People who have had near-death experiences often claim that their new lease of life has made them take things more seriously and stop wasting time. After their brush with political death in May, the Conservatives now exhibit the same traits.
Everyone has spotted David Cameron’s new sense of mission. He seems anxious not to waste his remaining time in government. Ministers describe him as “incredibly restless”. He recently gave them a lecture on making sure important social reforms didn’t get lost in the ether. He said: “For God’s sake, don’t let private offices and civil servants block the changes we want to make. Pick up the phone, talk, meet, get together with your counterpart minister and sort it out.”
Some ministers have been left in no doubt that if they don’t deliver on the PM’s priorities, they’ll lose their jobs: Greg Clark, for instance, will be sacked as communities secretary if he fails to get more houses built and reverse the decline in home ownership over the next few years.
The prime minister visibly smarts when people — even colleagues trying to make helpful points — describe the Tories as the party of the rich. He desperately wants to change this perception before he leaves office.
Another aspect of this impatience is his readiness to let ministers unpick shoddy policies from the last government. Iain Duncan Smith announced this week an overhaul of the work capability assessment, which determines whether those on sickness benefit are fit to work. Though Mr Duncan Smith spent the previous parliament defending the tests, he has become increasingly dissatisfied with their effectiveness.
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He’s not the only one changing tack. Since becoming justice secretary in May, Michael Gove has reversed a number of policies introduced by his predecessor Chris Grayling. Though Gove makes sure he praises Grayling’s work in public, No 10 sources are less complimentary, and encouraged Gove to abandon the controversial ban on books for prisoners, which Grayling had poured considerable effort into defending.
Grayling was demoted after the election to Commons leader because Downing Street felt his department was in a mess, and that the only reason the mess wasn’t widely reported was that he was good at managing the media. Grayling, a non-lawyer, rubbed the legal profession’s nose in the dirt by saying that it was better not to have a lawyer as lord chancellor (the justice secretary’s other role) because lawyers “naturally fight for their own interests”. Gove, who knows a thing or two about antagonising people, has been ordered to calm things down.
The new justice secretary has changed his own mind about the treatment of prisoners after studying the arguments of the American penal reformer Arthur Brooks. He also has Cameron’s full backing to improve the rehabilitation of criminals. Indeed, Cameron is keen to support his reforming ministers more than he felt able to do under the coalition. He has hired some seriously impressive advisers, such as Christian Guy, director of the Centre for Social Justice think-tank. That the prime minister was prepared to appoint someone from the CSJ, which Duncan Smith set up, has cheered the work and pensions secretary because it shows No 10 will share his views on the best way to solve poverty. And Cameron has underlined his support for Duncan Smith by taking a personal interest in the new measure of children’s life chances that replaces the child poverty target.
But though Cameron takes an interest in certain policies, particularly those involving young people and the Big Society, he is also able to trust his ministers without micromanaging them. One minister says: “The great thing about David is that he trusts you to understand the fine detail and lets you get on with it.”
Meddling is rarely a sign of strength in a prime minister — Gordon Brown and Anthony Eden were notorious for it. But Cameron needs to be careful that he doesn’t trust ministers so much that they end up developing policies that later turn out to be a mess. Indeed, giving certain ministers their head in the last parliament led directly to some of the problems now being unpicked, to say nothing of disasters such as Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms, which No 10 failed to spot in time. That “chillaxed” approach is also why confrontations between reforming ministers and the vested interests they were taking on, such as Gove and the teachers, got badly out of control and threatened the Conservatives’ electoral prospects.
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While impatience for change is admirable when government can so easily chug along without achieving very much, Cameron must beware of pushing his ministers too far, too fast. One reforming secretary of state worries that Cameron’s impatience to see quick results could become a liability. “Giving up on stuff because there is too little fruit may not be best if the course is the right one. He has four years to make a legacy but some of what we are trying to do will take a generation.”
That means Cameron must avoid being too frenzied as he recovers from his party’s near-death experience. After all, he doesn’t want the Tories to have another fright at the ballot box in five years’ time.