Do Tories Have the Mettle?

Sunday Times, The Times February 28, 2010

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Dominic Lawson

Where am I?

This is a big moment for David Cameron and for the country. Today the Conservative leader will stand up and address his party’s spring conference under the slogan “Vote for change”. The danger, as he sees his poll lead evaporate, is that the public is preparing itself to vote for no change. Astonishingly, Gordon Brown, the bruiser who has himself been badly bruised, could cling on to power. Rather than being Labour party fantasy, this is a real possibility.

Last summer, when the Tory poll lead was nudging towards 20%, Mr Cameron’s passage towards Downing Street appeared to be almost as smooth as Tony Blair’s in 1997. Even in early December, when the lead was still well into double figures, the Tories could look forward to this weekend’s conference as a springboard for a decisive victory in May. Instead, it has become a time of nerve-jangling uncertainty.

Polls are polls and, as Mr Cameron will no doubt say, there is only one poll that matters. Individual poll leads will jump around. The trend, however, is unmistakable. If it is not reversed soon, it will make Tory claims that the party can rely on its strength in marginal constituencies to secure a comfortable majority look hollow indeed.

The most worrying aspect for the Tory leader and for George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, is that amidst the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and with the government borrowing an eighth of Britain’s national income this year, Labour is trusted more than the Tories to run the economy. Either Mr Brown’s propaganda has worked and voters genuinely believe that he saved the world from something much worse, or the Tories have simply sown too much confusion about what they would do in office. Voters, like the money markets, hate uncertainty.

The Tories are not quite as hopeless as they have been portrayed. For an opposition, the challenge is always to muscle its way onto an agenda that the governing party finds it easier to dominate. Those who criticise the Tories’ campaign strategy appear to have forgotten the failings of 1997, 2001 and 2005 and the bitter internal battles that preceded Margaret Thatcher’s 100-seat majority in 1987.

That said, it is also hard to think of an opposition that, when faced with a series of open goals, has so comprehensively failed to find the net. Some of that reflects youth and inexperience. Peter Mandelson was running election campaigns when the Tory election high command was still in short trousers. Labour’s dark arts are in a different league from those of the Tories, to the point where the Tory advantage of having much more in the party coffers may count for little.

Mr Cameron has a job to do and it has to start today. The Tories, faced with a dwindling poll lead, could panic and begin to fall apart. There is no shortage of critics of the leader within the party. At a time when Labour is beginning to think that it might have the Tories on the run, the worst mistake would be to confirm them in that view.

Instead, Mr Cameron has to remind us, clearly and forcefully, why change has to happen. He has to start dominating the headlines. A lacklustre Tory front bench has to start giving people enough reason to think that with the Conservatives in charge the country would genuinely be better run. It is not enough to argue for merely getting rid of one lot, even this tired and discredited government. For many voters, and plenty of businesses, another five years of Mr Brown would be the last straw. They would not forgive the Tories for failing to make a decent fight of it.

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