Why are the Tories not marmalising Magic Grandpa and the Marxist maniacs?

During most British general election campaigns in which the Tories are in serious contention there comes a point when senior Conservatives start complaining that the party’s campaign is insufficiently robust and not taking the fight to the other parties. Nervousness about the result spills into worried Tory donors trading gossip with each other about what is really going wrong inside CCHQ. MPs and activists grumble. Reports surface of splits on strategy. In 1987, on wobbly Thursday, the fractious group around Margaret Thatcher was so worried that they might lose to Labour and Neil Kinnock that they fell out spectacularly. David Young grabbed Norman Tebbit by the lapels. The Tories won by  102.

This time too the Tories have a decent polling lead and are nervous, wondering whether it is going well enough to produce the breakthrough they need for a working majority to “get Brexit done.”

If you want to understand why they are playing it as they are – basing everything on several short messages delivered in a tightly disciplined fashion, bordering on the dull at times – it is worth remembering that the party is nervous for good reason and traumatised by its experience at the hands of voters in recent decades. The Tories may be a famed electoral force, ruthless in the pursuit of power, but they last won a majority of more than 21 seats in that Thatcher, Young and Tebbit election in 1987. That was 32 years ago. Ancient history to young voters. If your 18th birthday was in 1992, when the Tories secured a majority of 21 under John Major, you are now 45.

Following their heavy defeats in the New Labour years, the Tories have fought three general elections and ended up with mixed results and only one small working majority (of 12) in 2015.

In 2010, David Cameron against Gordon Brown made the mistake of establishing a campaign machine that while well-funded did not have a single manager or a coherent message. The party leader can never – successfully – run the campaign themselves. They are the retail offer personified, constantly busy out there on the trail and in the media. Back at campaign headquarters there must be a one name response to the question: who is in charge? In 2010 George Osborne thought it was him. Yet there was shoeless strategist Steve Hilton flying around the office doing goodness knows what. Lynton Crosby, the Australian guru, was there but not in charge. Other senior figures attempted to smooth the way, but the ineffective campaign leaked. The Tories fell short. And falling short in 2010 had grave consequences later. It meant the Tory Lib Dem coalition created the ghastly Fixed Term Parliaments Act (requiring a two thirds majority for an early election) which has been responsible for a considerable amount of the grief of the last year in which a zombie parliament stuck on Brexit would not dissolve itself, until last month, exhausted, it finally gave in.

In the 2015 general election there was a very clear structure and rigour at CCHQ but mid-campaign concern spread in the Tory tribe that that they were not setting about Labour’s Ed Miliband with sufficient ruthlessness. All this was forgotten after they won a majority, steered by Crosby. They knocked out Miliband and surged through Lib Dem seats on the way.

In 2017 the Tories made the most dreadful mess of it by having a leader whose character, it turned out, was not what they thought it was at the beginning of proceedings. Theresa May’s appeal to voters, it turned out, was very broadly based but also shallow and vulnerable to scrutiny. When in the course of about ten days the punters figured her out she, and her party, were done for. Having gone into the campaign in entitled fashion expecting something approaching a landslide, May was rumbled.

What about this time? It looked, for a while, earlier in this 2019 campaign when the Conservatives got off to such a poor start, that there would be a classic panic in the Tory tribe about their prospects. Boris Johnson seemed uncomfortable. There was a cabinet resignation and… and… some other stuff went wrong which, let us be honest, it is hard to recall because so much has happened since in this thrilling campaign.

Wait, no, of course this general election has not been remotely thrilling. At times it has been so dull that it has seemed as though it is not really happening. Perhaps this is because British politics has been operating at such a level of parliamentary intensity or collective insanity for so long now that it is impossible now to turn up the dial to produce anything that induces genuine excitement.

It’s also almost December. We all – politicians, media and voters alike, want to be concentrating on going to Christmas parties and looking forward to a rest. Instead, we must, in the political journalism game anyway spend a Friday evening watching the BBC Question Time general election leaders edition. Although, as I write this, having watched the four leaders not be much use in a terrible format, I am winding down by watching the South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim on the BBC’s Later With Jools Holland programme. Abdullah Ibrahim, an artist originally known as Dollar Brand, is now 85 and still a mesmerising player. He was much better to watch than any of the party leaders.

How did they each fare? If you watched BBC Question Time you will have formed a view. If you didn’t Jack Dickens was there for Reaction and his detailed report is on our site.

The Tories will be a little happier with Boris Johnson’s performance on Friday after his low wattage performance in the ITV leaders fight earlier this week.

But it was still a safety first approach. Anyone looking for Johnson to really start punching on Labour’s quite extraordinary manifesto – with its epic plans for sudden increased spending and a ruinous approach to taxation that would lead to wealth fleeing the country – will have been disappointed.

This is quite deliberate and careful on the part of the Conservative party campaign, to avoid monstering passionately Corbyn and his crowd – who have been termed by critics Magic Grandpa and the Marxist Maniacs. Those appalled by the thought of a Corbynite government and a Marxist Chancellor of the Exchequer, who want to see loud denunciations in robust ideological terms to defend wealth creation, have so far been disappointed.

The judgment made by Isaac Levido, the young Australian protege of Crosby running the campaign, is that what is needed to reach blue collar Britain is something more measured and rigorously concentrated.

As the campaign has developed the early mutterings from older hands among the Tory donor class and others that Levido seemed very young, too dry and not a great communicator have faded. Levido, it seems, has established his authority at CCHQ and they are sticking to their strategy.

The not so hidden story of the last election was that Theresa May altered the electoral map of England and Wales, flipping Leave seats Tory. She just fell short in the execution in too many seats. Those seats are now marginal and need an extra push from Johnson. Professor John Curtice, the leading polling guru who was in conversation at the latest Reaction reader event in London this week, goes so far as to say that if Johnson wins he will owe his victory in large part to May. There is something in that.

Take a seat such as Bishop Auckland, in County Durham – a pro-Leave seat held continuously by Labour since 1935. The Conservatives have never won it and the last non-Labour MP was Liberal Aaron Curry, who won it for the Liberal National party. In 1997 Labour’s Don Foster held the seat with a majority of 21,064.

Bishop Auckland is now number 12 on the Tory target list of marginals. Under Theresa May the Labour majority was cut to 502.

The Tory campaign this time rests on tipping over those target seats in the North, the Midlands and Wales in such numbers that it outweighs the losses they look set to suffer in Remain seats in London and parts of the South.

The way to do it, the Tories have concluded, is to not be distracted by calls for more ideological heft or noise. Instead, they must calmly reactivate the pro-Brexit vote and constantly reiterate the message they have focus-grouped and tested – get Brexit done, Corbyn isn’t a Prime Minister, and move the country on – and aim for those voters. That will be combined with a manifesto that someone involved in constructing it describes as “fantastic”, although the authors of the last one said something similar until it blew up on the launch pad.

Hey, it’s the Tory party. They have two and a bit weeks left for screw-ups or a mid-order batting collapse in cricketing terms. Time yet for a tightening of the polls and a panic. As of now, they have a coherent plan and they are executing it.