Why Coalition suits Cameron and the Conservatives
Marjorie Smith When David Cameron won the leadership of the Conservative party in late 2005 he promised to make people, "feel good about being Conservatives again" and said he wanted, "to switch on a whole new generation", this helped him to be seen as the fresh-face of a new form of Conservatism. The Tories trusted him to make them electable and to win back power after three successive Labour victories.
In fact the only obstacle to Cameronism becoming a notable political phenomenal was that he became the leader of a party that was utterly unelectable, rightly identified as a group of obnoxious reactionary right-wing ideologues. The Conservative party pre-2006 really was a motley collection of unpleasant right-wingers who had retreated to a core vote strategy many moons before. Their major problem was that the same core vote (like the Daily Telegraph readership) was slowly eroding as the core was dying out.
Cameron's tight little leadership clique readily understood why the Tories had been unelectable for so long. It didn't need leopard skin shoe-wearing empty vessels to point out that the Tories were seen as the 'Nasty Party'. Cameron readily acknowledged that detoxifying the Tory brand was to be the core of his electoral strategy because it was his greatest hurdle in pursuit of regaining power for the Tories.
However, it should be noted that party activists have always looked at him, purely as a tool to win an election. The Tories historical raison d'être has always been to represent the class interests of their backers. In Cameron they clearly had a thoroughbred leader whose background, upbringing and hinterland were firmly embedded in classic Conservatism. It is only because of his Conservative credentials that he has been able to take the party with him on a successful journey to deceive the British electorate.
Ha and his cohorts such as Osborne, Gove, Steve Hilton, Edward Lewellyn and others recognised that they needed to define the Thatcher era (and its political legacy) as an interrregum that was far too driven by solely focusing on neo-liberal economic thinking at the expense of other more traditional Tory values.
Intelligent Tories realised therefore that they had to not just adopt policies that echoed the concerns of the electorate (especially those in the middle ground) but also change the perception of their party as a right-wing, ideologically-driven, Thatcherite rump that had learned little from three successive election defeats.
Perversely, the present-day Conservative Parliamentary party is probably much more Thatcherite and hence, ideologically-driven that it was, even when Thatcher was at the peak of her powers. It is though, a monument to the success of the Cameron project that the Tory backbenches are pretty mute, even if they have to accept that some Ministerial posts have to be reserved for Cameron's useful idiots.
In fact, early on under this Conservative Government, many Thatcherite sympathizers clearly identified David Laws as one of their own and there was genuine sadness amongst the Tories about his defenestration. Law's appointment as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and his subsequent harsh pronouncements about public spending was the keystone moment that cemented the deal that has produced a Conservative Government.
Discontent may well be brewing on the backbenches, but the Tories are now in the back seat of Ministerial cars and whilst kow-towing to a few Lib Dem civil liberty issues may be the price of power, it is a relatively trivial price to pay. This is not only because the present-day Tory parliamentary party is overwhelmingly libertarian and hence pre-disposed to support such civil liberty issues, but because they can see that the economic policies being driven forward by Osborne and other ministers are, at their core, anti-statist, pro-market and fundamentally unreconstructed Thatcherite in sheep's clothing.
The great success of Cameronism is that what could be termed as mainstream right-wing forces are now intertwined with the acceptable face of the centre-right in a coalition of interests that is fronted by an apparent duopoly of reasonableness serving in the national interest. This is the big lie at the heart of this current administration. It is also the conceit that the Tories as well as Clegg and his cohorts want to continue to persevere with to the detriment of this country's medium and long-term interests.
Both Cameron and Clegg all too readily understand that their 'arrangement' means that they are inextricably linked until at least the lead-up to the next election and probably beyond. Only by having an electoral pact not to stand against each other can they hope to continue down the political path they have chosen. For Cameron, that path can continue as before or lean ever rightwards. For Clegg, there is no choice, his political career entirely depends on Cameron's fortunes (both nationally and internally in the Tory party).
Hence Clegg's room for manoeuvre is extremely limited, with his political career entirely dependent on the good grace of Cameron and on the electoral fortunes of the Conservatives. It should be no real surprise, considering his background, that Clegg seems extremely comfortable with the current arrangements. He has assumed a self-confident pomposity that is already emerging as he preens himself at the dispatch box.
Therefore, what we have is a Tory-led administration that is Conservative in all but name and that will attempt to shift the political debate rightwards as it seeks to embed a centre-right political philosophy as the pole by which political discourse in the UK will take place. Cameron and Osborne have already had some success in undermining electoral support for the public sector as part of this approach.
However, as Cameron has rightly tried to detoxify the Tory brand, there are valuable electoral lessons to be learned from his approach and apparent success. There is undoubtedly a residual toxicity about the Tories. The mere fact that they could not win a clear majority speaks volumes as to their electoral appeal. Despite the most fortuitous political circumstances and a pliant media on their side, the British electorate refused to give them a blank cheque.
It is quite apparent that the word Conservative is still laden with appalling folk-memories for a large number of people and that their perception of Conservatism is still largely negative. There is a residual belief that a central tenet of modern day Toryism is that it is brutish and harsh. However, a major consequence of the current administration is that behind the mask of the coalition, Osborne and his ilk are able to slash public expenditure by an amount not even dreamt of by Thatcher.
This is why, at every turn, this coalition of class interests, should be portrayed for what it is, namely a Conservative Government. Any continued reference to 'the Coalition' only serves to camouflage what this Tory dominated Government is all about. Make no mistake, this Tory Government is red in tooth and claw when it comes to the public sector. It must be portrayed for what it is.
If the Labour party refuses to acknowledge that this is anything but a Conservative Government, there is also a further positive side effect for Labour's pursuit of disillusioned Lib Dem voters. In that ignoring the Lib Dem element of the coalition avoids provoking knee-jerk defensiveness from Lib Dem loyalists, this in turn helps to negate any motivation such activists could feed off. Direct attacks on the Lib Dems only serve to encourage a siege mentality which leads to a binding together of most of their party, it raises their profile in the media and it gives the false impression that the Government is actually a true coalition of common interests, when it quite clearly is not.
It is the Tories that are in power in reality, not the Lib Dems, we have to take the fight to the Tories.
