POLITICS
IDS has a plausible strategy. A leadership contest now would be an unseemly farce
PETER OBORNE
To turn this week to the Conservative party, rather than deal with matters of consequence. On Wednesday morning George Jones, political editor of the Daily Telegraph, reported a 'sharp slump in morale' in the Tory party at Westminster. He stated that plotters are taking soundings to discover whether they can secure the necessary 25 signatures from Tory MPs to launch a vote of no confidence in lain Duncan Smith, He judged that backbiting among Tory MPs 'is the most serious since Lady Thatcher was forced to stand down as prime minister 12 years ago'.
George Jones is a sober and fastidious journalist. Though he does not name the conspirators, there is no reason to doubt his word. The Telegraph political editor accurately conjures up the mood in the Commons. It is only three weeks since the Tory conference at Bournemouth, an event which went far better than anyone expected. Duncan Smith produced a set of plausible and coherent policies, and made a powerful and moving platform speech. Afterwards reasonable people were inclined to the view that he had done enough to establish his leadership credentials for the time being.
This reading of events failed to take into account the character of modern Tory MPs. They were once solid, dependable characters, though too bovinely unimaginative for some tastes. Very few of them took much interest in politics — an admirable failing. Not so today's excitable collection. The chattering started up again the moment Parliament returned two weeks ago. It was given extra impetus by a couple of shaky performances by lain Duncan Smith at Prime Minister's Questions, followed by a mini-disaster during the exchanges that followed Tony Blair's summit statement on Monday.
A specimen of the modern Tory MP is Eric Forth, the shadow leader of the Commons. Forth affects a distaste for any political idea or practice dating from later than about 1850, and dresses like a Victorian undertaker out for a day at the races, with much flourishing of watch-chains and twirling of coloured handkerchiefs, all offset by a funereally dark suit. Forth's antique exterior is illusory. Inside beats the heart of a regulation 21st-century Conservative MP — shallow, fickle, disloyal, vain and self-promoting. It is lain Duncan Smith's misfortune that he is obliged to sit close to Forth at parliamentary questions. Forth feels that his status demands that he sit in the 'bubble' which surrounds the party leader. He makes abundant use of the proximity this gives him. The shadow leader of the House has taken to using body language, facial expressions or hand-movements to signal his independence from Duncan Smith. He did this by putting a pistol to his head during the Commons exchange over the Alevel crisis, and was up to the same trick last week over policy on Europe. Forth's fooling around, which derives from a vastly inflated sense of his own importance, amounts to insubordination bordering on treachery. Duncan Smith should not take this too personally: he is the second, if not third, successive party leader to whom Forth has been more or less openly disloyal. But the situation is bad for discipline, and readily exploited by the government. It is made more dangerous by the fact that everyone knows that Forth would be campaign manager in any David Davis leadership campaign (he once occupied a similar position vis-à-vis Michael Portillo, but switched allegiance).
Forth is not alone. Other senior MPs suffer the same affliction. Not even Sir Michael Spicer, chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, is wholly immune. Sir Michael has been admirably sparing in his media appearances, turning down the opportunity to use his position to become a kind of all-purpose minor television star, a temptation that was not resisted by all his predecessors. But he does not provide the unconditional and unequivocal support on all occasions which a Tory leader is entitled to expect.
It is not at this stage obvious who is behind the latest disloyalty. Allies of the leader point their finger at certain members of John Major's whips' office, a tightly knit group which pushed through the Maastricht Bill a decade ago, and who retain a grudge. There is evidence that some of Duncan Smith's original supporters on the Tory Right have become disillusioned. Doubtless, aficionados of Ken Clarke are plotting in their usual downbeat and desultory way. No doubt partisans of Michael Portillo are feverishly plotting as ever. Clarke, who now wears a dramatic black opera hat, favoured the Commons with a rare appearance last Monday night. He was ebullient.
A vote of no confidence against the Tory leader can be launched at any time. It simply requires the signatures of 25 MPs — 15 per cent of the total — to be placed in the hands of the 1922 Committee chairman. In theory Duncan Smith needs just 50 per cent of the votes to survive the ensuing contest, though in practice anything less than 70 per cent would be fatal. If he failed to make it, several rounds of voting confined to MPs would follow. The purpose of this procedure is to reduce to two the number of candidates who go out into the country to be chosen by the party members. The Westminster part of the operation would be a gruesome business, with ritual expulsions after late-night votes akin to television's Big Brother. The hustings in the country would take several months of backstabbing and sheer boredom. It would be unseemly, coinciding with a period when it seems likely that British troops will be at risk in Iraq. It would also be a farce: by the end there is no reason to suppose that the Conservative party would be ahead of the Liberal Democrats in the opinion polls.
It beggars belief that Tory MPs should even begin to contemplate a fresh contest. Many will take the view that it is dishonourable for a party to keep changing its leader; still others that it is unwise. Duncan Smith may lack charisma, as his critics assert, but he has worked out a plausible strategy. This autumn Conservative MPs face a choice. They can row in behind Duncan Smith — something they have failed to do so far — or continue with their narcissistic obsession to the exclusion of the nation at large. Even if they do want a contest, it is far from certain that the party at large, which voted 60-40 for Duncan Smith last summer, and reacted warmly to his party conference speech in Bournemouth, would allow them one. That may be Duncan Smith's best hope.
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