Cameron’s strength is that he does not throw his weight about
The most unexpected characteristic so far of the Cameron leadership of the Conservative party is caution. Westminster had been braced for some kind of spectacular announcement, or perhaps a series of announcements, signalling dramatic change. This has not been forthcoming. The day Cameron got elected a friend of mine rang up.
‘It’s all up,’ he said. ‘It’s finished.’ ‘Surely Cameron isn’t as bad as all that,’ I replied.
‘I don’t mean Dave,’ he said. ‘I mean me. I’ll never get a seat now.’ My friend is a white, middle-class male in his late thirties. He has struggled up the system, fighting a hopeless seat, never wasting the opportunity to ingratiate himself with constituency chairmen, heads of candidate selection, party functionaries, however obscure, local newspaper editors or anybody who might conceivably be of any use to him whatsoever in his indefatigable and quite shameless search for a secure constituency. There was no consoling the poor fellow.
Three days later he rang again. Proposals for a new 140-strong ‘A list’ had been announced. They were being hailed in the press and by interested organisations such as the Fawcett Society as the dawn of a new era.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They don’t mean it.’ ‘Don’t mean what?’ He explained that he had studied the proposals put forward for candidate selection by the Conservative party with great care. ‘It’s just the same as before,’ he said. He noted that Cameron had taken none of the deadly steps, such as imposing all-women shortlists, which would have inflicted really serious damage on his chances.
‘I’ll be in Parliament after the next election,’ he said.
It is the same with policy. There was a general expectation that the new leader would make some emblematic break with the past. Instead we have a review. Oliver Letwin, the newly appointed chairman of the Conservative Research Department, asserts that he is leading the boldest and most fundamental re-examination of policy since Keith Joseph in the 1970s. Doubtless this is the case. Nevertheless, the political utility of Mr Letwin’s undertaking is entirely different. All inquiries about where Cameron stands on the issues of the day can be brushed aside with reference to the overriding duty not to anticipate the fruits of Mr Letwin’s great work, regretfully still in preparation. Letwin’s six commissions are not expected to report back for two years. Even then the shadow Cabinet is under no obligation to accept their findings, so there will be further discussion and debate.
David Cameron seems to possess an invaluable gift. He can generate the illusion of decisive action while pursuing caution and delay. His shadow Cabinet is an example of the same enviable sleight of hand. On a micro level, he has made imaginative appointments. Theresa Villiers has surely earned her place in the Guinness Book of Records through her appointment after just seven months in Parliament to a place in the shadow Cabinet, formerly the reward for years if not decades of hard slog in committees.
But the big decision was a safe one. The modernisers who surround Cameron urged him ruthlessly to impose his authority by humiliating David Davis, the defeated candidate in the leadership election. He has spurned that advice. They wanted him to emulate Tony Blair by staging a confrontation with his own party. He has decided to take the Tory party with him, not oppose it. Cameron knows extremely well that he will never be as powerful or have as much freedom of action as in these first few months of office. It is extremely significant, though not necessarily a sign of weakness, that he has chosen not to take full advantage of his temporary period of strength.
Cameron may calculate that he wants to place the glare of national attention on Tony Blair, now a forlorn figure struggling for his political life. He shares with John Major the distinction of losing all authority within six months of a general election. This is the desperate state of affairs facing Blair.
The Prime Minister’s failure to secure the assent of the House of Commons for the proposal to detain terrorist suspects for 90 days without charge has proved to be the start and not — as Downing Street hoped — the culmination of a chain of events. It was followed swiftly by the contemptuous Treasury demolition of the pension reform plan proposed by Lord Turner, a protégé of the Prime Minister. About the same time, the government started to back down on its proposal to abolish juries in complex fraud trials. Its Fraud Bill was introduced in the Lords on 22 June, spent a day in committee on 19 July, and has not been heard of since. The problem here does not lie in the Lords: business managers are petrified about the reaction it will generate when it reaches the floor of the Commons.
Meanwhile the Religious Hatred Bill has been substantially rewritten in the Lords. The government is not protesting about this (as it would have done in the past). Instead, terrified of the Labour rebels in the Commons, it is happy to collaborate quietly in the emasculation of its own proposals.
Now Tony Blair is in full retreat on his proposal to reform disability benefit, which was announced in ringing tones in his party conference speech in the autumn. The future looks dire. Charles Clarke’s proposals for identity cards, currently being torn to shreds in committee in the House of Lords, are due to be debated on the floor of the Commons in the New Year. The Education Bill, expected in the spring, looks doomed, for all David Cameron’s earnest protestations of support. Tony Blair has lost the ability to govern.
There are a number of reasons for this. The government whips office, overseen by the lamentable Hilary Armstrong, has never regained the mystique and respect it lost when it was kicked out of its historic No. 12 Downing Street HQ to make way for Alastair Campbell’s hubristic media operation. It is virtually powerless to enforce discipline. There are rumours, stimulated by the surprising failure to fill the vacancy left by John Hutton as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, that the Prime Minister will try to reassert authority with a Cabinet reshuffle. It’s hopeless: he signed his own death warrant when he announced his intention to resign at the time of the next general election. Politicians, like financial markets, always discount events. The parliamentary Labour party understands very clearly that the fount of future power patronage is now Gordon Brown.
The government is even at war about how to combat David Cameron. His rejuvenated Tory party went ahead in the polls last week, and stands poised to make gains in the local elections next May. Tony Blair has made political recoveries before, but I don’t see him doing so this time. My guess is that he will be out by next Christmas.
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