THOSE whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make timid. The Tories have spent six frustrating and debilitating years in opposition. At times some commentators even wondered whether the party had a future. Now, at last, the shadows could be lifting. The Tories could have a chance of regaining power at the next election — but for one problem: they refuse to position themselves to take it. For the first time in 150 years, the Tory party has become power-shy.
When John Ramsden wrote his excellent history of the Tories, he chose a title that was also a summary of the book’s contents: An Appetite for Power. The party has often displayed ideological flexibility and has frequently been willing to change its opinions. But in one respect it has been immovable: Tories think of themselves as the natural party of government.
So they were, for much of the 20th century; so they could be again. Tony Blair may have succeeded where all his predecessors failed and won a second Labour full term, but it is proving a worthless victory. After six years his Government is as exhausted as Attlee’s was at the same stage and even more dishonest than Wilson’s. Blair had lost all intellectual and moral momentum even before the David Kelly affair. He even seems to have forgotten how to spin. But bad news for the Government is not necessarily good news for the Tories. They will not win merely because Blair deserves to lose. They will have to earn victory, and that means addressing three problems: leadership, trust and language. Yet this could be easier than it sounds. These difficulties have a common source, and therefore a common solution. The Tory party cannot move forward under an inadequate leader.
Few Tories voted for Iain Duncan Smith to become the leader of their party because they thought they had discovered a political genius. The hope was that he would prove to be a sound performer who could grow steadily in stature while exposing Blair’s meretriciousness. But there has been no growth, only shrinkage. Though the Prime Minister may be damaged, he is still a big figure; IDS is mired in littleness. That is why the Tories are not progressing in the polls. Although a leader of the Opposition can be less popular than the PM, he must appear prime ministerial. IDS does not, as Labour’s strategists are well aware. They are already factoring this into their plans for the next election. They intend to have a long campaign and a ruthless onslaught on IDS’s inadequacies, in the knowledge that he is bound to blunder and crack.
In Moscow recently, Peter Mandelson asked his audience what IDS stood for and then answered his own question: “In Deep S**t.” This assessment is widely shared in the upper reaches of the Tory party. Duncan Smith does not even command the respect of those who know him best: Tory MPs, including many members of the Shadow Cabinet, and senior Central Office staff. In private they are full of despairing comments about their leader. They will complain that he does not listen but merely rambles on, so that meetings are interminably protracted by his failure to grasp the point. A former minister recently ran through the list of the 165 Tory MPs; he concluded that 68 of them would do a better job than IDS.
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Yet defeat under IDS may not be the worst fate that could befall the Tory party. Suppose he were to win? The party’s reputation is only just recovering from the traumas of the Major years. It could not afford the lasting, even terminal, forfeiture of public confidence that would ensue from another failed government. Yet how could a government led by IDS be anything else? He does not have it in him to be prime minister. As one former senior Cabinet minister put it: “If he did win, we would have to demand a recount.”
IDS would be long gone if Tory MPs could sack their leader as easily as they got rid of Margaret Thatcher. As it is, however, a leadership contest would involve a poll of the party’s membership. That could take three months.
MPs with no desire to become leader shrink from informing their constituents that they have voted to put the party through the trouble and expense of a leadership campaign, while those who are interested in replacing IDS want to avoid the opprobrium of being the assassin. That is especially true of David Davis’s supporters. They claim that when Davis was party chairman he prevented IDS from making at least half a dozen crass mistakes. Now that he is no longer in a position to help, the errors are bound to recur, and the leader will have to go, with no blame falling on the Davisites.
Yet though Davis’s supporters will almost certainly be right about the errors, their hopes of the succession may still miscarry, for there is a better qualified candidate: Oliver Letwin.
Letwin, who taught philosophy at Cambridge, has a formidable brain and impregnable intellectual self-confidence. But there is no trace of pomposity or desiccation. A charming and humorous fellow, he has broad human sympathies and finds it easy to laugh at himself.
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That said, Letwin does have one grave political fault: he is alarmingly honest, and seems almost incapable of low cunning. Were he to become Tory leader, he would undoubtedly dig himself into a number of holes because of excessive honesty. Yet in present circumstances, that might not be a serious weakness; it could even be an asset. After all, Letwin is easily clever enough to dig himself out of the holes. He would also be taking over at a time when the public was fed up of being spun at, talked down to and lied to. As the voters find Blair’s tele-evangelist insincerity increasingly grating, they could easily warm to Letwin’s decency, truthfulness and generosity of spirit.
He could also help to recast the language of politics. During the last election I visited David Cameron, one of the ablest of the new Tory members. His wife Samantha, in feisty form, announced that she was fed up with William Hague’s fascist rhetoric. “Such as?” I inquired. “All that stuff about One Nation.” The origins of One Nation as a left-wing Tory battle cry were explained to Sam. She was unrepentant. “I may not have read history at Oxbridge, but I know as much about politics as most people and it means nothing to me.”
Sam was speaking for millions of disillusioned voters. The first political leader and party to address her concerns and replace the stale, clichéd vocabulary of current politics with new-minted language will receive a large electoral bonus. But Iain Duncan Smith cannot even master the current language, let alone replace it.
Letwin has the freshness, intelligence and honesty to inspire a political renewal and to re-forge the bonds between the Tory party and the British people. Most Tories now believe that their country needs them; that the Blair Government has been in office for far too long and ought to be swept out before it can do more damage. They also know that they cannot — and should not — win under the current leader.
They have motive, means and opportunity to replace him. All that is lacking is courage.