Labour is the common sense party
Published 04 September 2000
When is it safe to go on holiday? In June, I returned from a few days away to find that I had missed a war. Admittedly, it was only a "class war" instigated by the Chancellor over a failed Oxbridge application - and, in characteristic fashion, some panic-stricken Blairites were soon declaring that the "war" had never happened in the first place. Gordon Brown's words were of no significance, we were told, when it became clear that one or two newspapers and some stuffy academics disapproved of them.
The Class War That Never Happened is as nothing compared with what appears to have taken place during my latest break. When I packed up from Westminster, nobody liked new Labour. Nobody liked Tony Blair. And that was just the view of Philip Gould. Meanwhile, William Hague was metamorphosing before our very eyes into a leader of substance whose utterances chimed with the hopes and fears of Middle England. Hague left for his holidays looking ten years younger, the product of sessions on a judo mat with Sebastian Coe, combined with a political renaissance. Blair headed for Tuscany having aged another decade. With a little less publicity, I set off for France.
As I drove back from Dover at the end of my holiday, the political landscape had been transformed. The Conservative chairman, Michael Ancram, was rushing to Hague's defence on the car radio. There was no sense at all of Ancram basking in his party's revival, which had seemed to be under way a few weeks earlier. Instead, Ancram suggested that the changed mood was all the fault of August, a month when governments tend to do well. He should try telling that to John Major. The ERM crisis began in August 1992, and he never again enjoyed a trouble-free summer holiday. And blaming August is the feeblest excuse since ministers claimed that Blair's proposals for marching hooligans to their cashpoints had been a "metaphor".
More defensiveness from Ancram: what's all the fuss about Hague's claim that he used to drink 14 pints a day? That was just an honest answer to a trivial question, Ancram said. As for the policies, Ancram pointed out that they were all based on "common sense". That was their appeal. We would come to respect their common sense, he repeated many times.
An August poll in the Times giving Labour a huge lead was the main reason for the Tories' defensiveness. But it was not the only factor. Hague's interview boasting of his drinking prowess, given before the poll's publication, suggested that there was already a whiff of panic at Central Office. As someone who once skived off school to attend a debate in the Commons, I can understand Hague's sensitivity over his image as a Hansard- reading teenager. Occasionally, I tackled my uncool interest in politics by jumping up and down at parties to the Sex Pistols. Hague tried to reinvent himself retrospectively as a heavy drinker. But just as my dancing did not convince, Hague's interview made him seem an insecure fool.
Maybe that is because he is insecure. After all, it would not be surprising if even this calmest of politicians felt a little battered after three arduous years of opposition. For much of his political career, he has been neither insecure nor a fool, but he has been showing signs of both insecurity and foolishness for some time now. His summer campaign of populist initiatives did not amount to very much. They were a series of Daily Mail editorials without any great underlying themes: a Norfolk farmer who shot an intruder should not be in prison; asylum-seekers should be treated toughly; taxes should be cut, and spending on schools and hospitals should be raised; red tape should be cut, but the minimum wage accepted. There was no compelling narrative.
Ancram's claim that the connecting theme was "common sense" is as vacuous as that other conveniently evasive term, "modernisation".
Such terms can mean everything or nothing. But the Tories' use of "common sense" is more misjudged because they face a government that is so obviously "sensible". In their first term, ministers have not proved as radical as they have claimed, but their caution has meant an avoidance of silliness. There has been no equivalent to the poll tax.
Most of the time, ministers have been pretty sensible. Sometimes, they have been too damned sensible and not taken enough political risks. In a battle over common sense, the Tories will not win, especially when some of their policies seem a little on the silly side.
Instead of portraying their leader as Billy Hague, the wild drinker, the Tories should have attempted an ambitious, but more credible, image projection. Hague has always achieved what he wanted, it seems to me. I remember having a drink with him when he was a rising star on the back benches. Did he want to be a PPS, I asked. Only if he was an aide to a Treasury minister, he replied. The next time I saw him, he was holding an umbrella above the head of Norman Lamont outside No 11. He had just been made the then chancellor's PPS.
Soon, he was the youngest Cabinet member since Harold Wilson. Before all of this, he had been the only Tory to win a by-election for years. There is a good story here, in which Hague is presented as a winner. Instead, he has become the beer-swilling Hansard reader who echoes the Daily Mail.
Which is why the summer was never quite what it seemed. Labour got into its stride with the comprehensive spending review. The Tories lost the Romsey by-election. Nothing really changed during my summer holiday, because the Tory recovery was always an illusion. Politics rarely moves in great leaps and bounds. It is probably safe for political journalists to be away from their desks most of the year. Maybe I will head back to Dover.
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