John Harris writes:
The last-minute return of Tory-Ukip switchers might do it.
Thanks to stoked-up English fears about the SNP and the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming prime minister, maybe some general sense of staying put will belatedly break out across the country, and seal the deal even more conclusively.
But as delusional noise about the inevitability of Conservative defeat begins to fade, it seems sensible to acknowledge that another Tory-led government remains entirely possible, and the newly “pumped-up” David Cameron might yet be saved.
Thursday night’s three-way leaders’ Question Time said as much; so did the poll this week that put the Tories five points ahead .
But whether they end up in government or opposition, a nagging sense of Tory malaise will remain.
Their largely awful campaign, which has lately tipped into a particularly unedifying phase – finding even more money down the back of the metaphorical sofa, and this week offering a scarcely credible “tax lock” – speaks of a party that is having trouble achieving even a basic level of coherence.
Beyond scaremongering, there is no oomph to their messages; no hint of what kind of country they want to create beyond that teeth-grinding emphasis on their “long-term economic plan” – one of those phrases that always gets signed off by focus groups but withers as soon as it enters the real world.
God knows, Labour has deep-seated problems, but at least it has some unifying sense of purpose. Where is the Tories’?
The fact that the Conservatives now have no use for Scotland, other than as a bogeyman to scare their core vote, highlights a story that at least a few Tories must see as a tragedy.
Equally, there are no signs of any Conservative revival in the big cities of the English north that George Osborne would like to group into his “powerhouse”.
Even Londoners, residents of a place that arguably represents untamed capitalism at its most impressive, apparently have increasingly little use for Tory politics, which they seem to see as their city’s antithesis: provincial in the worst possible way, crabby and closed off.
Just as New Labour framed the centre-left’s problems in terms of its barren prospects in the south-east, you can learn a lot about modern Conservatism in the places where it currently does almost no business at all.
Two weeks ago, as part of the Guardian’s Anywhere but Westminster election video series, I spent three days on Teesside, in the company of doughty Conservatives who cling on to the hope that the shadow of the 1980s might recede and there could be some kind of Tory revival.
Fat chance, as things stand: at a post-war peak in 1959, they won 10 seats in the north-east and 44% of the vote, but now they hold only two, and if the Liberal Democrats manage to cling on to Berwick-upon-Tweed while the Tories lose Stockton South (which looks a good bet), they will be down to one: Hexham, from where the MP, Guy Opperman, makes the case for a more communitarian, interventionist Conservatism – so far to no avail.
In central Middlesbrough – where the Tories took 6.3% of the vote in the 2012 byelection – I watched their candidate, Simon Clarke, stoutly canvass a residential backstreet.
There was no enthusiasm for Labour here, or any sense of national politics saying much to anybody. In fairness, Clarke was given an often sympathetic hearing, but what he had to offer soon ran out.
His insistence that the north-east was in the midst of good economic news sounded hollow and aloof. When he tried to sell the Tories’ new right-to-buy policy, he bumped against working lives so insecure that taking on even subsidised home ownership is unthinkable.
One man who worked on a temporary contract at a local ice-cream factory, and whose values did not seem particularly leftwing, called his lifestyle “pay as you go”: “Pay your rent on time, you don’t get evicted – that’s it.”
Clarke seemed uncomfortable about emphasising the Tories’ punitive messages on so called welfare, though when they ran out of other options, I heard such talk from local candidates and activists elsewhere – and it played better with some people than leftie bleeding-hearts might like to think.
There again, that side of the Tory message is less the basis for any revival than the only residual benefit of still being the nasty party.
Here and all over the country, some of the Tories’ problems come down to a simple(ish) question of tone.
Sooner or later they will surely have to realise that in the 21st century, Conservatism becoming synonymous with people soaked in wealth spells deep trouble; and find a way of restoring the common touch that secured Margaret Thatcher’s dominance and won the 1992 election for John Major.
Put another way, David Davis might be one of the best leaders they never had.
But at the same time, the Tories will have to move beyond the cold free-marketry that the Thatcher-Major era bequeathed them, and find a voice both modern and human.
This would not mean that people like me would stop thinking of Conservatism as always built on class privilege, but that isn’t really the point: it has been titanically successful in Britain, and it could be again.
But the Tories will have to dig a bit deeper than believing they merely have to call on Boris Johnson, and everything will be OK.
Some promising ground has already been staked out by such new Tory projects as the Renewal group and The Good Right; Johnson’s revealing interview in this week’s Spectator, in which he enthuses about the living wage and decries the inequality gap, echoes their basic arguments.
What matters is whether any senior Conservatives are actually going to undertake the dramatic rethink these entail, or just pay unconvincing lip service.
You can just about imagine what a revived Tory politics would look like, all of it coloured by a deep scepticism for the centralised state – and for the EU – and a profound belief in personal responsibility.
Instead of undermining them,Conservatives might lionise housing associations, and put them at the heart of a home-building crusade.
Emphasising the need to reconnect with the north (and, at a push, parts of Scotland) as a matter of urgency, they could decisively re-embrace the industrial activism of Michael Heseltine, and blaze a trail for local and regional banking and its potential benefits to small business.
While continuing to bang on about worklessness, family breakdown, debt, drink-and-drug addiction and all the other supposed individual failings Tories tend to equate with poverty, they would at least realise such stupidities as the bedroom tax have done them no favours, and move away from the cruelty they have embodied.
They would still be Conservatives, but they might be that bit more in step with the country they want to run.
Indeed, they might even take inspiration from the unfinished project of a modernising Tory leader who once talked about the need for his party to reconnect with every corner of Britain.
Whatever happened to him?
