With the Howard Flight affair, a Conservative campaign that was going very well has become badly unstuck. The most depressing thing today is an article by Rachel Sylvester in the Daily Telegraph. She is a clever, perceptive political reporter but this is her argument: that Mr Blair has "for the moment at least, won the argument on tax and public spending" and that "most voters would still, at the moment, prefer to see the public services run collectively, with their taxes, than to see people left to to fend for themsleves". This is even though the Government has "squeezed us all with stealth taxes and wasted at least some of the many millions of pounds it has spent on schools and hospitals since 1997". She reckons that "voters feel rich enough to give Labour's public spending experiment more time to work".
This shift of the public, to accepting a larger role for the state, is a legacy of Tony Blair, she say, "if anything is".
She then goes on to assert, "The Tories has not quite caught up". Michael Howard is "still trying to fight the election that Margaret Thatcher won in 1979. It is time for the Tory leader to flag down the nearest Tardis and move forward to 2005".
An unspoken assumption quietly intervenes in the course of this line of logic. It is that the Conservative Party should learn what the public thinks, accept it and change its policies accordingly. That is the sort of assumption a political reporter may be inclined to make since the job tends to make journalists think of the whole political process as a game in which winning the current match is everything.
Politics is indeed, on one level, a game. But it is not only a game. It is about the future of this country - its prosperity, its freedom and the character of its people. For the Conservative Party to give up, as a matter of tactics, the concepts of a smaller state and lower taxes, would be to give up things which are essential, in the eyes of its most politically committed, to the well-being of Britain. The purpose of being in politics at all would be removed. The county would be left on a path towards economic relative decline and a further absolute decline in behaviour and education.
There was also another assumption in Rachel Sylvester's article. It is that Labour's spending policies are more or less working and will continue to do so. She also refers to just "some" of the money being wasted. In fact, vast amounts of money are being wasted and the damage done to our society will, I believe, gradually become more apparent. If the Conservative's argue this consistently - more consistently that in the past - and if the facts come to bear them out (as I believe they are already doing and will do even more clearly), then the Conservatives will bear the electoral benefits in due course. So even for those who see politics primarily as a game, there are benefits to holding to this line. In fact, it should be more fully developed.
One thing that Margaret Thatcher appreciated - and that most of the current generation of Conservatives do not - is that a major part of the long-term electoral battle is to win on the intellectual front. For the next four years, Conservatives should argue that public spending has become too big and should be reduced. Only when they argue this - instead of holding to the Oliver Letwin line that spending could rise just a little bit slower - will the argument be able to help change the views of the public. Rachel Sylvester is right that public acceptance of high state spending is at the root of the strong position of Tony Blair. It is at this root that the Conservative Party needs to strike.
There is no need for this to be the whole of what the Conservatives stand for. But it should be at the core.
(Update: See also interesting commentary on the Rachel Sylvester article at Blithering Bunny.)
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Politics
Comments (1)
TrackBack (21)
Comments
Warning: file(http://63.247.138.2/~bartholo/randomquotes.dump) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No route to host in /home/bartholo/public_html/archives/2005/03/poltics_is_not.php on line 291
Warning: implode() [function.implode]: Invalid arguments passed in /home/bartholo/public_html/archives/2005/03/poltics_is_not.php on line 291
The Conservative Party can only be described as the party of low taxation when measured against Labour. What politics in this country needs is a party that can offer a coherent policy that is a true alternative to social democratic spending. That entails being strong & confident enough to have such a debate & having access to the media.
Whilst the Conservative Party can access the media, it certainly does not have the confidence. A good analysis of conservatism (somewhat American biased but applicable) can be read here:
The Intellectual Incoherence of Conservatism
Posted by: Thersites at March 28, 2005 11:15 PM