‘Can a party conference change politics: the Conservative view’, from Total Politics, 11 September 2013

Posted on September 14, 2013 by tpbale

Although they can seem awfully important at the time, especially to those who’ve been sweating over their speeches all summer, most party conferences, like the opinion poll bounces they sometimes occasion, fade from the memory very quickly. There are, however, some honourable exceptions – years that have provided high drama and even made a real difference.

In a top-down organisation like the Tory Party, there’s little expectation that its annual gathering can make much difference to policy. After all, it was one of its own leaders, Arthur Balfour, who famously remarked that he’d sooner listen to the opinions of his valet than those of the Conservative Party Conference. Yet there has been the odd exception that proves the rule.

Perhaps the most famous was in 1950, when calls from the floor led the leadership to promise to build 300,000 houses a year, a commitment Churchill thought unwise until Macmillan managed to deliver on it in the early 1950s, thereby cementing a growing reputation that eventually helped him win the top spot. And, although they’ve been few and far between, votes taken at party conference may once or twice have pushed the leadership into taking a tougher line than it might otherwise have adopted, the one held after a heated debate on immigration in 1969 being an obvious case in point. That said, various home and shadow home secretaries have been subjected sometimes to vituperative criticism from the floor over their refusal to restore hanging and flogging, but all of them resisted those siren calls.

In the end, and perhaps fittingly, the biggest impact of conference for the Tories has been on leadership rather than policy. There have been two years – 1963 and 2005 – which turned into beauty contests between rival candidates and where reputations were won (Alec Home and David Cameron) and lost (Rab Butler, Lord Hailsham and David Davis). Meanwhile, it was Iain Duncan Smith’s woeful performance at the 2003 conference – “the quiet man is here to stay and he’s turning up the volume!” – which, notwithstanding 17 stage-managed standing ovations, finally helped to trigger his removal.

Turns out, then, that all that time spent slaving away over your speech during the summer may not be wasted after all. “You turn if you want to” told voters that Margaret Thatcher was going to stay the course. “Let me take you on a journey to a foreign land” made it clear that William Hague had finally abandoned all thoughts of a fresh start. And in 2007, Cameron’s “So, Mr Brown, what’s it going to be? You go ahead and call that election…We will fight, Britain will win” went a long way – along, of course, with George Osborne’s announcement on inheritance tax at the same conference – to persuade Brown to bottle it, thereby blowing Labour’s best and only chance to win after Blair’s departure. The rest, as they say, is history…

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Don’t believe the Hysteria: Britain’s role hasn’t diminished overnight, Observer, 1 September 2013

Posted on September 3, 2013 by tpbale

According to some, Britain woke up a different country on Friday morning. But how much has really changed? Of course what happened matters, both in terms of democracy at home and the part we play in the world. But the government’s defeat is part of a much longer, occasionally painful process of adjustment whose outcomes are by no means as clear cut as some suggest.

For years, despite its claim to be “the mother of parliaments”, Britain stood out as having one of the weakest legislatures in western Europe, the paucity of its powers vis-à-vis the executive rivalled only by France’s notoriously impotent assemblée nationale. The desire to do something about that situation, however, has been growing for decades, and led, at last, to the Wright committee reforms. That some of its proposals to give MPs greater control over how Westminster works were eventually allowed to emerge was primarily down to Gordon Brown’s deep-seated desperation to distinguish himself from Tony Blair.

But it also had more than a little to do with the fact that David Cameronwas equally concerned to come over as a breath of fresh air to voters grown tired of government that didn’t seem to listen – a desire that also led him to run (or at least flirt) with Brown’s idea of slimming down some of the crown’s prerogative powers, up to and including the untrammelled freedom to commit the country to military action.

Blair himself had implicitly conceded the principle back in 2003, in agreeing to put the invasion of Iraq to a vote. And Cameron’s decision to repeat the exercise on Libya effectively turned it into a convention, in so doing adding in time-honoured tradition to myriad unwritten rules that make up this country’s famously uncodified constitution.

Still, it is one thing for a parliament to believe it has the power to do something, quite another to discover –as it did on Thursday night – that it can actually do it. That much at least has changed, and changed irrevocably.

