Is it time the Tories stopped being emotional and learnt to love PR?
Lord Saatchi, the Conservative cochairman, and Mr Lynton Crosby, the Australian who has been brought in as general election campaign director, are reported to have quarrelled. In fact, it was reported some time ago, but for some reason the Times reported it again this week.
Mr Crosby is said to want to concentrate on winning certain marginal seats. Lord Saatchi is said to want to campaign as if the Conservatives could win the entire general election. As with all such disputes at this level in the organising of parties, how can we outsiders know? What seems not to be in dispute is that at some stage Lord Saatchi wrote an email saying that Mr Crosby had apologised for something or other. Any of us would have known that such a communication would find its way into a newspaper, which it did. On Tuesday Lord Saatchi and Mr Crosby had a letter in the Times. Its gist was that they were at one. Naturally, this was taken as further proof that they were not.
Other things being equal, voters tend not to vote for parties whose leading figures appear to quarrel with one another. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor quarrel all the time. But in their case other things are not equal. The economy is still doing well that is, if the definition of the economy doing well is high employment and low inflation. Lord Saatchi and Mr Crosby have no such luxury. Poor Mr Howard; the Conservatives this week announced — in a Sunday paper advertisement consisting of capital letters a policy to stop migrants settling in the country. With this Saatchi–Crosby quarrel, the Conservatives this week announced a policy to stop votes settling in their party. It was as if the Tories had put an advert in a Sunday paper in capital letters: ‘There are literally millions of people who could vote Conservative. The Conservative party cannot take them all. The Conservatives have reached a turning point. Our party can no longer absorb new voters.’ One can see the logic. It is unreasonable to expect older Conservative MPs — ‘bedblockers’, as they have been called — to be voted for by Afro-Caribbeans, Muslims, young people and gays. A few in each category will always be welcome, but it is a question of numbers.
Certainly, then, with less than four months to go before the general election, unless Mr Blair decides to hold it even earlier, there is much defeatism in the Conservative party. The quarrels are as much a symptom of it as a cause. In pieces on this page in 2001 and 2002 I argued that the early 21st-century Conservatives were in the position of the mid-19th century Conservatives. In both epochs, their opponents — Lord Palmerston and Mr Blair — captured natural Tory ground. Palmerston was as patriotic and imperialistic as any Conservative, Mr Blair was in sympathy with the middle class — the only class which now votes in large numbers. Palmerston captured the manor houses. Mr Blair captured the crunchy drives.
To win, and stay in power for long, Disraeli’s Conservatives had to wait for Palmerston’s departure, and Gladstone’s arrival. Gladstone was more radical and therefore an easier target for the Conservatives. Likewise the Conservatives await Mr Blair’s departure and Mr Brown’s arrival. They think that Mr Brown will be more Old Labour, and therefore an easier target. Perhaps he will. But he is intelligent enough to know that that is what the Conservatives want of him. It is reasonable to doubt that he will give them it.
There was one other aspect of the comparison — between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries — which I do not remember having had the time to go into. It is true that, after their long years in opposition, the Conservatives returned for seven years at the 1874 general election. But something important had happened in addition to Palmerston’s departure and Gladstone’s arrival as Prime Minister. There had been a change in the electoral system. The second Reform Bill had widened the franchise. Many — perhaps most — Conservatives thought that, in the long run, this would make their party even more unelectable. In fact, it made it more electable. The new working-class voters were soon captured for Conservativism. Their capture was one of the reasons that Lord Salisbury — Disraeli’s successor — won successive general elec tions, even though Salisbury had opposed any second Reform Bill.
Is there any future change in the electoral system which could similarly revive the Conservatives? On balance, I do not think so, but only on balance. A few good judges think that there is.
The only imaginable change in the electoral system is proportional representation. We assume that this would favour Blairism or any successor which Blairism might have. Blairites would form an electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats. But there are some Tories — such as my friend Michael Brown, a former MP, an Independent columnist and perhaps the leading Kremlinologist of the Conservative party — who argue that PR is the Tories’ best hope. Forming an alliance with one group or another — Liberal Democrats or Blairite Labour is the only lasting way back, since for various sociological reasons there are no longer enough Tory votes in inner cities, Scotland, Wales and so on. Only with PR could the Tories become again a party of government, as only the widening of the franchise enabled them to be so again in the 1870s.
I am not persuaded. But perhaps the emotions are the reason I am not. It would be a sad day when the historic Conservative party could no longer form a government alone and unaided. But emotion is not reason. There could indeed be something in PR for the Tories.
Nearly everyone thinks PR would mean permanent centre-Left rule. ‘Everyone’ in the 1860s and early 1870s — with Disraeli one of the exceptions — thought that widening the franchise would mean permanent Liberal rule. But franchise enlargements, and constitutional change in general, have a habit of favouring the unexpected party. Apart from 1945, Tories have also tended to gain control of, or do what they want with, coalitions that they enter. They entered into a coalition with Asquith in 1915 and overthrew him for a coalition which Lloyd George led. Later they overthrew Lloyd George. A Tory, Baldwin, became prime minister of the coalition they entered under the early Blairite MacDonald.
All this is partly because the Tories, even when as low as they are now, tend to have more votes in the country than those with whom they form coalitions. In a future Conservative–Liberal Democrat pact which PR brought about, the Tories could gain the upper hand. Not that any of this will cheer up Tories at the moment.
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