A PHOENIX, NOT A DODO

It is five to midnight for the

Tories, says Francis Maude, but

they can still recover

THE Conservative party has teetered on the brink of oblivion several times in its long history. This time there is no guarantee that it will survive. Ours is the oldest and most successful party in the history of democracy, and has for long periods been the dominant force in British politics. But for some years now we have simply not seemed to be in touch with the way people live, or attuned to their aspirations and fears, their anxieties and their hopes. At the election last year, fewer people voted Conservative than voted for Michael Foot's Labour party. The middle classes, business and professional people, deserted us. We now hold no city seats whatever outside London. Among 25to 34year-olds, we are in a poor third place.

Yet the Conservative party is a phoenix, not a dodo. There are some encouraging signs, among them the readiness of a number of senior Conservatives to eschew partisan opposition: lain Duncan Smith's imaginative proposals for Lords reform and his repudiation of the Monday Club and the Carlton Club; Oliver Letwin's vision of the neighbourly society; and David Willetts's insistence on Conservatives being serious about poverty. But these are tender green shoots in a wintry landscape.

There is nothing inevitable about a Conservative recovery. Even though the Labour government has had a truly dreadful start to 2002, we continue flatlining in the polls. Time is not on our side. It is five to midnight. So what is to be done? First, we must again become a genuinely national party, as Disraeli insisted. We must show real respect for all: male and female, rich and poor, old and young, black and white, gay and straight. This is not about 'pandering to minorities'. It is about being a decent party.

Today, many couples decide not to many, and yet form stable families with children. These are not people on the fringes of society. They are not bad or irresponsible. We cannot be a party of choice if we deny people the choice of how to organise their relationships. Plenty of good citizens choose to live in all kinds of relationships. So let's accept that non-married couples ought not to be excluded from adopting children.

The Conservative party must reflect the face of contemporary Britain, not from electoral expediency, but because that is what being a decent national party means. At the last election we selected only candidates who were straight white males to fight Conservative-held seats. It was an emblem of our narrowness. Whatever it takes to change that, however much it offends the purists, must be done. None of this will win us an election. It is no more than the entry ticket to get into the race.

The second thing we must do is to practise grown-up politics. In the days of the Cold War, when socialism was serious, a grand canyon separated the parties. There remain sharp differences, but they are not such that the old adversarial politics are appropriate. The public hates partisan politics, and think all politicians are dishonest. Being less partisan makes us more credible. Finally, we need to win the battle of ideas. I think there are four strands that can define modern Conservatism.

First, `groupism', to coin a rather horrid word. By groupism I mean the converse of statism, of collectivism, and of individualism. We do believe there is such a thing as society. And that the strength of society flows from what people do, not from what the state does. Most of what people do is done together, in groups, in communities, in that fantastically complex tapestry of vol

untary organisations so-called 'intermediate institutions' — that together form society. So how did it ever become possible for Conservatism to be caricatured as a selfish creed; as the doctrine of 'me first' and 'greed is good'? We think much better of people than that. We don't believe that people are mean and greedy and selfish; we don't believe that most people want to walk by on the other side of the road when they see someone in need.

Second, social justice. Social justice has conventionally meant narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Yet disparity alone is not injustice, any more than equality of poverty is justice. Real social injustice happens when people are held back. Our vision should be about opportunity, aspiration and self-belief. This means proper Conservative ideas for welfare reform; policies that attack welfare dependency, not encourage it.

And in a just society people do not assume that all their social obligations are discharged when they have signed their tax cheque. We should argue that the rich and powerful have obligations beyond those imposed by law; that the strong have an obligation to help the weak; the rich, a duty to help the poor; the fortunate, to help the unfortunate; and the able, to help the less able. Obligations, freely undertaken and cheerfully discharged, are the bonds that bind society and the community together.

Third, localism, decentralisation, the dispersal of power away from the centre. This means a serious commitment to independence for much of local government. We were wrong in the 1980s and 1990s when under severe provocation we hugely eroded the ability of local councils to order their own affairs. We have to choose between giving some independence to all councils, or lots of independence to some. We should aim to give some councils complete freedom. That means freedom to provide services to local, not Whitehall, standards; freedom to raise money, through the business rate, the council tax and by borrowing; freedom to go bust. This principle could extend to the NHS, where local units could be controlled by local people and local doctors. Hospitals would belong to the community.

There are loads of risks in localism. It means more diversity of provision. But there is a huge prize. If we believe that we are a stronger, better, more tolerant society when power is dispersed, and if we believe that such dispersal brings diversity and choice which in turn leads to innovation and progress, then diversity is to be celebrated, not feared. Localism means trusting people. It's what Conservatives should do.

The fourth strand that defines modern Conservatism is internationalism. We should not have to take a Trappist vow of silence on the great European issues. We must have an outlook that is so unmistakably internationalist that it could never occur to anyone to depict us as narrow, 'xenophobic', 'Little Englanders'. As Conservatives we believe in choice and we now have the starkest possible choice: we can retreat further into a reactionary redoubt and try to hold the modern world at bay, or we can rise up and embrace it. Stagnation and oblivion or radicalism and revival? Modernise or die? It's obvious, isn't it?

Francis Maude is MP for Horsham, and former shadow chancellor and shadow foreign secretary. He is chairman of Conservatives for Change (CChange).