to regain a sense of discipline and purpose after years of infighting and recrimination. But the personal feuds and ideological differences that had beset the parliamentary party since the early 1990s threatened to return with a vengeance after the defeat in May 2005. Annihilation had been averted, but the Tories had recovered little ground.
The emergence of a new generation of modernising Conservative politicians, led by David Cameron and George Osborne, untainted by the dying days of the last Tory government, is pivotal to this story. If the Conservative Party’s decline was shaped by the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, the twists and turns in its resurrection have been influenced by the other commanding figure in British politics of recent times: Tony Blair. By learning the lessons from New Labour’s electoral success under Blair, this new generation of modernising Tories have succeeded where their predecessors so visibly failed.
In December 2005, David Cameron achieved something few before him had ever accomplished. In just four and a half years he had gone from novice backbencher to Leader of the Opposition. He would have the same amount of time to pull the party back to the centre of British politics and reinvigorate it to the point of being a credible alternative government. It would be an audacious undertaking for a thirty-nine-year-old politician. The second half of Back from the Brink tells the story of how Cameron has sought to change his party. In essence, he has tried to heal old wounds and restore a sense of balance to Conservatism by reviving a concern for social reform.
Cameron’s project to modernise the party has given it a new lease of life, yet at times it has seemed perilously close to falling apart. There have been three moments when his leadership was under severe pressure: after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007; in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis in October 2008; and during the expenses crisis in May 2009. On each occasion, the Conservative Party’s recovery was at stake, as was Cameron’s authority as leader. The fact that the Cameron project was in peril on each occasion exposes the flaws in the party’s strategic direction, but at the same time it throws light on the tactical agility of its leadership in bouncing back.
David Cameron’s mission to revive the fortunes of the Conservative Party has encountered reversals, yet it remains intact. Whether voters believe that he and his party are ready to take on the responsibility of governing the country is still to be seen. In Gordon Brown, the Conservatives face a battle-hardened Prime Minister who has been at or near the summit of British politics for the best part of two decades, both in opposition and in government. Brown is a great survivor: he has seen off two plots from within his Cabinet to remove him in the last two years. For the man Cameron describes as ‘a steamroller who just keeps going’, the general election will be a hard-fought battle to the end.
Much is at stake for both the old warhorse and the young pretender of British politics. For Brown, leading Labour into a fourth term would represent the most impressive recovery by an incumbent government in modern history. For Cameron, forming a government would end the longest uninterrupted period in opposition his party has endured since 1832. A fourth successive election defeat, however narrow, would represent a massive failure for everything Cameron has sought to achieve in the past four years, and would reduce the party to a state of acrimony and division. If the Conservatives cannot win amidst the economic gloom that pervades the country in 2010, when can they?
Based on more than 120 interviews with figures from across the Conservative Party – from successive leaders to representatives of the grassroots – this book tells the story of how a once formidable fighting force in British politics stared into the abyss before making its way back to be in contention for power. By talking to a wide range of party insiders, both on and off the record, I hope to have built up a candid and unvarnished account that sheds new light on a dramatic tale of decline and renaissance.
The Conservative Party may have come back from the brink of disaster, but rediscovering its winning formula has been far from easy. As David Cameron and his party prepare for their steep climb to the summit in the months ahead, it would probably be best if they did not look down. Theirs has been a long, harsh and often painful journey. I hope that readers will find it a compelling one.
Peter Snowdon
December 2009
ONE The Makings of a Landslide
As the sun rose on a fine spring day, an exuberant Tony Blair left a rally on the South Bank of the River Thames and headed for his Islington home to catch a few hours’ sleep. Blair had spent much of the early morning soaking up the adulation of friends, colleagues and supporters. ‘A new dawn has broken, has it not?’ he exclaimed to a party that had not won a general election for twenty-three years. On 1 May 1997 the country had placed its faith in Labour after the party had spent almost two decades in the wilderness. Friday, 2 May would usher in a new regime in Downing Street and a new era for British politics.
There was not much left of the old regime. It had been swept from office in a landslide. ‘I remember driving back to London from Cornwall at 5 a.m. and realising that there were great swathes of the West Country that no longer had a Conservative MP. I didn’t drive through a single Conservative seat until Wiltshire.’1 Sebastian Coe, the former double Olympic gold medallist, was one of 178 Tory MPs who lost their seats. From Lands End to John o’Groats, voters had purged themselves of a party that once dominated Britain’s electoral landscape. Half the parliamentary party had been wiped out overnight: only 165 were left standing by the morning. The party had polled just 31 per cent of the vote, its lowest showing since 1832, the year of the Great Reform Act. Middle England had deserted the party in droves. Leafy Birmingham Edgbaston, true blue since the Second World War, was the first of many seats to fall to New Labour’s advance as Tony Blair led his party to victory with an overall majority of 179, a post-war record. Not one Conservative MP was returned to Westminster from Scotland or Wales. The surviving rump represented the outskirts of London, the Home Counties and a retinue of rural shires and market towns. The Liberal Democrats, recording the best result for a third party since 1929, sliced into Tory heartlands, picking up votes that had been cast tactically to ensure total defeat of John Major’s government.
Seven Cabinet ministers lost their seats, including the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, and the charismatic Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo. Portillo’s defeat in Enfield Southgate, a plush suburban district of north London, was the biggest scalp of the night. His should have been a safe seat. Iain Duncan Smith, a backbench MP in nearby Chingford and Woodford Green, had realised that he and Portillo were in trouble. ‘Labour was all over seats like mine and Portillo’s. We spent the final week of the campaign working my seat as if it was a marginal. I held on but everywhere around me went.’2
For some time before the votes were cast, Michael Portillo had been contemplating life in opposition. Halfway through the campaign he summoned Andrew Cooper and Michael Simmonds, two bright young aides from Central Office, to his home, and gave them a piece of paper on which he had sketched out the themes for a leadership campaign in the aftermath of a Conservative defeat, asking them to finish it off.3 Portillo had passed up what might have been his best opportunity to lead the party only two years previously. When Major threw down the gauntlet in June 1995 by putting himself forward for re-election as party leader after three years of backbiting, the ‘darling of the Right’ refused to stand against him. It soon emerged that he was in fact planning to challenge Major if the contest went into a second round, after engineers were spotted installing telephone lines outside what was to be his campaign headquarters. ‘I appeared happy to wound but afraid to strike: a dishonourable position,’ he later confessed.4 Two years on, Portillo’s hopes of making a second attempt began to slip away when an opinion poll in the Observer just days before the election suggested that Enfield Southgate was too close to call. ‘Tell me why this is wrong,’ he asked Cooper, who oversaw the party’s private polling.5