Category Archives: Cameron

The blind fury of the Euro-sceptic Tories


Iain Duncan Smith was not one of those ministers we heard serial encomiums about when he was actually in office.  A former backbench rebel against John Major, he was thrust unprepared into the leadership of the Tory party, from which role he was ignominiously ousted by his fellow MPs a couple of years later.  He is now, of course, the best Work and Pensions Secretary we've ever had, a reformer of remarkable quality who has sacrificed his career in order to warn the Tory party of the dangers it faces under its current evil, election winning leader.

Mr. Duncan Smith's past and present are useful fables on the wider problem of the Conservative party as a whole.  He was elected as a leader in what became a two-way contest against Kenneth Clarke.  Clarke was by  far the most experienced of the two, as well as having a popularity in the world outside the Tory party.  He may have been a consummate politician,  but he also had character and an appeal as a "regular" guy who spoke sense in politics.  He was, however, a pro-European and this proved toxic in his various leadership bids, including the one against Mr. Duncan Smith.  The Tories showed that they preferred an unknown, untried serial rebel to allowing a Europhile anywhere near the leadership, and much good did it do them. Within two years IDS had become such a liability as an opposition leader that he was gracelessly ejected by his own parliamentary colleagues.

As leader IDS had proved a poor speaker and a poor tactician.  He failed to fulfill the function of an Opposition Leader when it came to the Iraq war, which he supported (and which Clarke opposed) and found it difficult to identify any strategic vision to help the Tories overcome their trenchant unpopularity.  He was succeeded by the more experienced Michael Howard, who went on to show that an initially poor public profile didn't need to be a handicap for an accomplished and intelligent political operator.  Howard stabilised the Tories and while he didn't win the 2005 election in the UK, he shored up his party's position and won the most votes in the populous but electorally under-represented England.

It was Howard who mentored David Cameron, his successor as leader who went on to bring the Tories back into government in coalition in 2010 and on their own in 2015.  Cameron is thus the most electorally successful Tory leader since Thatcher, and has proved a less divisive figure nationally.  He is also a pragmatist and has most recently, of course, come out as a pro-European, leading the Remain camp in a referendum that had only one political aim, which was to try and appease the Euro-sceptics in his ranks.

To hear the wild stories now circulating, and provoked by the resignation of Mr. Duncan Smith, is to see again the full lunacy of the Tory Euro-sceptic right.  There is talk of backbench rebellions whatever the outcome of the referendum, a desire to see the back of Mr. Cameron, serious allegations against his dictatorial leadership style and even condemnations of just how closely he and his Chancellor work together.  Nearly all of these criticisms lack merit.  Cameron's "dictatorial" leadership style is nowhere near as domineering as the late, sainted Margaret Thatcher, while his closeness to George Osborne has delivered remarkably harmonious government.  This has been in stark contrast to the thirteen year trauma of the Blair-Brown years.

None of this matters to the Euro-sceptics though. As their hysterical interventions in the current referendum campaign indicate, there is no fury equivalent to that of the Tory Euro hater against anyone who suggests there might be another side to the European debate.  Mr. Duncan Smith himself was the author of one of these polemics recently, railing against the fact that the Remainers were, er, putting their case.

The Tory sceptics will never accept a referendum vote to stay in the EU and they will continue to push the self-destruct button in their own party long after the referendum is past.  Much of their campaign at the moment is dedicated to the idea that Remainers are somehow cheating in the debate.  This includes the notion that the Prime Minister himself shouldn't really be campaigning at all and that Downing Street should stay above the fray.  The Outers are worried that they will lose and are setting up the next stage of the campaign.  For there will be a next stage.  As in Scotland, the referendum won't end the debate and it won't silence the sceptics.  If they lose they will seek the first opportunity to oust the most successful Tory leader in decades and neuter as many of his supporters as they can.  Like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in the Labour party, they will have the majority of the Tory grassroots with them and it will be this populist endorsement that powers their attempt to re-take control of the leadership of the Tory party.

Mr. Duncan Smith is an unlikely political martyr, but the sound and fury accompanying his self-imposed departure from government has far less to do with the issue at hand than he might protest.  He may indeed be passionately committed to the social welfare reform he feels has been undermined by Mr. Osborne and the rest of the government.  But his resignation storm is not about that.  It is about the undying hatred of the Euro-sceptics towards a successful leader who refuses to share their views on Europe, and might even take those views to a substantial public endorsement in June.  But that won't matter.  The right have already shown they prefer purity in opposition to electoral success that depends on compromise.  It was what propelled them to choose Mr. Duncan Smith as their leader back in 2001, and it's why they are so vociferously using his resignation now as a wedge against their current leader.  Mr. Duncan Smith proved a useful fool when they adopted him in the leadership contest before and is alas proving so again now.  Such is the madness of the modern Tory party.




