Yesterday, I argued that the Conservatives, through their utter folly and cowardice, have probably condemned themselves to irrelevance for the next few Parliaments. Since then, I have thought of a counterargument. It does not convince me, but is worth exploring.
Anyone who has studied history—or simply been alive for a while —will know how, viewed from the future, present events can often wholly shift their meaning. Nowadays, for example, it is agreed that the recovery of the Thatcher Government from its first awful years began in the spring of 1981. At the time, I recall, we were all agreed—if only in private—that things could only get worse. We could see the rising unemployment, the continuing inflation, the divisions within the Government, and the prospect of more extensive rioting somewhere in the country as soon as the weather improved sufficiently. We could not see the gentle recovery in the economy that had already started, or the Falklands War a year in the future. We certainly could not expect the next few years of triumph for Margaret Thatcher in which, like the goddess Kali, she danced one after the other on the fallen bodies of her enemies.
Equally, it may be that the recovery of the Conservative Party will one day be dated to a time before the present, and it will be astonishing to people then that we now were unable to see the signs of recovery. To explain what I mean, let us recall the oddly similar circumstances of the Conservative Party on the eve of the Great War.
In June 1914, the Conservatives had passed years in opposition. Back in 1905, they had believed the Liberals were too divided and incompetent ever to form a government. When a government was formed, and when it inflicted an annihilating defeat on the Conservatives in the 1906 election, they had turned to the belief that it would soon tear itself apart or make such a mess of the country that they would soon be back. In fact, the Liberal Government had been remarkably lucky and successful. It had given the various groups of its supporters enough to keep them reasonably happy, and had enjoyed an almost continuous run of economic good news. It had detached a large mass of normally Conservative votes, and seemed likely to keep hold of them in the election that was to be held in 1915.
It was the Conservatives themselves who had fallen apart and failed to make their case. They were divided over trade policy, and their compromise of tariffs for revenue and retaliation had failed to satisfy either committed free traders or those committed to a closed imperial trading system. Their use of the Lords' blocking veto had brought them into disrepute, and given the radicals the excuse for reform they had been waiting for since the 1830s. Their defence of Ulster in the debate over Ireland had brought them into still greater disrepute, any many thought it reasonable to charge them with fomenting civil war for their own partisan advantage. They had entirely failed to build on the personal and financial scandals that surrounded the Government, and there had been no big reaction in their favour over the wave of industrial unrest during the previous few years. Their opposition to land reform was largely dismissed as a mere defence of the landed interest. They had driven out one leader for his failure to oppose. Now, they were beginning to talk of replacing the current leader—even though he had seemed an excellent choice when he took over. They were divided. They were weak. They seemed increasingly irrelevant in the changing circumstances of early 20th century Britain.
The Great War changed everything. Within months, it melted the glue that had previously held together the diverse strands of Edwardian Liberalism. There was no agreement over the aims of the War. Nor was there any over how to fight it. The Conservatives, however, were fully agreed. They had no qualms about conscription or about organising the economy for war. The eventual scale of the horror did bring a partial defection of the landed interest. But, by then, the Liberal Party had collapsed as a governing force. The Conservatives entered the coalition in 1915 as a united, coherent body. They emerged from it in 1922 as the natural party of government —and remained that until 1940. In this time, Andrew Bonar Law went from being the weakest and apparently most ineffectual Conservative leader since Goderich to being the most quietly powerful man in Westminster, who would become Prime Minister as a matter of course just as soon as he chose to drop the fig leaf of coalition and therefore the increasingly sordid individuals whom it sustained.
Is this about to happen again? In giving his unconditional support to the American Alliance and whatever force may be needed to remove Saddam Hussein, Mr Duncan Smith leads a Party that is, by and large, united—even if there are arguments over detail. Tony Blair, on the other hand, leads a coalition of forces that may disintegrate as surely in a serious war as the Liberals did in 1916. His Government and party are filled with old leftists. They may have given up on socialism. They may have decided first to pretend love for the European Union after all those years of denunciation in the 1980s - and now they may have decided very quietly to change their minds again. But will they also drop the anti-Americanism and pacifism that brought most of them into politics in the first place? Some will, no doubt. But Robin Cook and Clare Short have both rediscovered a few ghostly principles that may take on substance as the revolt in the Parliamentary Labour Party and in the trades unions continues. Normally pro-Labour newspapers and the Government-controlled BBC are also at least unenthusiastic for war.
If the war, when it comes, can be kept short and limited, there will be no crisis. But some of my friends have military sources who are predicting between 10,000 and 30,000 allied casualties in a full invasion of Iraq. Even if these turn out to be nonsense, the American Government is apparently projecting supplemental attacks on Libya, Syria and Iran. Otherwise, there is the possibility of a long-term occupation of Iraq and its defence against current allies in the region—Turkey, for example, has ambitions in the north of the country. And all this excludes the possibility of some nasty terrorist retaliations that could fall as easily on London as on New York. Bearing in mind its collective failures and betrayals since 1997, Labour is led by undoubted masters of what is politely called perception management. But there may be limits to what even this mastery can achieve.