Whether, however, refusing permission for military action will become parliament’s default setting is surely more of a moot point. Thursday’s vote, after all, was on a specific motion about a specific country at a specific time – not a rejection of the principle of a British government deploying military force, or even of deploying it in concert with the US. It may well be that politicians will now have to work much harder than an initially complacent Cameron did to convince people that military action makes practical as well as moral sense. If so, however, Thursday’s vote is far more a symptom than a cause of the new normal.

As for the idea that the government’s defeat somehow spells the end of the UK’s special relationship with America, where does one start? For one thing, that relationship has survived possibly even greater strains before. Was Obama more outraged by Cameron’s withdrawal than Lyndon Johnson was by Harold Wilson’s refusal to help out in Vietnam or Richard Nixon was by Ted Heath’s reluctance to side unequivocally with Israel during the Yom Kippur war? This notion looks especially wrongheaded after Obama’s decision to consult Congress before any action.

For another, as the Edward Snowden affair has recently reminded us, the special relationship is based on day-in-day-out intelligence co-operation that counts far more than whether the UK fires off a few missiles to lend legitimacy to what was always going to be an essentially American operation.Indeed, such is the scale and scope of co-operation between London and Washington that it is difficult to believe, if an attack does go ahead, that British assets will have played no part whatsoever in its planning, if not its delivery. In any case, given the apparent willingness of other EU member states to play a more visible role than the UK in any such operation, and given the fervent Euroscepticism of some of the Tory rebels, it can hardly be that Thursday’s vote represents a long-overdue recognition that this country’s future lies more with its continental partners than its transatlantic cousins.

Our post-imperial illusions on that score, as well as on the issue of how much we matter – and deserve to matter – globally, remain pretty much intact: the prime minister may have had to stay his hand on Syria but he’s a long way from facing serious pressure to admit the game’s up by throwing away Trident or our seat on the UN security council.

Even the impact on domestic party politics is likely to be rather more limited than those piling into – and piling out of – Cameron seem to think. No one, not even those who argue that there may be some mileage in the idea that the PM can at least claim to have listened to parliament and public opinion, is arguing that Thursday night’s defeat was anything other than a humiliation. Yet the Tories are likely to stick with their tarnished leader, even if only faute de mieux.

Nick Clegg’s pro-war stance may well have ended any lingering hope that all those Lib Dem voters who switched to Labour might one day drift back. But even those Labour people who believe that Ed Miliband has basically played a blinder over Syria probably don’t hold out too much hope that what has happened will do any more than, say, his deft handling of Hackgate a couple of years back, to boost his personal or his party’s popularity among floating voters in marginal seats.

Thursday night’s vote, then, has not so much changed things utterly as dramatised developments and dilemmas that have been going on for years and will continue to play out for decades to come. Britain, however infuriatingly, is still the same country.

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Gove or May as Tory leader? No, Boris is still the grassroots’ favourite – and by a country mile, Telegraph, 2 August 2013

Posted on August 4, 2013 by tpbale

Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. So welcome to the silly season – sun, sea, sand, and speculation.

But when three of the best-informed political commentators around all write columns on the same theme in the same week talking about pretty much the same thing, we should probably sit up and pay attention.

Matthew d’Ancona kicked things off with a column on Boris Johnson’s still burning ambition to be Prime Minister, should David Cameron have to step down soon after the next general election.

The Spectator’s James Forsyth, who like d’Ancona believes that “a Boris-free contest” would only mean that “the eventual winner would be dogged by doubts as to his or her legitimacy and speculation about what the blond one would do next”, goes on to suggest that, if it really is true that Michael Gove isn’t interested in taking over from Cameron, then George Osborne (whose reputation is recovering along with the economy) “might be better placed in this leadership marathon than the pundits realise”. That said, he notes, “it is not the fellow Bullingdon boy who worries Boris, but the vicar’s daughter, Theresa [May].”

