Who wants to be the heir to Blair?
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The resurgent Conservative Party under David Cameron sensed that Tony Blair’s departure from office was a huge opportunity. With Gordon Brown taking over as Prime Minister when Blair resigns on 27 June, they argued, the Labour government would be pulled further to the left, away from the political center ground that the Conservatives were chasing. Indeed, David Cameron is reported to have said privately that he saw himself as the true “heir to Blair”. But one damaging internal argument later, and Cameron’s strategy has hit trouble. His team could be forgiven for wondering what hit them.
It began with an intelligent speech on education by a senior member of his team, David Willets, and seemingly innocuous remarks about the future of ‘grammar school’ education in the UK – academically selective schools open to all, regardless of family background, of which only around 150 still exist. Because of economic and social change, he argued, grammar schools could no longer promise to transform the opportunities of children from poor backgrounds.
So far, so consistent with Cameron’s efforts to re-brand the Conservatives as a modern, tolerant and inclusive party. Indeed, Willets was echoing a policy stance set out by Cameron himself 18 months ago.
But it hit a very raw nerve. It soon became clear that grammar schools remained, to many Conservative supporters, a symbol of the party’s claim to be the party of aspiration. Cameron’s Europe spokesman resigned in protest at the way the party had “undermined” the grammar schools in his constituency , and the party leadership were forced to back-pedal furiously when another senior member of his team appeared to publicly contradict the leader. Had Cameron backed away from a test of his authority?
The problem for Cameron is that the debate has had two effects. Firstly, it has starkly illustrated that a significant strand of his party is some way from following him willingly to the center-ground. Neither is that strand necessarily confined to the party’s grass roots: a straw poll of Members of Parliament (MPs) released today suggests that a large percentage of Conservative MPs do not share the more liberal attitudes to gay rights, or racial and cultural diversity, that Cameron has embraced while aiming to reposition his party.
Secondly, it has seemingly emboldened those critics on the right of his party who feel that too many of the party’s shibboleths are being torn down by Cameron: his refusal to commit to specific tax cuts, for example, or his emphasis on quality-of-life issues rather than liberalization and free enterprise. A former Downing Street adviser to Margaret Thatcher recently wrote an article asking “Why does David Cameron despise the [Conservatives]?”; as blogger and former Conservative candidate, Iain Dale, recently put it, “[Conservative] party members are nervous. Some think their party is being taken away from them. It doesn’t matter whether they are right or wrong - that’s what some of them think.” The “heir to Blair” tag now seems politically toxic for Cameron.
None of this is to write off Cameron’s chances – he’s a smart politician who has done more to revive the Conservative party’s electoral fortunes than any of his three predecessors. But he has a huge task ahead of him. The events of the last few weeks should serve to illustrate just how big that task is.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
[...] Have Conservative strategists ‘mis-underestimated’ Brown’s appeal to voters? Perhaps - and far from simply challenging them in the political center-ground, his approach may also hit the Conservatives where it hurts most. I noted in an earlier post that while Cameron was attempting to re-brand his party along modern and inclusive lines, vocal critics argued that he was abandoning some of their most deeply held principles. Brown’s approach potentially deepens Cameron’s dilemma by saying what some social conservatives in his party want to hear, but which Cameron himself may be fearful of saying because it conflicts with that modernising agenda. As one conservative commentator put it, Brown is: “reaching out to the conservatives of middle Britain who have been so completely abandoned by the [Conservative Party].” [...]