alliance with Seb Coe, Hague’s chief of staff, and from the summer of 1999 Hague trusted their advice much more than that of the Shadow Cabinet. Some were concerned that he had become too reliant on a close-knit team of young advisers. ‘I remember going to an away day,’ says Parkinson. ‘There were only six of us there. I asked halfway through, “Where does the Shadow Cabinet fit into your thinking?” They were convinced that just this little group could do it on their own.’59
Platell and Wood encouraged Hague to take a line on issues that would play well with the tabloid press. Support for Tony Martin, a Norfolk farmer who shot dead an intruder breaking into his house, brought favourable coverage in the red-tops and the Daily Mail, but attracted criticism in other quarters. ‘Amanda rehabilitated William Hague, but not the Conservative Party,’ one former party aide observed. It was a press strategy designed to secure ‘core’ supporters, but it did not impress swing voters. ‘It was a shift towards a more robust kind of conservatism that spoke for the silent majority,’ Wood insists.60 Policy documents such as the Common Sense Revolution included measures to crack down on ill-discipline in schools and bogus asylum seekers. It was hoped that a tough stance on law and order and a commitment to lower taxes, through a ‘tax guarantee’, would be music to the ears of supporters. Hague memorably said that ‘If the Common Sense Revolution was a person it would be Ann Widdecombe,’ the tough-talking new Shadow Home Secretary. ‘It mattered more to party members that the leader was coming out with things that they agreed with than the fact that the party was not doing so well,’ admits Rick Nye, who joined Central Office as Director of Research in 1999. ‘It was the height of our introspection.’61
Only once did the Conservatives overtake Labour in the opinion polls – during the fuel crisis in September 2000. This owed more to the government’s unpopularity over high petrol duty than to any faith in the Tory alternative. Three years into government, New Labour had survived its first domestic crisis, when protesters blocked access to oil refineries, leading to a shortage of fuel. Voters were prepared to give Blair the benefit of the doubt after the crisis ended, and the polls soon reversed. Although the Conservative Party made some progress in local and European elections, its performances in parliamentary by-elections continued to be abysmal. A dire warning came at the Romsey by-election in May 2000, when a rock-solid Tory majority fell to the Liberal Democrats. If there was a moment at which to pause and question whether the approach pursued since the European elections was working, it was after the result in Romsey. The leadership pressed on regardless.
Portillo Returns and Disharmony Reigns
Victory at the Kensington and Chelsea by-election in November 1999 provided one glimmer of hope, even though it was the party’s safest seat in the country. The death of the veteran diarist and Tory MP Alan Clark paved the way for Michael Portillo to return to the Commons. Hague hoped that Portillo would strengthen the frontbench team; it was a sign of his continuing vulnerability that he extended the invitation so soon to a man who was widely seen as a rival for the Tory crown. ‘William had suffered a huge amount of undermining, which was compounded by the fact that we had a king across the water in the shape of Michael Portillo,’ says Widdecombe. ‘Everywhere I went, including Tory associations around the country, people asked me, “Have we got the right leader?” and there were a lot of people waiting for Michael to take over.’62
The former Defence Secretary had embarked on a great deal of soul-searching after his dismissal by the voters of Enfield Southgate in 1997. A series of television documentaries, including a journey by train across Spain tracing his family roots, had helped to rehabilitate his public image. He had also embarked on a political journey since his defeat, in an attempt to come to terms with why his party had been so comprehensively rejected. Hague’s team were not entirely convinced that his journey was complete. Soon after Portillo returned to Parliament, Nick Wood had lunch with him. ‘I asked him what he thought we should be doing, and he replied that he didn’t know. I then reeled off what we were planning to do, and he said absolutely nothing,’ recalls Wood. ‘So I went back to William and said that he seemed happy with everything. In reality, he wasn’t happy at all.’63
Within two months, Hague invited Portillo to replace Francis Maude as Shadow Chancellor. Maude had failed to land any blows on Gordon Brown, and had given a huge hostage to fortune when he predicted that Britain was heading for a ‘downturn made in Downing Street’ at a time when, apart from the bursting of the dot.com bubble, the economy showed little sign of slowing. Hague felt that Maude had not given him the support he expected from a Shadow Chancellor, and considered removing him from the Shadow Cabinet in the reshuffle. At Portillo’s insistence, Maude was kept on board, taking over as Shadow Foreign Secretary.64 Portillo quickly made an impact as Shadow Chancellor, reversing the party’s opposition to the minimum wage and the independence of the Bank of England, two of Labour’s most popular economic measures since 1997. However, he found a hardened opponent in Brown. ‘This was a Chancellor of the Exchequer who at that stage was at the top of his game, publicly and professionally,’ says Coe. ‘Neither Francis nor Michael could lay a glove on him.’65
As the leadership prepared for the final party conference before the general election, which was expected in spring 2001, one last effort was made to broaden the party’s appeal. Hague formed a new strategy group of senior shadow ministers and aides. Two new MPs, Tim Collins and Andrew Lansley, also joined the group. They had been at the heart of the successful 1992 general election campaign, and would become prominent figures in planning for the 2001 election. The strategy group discussed how the party should respond to the public’s continuing concerns over the state of the public services. While the government had been surprisingly cautious since 1997, sticking to Conservative spending plans and avoiding major reform, there was a strong view that the Tories should not even talk about health or education, because the public was far more inclined to trust Labour in those fields, as opinion polls had indicated, and they could not win the argument. Portillo and Maude, who had formed an alliance, disagreed, as did Archie Norman, who had recently been promoted to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Environment Secretary. ‘It became clear that we were completely empty on these issues, especially health,’ Norman recalls. ‘On education we did have one or two flagship policies on grammar schools and liberating universities by raising endowments, but that was about it.’66
Personality clashes and divisions over social issues soon came to the fore. The tensions focused around Portillo. ‘Once he returned the party was immediately divided,’ recalls one colleague from the Shadow Cabinet. ‘I did not recognise the Michael Portillo I knew from before.’ The stage was set for tensions to boil over at the conference in Bournemouth in October 2000. The mood had been upbeat until the Shadow Home Secretary, Ann Widdecombe, delivered her keynote speech. A combative performance in which she outlined a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to drugs established her as the conference darling. During her speech she announced fixed-penalty fines for people caught with cannabis, a policy that had not been discussed in full Shadow Cabinet. Widdecombe insists that it had gone through the ‘proper processes’, and that Hague had signed the policy off. However, as soon as the press were briefed on the day of Widdecombe’s speech, an argument developed about whether those caught would receive a criminal record. The police questioned how the policy could be enforced, and Widdecombe believes her colleagues used the controversy as an opportunity to attack her.67 The row descended into farce when the Mail on Sunday, prompted by a former Central Office official, asked members of the Shadow Cabinet whether they had taken cannabis in their youth. When several replied that they had, the policy collapsed. The Shadow Cabinet could not agree about a supposedly flagship policy at its last conference before the general election. It gave the impression of a party in total disarray and utterly unfit for office.
The