularity spectrum, they have a common problem. Neither is confident in its relationship with the sovereign people. The Tories cannot believe in their unpopularity; Labourites find it almost as hard to believe in their popularity.
This diffidence is creating a problem for thoughtful Labour supporters (which excludes almost the whole front bench). Underneath the tribal rejoicing by Guardian columnists as they anticipate the pleasure of an inevitable victory, one can detect a note of anxiety. What will this victory be for? For four years, such persons have been writing about the Blair project; no political concept has ever attracted so many words and so little definition. At last, however, they seem to be grasping the truth. The title of the Blair project is make it up as you go along; the sub-title, try desperately to keep the Sun on board. Over at the Guardian, they do not find that an enticing prospect.
There is a forceful and engaging character called Roy Denman, who resembles Ken Clarke in that he looks and sounds like a rumbustious British patriot; he once described the Japanese as 'a nation of workaholics living in rabbit hutches'. He was also one of the first natural Blair supporters to recognise that the PM had no political courage. He produced a retrospective piece, dated towards the end of this decade, lamenting Mr Blair's failure to exploit his electoral and moral momentum. For all the high hopes of 1997, he wrote, historians would conclude that the Blair government was an insignificant affair, which had missed an historic opportunity. Sir Roy's views are now widely shared, even among columnists who will be cheering Labour on, at least until 7 June. Several of them are now bracing themselves against disillusion.
There is also a lot of bracing going on among the Tory high command. Thoughtful Tories will admit that four years after their defeat, the basic problem remains unresolved; the party has still not reconnected itself with the British people. Not only is that unlikely to be rectified between now and 7 June; the task is even greater than most Tories yet realise. The Tory party believes itself to be the national party, entitled to an almost permanent hold on government. Its periods in opposition should be brief interludes to regroup and refurbish before recapturing Whitehall. But this claim to be a national party rests on tenuous assumptions, and on myths.
Large numbers of Tory activists — and far too many MPs — misunderstand their party's history. They believe that Margaret Thatcher was a uniquely popular leader, and that her overthrow has been followed by a decade of moral backsliding. The solution is easy, if only the party could find a leader with the courage to implement it: a return to Thatch erite verities.
There is one basic flaw in that analysis. Mrs Thatcher was never a popular Prime Minister. The electoral system made her seem so; she won plenty of seats. But when it came to percentages of the vote, she struggled to equal Alec Douglas-Home's losing total in 1964. Thatcherism was made possible by a hopeless Labour leadership and a divided opposition. Michael Foot, Neil Kinriock: David Owen, David Steel; they all made an indispensable contribution to Britain's well-being, even if it was not quite the one that they had intended.
The Tories suffer from two historic liabilities, and Margaret Thatcher added to both of them. The fact is that they are seen as the skinflint party, always saying 'no' to desirable public expenditure, full of politicians who are never happier than when telling hungry sheep about the price of grass. The second, related, difficulty is that they are seen as the party of the rich, only interested in the striving, the sharp-elbowed and the successful. Again, the electoral system misled Tory enthusiasts, leading them to exaggerate the scale of their intellectual victories. Many fewer voters had been converted to the cause of smaller government than the Parliamentary majorities of the Eighties would have suggested.
There is a grim irony in all this. There was one leader who could have overcome these twin difficulties while pursuing broadly Thatcherite policies. Christopher Booker once summarised Alec Home's political problems; he was an iron ist in an age of satire, but no irony. John Major had a similar problem; he was a gentle man, at a time when neither the country nor his party were interested in gentle leadership.
But he was the one Tory who could have made Thatcherism popular. He could have spoken as she never could, in the language of those at the bottom of the heap. He had
been there himself, and never forgot what it was like. He started well, by stealing a phrase of Margaret Thatcher's which she could never have made work: 'the classless society'. But he was then mocked out of using it, largely by the then Telegraph school of commentators. However often it was pointed out to them that it was a borrowing from Mrs Thatcher's final conference speech, the snobbish giggling continued; the repeated assertions that John Major only wanted a classless society because he had no class.
Mr Major was aware of the distinction between classlessness and egalitarianism. By talking about classlessness, he was merely describing what had happened in British society. Our aristocracy was never a closed caste. There were always carrieres ouvertes aux talents, to a much greater extent than in some societies with egalitarian outward forms; for liberte, egalite, fraternise, read liberte, enarquerie, fraternite. John Major had nothing against toffs; he was merely trying to persuade his fellow-subjects that the class barriers which many of them believed would impede their progress existed principally in their own imagination.
But Mr Major could never have been accused of an excess of political self-confidence. He quickly lost confidence in his own instincts and judgment, and the Tory party lost an historic opportunity. Mr Blair did not have the moral depth to take his historic role. Mr Major did not have a party with enough moral depth — not to mention common sense and a sense of self-preservation — to allow him to take his.
Thanks to a ruthless opposition able to feed off the Tory party's self-destructiveness, John Major was discredited. Despite a first-class economic record, the Tories were not only seen as the political wing of the Treasury, but as the political wing of an incompetent, bungling Treasury. Some of Mr Hague's own supporters who cannot understand their party's failure to recover are forgetting their own part in putting it in the casualty ward.
There is no need for Tories to despair. The vicissitudes of politics can always be relied on, especially when we have a government so absolutely lacking in moral cement. But it will require another Parliament of moral crumbling, relentless opportunism and a permanently postponed project before this weakness becomes apparent.
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