Brian Monteith: 'Same old Tories' would rather have a new view

Published on Sunday 3 October 2010 16:37

Blackpool no more, Brighton no more, Bournemouth no more, Thatcher no more. It has been central to David Cameron's successful strategy that the Conservative Party must reposition itself so that most damning and damaging of phrases, "same old Tories", could not cast them outside the boundaries of electoral acceptability.

Over the years the out-of-season seaside resorts have been thrown to the wolves as they became out of fashion, defining the old politics of a bygone age that Cameron wished to leave behind; the early Thatcher with her curt (but correct) middle class diction, later her triumphalism of the eighties election victories, Norman Tebbit extolling his father looking for work on his bike, the murderous confrontation with the IRA, interminable arguments over Europe bursting on to the conference floor - and of course William Hague being reminded every two years about that speech in Blackpool when he was only 16.

The Blackpool and Bournemouth conferences provided the Conservatives' opponents with a useful political Groundhog Day with which to beat-up first Hague, then Duncan-Smith and then Howard. It was a memory the electorate did not wish to waken up to in 2001 or 2005.

So it became Birmingham, then Manchester and now Birmingham again, with the Cameron caravan returning to England's second city with the job done. The old perceptions were challenged, and to some extent changed, and it is now time to write a new history and create new perceptions, and no doubt new, damaging myths, if Labour has anything to do with it.

It should be one hell of an occasion, for this conference is the first time in 14 years that a Conservative leader has been able to address the party faithful as a Prime Minister. There are many in the party who begrudge Cameron his moment of adulation, believing that he should have won outright against an exhausted Labour government that presided over the worst economic bust in living memory, and bemoaning that he could have extracted a better, more dominant role from his coalition parties.

I think the criticism that Cameron's initial attempt to be a different kind of Tory by failing to challenge Labour's largesse and instead talking of sharing the proceeds of growth is fair. It was a hostage to fortune that prevented him from claiming he had seen the recession coming and knew what to do about it. He didn't and he doesn't.

Cameron, and his chancellor, have a plan for reducing the deficit, but that is not the same as saying they have a plan for taking us out of the recession. For the deficit there will be austere cuts but for the recession there's an awful lot of hope and expectation that the private sector will rescue us without really understanding how to help.Indeed many of the government's plans for discreet taxes and regulations will only slow the recovery down.

There will be little carping or even public exuberance, however, for it is the looming news of the public spending cuts, to be announced in a fortnight's time, which will shape this conference. The party's critics will want to play up any celebrations over Cameron's relative success so they can say "Same old Tories" and say it with conviction. Any election celebrations must therefore be muted; champagne will be publicly barred again leaving the clink of glasses to be heard behind closed doors.

The party's relief at returning to power will make the emotions run high and hard to contain. The prospect of drunken hedonistic Young Conservatives being photographed by the political paparazzi and splashed across some less than sympathetic tabloids is more a question of when and how many rather than if. The rebranding of YCs as Conservative Future only serves to make the headlines more scathing, What Future? Same old Tories.

It is such a killer phrase because it means so many things to different people. To some, "Same old Tories" will mean savage spending cuts even though public spending rose in all 18 years of the last Conservative government - and even though Alistair Darling had admitted his cuts would be greater than Thatcher's (by about 4 billion).

In Scotland the "Same old Tories" tag conjures up additional images that has made the description toxic brand a clich. Whatever the fairness and accuracy of the mythology, Scotland as the Poll Tax Guinea pigs (that Thatcher advised strongly against) and Scotland being denied a devolved parliament (that she claimed was only a priority for politicians) "Same old Tories" just adds to the party's woes north of the border.

"Same old Tories" never means tenants buying their own council houses, the personal tax cuts, trade union barons being slayed and strikes becoming a distant memory. "Same old Tories" never conjures up the transformation of the car industry or the liberation of the resource-sapping nationalised industries.

For this the Tories have only themselves to blame. It is the victors that write the history and they never created their own myths about themselves. The only lasting myth the Conservatives contributed consciously to was the "Winter of discontent" that was back in 1979 and was authored by the media. It was still being used in election broadcasts in 1987 but was losing its effect then and has now become a dim memory.

If Cameron is to truly triumph his legacy in eight or maybe 12 years time must include the rewriting of British economic and political history so that "Same old Tories" becomes empty and meaningless because he has saved the country but without the pain of Thatcher.

He should not stop there.With the arrival of Ed Miliband as his new challenger thanks to the return of trade union power inside the Labour Party, Cameron must go on the offensive and create his own myths. Only when the phrase "Same old Labour" rings true, meaning awful things to the majority who hear or read it, will his job be complete. l Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org