Events are never exactly repeated. Even so, there is a very close parallel between then and now—and this could grow closer. So is our gloom about the Conservative Party at least premature?
I suppose the answer is that events are never exactly repeated. Though close, the events of 1914 and today do not exactly correspond. Most obviously, the earlier Conservatives had largely closed the electoral gulf between them and the Liberals by 1910, and were chiefly kept out of office by the combination of Labour and the Irish with the Liberals. Indeed, in England, the Conservatives were the majority party. The present Conservatives are nowhere close to this. They hardly exist in electoral terms outside of England, and are a decided minority even here. Again, the earlier Conservatives had better speakers and writers on their side. Compare the sustained and closely-argued oratory of Bonar Law and his colleagues with the deliberately vague bullet point style of the present leadership - excepting, I grant, Oliver Letwin. And in the landed interest, the earlier Conservatives had more dependable and less sordid means of funding than the rather odd magnates whose cheques nowadays pay the bills at Central Office—cheques, I have no doubt, that come with all manner of hidden strings attached.
Then we have the differences of parliamentary and ancillary personnel. The earlier parliamentary party was comprised of junior aristocrats, the lower gentry, together with successful professionals and businessmen. There were career politicians among them, but these were an exotic, if useful minority. Most Conservative Members of Parliament were financially independent, and were used to thinking for themselves—even if not all of them were very coherent in their thoughts. Compare these with the machine politicians of today. Most have received nothing approaching a good education. Most have never worked—I do not count the professional and corporate sinecures handed out to the more promising young candidates to occupy them between leaving university and finding a safe seat. Hardly one of them is financially independent. The cumulative effect of this is a parliamentary party that can be led like sheep—and that therefore attracts sheep to its ranks. The average Conservative politician today may have worked hard to acquire the surface mannerisms of the old ruling class, but has none of the solidity and other deeper qualities that made it a force to be respected or even feared by its bitterest opponents. Certainly, with one or two exceptions, I have never met one whom I have not utterly despised.
As for Central Office, the contrast is simply funny. Party organisations have always carried some ballast. But just look at the modern Conservative organisation. It is dominated by people with names like Tarquin and Crispian—people appointed purely because of their connections, and without the smallest regard for ability. Little wonder the Ministers have had such an easy time from the official opposition. I suspect that even if Downing Street were raided by the Police, and if Tony Blair's freezer were found stuffed with human flesh, the Conservatives would either not use the fact, or make their complaints look petty-minded.
Perhaps a war with Iraq will turn nasty and less winnable than is presently assumed. But I do not see the same smooth use of the stiletto that brought the Conservatives back to the centre of politics after 1915.
Even without an expensive war with Iraq, the Conservatives could probably knock Labour down within a few months. If they were to become as hard faced and "uncaring" as their enemies accuse them of being in the 1980s, they would, I am sure, do better than they have for many years past. There really are votes in promising vast tax and spending cuts and wholesale deregulation. There are also votes in promising tough action on Europe and other questions of great national importance—so long as the policies are carefully explained. The only changes required from the caricature vision of Thatcherism are a better regard for things like trial by jury and individual freedom. Let this be done, and let the resulting media storm be resolutely faced, and the Conservatives would recover most if not all of their old standing.
I am still deep in argument with Brian Micklethwait over the future of the Conservative Party. We both agree that it is probably doomed for the foreseeable future. Our disagreement is over its available means of recovery. Brian likes to compare the Conservatives now with Labour in the 1980s, insisting that the differences are more important than the similarities. Labour in the 1980s had a straight choice. It could continue as a party of socialism, and there were no votes in that. Or it could accept the Thatcher consensus on economic policy. There was no third way. The Conservatives now, he believes, have a much wider range of options. They could accept my advice, and that might work. Or they could become socially and economically authoritarian, and that might work. Or they could accept the whole New Labour agenda, and compete over matters of detail and competence of delivery—and that also might work. Faced with all these choices, and with many others beside, they have decided to compromise and spare themselves the trouble of incurring the attendant costs of action, by doing nothing at all.
My reply is that there is a wider movement beyond the central organisations of the Conservative Party, within which there is now substantial agreement over means, if not over ends. All the Party needs is a leadership with the imagination and courage to put itself at the head of this movement.
But there is the problem. Where is the imagination and where the courage in any likely Conservative leadership? For all we disagree over what might be, Brian and I are for the moment agreed on what is. The Conservatives are drifting gently towards oblivion; and there is no reason to suppose that they will in the short term be turned back from it by any but the most remotely conceivable turn of events.
Yes, for the moment, we are alone. For all they may continue to disappoint us, the Conservatives will not surprise us. We really had better learn to live with Labour, and hope that our own various representations to it will keep us from the personal and collective enslavement that it has in mind for us.
If I get to say all this on Sunday morning, I shall be surprised. But at least I have written it.