Playing to your strengths

19 Oct 07
PHILIP JOHNSTON | The political landscape in Britain has had more upheavals recently than an earthquake zone.

The political landscape in Britain has had more upheavals recently than an earthquake zone.

In the space of four months, two party leaders have departed, an election has been postponed and the polls have swung around like a weathervane in a gale.

What a few weeks it has been. There they were, smashed to pieces, on their backs and waiting to be pulverised by the great clunking fist. Then, suddenly and out of nowhere, they were back in it, serious contenders once again.

I refer, of course, not to the Conservative Party, nor even to the temporarily leaderless Liberal Democrats, but to the England rugby team. And, without wishing to overdo the analogy, there are some parallels here with the political events of recent times.

England are in the World Cup final principally because they reverted to the game they know best, based around a powerful pack that can squeeze the life out of the opposition.

The Tories are ahead in the polls again, not simply because Gordon Brown made a botch of the on/off election speculation but because they have reverted to the policies they know best, like tax cuts and small government.

In both cases, the prospect of obliteration — sporting and political — forced them back to the territory on which they feel most comfortable. In both cases, this has reaped dividends because it works.

Despite once ruling the roost themselves, both the England team and the Tories were in thrall to the fancy footwork and seeming invincibility of the opposition.

England were told they were boring and they tried to play a running game that was alien to them; the Tories were told they were old and nasty so they tried to look modern and cool.

But just as there was nothing much wrong with the old England game, even if it wasn’t very pretty, there was nothing much wrong with Tory policies either — otherwise why have most of their ideas over the past quarter of a century been adopted by their opponents?

It was the image that was at fault. David Cameron has been right to make the party look different; but he came perilously close to jettisoning popular policies, too, until the apparent imminence of an election forced him to make some pretty swift and clear-cut choices.

It is telling that the one policy that Labour saw as the key factor in the improved Tory fortunes in recent polls was shadow chancellor George Osborne’s promise to increase the inheritance tax threshold to £1m. It shows that tax (and spend) remains a potent issue: the key is to persuade wavering voters that taxes can be cut without affecting services.

This is the task the Tories now have ample time to fulfil, with the election put off until 2009 at the earliest.

It has also given Brown the space both to cherry-pick the policies he wants from the Tory table and to set out his ‘vision for Britain’ as well, although he has not been making a good a job of that so far.

He has had a conference, a mini-Budget and a Comprehensive Spending Review, any one of which should have carried some pointers to the direction to be taken by Labour under Brown, but didn’t. Furthermore, he has already set out the main elements of the Queen’s Speech next month, so that won’t be much of a surprise either.

The world of politics abhors a vacuum, and without new ideas and significantly distinctive policies to distract the media and occupy the legislators, it will be filled with mischief.

Brown risks spending the next few months on the defensive — justifying his reasons not to offer a referendum on the European Union treaty, explaining why the economy is slowing down, fending off criticism of tax rises already in the pipeline and getting it in the neck for yet more council tax increases next spring.

The most dramatic consequence of Brown postponing the election is that the Liberal Democrats have used the opportunity to get rid of Ming Campbell.

After taking an initial hit for dumping a second leader in as many years, the prospect of a LibDem recovery, probably under Nick Clegg, will worry the Conservatives far more than Labour.

Whatever the volatility of the polls, the fact remains that the vagaries of the electoral system mean that it is impossible for the Conservatives to regain power with less than 42% of the vote, whereas Labour can — and did in 2005 — win a comfortable majority with 36% or thereabouts. The Tories need to wipe out the LibDems in the South and Southwest to accumulate the seats they need.

They will now find that more difficult than it looked just last week but, then again, nowhere near as hard as it appeared two months ago.

Pretty much the same can be said about England’s chances of retaining the rugby World Cup.

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top