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| Conference will reveal whether the Tories still have the recipe for survival | Conference will reveal whether the Tories still have the recipe for survival |
| (4 months later) | |
| This may be extremely hard to believe at the moment, but the British Conservative party is the most enduringly successful force in democratic politics anywhere. Love them, which not many do, or loathe them, as many always have, that is just a fact. The Conservatives have dominated the government of Britain. The party emerged in the 1830s, at a time when steam locomotives were the scary new thing and only very affluent chaps had the vote. Since then, the Conservative party has collided with economic and social movements so powerful that many people, including many Tories themselves, thought they were doomed to disappear. Yet this party originally rooted in reactionary privilege adjusted to universal male suffrage, to women securing the vote and to the transformation of an agrarian economy into an industrial one. It has survived world wars, the retreat from empire and the death of deference. Great winds of change have blown through Britain and there the old Tory party still stands, a gnarled and twisted ancient tree that no one has ever thought pretty, but no one has ever managed to uproot. | This may be extremely hard to believe at the moment, but the British Conservative party is the most enduringly successful force in democratic politics anywhere. Love them, which not many do, or loathe them, as many always have, that is just a fact. The Conservatives have dominated the government of Britain. The party emerged in the 1830s, at a time when steam locomotives were the scary new thing and only very affluent chaps had the vote. Since then, the Conservative party has collided with economic and social movements so powerful that many people, including many Tories themselves, thought they were doomed to disappear. Yet this party originally rooted in reactionary privilege adjusted to universal male suffrage, to women securing the vote and to the transformation of an agrarian economy into an industrial one. It has survived world wars, the retreat from empire and the death of deference. Great winds of change have blown through Britain and there the old Tory party still stands, a gnarled and twisted ancient tree that no one has ever thought pretty, but no one has ever managed to uproot. |
| The Tories are survivors, something that cannot be said for their rivals. Their competitor in the 19th century and early decades of the 20th was the Liberal party. That is now a party with just a dozen MPs, which has been reduced to advertising a vacancy for its leadership in the hope that someone from outside might be interested. With Labour as their main rival, the Tories have won many more times than they have lost. Since 1945, just three leaders of the Labour party – Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair – have won a general election. Just five have been prime minister. Over the same period, nine Tory leaders have held the job. | The Tories are survivors, something that cannot be said for their rivals. Their competitor in the 19th century and early decades of the 20th was the Liberal party. That is now a party with just a dozen MPs, which has been reduced to advertising a vacancy for its leadership in the hope that someone from outside might be interested. With Labour as their main rival, the Tories have won many more times than they have lost. Since 1945, just three leaders of the Labour party – Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair – have won a general election. Just five have been prime minister. Over the same period, nine Tory leaders have held the job. |
| The clue to the survival of the Conservative party is not in its name. It has endured not because it is good at the sentimental preservation of things, but because it has been clever about ruthlessly purging stuff that no longer works. Its tradition has been merciless towards leaders who have failed or who are perceived to be failing. Margaret Thatcher won a hat-trick of elections for the party. That didn’t stop the cold-eyed Tories defenestrating her when they decided that she had outlived her usefulness. It has also been unsentimental with its body of ideas. No party has been as efficient at jettisoning thinking that has become out of date and a hindrance to assembling election-winning coalitions of voters. No party has been more versatile about adopting new ideas, often ones shamelessly stolen from their opponents. Under Benjamin Disraeli, they changed from relentless hostility towards giving the vote to more people to supporting the expansion of the franchise. Under Winston Churchill, they embraced the National Health Service and the welfare state created by the Attlee government because they could see that it was popular with a lot of voters. More recently, Tories first railed against the social reforms of the Blair era before dropping their resistance when they realised that they had to adapt to win in changed times. | The clue to the survival of the Conservative party is not in its name. It has endured not because it is good at the sentimental preservation of things, but because it has been clever about ruthlessly purging stuff that no longer works. Its tradition has been merciless towards leaders who have failed or who are perceived to be failing. Margaret Thatcher won a hat-trick of elections for the party. That didn’t stop the cold-eyed Tories defenestrating her when they decided that she had outlived her usefulness. It has also been unsentimental with its body of ideas. No party has been as efficient at jettisoning thinking that has become out of date and a hindrance to assembling election-winning coalitions of voters. No party has been more versatile about adopting new ideas, often ones shamelessly stolen from their opponents. Under Benjamin Disraeli, they changed from relentless hostility towards giving the vote to more people to supporting the expansion of the franchise. Under Winston Churchill, they embraced the National Health Service and the welfare state created by the Attlee government because they could see that it was popular with a lot of voters. More recently, Tories first railed against the social reforms of the Blair era before dropping their resistance when they realised that they had to adapt to win in changed times. |
