14.11.2002

IDS into the abyss?

It is perhaps time to think the unthinkable. Are we witnessing the death agonies of the Conservative Party? If so, the coroner's verdict will be suicide while the balance of the party's mind was disturbed. The events of the last two weeks have shown that the Tories are not merely unfit to govern, but unfit to constitute an effective party of opposition. Flatulent talk from Charles Kennedy to the effect that the Liberal Democrats are poised to become the major party of opposition begins to sound almost credible. Certainly the Tory claim to be the natural party of domestic and international capital, of business big and small, is looking more and more implausible. Blair has robbed them of that, as of so much else. The country has, in fact, two Tory parties and there is only room for one. The Tories' fundamental problem is not that they have what turns out to be a poor leader - weaker, if anything, than John Major; nor that they have a membership whose average age is 67; nor even the fact that they have failed to come up with any coherent policies with which to challenge Labour's signal failure to do anything meaningful in the vital area of public services. The Tories' problem is that they no longer have a real constituency; no obvious link with any class or major vested interest in civil society. The party of Wellington, Peel, Disraeli, Salisbury, Churchill and Thatcher has now not a single seat in Wales, just one in Scotland and represents no major conurbation even in England. It has become the party of the diehard home counties - the stockbroker belt - and of the rural interest. Farmers have been traditionally Tory, but the last time that their vote really counted in British politics was in the first half of the 19th century. As September 22 demonstrated, there is a mobilisable and increasingly militant extra-parliamentary force in the form of the Countryside Alliance. However, it has absolutely no connection with the mainstream of society. When Iain Duncan Smith became leader just 14 months ago, in the first election for the leadership where members themselves had a democratic vote, it was on the basis of an overwhelming endorsement from the grassroots, not from the severely depleted parliamentary party (only 38 MPs out of 165 gave him their first preference), which remains viscerally divided between traditionalists and 'modernisers'. After two landslide defeats, it was obvious that the party had to change or die. Divisions over Europe - the essential fault line in the party both in Westminster and the country - were consigned to a shallow grave, and, like Hague before him, Duncan Smith started talking the language of 'compassionate Conservatism'. At Bournemouth this year, conference was vigorously berated by chairperson Theresa May for still appearing to be the "nasty party". Duncan Smith himself said: "We must first understand the way life in Britain is lived today and not the way it was lived 20 years ago." While bemused blue-rinses and retired colonels hovered about the conference centre, the entire shadow cabinet was despatched to 'meet the people' and show how much they cared for ordinary folk. A pretty unconvincing display, as was the risible idea of portraying IDS as the "quiet man" - Chingford's answer to John Wayne. But only a few weeks later we saw the fundamental ambivalence and insecurity that mark Duncan Smith himself, the tensions in his own head between the need to change and the irresistible desire to remain the same. The Adoption and Children Bill was by any standard a bizarre field on which to take a stand. Whether or not to allow unmarried couples, gays and lesbians to become adoptive parents is the sort of issue that bourgeois parties normally declare to be a matter of 'conscience' or individual 'morality', permitting the exercise of a free vote. But IDS imposed a three-line whip in what he knew was a doomed attempt to defeat Labour's amendment. Why? Mainly because in the previous few days a whispering campaign had begun against him. A few disaffected backbenchers had started to talk about a leadership challenge. Central office ill-advisedly leaked the names of the offending members, including Anthony Steen (MP for Totnes), who must at least be credited with an amusing aphorism, that IDS is "murally dyslexic" - he cannot read the writing on the wall. Worse still, the whips privately advised Tory MPs that the three-line instruction was 'soft': ie, stay away from the Commons, keep your mouth firmly shut and there will be no repercussions - a masterly combination of weakness masquerading as strength and discipline. John Bercow, shadow cabinet spokesman for pensions and jobs, promptly resigned. No wonder that Portillo and Clarke - rare visitors to the back benches these days - together with a handful of acolytes, used the occasion to rebel, and vote with the government. Portillo astonishingly used the debate publicly to denounce his own leader. Hence what the Daily Telegraph called, somewhat hyperbolically, "the most desperate day in the history of the Conservative Party" (November 6). Not the fatuous vote itself, but IDS's decision on the morrow to call a press conference at Central Office and tell his party that it was time to "unite or die": "Over the last few weeks a small group of my parliamentary colleagues have decided consciously to undermine my leadership. For a few, last night's vote was not about adoption but an attempt to challenge my mandate to lead this party" (ibid). Within 24 hours, the leader was claiming, incredibly, that the parliamentary party was solidly behind him, even while Clarke and Portillo were using the press to signal a possible 'dream ticket' in a putative leadership battle. Meanwhile, an IBM poll in The Sunday Telegraph puts the Conservative Party on 29% against Labour's 43%, with the Liberal Democrats on 21%. More than half the Tory voters polled considered that Duncan Smith was an "ineffective" leader. At the same time, they believed a leadership election now would be inadvisable, but some 30% of Tory voters were inclined to favour a Clarke/Portillo ticket (November 10). In a leading article, all that the same paper can find to say is that the events of the last couple of weeks constitute "an obscure split in a somewhat obscure party". Hapless confusion, confirmed by other polls, which make it clear that that party is perceived as utterly rudderless, even by its own membership and press. Duncan Smith must now be consigned to the department of damaged goods, but the idea that arch-Europhile Clarke and Hamlet Portillo could somehow unite the show and get it back on the road does not bear serious examination. Only what Harold Macmillan called "events" - in the form, perhaps, of a catastrophic economic downturn, a disastrous military setback or a humiliating climbdown in the face of the firefighters' strike - represent even the vaguest possibility of a revival and even then, given the Tories' lack of any coherent alternative in the economic or any other policy area, the chances seem remote. Even if the impending war against Iraq goes badly wrong in terms of human costs, it can do the Conservative Party no good at all, as they will inevitably be locked into 'patriotic' support of this military adventure. There was a time when Tory woes would be an occasion of unmitigated rejoicing on the left. We certainly shed no tears now when we see the most inveterate enemy of our class embroiled in a crisis that could spell its possible disintegration. But the point is that, where the Tories left off, Blair is carrying on. Indeed, you could argue that New Labour has already done much which the Conservative Party itself was unable to contemplate. Given the lack of any meaningful opposition, this fundamentally anti-working class drive on the part of capital must be set to intensify, and that is what makes breaking the working class from Labourism and creating a united and powerful party of the working class our most pressing strategic objective. Maurice Bernal