Politics
And now for the really stupid party
Published 09 April 2001
The Tories once seemed to have a monopoly on all the ideas. Today, they have only two - and one has William Hague running scared
Calling the Tories the stupid party was, in part, prompted by the arrogance of left-wing intellectuals, confident that most of those who made a difference to the content of politics in the first two-thirds of the 20th century were on the left; and, in part, it was also Conservatism's self-definition. Roger Scruton, an intellectual of the right, wrote in his The Meaning of Conservatism that "its essence is inarticulate, and its expression, when compelled, sceptical. It is capable of expression . . . [but] not always with any confidence that the words it finds will match the instinct which required them."
This, however, was written two decades ago, when the high tide of Conservatism - or the neoliberal radicalism that the Conservative leadership then commanded - owed a great deal to the think-tanks and intellectuals (especially American intellectuals) of the right. Many of these had been on the Marxist left, where they picked up their habits of argument, pamphleteering and intellectual denunciation. They certainly had every confidence that they could find the words to match their new instincts - and they did. Although the right kept Scruton's definition in its back pocket, to be brought out when it wished to claim that it bonded more naturally with the nation or the people, it actually came to prize innovation and ideas at least as much as the left - indeed, in Britain, for a while, more so. A new commonplace grew up: that the right was the innovative movement - and, as communism and socialism both collapsed, that it had read history far better than the left.
But, unlike the claims made for history, politics does not end. Centre-left politics, in this country and in all the states where it dominates, has relied more on think-tanks, intellectuals, university research, evidence-based policy research and government aides distinguished by their learning and intelligence than in any previous era.
Conservatism, instead, has foundered intellectually. William Hague has signalled his dissatisfaction that the existing policy institutes of the right provide him with no big idea of the kind discovered by Keith Joseph for Margaret Thatcher in the Seventies. The head of one of the most influential think-tanks in Thatcher's time, John Blundell, shot back in the Daily Telegraph that Hague should develop "a better understanding of what think-tanks actually do" - which is, he said, not to have "big ideas", but to "apply an existing body of ideas . . . to contemporary problems".
The Tories suffer from three, interrelated malaises. One is that new Labour is super clever. It was crafted by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - the first with the barrister's aptitude for discovering the essence of a case, the second with the intellectual's appetite for endless draughts of ideas, and both with acute political instincts and powerful wills. They have hired and keep close to them a posse of policy aides - some of whom are also ex-Marxists - who often went through Oxford or Cambridge and a US Ivy League college, and whose life is the development, assessment and destruction of ideas. The policy unit at No 10 has been expanded: a new organisation, under the former think-tank director Geoff Mulgan - the Performance and Innovation Unit - has been created in the Cabinet Office, and most of the ministries have their own small specialist sections that deal with policy.
Few Conservatives, by contrast, are now much interested in policy analysis and in new ideas. When you ask policy institute directors who comes along to their meetings, they always name the party's cerebral social security spokesman, David Willetts; less often comes the shadow chancellor, Michael Portillo, though his aides are often in attendance. David Davis, chairman of the Commons select committee on public accounts, who was profiled in the NS as a man who might one day make a push for leadership, spends time with British and American intellectuals of the right, engaging with them on their own terms. But there is little encouragement from the top. Portillo and Willetts are both on the socially liberal side of the party; Davis is not a member of the shadow team at all.
The most important reason, however, for the Tories being thought of again as the stupid party is not that they have no "big ideas" - but that the two which are available, are for different reasons off- limits. The first, tax-cutting, seems to attract little support: the second, immigration, is too well guarded by political correctness to make much of. (Neither, it should be pointed out, is exactly a new idea - but then again, nor was neoliberal economics.)
Tax-cutting has received a boost from the programme of President George W Bush, and from his unequivocal assertion that the US budget surplus represented an "overtaxing" of the American people, an injustice he was in government to amend. He will run into strong opposition from the Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate, but calculates it will run well with the people.
There is no similar strategy to offer the same rewards here. Big business, which had been a stern critic of previous Labour government tax policies, is muted on that issue now - proclaiming that public expenditure's share of GNP should not exceed 40 per cent, which currently it does not. Ordinary voters seem more concerned with putting right the large problems in the public services and infrastructure, most of which require public money. Though taxes have risen under Labour, income tax has not; and the tactic of keeping public expenditure under tight rein for the first two years has had the benign electoral effect of the increased flows now welcomed by a wide range of institutions. The Conservatives will use the line that they will provide as good or better services on lower tax income - a claim which, to be believed, would require an image of political and economic competence that they currently do not have.
The second image is the most delicate of all. Immigration and ethnic diversity are both issues of huge importance. The scale of the changes in the ethnic and cultural make-up of Britain over the past four decades is now becoming obvious, while the pressure on the country - as on all advanced nations - of poor immigrants, desperate to make a better life, is growing inexorably.
The census, which will be taken this year and published in 2002, is expected to show that minority ethnic communities form 10 per cent of the population, or five million people - up from 3.5 million, or 7 per cent, in 1991. Minorities make up 20 per cent of London's population now; in Blackburn, the constituency held by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, minorities already exceed 50 per cent. If "Anglo-Saxon" is defined narrowly as meaning "white", then the Tory MP John Townend was right when he warned, last month, that it was being "undermined", or at least substantially diluted. (If the definition is broadened, it is less powerful: if it includes being "English", then that has been "undermined" by the Scots, Irish and Welsh for centuries. If it means Protestant, then that has been "undermined" by Catholicism, Islam, Judaism and Anglicanism's own liberal refusal to be exclusive for at least decades.)
More disturbing is research now being completed, in the US, by a team at Harvard's Kennedy School. It shows that, in areas of high immigration and/or ethnic diversity, trust between and within the different groups is low, and the social pathologies - crime, drug-taking, low educational achievement, bad health - are high. No similar study has been done for European countries, but the authors of the US survey believe the same would hold true. It seems that the multicultural model, in which different ethnic groups retain distinct cultures of their own while respecting those of others, is not working well. Yet broadly speaking, multiculturalism is the model to which the government holds for Britain.
There are two ways to respond to this. One is to insist that citizenship, not race or colour or culture, is the defining element for Britishness. It is to propose - with varying degrees of credibility - that immigration is not a threat per se, and that we should encourage some immigration of people who would be useful to the economy of a country whose birth rate is low - while being tough on "illegal immigrants".
That is the government's position. Indeed, it is also the Conservative Party's position; the latest evidence of this is that Hague, with all the other parliamentary party leaders, signed a declaration in March committing himself not to play "the race card" during an election campaign. Hague began as an "inclusive" Tory; but his speech on 4 March, forecasting that Britain would become a "foreign land" if Labour is returned at the next election, was widely criticised - by the Sun, among others - as encouraging racism, if not actually being racist.
The other way is the one that Hague hinted at, and that Townend opened up. It is to say that immigration has had and will have pernicious effects on our culture, evidenced by high crime, low educational achievement and fragmented societies. It is to put the party forward as one that will stop all immigration, and that will be hostile to the claims of multiculturalists - insisting on assimilation to the dominant culture as a condition of citizenship.
But Hague will not say this. A significant section of his party - Portillo, Willetts and others - find it anathema. Lacking the ability to be radical on race and immigration - that is, racist - he can only hint at this alternative, scurrying back for cover when outrage erupts.
New Labour has captured the centre ground. Most of the policy institutes and policy intellectuals think that Labour will be more radical and innovative in a second term than in its first. Most of them believe the Tories can't think any more. The Conservatives - by their own reckoning - were born stupid; achieved cleverness; and have now had stupidity thrust upon them once more.
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