| When your membership shrinks as small as the Tories, you have a real problem | When your membership shrinks as small as the Tories, you have a real problem |
| The nostalgic nationalists among the Brexiters like to think of themselves as the truest of blues, the ur-Tories. With their ideological intensity and their disdain for compromise, they are actually the Tories most alien to the traditions that have made their party a success in the past. | The nostalgic nationalists among the Brexiters like to think of themselves as the truest of blues, the ur-Tories. With their ideological intensity and their disdain for compromise, they are actually the Tories most alien to the traditions that have made their party a success in the past. |
| Can the Conservatives rediscover their talent for reinvention? This will be the big question hanging over their conference in Birmingham. There will be a lot of relatively trivial questions swirling around too. How long can Theresa May go on? How far will Boris Johnson go? Which member of the cabinet will be most naked in strutting ambitions to be the next leader? The much more important question for the future is whether the Conservative party retains any capacity to rethink itself. This makes it a big question for British politics overall. | Can the Conservatives rediscover their talent for reinvention? This will be the big question hanging over their conference in Birmingham. There will be a lot of relatively trivial questions swirling around too. How long can Theresa May go on? How far will Boris Johnson go? Which member of the cabinet will be most naked in strutting ambitions to be the next leader? The much more important question for the future is whether the Conservative party retains any capacity to rethink itself. This makes it a big question for British politics overall. |
| At several levels, the party is exhibiting signs of morbidity. The Tories won only 27% of the votes of 18- to 34-year-olds in last year’s election and the support of just a third of the 35 to 44 cohort. Membership numbers have become so embarrassingly low that the party has stopped publishing them. The residue are very Brexity, do not look like modern Britain and are dying out. The party now receives more money in donations from deceased members than it does from living ones. The Conservatives are becoming a legacy party – literally so. Party memberships are, by their nature, unrepresentative of the general population because most people do not join political parties. Labour has many more members than the Tories, but they aren’t terribly representative of the typical voter either. The typical voter, unlike a Labour conference delegate, does not think that it is fun to spend two days arguing about internal rule changes. Labour can at least boast that it has around 500,000 members, which adds a smidgen of credibility to its leader’s claim to speak for the “mainstream”. When your membership shrinks as small as the Tories’, you have a real problem. One danger is infiltration and takeover by extremes because you have too few sensible types left to defend the party’s borders. A related risk for a low membership party is becoming a very narrow sect, not just unrepresentative of the general population, but wildly out of kilter with the country. This means less pressure on leaders to adjust to changes in society and more pressure to conduct futile struggles in defence of a lost yesteryear. | At several levels, the party is exhibiting signs of morbidity. The Tories won only 27% of the votes of 18- to 34-year-olds in last year’s election and the support of just a third of the 35 to 44 cohort. Membership numbers have become so embarrassingly low that the party has stopped publishing them. The residue are very Brexity, do not look like modern Britain and are dying out. The party now receives more money in donations from deceased members than it does from living ones. The Conservatives are becoming a legacy party – literally so. Party memberships are, by their nature, unrepresentative of the general population because most people do not join political parties. Labour has many more members than the Tories, but they aren’t terribly representative of the typical voter either. The typical voter, unlike a Labour conference delegate, does not think that it is fun to spend two days arguing about internal rule changes. Labour can at least boast that it has around 500,000 members, which adds a smidgen of credibility to its leader’s claim to speak for the “mainstream”. When your membership shrinks as small as the Tories’, you have a real problem. One danger is infiltration and takeover by extremes because you have too few sensible types left to defend the party’s borders. A related risk for a low membership party is becoming a very narrow sect, not just unrepresentative of the general population, but wildly out of kilter with the country. This means less pressure on leaders to adjust to changes in society and more pressure to conduct futile struggles in defence of a lost yesteryear. |