The Home Secretary’s chances are also talked of, if not up, by Paul Goodman, who as well as joining the debate about how Boris might or might not manage a leadership bid in or after 2015, also outlinesConservativeHome’s polling on who the Tory grassroots would like to see come after Cameron. Osborne didn’t really feature, but the gap between the front-runner, Johnson (on 21 per cent), and Gove, the supposed non-runner (on 20 per cent) was tiny, with both reasonably closely followed by May (on 16.5 per cent).

Our academic survey of the Tory rank-and-file, carried out for us byYouGov and funded by the McDougall Trust, paints a very different – and much clearer – picture. While it shows that six out of ten grassroots members believe David Cameron should resign should he fail to hang on to No 10 in 2015, it also suggests that there is in fact a much bigger gap between the various runners and riders.

If the 852 members we questioned are anything to go by, Boris Johnson is way out in front, with 38 per cent of first preferences – double the number given to Theresa May (18 per cent), who isn’t that far ahead of Michael Gove (on 13 per cent). The suggestion that George Osborne may be in with a chance is by no means far-fetched – but he will have to make up a lot of ground: just 3 per cent of party members gave him their first preference. That was less than the 8 per cent gained by Philip Hammond, who has also been reported as being “on manoeuvres”, although it was still better than the mere 1 per cent afforded to the apparently ambitious Adam Afriyie.

Because we asked our members a wide range of questions about their backgrounds and their views, we can also say something about where the various runners and riders draw their support from. Demographically there are few surprises. Boris not only goes down particularly well in London, but does better than the rest among younger members – although, given the fact that most of the membership is getting on a bit, this is probably no great cause for celebration.

For her part, Theresa May – perhaps predictably – picks up disproportionate support among the party’s female members, although, again, this shouldn’t set the Champagne corks popping too soon, since (according to our figures anyway) women make up only a third of the membership. By the same token, the fact that May draws rather more support from the one in five of the party’s membership that isn’t thoroughly middle-class probably won’t do her much good either. That said, she might take some comfort from the fact that, while her support among Telegraph readers is far less convincing than that accorded to their stand-out favourites, Johnson and Gove, she beats them hands down when it comes to readers of the Mail – the very paper with whom she chose this week to share the story of her “shocking illness”. Even better, all this hints at the possibility that a May-led Tory party may attract more support among women and the electorally-precious C2s.

Michael Gove, on the other hand, appears on our figures to be very much a man for the solidly middle-class, whereas George Osborne actually does much better than most (including May) among the party’s tiny band of working-class voters. Gove’s supporters are also more Right-wing than supporters of the other candidates, while Osborne’s – for all that he is the “Austerity Chancellor” – are more centrist with regard to both economic and social/cultural issues.

The fact that the Chancellor’s small band of supporters is drawn disproportionately from the more centrist and less well-heeled members of the Party could well be a problem for him since neither group is well represented in the rank-and-file. But his biggest challenge is that he does best among those members who see themselves as ideologically closest to David Cameron. If the PM chooses or is obliged to step down at the next election, the grassroots will almost certainly want someone as unlike him as possible. In which case – ideologically speaking (at least in terms of perception if not reality) – step forward Michael Gove, current darling (according to our figures anyway) of the rank-and-file Right.

But the man to beat – at least as far as the grassroots are concerned – remains, by a long chalk, Boris Johnson. Whether they ever get the chance to vote for him, of course, is another matter.

 

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Five things you may think you know about the Conservative grassroots but actually probably don’t, Ballots and Bullets, 24 July 2013

Posted on July 24, 2013 by tpbale

The problem with doing any kind of social science is that the data you collect end up confirming what people already assume is the case. This is not bad in itself. There’s nothing inherently wrong in providing empirical evidence for something that, up to that point anyway, was merely unproven common wisdom. But it doesn’t make for great telly – or radio or press or even blogs. No-one, after all, wants to fail the proverbial No Shit Sherlock test.

Our recent survey of 852 rank-and-file members of the Conservative Party, conducted for us by YouGov and funded by the McDougall Trustturns out, predictably enough, to tell us some stuff we probably could have guessed at and other stuff that is slightly more surprising. Sometimes things that fall into the former category are actually pretty important. Sometimes things that fall into the latter are kind of fun, but hardly earth-shattering. Sometimes it’s not until you do the statistical analysis that you can tell the difference.