The One Nation PM

David Cameron announced that he would be a "One Nation" prime minister, and in both outlook and practice he would appear to be fulfilling the role he has set out for himself.

Although he has indeed appointed a more Thatcherite cabinet than his predecessors, this has largely been through the pragmatic necessity of getting the right people into the right jobs.  The Cameron style of governance in any case favours continuity - a significant and, many would argue, welcome distinction from the almost constantly moving BLair/Brown years - and this obviously saw a number of committed Thatcherites retain Cabinet office (Gove, Grayling, Javid, Hammond to name a few).  They were joined by rising stars such as Priti Patel (attending, rather than a full-on member of cabinet) and Andrea Leadsom, while Thatcherite old-stager John Whittingdale got his place in the sun, not least because he happens to be the best-qualified person to hold his role.  The cabinet selection, in fact, was a triumph of pragmatism over ideology, with the arch-strategist George Osborne increasing his own authority as part of the harmonious duopoly that he and David Cameron seem able to run.

The Queen's Speech, too, carried some right-wing headlining.  The promise on a European referendum, the proposed welfare cuts and the right to buy bill; all these could have come straight out of the Thatcher playbook.  But they were all also manifesto pledges.  The European referendum is Cameron's attempt to lance the boil in his own party and give membership of the EU a genuinely popular mandate.  Putting it straight in to his first Queen's Speech was a matter of necessary management.  The other headlining issues reflected promises made during the campaign.

Look, however, at what wasn't there.  No British Bill of Rights yet, nor a vote to repeal the fox-hunting ban.  And under the wire, look at what else is happening.  Childcare allowances to be doubled, apprenticeships to be increased, and of course Cameron's own well publicised commitment to actually extend NHS provision in a 24/7 direction.  There is definitely an issue of costing of these expensive commitments to be identified, but they form part of a One Nation commitment to social mobility and "caring for the poor" that is certainly redolent of One Nation PMs of old, as Anne McElvoy persuasively notes in her Observer piece.

It's not just in policy commitments that David Cameron appears to be showing his One Nation colours.  His practice too reminds us of the methods of government of the most prominent of his One Nation predecessors.

The originator of the One Nation brand (though he would hardly have used that term) was of course Disraeli.  But Disraeli reached the top office at a point when he was almost too tired to pursue any active measures himself.   He left the radical reforming to his ministers, most notably his Home Secretary Richard Cross who has as much claim as anyone to be the original executor of One Nation Toryism.  Cameron is certainly not a tired man in office, but like Disraeli it is possible that foreign affairs (in his case the necessary negotiations over EU membership) will consume more of his time.  Thus, the practical measures required to put his vision onto the statute books will lie in the hands of his ministers.  That's why Iain Duncan Smith stays at Work and Pensions, and Jeremy Hunt at Health.

Mr. Cameron also understands the art of steady rule.  The Spectator blog suggests that the greatest reforms of the Cameron administration come from his ministers.  True, but it is the PM who must both give the political freedom to pursue this, and the steady leadership to stop it being overly divisive. This is a classic Stanley Baldwin approach, another notable One Nation leader.  Baldwin presided comfortably over a potentially divisive inter-war Britain, ensuring Labour had its chance to govern, making sure that the General Strike didn't become a class war, and giving radical reformers such as Neville Chamberlain their head.

The most potentially divisive issue facing Mr. Cameron is the European Convention on Human Rights. He has apparently decided that Britain will not in fact pull out from this, believing that the production of a British Bill of Rights should satisfy most of the calls for a greater prominence of British rulings in such issues.  The Telegraph reports that this has put him at odds with Michael Gove and Theresa May, but the fact is that this is Cameron the arbiter in action.

David Cameron clearly does not see power as something to hold on to for its own sake, and has a refreshingly detached view of holding office - hence his off the cuff comment to James Lansdale of the BBC about not running for a third term.  He is a leader who sets the agenda, and understands that very often he has to find en effective middle way between the competing ideologies of colleagues and party supporters, as well as position the Tories as an effective whole nation party once again.  The early indications are that he has the temperament and commitment to achieve this.  Any One Nation Conservative should be cheering him on enthusiastically as he re-sets the party for a generation or more.