| The Tory party has also lost its ruthless touch when it comes to dispatching failed leaders. If it still knew how to make a living sacrifice to the angry gods of the electorate, Mrs May would have been put to the dagger when she threw away her party’s majority at an election she didn’t have to call. She has been allowed to linger only because her colleagues have never been able to agree which of them would do any better. Most of the cabinet assume that the platform speech she will make on Wednesday will be her last as leader to the party conference. Yet I see little sign that they are getting closer to a consensus about who might reunite and reinvigorate them once Mrs May is gone. Any conversation about the succession with a Tory usually involves little time on the positives of potential candidates and much more time spent hearing that X is a self-centred shit who should never be allowed anywhere near the premiership and that Y is an over-hyped dud who would be even worse than the incumbent. | The Tory party has also lost its ruthless touch when it comes to dispatching failed leaders. If it still knew how to make a living sacrifice to the angry gods of the electorate, Mrs May would have been put to the dagger when she threw away her party’s majority at an election she didn’t have to call. She has been allowed to linger only because her colleagues have never been able to agree which of them would do any better. Most of the cabinet assume that the platform speech she will make on Wednesday will be her last as leader to the party conference. Yet I see little sign that they are getting closer to a consensus about who might reunite and reinvigorate them once Mrs May is gone. Any conversation about the succession with a Tory usually involves little time on the positives of potential candidates and much more time spent hearing that X is a self-centred shit who should never be allowed anywhere near the premiership and that Y is an over-hyped dud who would be even worse than the incumbent. |
| Unless an election happens soon, the Tories will pick a new leader before they next present themselves to the electorate. They will simply not entrust another campaign to Mrs May after the train wreck she made of the last one. The sharper Tories also understand that they will need a lot of fresh thinking if they can get to the other side of Brexit in more or less one piece. They will need a political regeneration that Mrs May has neither the authority nor the creativity to provide. If the Tories are to renew themselves, they will have to rediscover their past dexterity at evolving to succeed. | Unless an election happens soon, the Tories will pick a new leader before they next present themselves to the electorate. They will simply not entrust another campaign to Mrs May after the train wreck she made of the last one. The sharper Tories also understand that they will need a lot of fresh thinking if they can get to the other side of Brexit in more or less one piece. They will need a political regeneration that Mrs May has neither the authority nor the creativity to provide. If the Tories are to renew themselves, they will have to rediscover their past dexterity at evolving to succeed. |
| In this respect, Tory reaction to the Labour conference has been instructive. They do not like what they heard from the Labour conference about renationalisation, much more state intervention in the economy and the rest of the Corbyn/McDonnell programme for socialism in one country. Tories are torn between telling themselves that Britain will surely never vote for this and quaking that it just might. The smarter Tories recognise that Labour is getting a hearing for these ideas because of the deep-seated discontent with the way the economy is working and how the fruits of prosperity are being shared out. It is worth recalling that the Tories have form on stealing Labour ideas that are getting traction with the public. A cap on energy prices was a madly Marxist idea when Ed Miliband first proposed it – and then a version of his cap became Tory policy. If the Tories are as cunning as they used to be, they will take a hard look at why elements of the Labour prospectus resonate with voters and they will respond accordingly. | In this respect, Tory reaction to the Labour conference has been instructive. They do not like what they heard from the Labour conference about renationalisation, much more state intervention in the economy and the rest of the Corbyn/McDonnell programme for socialism in one country. Tories are torn between telling themselves that Britain will surely never vote for this and quaking that it just might. The smarter Tories recognise that Labour is getting a hearing for these ideas because of the deep-seated discontent with the way the economy is working and how the fruits of prosperity are being shared out. It is worth recalling that the Tories have form on stealing Labour ideas that are getting traction with the public. A cap on energy prices was a madly Marxist idea when Ed Miliband first proposed it – and then a version of his cap became Tory policy. If the Tories are as cunning as they used to be, they will take a hard look at why elements of the Labour prospectus resonate with voters and they will respond accordingly. |
| Adapt to survive. This has been the secret sauce that has kept the Conservative beast in business over so many decades. Do they still have the recipe around somewhere or have they entirely forgotten what they used to be about in the furious mayhem of Brexit? That is the really big question that Tories ought to be asking themselves in Birmingham. The answer will affect everyone. | Adapt to survive. This has been the secret sauce that has kept the Conservative beast in business over so many decades. Do they still have the recipe around somewhere or have they entirely forgotten what they used to be about in the furious mayhem of Brexit? That is the really big question that Tories ought to be asking themselves in Birmingham. The answer will affect everyone. |
| • Andrew Rawnsley is an Observer columnist | • Andrew Rawnsley is an Observer columnist |
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