The last-minute return of Tory-Ukip switchers might do it.
Thanks to stoked-up English fears about the SNP and the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming prime minister, maybe some general sense of staying put will belatedly break out across the country, and seal the deal even more conclusively.
But as delusional noise about the inevitability of Conservative defeat begins to fade, it seems sensible to acknowledge that another Tory-led government remains entirely possible, and the newly “pumped-up” David Cameron might yet be saved.
Thursday night’s three-way leaders’ Question Time said as much; so did the poll this week that put the Tories five points ahead .
But whether they end up in government or opposition, a nagging sense of Tory malaise will remain.
Their largely awful campaign, which has lately tipped into a particularly unedifying phase – finding even more money down the back of the metaphorical sofa, and this week offering a scarcely credible “tax lock” – speaks of a party that is having trouble achieving even a basic level of coherence.
Beyond scaremongering, there is no oomph to their messages; no hint of what kind of country they want to create beyond that teeth-grinding emphasis on their “long-term economic plan” – one of those phrases that always gets signed off by focus groups but withers as soon as it enters the real world.
God knows, Labour has deep-seated problems, but at least it has some unifying sense of purpose. Where is the Tories’?
The fact that the Conservatives now have no use for Scotland, other than as a bogeyman to scare their core vote, highlights a story that at least a few Tories must see as a tragedy.
Equally, there are no signs of any Conservative revival in the big cities of the English north that George Osborne would like to group into his “powerhouse”.
Even Londoners, residents of a place that arguably represents untamed capitalism at its most impressive, apparently have increasingly little use for Tory politics, which they seem to see as their city’s antithesis: provincial in the worst possible way, crabby and closed off.
Just as New Labour framed the centre-left’s problems in terms of its barren prospects in the south-east, you can learn a lot about modern Conservatism in the places where it currently does almost no business at all.
Two weeks ago, as part of the Guardian’s Anywhere but Westminster election video series, I spent three days on Teesside, in the company of doughty Conservatives who cling on to the hope that the shadow of the 1980s might recede and there could be some kind of Tory revival.
Fat chance, as things stand: at a post-war peak in 1959, they won 10 seats in the north-east and 44% of the vote, but now they hold only two, and if the Liberal Democrats manage to cling on to Berwick-upon-Tweed while the Tories lose Stockton South (which looks a good bet), they will be down to one: Hexham, from where the MP, Guy Opperman, makes the case for a more communitarian, interventionist Conservatism – so far to no avail.
In central Middlesbrough – where the Tories took 6.3% of the vote in the 2012 byelection – I watched their candidate, Simon Clarke, stoutly canvass a residential backstreet.
There was no enthusiasm for Labour here, or any sense of national politics saying much to anybody. In fairness, Clarke was given an often sympathetic hearing, but what he had to offer soon ran out.
His insistence that the north-east was in the midst of good economic news sounded hollow and aloof. When he tried to sell the Tories’ new right-to-buy policy, he bumped against working lives so insecure that taking on even subsidised home ownership is unthinkable.
One man who worked on a temporary contract at a local ice-cream factory, and whose values did not seem particularly leftwing, called his lifestyle “pay as you go”: “Pay your rent on time, you don’t get evicted – that’s it.”
Clarke seemed uncomfortable about emphasising the Tories’ punitive messages on so called welfare, though when they ran out of other options, I heard such talk from local candidates and activists elsewhere – and it played better with some people than leftie bleeding-hearts might like to think.
There again, that side of the Tory message is less the basis for any revival than the only residual benefit of still being the nasty party.
Here and all over the country, some of the Tories’ problems come down to a simple(ish) question of tone.
Sooner or later they will surely have to realise that in the 21st century, Conservatism becoming synonymous with people soaked in wealth spells deep trouble; and find a way of restoring the common touch that secured Margaret Thatcher’s dominance and won the 1992 election for John Major.
Put another way, David Davis might be one of the best leaders they never had.
But at the same time, the Tories will have to move beyond the cold free-marketry that the Thatcher-Major era bequeathed them, and find a voice both modern and human.
This would not mean that people like me would stop thinking of Conservatism as always built on class privilege, but that isn’t really the point: it has been titanically successful in Britain, and it could be again.
But the Tories will have to dig a bit deeper than believing they merely have to call on Boris Johnson, and everything will be OK.
Some promising ground has already been staked out by such new Tory projects as the Renewal group and The Good Right; Johnson’s revealing interview in this week’s Spectator, in which he enthuses about the living wage and decries the inequality gap, echoes their basic arguments.
What matters is whether any senior Conservatives are actually going to undertake the dramatic rethink these entail, or just pay unconvincing lip service.
You can just about imagine what a revived Tory politics would look like, all of it coloured by a deep scepticism for the centralised state – and for the EU – and a profound belief in personal responsibility.
Instead of undermining them,Conservatives might lionise housing associations, and put them at the heart of a home-building crusade.
Emphasising the need to reconnect with the north (and, at a push, parts of Scotland) as a matter of urgency, they could decisively re-embrace the industrial activism of Michael Heseltine, and blaze a trail for local and regional banking and its potential benefits to small business.
While continuing to bang on about worklessness, family breakdown, debt, drink-and-drug addiction and all the other supposed individual failings Tories tend to equate with poverty, they would at least realise such stupidities as the bedroom tax have done them no favours, and move away from the cruelty they have embodied.
They would still be Conservatives, but they might be that bit more in step with the country they want to run.
Indeed, they might even take inspiration from the unfinished project of a modernising Tory leader who once talked about the need for his party to reconnect with every corner of Britain.
Whatever happened to him?
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