We’re not going to do that analysis here – something which, no doubt, some readers will be relieved to learn. For those who aren’t, some initial forays have already made their way into the media here,here and here. And some serious number-crunching is going into a suitably pointy-headed paper we’re going to be delivering at theAmerican Political  Science Association’s meeting in Chicago at the end of August.

Instead we thought we’d pick out five more or less random findings that contradict or at least qualify the common wisdom about the Conservative grassroots. So here goes:

1. The Tory rank-and-file are a bunch of middle class old duffers who, when it comes to candidate selection, like to pick a typical Tory boy – public school, Oxbridge, and the rest.

Not quite. Grassroots Conservatives may indeed be ‘of a certain age’ – the average for our respondents was 59. And they are certainly overwhelmingly middle class. However, they are rather more open minded about candidates than many imagine. When we asked members about female MPs, 52% of them said they’d like to see more and only 2% said they’d like to see fewer, with the rest thinking the number was about right (24%) or not caring either way (22%). Even more interestingly, and chiming nicely with the work of Nottingham’s own Philip Cowley, when we asked them about MPs from working class or lower middle class backgrounds, 53% would like to see more and only 3% less, with the figures for those who were satisfied with the current number or not caring either way standing at 24% and 18% respectively.

2. Grassroots Conservatives are rabid right-wingers.

In fact, it all depends what you mean by right-wing. Our findings suggest that it’s important to distinguish between social conservatism and attitudes to the state and the market. The former – typified by current ambivalence or outright hostility to gay marriage – is pretty widespread, although there are some libertarians at the grassroots, including, perhaps, the third of members who don’t believe moral standards need to be upheld by censorship of films and magazines. On the economy and public services, however, we need to be a bit more careful. Between a fifth and a quarter of rank and file Tory members believe, for example, that big business benefits owners at the expense of workers, that ordinary people don’t get a fair share of the nation’s wealth and that there is one law for the rich and one for the poor. Moreover, especially where their own interests or those of their families are directly affected, grassroots Conservatives suddenly see a role for the state: while there is widespread support for spending cuts, less than half of rank and file members support the rise in university tuition fees, while more than half of them don’t want to see cuts made to the NHS.

3. The Tory rank-and-file are irredeemably opposed to immigration in all its forms.

No they aren’t, actually. As you may have seen reported in the media, we discovered that a significant minority of Tory members are tempted by UKIP – a party whose anti-immigration platform is a big part of their appeal. Indeed, while 66% of grassroots Conservatives say they would never vote for their coalition partners, the Lib Dems, in a general election, only 33% of them say the same about Nigel Farage’s outfit. However, as is the case for many of their fellow countrymen and women, rank-and-file Tory members’ views on immigration are actually rather more nuanced than many would imagine. True, a quarter of them (26%) would like to see an immediate cessation of immigration from inside or outside the EU. But that figure is dwarfed by the two-thirds of them (67%) who are happy for the government to allow people to come and live in the UK as long as they have a job or some other means of financial support.

4. The C of E might not be ‘the Tory Party at prayer’ any more but loads of grassroots Conservatives are pillars of their local churches.

Not really. While 15% claim to attend a religious service at least once a week – which is probably higher  than (maybe even double) the national average – a quarter (25%) go less than once a month and half (49%) practically never go, except maybe for weddings and funerals. That’s about the same for the population as a whole.

5. When they’re not hanging out at church, hordes of rank-and-file Tories are to be found gracing the golf courses of Great Britain.

Wrong. Turns out that only a disappointing 8% of Conservative Party members belong to a golf club: 11% of the men and 3% of the women. Whether more of the latter would belong if they could but are excluded by courses which don’t admit women, we don’t know. What we do know is that in the twenty-first century more than twice as many grassroots Tories (17% of them in fact) go the gym than play golf.

