All is not lost for the Tories

The starting pistol is about to be fired, and the race is set to last until next October. Political obsessives will have enough material to entertain them, 24/7. The rest of the populace may well grow terribly bored. The standing of politicians is already much lower among the public than it ought to be. A Punch and Judy show lasting for more than a year will not put that right. Yet this could give the Tories an opportunity. Many voters are fed up with cliches, being talked down to and claptrap abuse. They want a serious debate and a party that offers them one could reap a good harvest. Step forward, Mr Sunak.

It might be thought that this was impossible. So much has gone wrong, while “Time for a Change” is the most potent slogan in electoral politics and the latest poll gives Labour a fourteen-point lead. Even so, there are two important and related factors that should hold Tories back from despair.

First, “Time for a Change” is not enough. An opposition cannot guarantee to prosper merely by saying: “It’s our turn.” When Attlee, Wilson and Blair won power, there was excitement, even a vision: a sense that the country would now be galvanised – that a better future was on offer. Under Sir Stumbler, galvanised? A better future, excitement: really? The man has qualities. He is offering decency and worthy dullness: I am sure he wishes that he was up against Boris Johnson. As the election approaches, he will no doubt try a bit of necromancy, and should be able to summon the help of that squeaky little political ghost, Nadine Dorries. There might be other would-be revenants: what was the name of that girl who took over from Boris, for five minutes?

Rishi Sunak has to brush all that aside. The PM faces a double challenge. He should focus everyone’s mind on the future, while acknowledging that a great deal has gone wrong. In this country, it often seems as if nothing works. The air traffic control system breaks down. So do a number of school buildings. Railwaymen indulge in guerilla strikes. Arthur Scargill appears to have taken over some of the medical trade unions. A nurse, who looked like an advert for everything admirable in her profession, turns out to have given herself over to evil. This goes well beyond party politics, but it will reinforce the widespread feeling that it is not just school concrete which is crumbling. So, it sometimes appears, is the very country.

Labour will say that it is all the Tories’ fault. One cannot blame them: that is the way in which all oppositions assail their opponents. Yet Sunak would be wiser to adopt a new tactic. Let him start by admitting that a great deal has gone wrong. This is partly due to the two five-letter words Covid and Putin. But there is a longer-standing problem, which has defeated all governments of all parties. How can we ensure that the public services actually serve the public? How can we offer the taxpayer a new pledge: that the pound taxed from him and spent on his behalf will obtain the same value for money as the pound which he himself spends? Although this is a Gospel of Perfection and thus unattainable, ministers should commit themselves to working towards that goal.      

There is a corollary. Many Conservatives have been far too ready to blame officials for anything that goes wrong. In reality, the difficulties often arise from weak leadership by ministers who are not up to the job and therefore oscillate between an abject dependence on their officials and petulance when any difficulty is encountered. Over more decades than I care to remember, I have come to one conclusion about the civil service. The best of them welcome strong leadership: ministers who know what they want and can persuade – or even coerce – their colleagues into agreeing with them. As for ministers who whine on about their civil servants, a bad workman blames his tools.

So there ought to be a new concordat between the politicians and their officials. It would help, of course, if ministers were usually appointed on merit and then stayed in post for longer than a twinkling of a Truss, but that is for the future.  There ought also to be a new priority, led from No. 10 on a range of issues. The government should set out to win the intellectual argument. The environment, immigration, education, the health service, housing: these are all difficult areas and anyone who believes that there are easy answers has not begun to understand the questions. But there are some bright ministers and advisers who have been bending their brains on these matters. We need to hear more about their conclusions.

Equally, it would be foolish to underestimate the public’s appetite for seriousness. I suspect that many people are aware that we live in difficult times and that there are no simple solutions. This is a Prime Minister who is fully able to cope with complex questions. If he almost seemed to be taking the voters into his confidence and treating them as intellectual equals, he should not find it hard to outgun the earnest Stumbler. 

While the PM was taking the high road, his party should also deal with the low one. British politics will always have an adversarial element. Rishi Sunak needs an attack-dog and there is an obvious one to hand: Kemi Badenoch. She can bring wit and novelty to the political cock-pit, and could help to strengthen an audacious claim: that there is time for a change and Rishi Sunak is the man to deliver it. 

That brings us to the second reason why Tories should not abandon hope. British public opinion is volatile. Theresa May took a seventeen-point lead into her general election and lost almost all of it. Is Keir Starmer a better campaigner than she was? So: it is indeed time for a change and a new direction. We still have a new-enough PM.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life