Can the Tories woo the have-nots and not just the have-yachts?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/29/tories-have-nots-have-yachts

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The Tories gather in Manchester under the slogan "For Hard-Working People". Their image consultants advised them against "For The Idle Rich". You only have to think of the opposite of a party conference slogan to see that they are usually vapid. But the theme that the Tories have decided to adopt this year is really quite instructive about their state of mind. For it tells us how they would like to be seen, but know that they are not.

Each party has its Achilles heel, its fundamental weakness in the eyes of the electorate. For the Lib Dems, it is "broken promises". For Labour, it is "economic credibility". For the Tories, their zone of vulnerability is perceived values. "Motives – that is the big Tory handicap," says one strategist. It comes out in very bad Tory polling numbers for being "in it for themselves", "out of touch" and "not understanding ordinary people". A recent poll found that only one in five voters believes that the "Conservatives are concerned about people like me". One minister remarks: "It bedevils us still, this feeling that everything we do is for the toffs; only the rich benefit."

This matters a lot – indeed, it could be the key to determining who ends up in power after the next election. When Barack Obama won the last American presidential contest, one of the most important reasons he did so was because he beat his challenger when voters were asked which of them was "on their side".

Distrust of Tory motives was one of the most significant factors in their serial defeats at the hands of Tony Blair. Once he became Tory leader, David Cameron tried to dispel it – that was what his "detox" of the Tory brand was supposed to do. While Tory "modernisation" saw progress in making the Conservatives seem more comfortable with social change, the project was much less successful at convincing less affluent voters that the party was on their side. If one single thing cost the Tories a majority at the last election, it was the perception that they were still too narrow, remote, privileged and self-interested: in the phrase once used by Theresa May "the nasty party". Tories would retort that the venomous internecine warfare that consumed Labour when it was last in government shows which of them is truly "the nasty party" and that would be the one that employed Damian McPoison. But that misses the point. I doubt most voters lose much sleep worrying about what vile things politicians do to each other. Voters do care very much about what nasty things politicians might do to them and their loved ones.

Who is on your side? This is the ground on to which Labour wants to take the political battle by shifting the economic debate from "will there be a recovery?" to "a recovery for whom?" The central argument of Ed Miliband's speech to the Labour clan was that the link between national wealth and family finances has been broken because too large a proportion of the gains is gobbled up by the very richest. One of the better jokes in his speech was: "The rising tide only seems to lift the yachts." He married this to his contention that David Cameron is "always weak when it comes to standing up against the strong".

The Tories, argued the Labour leader, were incapable of fairly spreading the fruits of any recovery. Thus also the relentless Labour focus on the living standards of the average citizen. The polling on this is interesting. More voters blame Labour than they do the coalition for the decline in living standards – and not without reason because the squeeze started on Labour's watch. Yet more voters also see Labour as the party more likely to improve their personal circumstances.

Hoping to reinforce that advantage, the policies unveiled in Brighton were all focused in this area, including more aggressive action against companies that cheat on the minimum wage, a cut in the tax burden on smaller companies, a new bank levy to fund childcare and, the most eye-catching of the pledges, a promise to freeze energy bills for the first 20 months of a Labour government. They picked that one because it is universal. Just about everyone gets an electricity bill. The freeze is also tremendously popular. When tested with focus groups, Labour and Tory pollsters agree that approval goes "off the chart".

This poses a dilemma for the Conservatives and it has been illustrated by the confusion in their response. The visceral instinct of the Tories and their media allies is to try to brand the Labour leader as "Red Ed" who is on "a lurch to the left". The prime minister told his staff that he was "genuinely shocked" by the Miliband speech. Mr Cameron exclaimed to aides: "He is not going back to 1992. He is going back to 1983."

The Tory leader is perhaps too young to accurately recall what actually happened in the mid-80s. The Michael Foot Labour party wanted to nationalise most of the solar system. Miliband Labour is not advocating state ownership of the utilities, though that, incidentally, comes out as highly popular when people are polled. Labour is proposing a temporary cap on energy bills pending reform of a dsyfunctional, monopolistic market.

Thoughtful Tories believe they will need a more sophisticated response than trying to suggest Mr Miliband is the reincarnation of Lenin. They are also kicking themselves for letting Labour seize this advantage.

One minister says: "We knew from our own polling that energy prices were the most vivid example of the squeeze on living standards." Another minister argues: "We now need to move on market reform before the next election."

When the education secretary, Michael Gove, appeared on the BBC's <em>Question Time</em>, he was very careful to try to stay on the side of the audience by lambasting the energy companies. He had been warned beforehand by David Cameron: "Whatever you say, don't sound like the public affairs spokesman of Centrica or the MP for npower." Once the prime minister had got over his instinctive reaction to Labour's move, Mr Cameron grasped that if there is a side you want to be on, it is not on the side of the energy fat cats.

That leaves the Tories with a specific challenge in that area and the deeper one of trying to reconcile their ideological faith in markets with the political imperative to look as if they have an answer to Labour on living standards. So they will try to repackage the tax break for some married couples, which was originally designed to be a sop for the party's traditionalists and Tory voters tempted by Ukip. This will now be presented as helping out couples on low incomes. Those who are married, anyway. But it is a cause of regret to some Tory cabinet members that they let Nick Clegg have the much less divisive announcement of free school meals for under-eights. "It is a pity. It would have been a fantastic thing for us to announce," says one senior Tory.

The high-speed rail link is to be rebranded "the north-south railway" in an attempt to convince voters that the Tories want an economic recovery for all regions of the country. They will have to do a lot better than that, so think an increasing number of Conservatives, if they are to answer the charge that they are a party for the wealthy and big business that doesn't care about the living standards of everyone else. Renewal, a Tory group that is gathering backing among a diverse range of MPs, will tomorrow propose that their party should match Labour's pledge to build a million homes, commit to a boost to the minimum wage and appoint a cabinet minister specifically tasked with taking a crack at rip-off companies.

Their ideas have the goodwill of some Tory ministers, but not yet the enthusiastic support of the two who really matter, David Cameron and George Osborne. When he speaks to the conference tomorrow, the chancellor will present his freeze on council tax and contentious Help To Buy scheme as ways in which he is addressing the squeeze on living standards. But Mr Osborne's general attitude is disdainful of what his friends dismiss as "fiddly gimmicks". The chancellor argues to other cabinet ministers that living standards are a subset of the economy. He believes that the terms of battle haven't really been changed by the Labour conference: the way for the Tories to win is to sustain the recovery and make voters fearful that Labour would wreck it. "We are on the right track, don't turn back," will be at the core of his message on Monday and a central theme of David Cameron's speech later in the week.

This has been a winning formula for the Tories in the past, but that doesn't guarantee that it will work in the current context. Voters do not experience the economy as a line on a graph, but by how things feel to them and their family. If the gains from a resumption of growth are not widely experienced, if only the have-yachts appear to be buoyant, if the Tories can't convince more people that they are on their side, the danger for the Conservatives is that the recovery will be voteless.

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