Not one, but three big gambles have been made in this party conference season. Everyone knows that George Osborne bet that telling the voters the bad news wouldn’t cost the Tories the general election. But David Cameron also bet that a Conservative government could tackle poverty and inequality. And Gordon Brown bet everything he has got that the hoary new Labour theme tune “things can only get better” is a winner.
On a personal level Osborne’s gamble was a no-brainer. The precocious 38-year-old really had to prove he’s got what it takes with City folk who prefer the nation’s bank manager to show a few flecks of grey. Youth inevitably attracts suspicion and envy in politics. It has always been so. The appointment of William Pitt the Younger, the first “new Tory” prime minister, aged 24, inspired the popular ditty “a sight to make all nations stand and stare: a kingdom trusted to a schoolboy’s care”. Had Osborne spoken again about the need for tough decisions without actually taking any of them, his credibility with the markets would have been strained.
The shadow chancellor pledged a rise in retirement age, a pay freeze for 4m public sector workers and the mean — testing of middle-class benefits. Although the proposals represent only a down payment on the deficit, an old-fashioned Labour campaign against Tory cuts is now feasible. The Conservatives, of course, hope to gain credit for their honesty. But what if we the voters dislike unpalatable truths? Lower middle-class voters in marginal seats, already squeezed by the recession, will blanch at the squeeze on their pay. The nurse earning just that little bit more than £18,000 may resent the pain.
As I said last week, Margaret Thatcher’s political identity was clear in 1979 but she was much shorter on specific pledges. Most obviously there was no warning of the near doubling of Vat that followed her election victory. More than one Tory candidate I spoke to in Manchester wondered aloud whether Osborne would have best kept shtoom.
The balance of risk had to be accepted in a spirit of unanimity: any difference on this issue between Cameron and his chief ally would be disastrous. They keep up a good front. The inspiration for the Tory leadership’s arrangements at Manchester’s Midland hotel could have been taken from the Beatles movie, Help!, in which the Fab Four go into their terraced houses by separate doors only to reveal it’s just one vast living area. A barefoot Steve Hilton, the Tory strategist, is clearly the Ringo of the line-up.
Yet Osborne’s gambit was as much about securing the fortunes of a future Tory government as aiding the Tory opposition today. Privately, he cites the fate of the social democratic government in Hungary, which came to power in 2006 on a false, rosy prospectus. Its prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, later admitted he had lied during the campaign when he denied the need for cuts. Riots swept the capital. Last week, the volatile Greeks elected a socialist government on a programme that looks similarly unrealistic. By getting his message across now, the shadow chancellor hopes to defuse popular anger when his axe falls. John Major was elected in 1992 on a pledge to resist Labour tax rises yet soon was forced to break his word in government. That betrayal lost the Conservative party its reputation for economic competence for a generation. Osborne wants it back.
So much for the case for pessimism. Excessive optimism may be even riskier.Cameron’s speech, described by two members of his shadow cabinet as merely “pretty good” and “workmanlike”, is more interesting in print. His use of the term “the big state” echoed Ronald Reagan, though the sentiments could have been culled from Thatcher’s guru, Keith Joseph. It cheered Conservative commentators no end. On a note of gentle scepticism, you might ponder how Cameron reconciles an attack on the big state with support for the elephantine National Health Service and the retention of Labour’s oncevilified Sure Start scheme.
“Why is our economy broken?” he asked. “It is more government that got us into this mess.” Perhaps. Some might say the bankers and the salesmen of salami-sliced, securitised mortgages for the poor, deserve a walk-on part too.
Less remarked upon was that the speech contained some startling revolutionary talk. “Who made the poorest poorer ... who made inequality greater?” he cried. “Not the wicked Tories. You, Labour, you’re the ones that did this to our society.” Reducing inequality without penalising the productive is the philosopher’s stone of politics. Can Dave really find it within five years?
Cameron’s promise of dramatic improvements in educational provision and therefore social mobility were equally ambitious. His pledge that “I see a country where the poorest children go to the best schools not the worst” followed on logically from his assurance that “I want every child to have the chances I had”. Eton costs £28,000 a year so the Tory leader will have his work cut out.
Perhaps his strongest line was his attack on the tax system. “If you’re a single mother with two kids, earning £150 a week, the withdrawal of benefits and the additional taxes mean that for every extra pound you earn, you keep just 4p,” he said. “What kind of incentive is that?” The Conservatives must challenge 96% tax rates on the very poorest, he said, as they once did Labour’s 98% on the richest. Unravelling Gordon’s fiendishly complicated tax credit and benefit system will be Iain Duncan Smith’s task.
I’m a Believer, the Monkees’ song, rang out at the end of his speech. I’m a believer when I see it — though I salute the breadth of Conservative One Nation ambition. There will be plenty of ammunition here for a new Labour leader such as David Miliband or Ed Balls by the time the 2014/15 election comes around. For the moment, however, Cameron may get away with his Blair-like rhetorical excess.
As for the prime minister, his gamble is wildly optimistic too, and in his case the bet will be called within months. Brown, a Keynesian true believer, predicted in The Daily Telegraph yesterday that the economy will bounce back swiftly. This statement logically follows on from his speech to the Labour conference, which avoided all talk of debt, deficits and cuts. Instead he offered us a sack-load of welfare state goodies.
“Cameron made an anti-big state speech,” says a former Labour minister angrily. “Gordon sees this as a heaven-sent opportunity to defend huge debt, huge government. It’s all wrong. We should be contesting them on every area of policy, exposing them on health, as the friends of producers not consumers.”
The prime minister is out on a limb. It’s not just the Tories who preach gloom. The Treasury is far less optimistic about the rate of recovery, which it predicts will be sluggish while unemployment rates will stubbornly refuse to come down fast. And even if we were to believe him would that assure Labour of victory? When Ken Clarke was chancellor in the last Tory government, with an election approaching, he really could boast of four years of sustained economic growth: he pleaded with commentators and public alike to acknowledge it. All in vain. Nobody listened. The voters were bitter about lost jobs and depressed house prices.
Left, right, centre and the opinion polls all appear to agree on one thing — the Tory leader is more popular than Brown. “If David Miliband were leader, Cameron would be finished,” snarls a Labour dissident as backbench rebels plot their next move against their leader. But rebellions have always failed. In an era of presidential-style politics in Britain, Labour has bet the farm on Gordon to lead them into an election. Perhaps that’s the most high-risk gamble of them all.
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