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Another coalition after 2015? The Tory grassroots can’t bear the thought, Telegraph, 17 July 2003

Posted on July 18, 2013 by tpbale

An overwhelming majority of rank-and-file Conservatives wish David Cameron had never taken them into coalition with the Lib Dems back in May 2010. But that doesn’t mean that they’ll stop him doing exactly the same thing after the next election – not if that’s what it takes to keep a Tory Prime Minister in No 10.

In a comprehensive survey of 852 Conservative Party members funded by the McDougall Trust and carried out for us last month by YouGov, we asked “Had you known in May 2010 what you know now about how the Coalition has worked and what it has achieved, which of the following options would you have supported: the coalition with the Lib Dems, a minority Conservative government, or an immediate second general election?”

The answers we got back point not just to mild disaffection but to far-reaching disappointment and discontent with the coalition at the Tory grassroots.

With the benefit of hindsight, Only 33 per cent of grassroots Conservatives say that a Cameron-Clegg government was the right way to go. Some 41 per cent would have preferred a minority Tory government to a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, while a further 24 per cent would rather have seen an immediate second general election called in May 2010. In other words, two thirds of ordinary Tory members, knowing what they know now about how things have worked out, would have preferred David Cameron not to have done the deal he did.

If we dig a little bit further, things look even more depressing for the Prime Minister – at least at first glance.

For one thing, it’s clear that rank and file distaste for coalition isn’t driven by demographics or length of service. There aren’t many youngsters around in the Tory Party – the average age of its members is 59 – but they are no more likely to favour coalition than the old-timers. Instead, the membership’s dislike of the coalition appears to be driven not just by policy concerns but by an underlying feeling that the leadership has no respect for them and that Mr Cameron in particular is too much of a centrist for their taste. Worse still, hardcore activists – the 3 per cent of the membership who work more than 40 hours a month for the Party and who will presumably form the backbone of its ground campaign – are more disaffected than the largely passive majority.

For another, few grassroots members are keen, at least on the face of it, to repeat the coalition experience. We asked them to rank their preferences with regard to the outcome of the next election. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority would like to see an overall Conservative majority, even if very few of them – in fact, only 19 per cent of them – see it as the most likely outcome in 2015.

Given the distinct possibility of another hung parliament, however, it is members’ second preferences that should interest us most. If we look at those, then a minority Tory government is the second choice of 59 per cent of the rank-and-file. Perhaps predictably, it’s a more popular option among those who regret going into coalition than it is among those who don’t. Equally predictably, but even more definitively, only 4 per cent of those who would have preferred Cameron to have avoided jumping into bed with Clegg in 2010 put down a Con-Lib coalition as their second choice for 2015.

What’s more surprising, however, is that even most of those who are keen on the current coalition would turn down the chance to do it all again if there were some other way of holding on to power. A renewal of the current arrangement in 2015 turns out to be the second choice of just 30% of those who are glad that the Party went into coalition back in 2010. Contrast that with the 44% of the self-same group who say a minority government is their second choice.

In fact, if we return to members as a whole, giving coalition another whirl is the second choice of a mere 13 per cent of the Tory grassroots. This makes it not only four times less popular as a second choice than minority government but also slightly less popular (5 percentage points less popular, to be exact) than a coalition with other smaller parties – presumably assorted nationalists, unionists and (who knows?) the odd Ukipper.

On the face of it, then, this presents a serious problem for David Cameron. Unless he hangs onto No 10 in 2015, he is toast – certainly as far as the grassroots are concerned: less than a third of them think he should stay on as leader if the Tories aren’t still in government after the next election. Yet another coalition with Clegg, or whoever succeeds him, could be the only way ensuring that the Conservative Party remains in office.

Fortunately for the Prime Minister, our survey also shows hope is at hand. The chances of him managing to win over his disaffected followers by miraculously transforming himself into a credible social Conservative in the 21 months remaining before the next election are vanishingly small. What he can rely on, however, is their continuing will to power.

Faced with a straight choice between losing office and returning to opposition or else doing another deal with the Lib Dems, it turns out that a comfortable majority of rank-and-file Tories – including over two thirds of those who wish Cameron had never teamed up with Clegg in the first place – would do it all over again. Pragmatism, it seems, trumps ideology in the end.

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