The real Tory war is between the frantics and the long-garners
PETER °BORNE
Lst Tuesday's ICM poll in the Guardian, showing a ten-point lead for Labour, came as a sharp blow to the Tories. There had been fervent hopes that recent Downing Street disarray might have done the opposition some good; it hasn't. The problem is easy to state, though hard to solve. However much of a pounding the government takes, support does not cross over to the Tories. It simply leads to a greater disenchantment with politics. This is a syndrome that dates back to Labour's brilliant period of opposition between 1994 and 1997. Labour's assertion that the Conservatives were corrupt, disreputable, sleazy, mendacious and arrogant was so brilliantly made that the label has proved impossible to remove.
New Labour boasted that it represented a fresh decency and integrity. But only a short time elapsed before a series of scandals — Ecclestone, Robinson, Vaz, Jo Moore, Mittal, etc. — exploded this claim as duplicitous and cynical. The result has been a spectacular collapse in trust in all politicians, along with apathy, disaffection and cynicism_ In this sense New Labour has done a deep disservice to British public life.
The problem facing the Conservatives is how they can win back the trust of the British people just as New Labour is losing it. There are two views on this within Tory ranks. There is a faction that believes the situation is so bad that the Tories should start again from scratch. Then there is the faction that feels that the British people will get fed up with Tony Blair in the end.
There are some powerful parallels with the internal debate that convulsed Labour in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1993 Alastair Campbell, now director of communications in Downing Street, wrote an attack on John Smith's leadership of the Labour party in the Sunday Telegraph: 'I see the real divide as between "frantics" and "long-garners",' he wrote. 'The long-garners all believe Labour has time on its side. There is no point, they say, in wasting energies and risking the Tory theft of ideas, in a period that will be forgotten by the next election. But what makes the frantics frantic is that the party does not know what it is for, other than to oppose the government in Parliament. There is little sense of the party finding itself a wider role.'
A comparable divide between 'frantics' and long-garners' has emerged within fain Duncan Smith's Conservative party. The most outspoken and articulate spokesman for the frantics comes from outside the shadow Cabinet: Francis Maude, whose ginger group Conservatives for Change (Cchange) had an inaugural public meeting on Monday night.
Cchange stands for exactly the metropolitan agenda that fain Duncan Smith was elected leader of the Conservative party to stop. Maude wants the Tories to have allwomen shortlists, embrace gay rights and embody the *pashmina politics' that Duncan Smith so notably repudiated during his campaign for the Tory leadership last summer. Cchange regards the endorsement of the Guardian rather than the Daily Telegraph as the key short-term aim of the 21stcentury Conservative party.
There is something to be said for the Cchange position. It is reasonably coherent and, above all, grasps the current Tory predicament in its full ghastliness. On the other hand, its basic strategy of making the Conservatives as much like New Labour as possible contains one basic failure of analysis. It does not address the fact that New Labour is more of a strategy than a traditional political party. Since it lacks baggage, New Labour can disappear or reappear at will, like the Cheshire Cat. By the time the Conservatives have laboriously set about occupying one segment of territory, New Labour has moved elsewhere. To take one recent example: after the last election Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, led a daring shift to the left on asylum seekers. By the time Letwin had completed his manoeuvre, New Labour's tents were camped in the very ground that the Tories had vacated. Very much the same sleight of hand looks about to happen on crime. But there is no ignoring Francis Maude's Cchange. It has been prodigiously successful. Though it has only met once, and is indelibly associated with Michael Portillo's losing campaign for the leadership last year, it is as influential as the now-forgotten No Turning Back group at the height of the Thatcher period. Without anybody quite noticing, it alone articulates the guiding ideas of the Tory leadership. Last Monday's meeting was represented in the press as a subversive event. On the contrary, it was attended by David MacLean, the chief whip, Mark MacGregor, Conservative party chief executive, and Dominic Cummings, the head of strategy. They observed events with unfeigned interest and approval.
Something very complicated is going on in the Conservative party. The old categories have broken down. New loyalties are being formed. Last year's leadership election boiled down to a battle between the Duncan Smith hardliners and Kenneth Clarke's proEuropeans. But it is now pretty obvious that the real winner was Michael Portillo, who came third. The Portillo modernising agenda has been taken up by lain Duncan Smith, who won the election by ridiculing it.
Duncan Smith's readiness to embrace change is seen by loyalists as evidence of a refreshing realism. There is, however, a body of his former supporters who are more than happy privately to accuse him of betrayal. Perhaps Duncan Smith would welcome a public attack of this sort; certainly there are plenty of modernisers who would like nothing better than for Norman Tebbit to denounce the man who succeeded him as MP for Chingford.
Recent trends in the Tory party have produced a division in the shadow Cabinet which bears comparison with Alastair Campbell's divide between frantics and longgarners ten years ago. Oliver Letwin, John Bercow, David Willetts, Tom Strathclyde and Damian Green are among the frantics. Aligned in the other camp are David Davis, Michael Howard, John Whittingdale and Eric Forth. Partisans of Davis are already sniping at Duncan Smith's leadership, while Tory modernisers accuse Davis of failing to embrace the whole-hearted reform that they insist is vital if the Tory party is to become a 21st-century political party. These are treacherous waters. The Tories have no alternative but to pass through them if they are to become a formidable opposition. But they could easily sink in the attempt.
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