London: At 5.45 am Lynton Crosby, Australian political strategist, holds the first meeting of the day at Conservative headquarters. The aim is to work out the threats need to be neutralised that day. The early start isn’t macho posturing but a reflection of the modern media environment. In this environment, the trick is to work out what actually matters. But after the past week one thing is clear: the Tories have survived a wobble that could have turned into a death spiral.
Labour’s pledge on April 8 to abolish non-dom tax status was typical of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband’s “people versus the powerful” populism. When he did this over energy prices, the Tories floundered for weeks before they worked out how to respond. On April 8, many senior Tories feared that the move on non-doms would dominate the political agenda in the same way that Miliband’s energy price freeze had.
Tellingly, late last week, Conservative Cabinet ministers were talking about those running the campaign in the third person. Party discipline was beginning to fray. Liam Fox, the former defence secretary, delivered coded but public criticisms of the campaign. Even those close to No. 10 admitted they were baffled as to why the “big society” had suddenly returned with a pledge to provide employees of large companies with three days of paid volunteering leave. It was as if the Conservative post-mortem had begun.
But somehow the Conservatives righted themselves. A panoply of policy pledges — £8 billion more for the National Health Service, family homes taken out of inheritance tax, a doubling of the free childcare allowance and the extension of the right to buy to housing association tenants — restored the party’s faith. The Conservatives are now offering competence with a purpose.
This Conservative manifesto marries the insights of modernisation, the importance of the NHS and appealing to working women with the party’s traditional strength: the tax-cutting instinct. The most significant policy in it is the extension of the right to buy to housing association tenants. The importance of the original right to buy was that it created a new cadre of homeowners and shifted the centre of political gravity to the right. It was not a measure designed to appeal to the Conservative base, but rather one designed to expand that base. A property-owning democracy is one that is more opposed to wealth taxes and other such ideas. The most worrying trend for the centre-right in Britain today is the decline in home ownership. But if this trend is to be reversed it will require a lot more houses to be built.
Perhaps the greatest boon for the Tories in the last few days, though, was Labour’s strategic blunder. It decided to launch its manifesto with a claim to be the fiscally responsible party. It was a brave decision to try to seize Tory turf, but a mistaken one. Labour can’t make any claims to fiscal responsibility until it concedes that last time it was in government it spent too much. Eds Miliband and Balls are not prepared to say that.
In a sign that both sides expect this election to go to the wire, they have both kept policies back from their manifestos. The Conservatives will concentrate on two main themes in these final weeks. The first is tax. The party leadership believes that voters haven’t yet realised how sizeable the income-tax cuts the party is offering are. The second is the prospect of the Scottish National Party propping up a Labour government. The Conservatives believe that the fear of what this would mean will drive English voters to them in the final furlong.
But the Conservatives also need to find a way to show that David Cameron actually wants to do the top job. At the moment, this is not coming across. According to one of those who knows him best, part of the problem is actually how nervous he is about losing.
The Conservatives, not least Cameron himself, are fond of playing up the parallels between this campaign and that of 1992. One wonders if Cameron might be well served by taking another leaf out of that campaign’s strategy and getting on his soapbox, engaging with the voters as John Major did and proving that he is not too posh to push. When I put this idea to one political professional, he dismissed it as unworkable in today’s world of rolling news. But the Conservatives do need, somehow, to find a way to demonstrate to the public that Cameron retains his hunger for the job.
By arrangement with the Spectator
