Parties in opposition are often encouraged to develop lots of policies. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ is the most common question thrown at a Conservative spokesman who goes on the radio to criticise a government decision. The second is: ‘Where are your ideas, then?’
But this is a trap. The last thing a party should do in opposition is to work up detailed policies. Labour fell into this elephant pit in 1992 when the late John Smith, constantly badgered about what he would do if he got into the Treasury, produced a shadow budget.
It was a fateful decision that merely provided the Tories with the ammunition they needed to shoot down Labour’s financial plans and produced the ‘double whammy’ election slogan that had such an impact on the campaign.
It is far better for an opposition party to develop what is now fashionably referred to as a ‘narrative’, a coherent and accessible political philosophy, without necessarily having to develop concrete policies. This is what the Tories did in the late 1970s when they were last trying to develop a political strategy able to challenge the received wisdoms of the age.
At that time, the post-war certainties of big government, state-run industries and union power, had been tested almost to destruction. In their place, the Tories talked of greater individual freedom, less state control, curbs on the unions and private ownership. These were the general themes associated with Margaret Thatcher before she became prime minister, but there was little in the way of detailed policy. The big exception was council house sales, a policy that encapsulated the overall philosophy.
The Conservatives are currently trying to develop a new narrative. This holds that, under Gordon Brown, government has become excessively intrusive, interfering and statist. Labour has run the country from the centre, using targets, performance indicators, regulation and inspection in a way that has undermined local responsibility and accountability.
According to this analysis, the past ten years have been the apogee of the ‘bureaucratic age’ whose days are now running out. In its place is the ‘post-bureaucratic age’ where people, both as citizens and consumers, are no longer prepared to accept simply what is given to them, show little deference to the central state in the provision of public services and are used to shopping around for something better.
The assumption that the centre knows best and has a monopoly of information has been smashed by access to the worldwide web. People search out the cheapest or the best option in a matter of minutes. It is only when it comes to the public provision of their education or health care that choices are not available.
This is an arresting narrative and belies any suggestions that the Tories are bereft of new ideas. At a shadow Cabinet seminar earlier this week, held at the Royal Society of Arts in London, Tory policy-makers held a brainstorming session designed to put some meat on the bones of these new thoughts.
The big danger, however, is that they will send out the wrong message. There will be those working in the public sector who suspect that this post-bureaucratic age must be bad news for them. Many people will also wonder whether greater local delivery of services means more inequality and unfairness. Just look at the controversy this week over uneven provision of care services.
These are all concerns that the Tories will need to address before an election, now unlikely to be held until the spring of 2010.
David Cameron was anxious at the seminar to say the party was not trying to ‘trash the state’ or deliver cheap public services, both charges that Labour will throw at them.
Voters will also want to know what is in it for them. Cameron said reducing the role of the state was ‘an idea whose time has come’; but it was an idea whose time came a long time ago, and yet the Tories in power were serious centralisers.
They introduced the national curriculum and targets in public services because they wanted to drive up standards, just as Labour has. But the Tories are right about the impact of the communications revolution on the role of government. There is an appetite for something more personal and less centralist, which is what Labour is trying to address with its ‘transformational government’ agenda.
Can the Conservatives convert their ideas into something attractive to the electorate? So far, the polls suggest that Brown is proving remarkably resilient to the buffeting he has received from economic calamities and the Peter Hain resignation. The Tory lead has been nothing like the 20-point gap Labour opened up in the mid-1990s.
But they have shown they are prepared to think radically; and their task now is to ensure that if the country decides it is time to take a close look at the alternative, it knows clearly what they stand for.
