Time for David Cameron to reach beyond the media class
We have entered an equivocal and shiftless passage in British politics. Tony Blair is in the situation of a relegated football club towards the end of the season. He is going down, and there is a zero statistical chance that he can survive. He lingers at top table, but has reached the stage where even victories cannot save him.
David Cameron finds himself in exactly the opposite position. Formally, he is still a mere contender. But the issue is in practice decided. This means that Cameron no longer needs to use the two-and-a-half remaining weeks of campaigning to secure votes. The imperative need is rather to work out strategies for the moment he officially becomes Opposition leader on the afternoon of 6 December.
This is important because there are at present two versions of David Cameron in circulation, each equally plausible. There is the Cameron as portrayed in the newspaper columns of Matthew Parris and Lord Rees-Mogg, arguably the two leading Conservative commentators. Both writers view Cameron as an uncomplicated Conservative of the old school, moderate, decent and reassuring. Rees-Mogg usefully compares Cameron with Harold Macmillan, the last Tory leader to have been educated at Eton and to have won a general election. Rees-Mogg takes heart from the Cameron family connection with the Earl of Shrewsbury, first minister to William III and architect of the Glorious Revolution. Parris maintains that the victory of Cameron marks the ‘return of the toffs’ to the leadership of the Conservative party, after a long period in the wilderness, which dates back to the election defeat of 1964.
To the extent that this analysis is correct, Cameron is the most recent example of an important new trend in Britain around the start of the 21st century: the re-emergence of the former British ruling class, after a longish period of comparative obscurity, in important public roles. The prodigious success of the singer James Blunt, formerly of Harrow School and the Household Cavalry, is one manifestation of this renewed self-confidence. The arrival of Radley-educated Andrew Strauss as a formidable opening bat in the England cricket team is another. There are numerous other cases in point.
But the alternative analysis is equally potent. Those closest to Cameron —his friends, advisers and political strategists emphatically deny that Cameron is the candidate of continuity. For them, the crucial point is that he offers not merely change but a violent break with the past. His task as leader will be to turn his back on tradition, established structures and the Conservative party itself in order to create a fresh and potent political force capable of matching New Labour.
According to this analysis, the key fact about Cameron is the class which he has chosen as his natural base, and from which he draws many of his friends: the political/media elite. This media class is far narrower in outlook than the traditional upper-middle class, which had connections with all walks of life and an all-embracing geographical stretch. The media class exists only in London, and then only along a straight and tightly defined line stretching from Notting Hill in west London through Soho to the Guardian building in Farringdon Road. Members of this media class, whatever their notional party affiliation, have far more in common with each other than with ordinary politicians. (There was an interesting manifestation of this on Monday night, when David Cameron’s tactician Ed Vaizey, the Guardian columnist turned Tory MP, was seen hugger-mugger in a bar with Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, the newly appointed director of strategic communications in Downing Street.) The characteristics of this media class include an obsessive interest in process rather than substance, and a formal hostility to the institutions of representative democracy. It has been stealthily gaining power in the last 15 years and secured its first massive success with the election of Tony Blair as Labour leader in 1994. Now that Tony Blair looks broken, the media class is starting to attach itself to David Cameron.
Some will doubtless try to argue that there is no contradiction between being a traditional Tory along the lines of Harold Macmillan and a member of the media class. But this argument fails. Both positions demand radically different strategies in the vital weeks ahead as Cameron consolidates his position as leader of the Conservative party.
The media strategy is very clear. In the words of one of Cameron’s most articulate Westminster supporters, ‘Cameron has got to populate the political landscape. Out there they are waiting for a new phenomenon. He needs an idea, or a movement. A huge weight of effort must go into doing what Tony Blair did and to create the concept of an army on the march. He will have to rebrand the Conservative party and make it electable.’ Theoretically, this kind of approach means defining Cameron in opposition to the Conservative party, just as Tony Blair defined himself in opposition to Labour. Tony Blair’s takeover of New Labour was very much a coup d’état. A tiny group of modernising politicians, by no means all of whom were in Parliament, seized hold of the levers of power in New Labour and used them to vilify and destroy opponents, most of whom were in the Labour party itself. This permanent struggle between the forces of progress and reaction provided the media class with a powerful narrative which was sustained for many years.
The small group of modernisers who give strategic advice to David Cameron are urging him to conduct himself along very similar lines. They are looking for their ‘Clause 4’ moment, when their hero dramatically confronts the past. As things stand, David Davis, whose leadership campaign seems more and more centred on the parochial concerns of the Tory activist base, is lining up nicely for the role of fall guy.
Perhaps this is inevitable. Perhaps all political leaders, in order to win, now have to follow the modernising prescription as enforced by the media class. But it is still open to David Cameron to play by a different set of rules. If he really is the uncomplicated Conservative of the old school that Lord Rees-Mogg and Matthew Parris claim, he will not seek to govern the Tory party as Tony Blair has governed Labour — as a clique. He will seek to create what used to be called, in the age of factional politics, a ‘broad-bottomed’ administration. He will wish to emphasise rather than downgrade the variety of talent on the Conservative benches. David Davis, who has fought a fairly honourable campaign, will be offered an honourable job (perhaps defence spokesman), and be expected to conduct himself honourably. William Hague will be found a major position, and illustrious figures from the Conservative past such as Douglas Hurd and Chris Patten somehow will be brought back to provide reassurance. He will seek to present himself as a standing reproach to Tony Blair. David Cameron will have to make this career-defining choice in the next few weeks.
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