15 June 2017
The Need For A New Leader
The Conservatives need to move on.
By John Watson
It is hard to know how to take Teresa May’s decision to remain Prime Minister. Is this just an interim step while the Conservative party considers behind closed doors who should lead it next, or does she really think that she can still regain the confidence of the British people, following the misjudgments of her campaign? We will soon find out, but I must say that I hope it is the former because the time has come to select a prime minister of quite a different stamp.
The Conservative’s link with the Democratic Unionists will give them an initial majority of two, which in practice is rather bigger than you would think as there are seven Sinn Fein MPs who traditionally do not take up their seats. Still, there is plenty to go wrong: a breakdown between the Democratic Unionists and the Conservatives under the pressures of Brexit, perhaps; or a combination of lost by elections and a decision by Sinn Fein to help Mr Corbyn defeat the government on a matter of confidence; or even a group of breakaway Tory MPs appalled at the abandonment of their favoured Brexit strategy. Whichever it is, it is likely to be followed by an election which the Conservatives will probably lose. Suppose they do. Suddenly there is a reversal of approach to the negotiation and the country’s stance on Brexit softens. The City becomes less important and we confirm to the EU that we will not walk away without a deal. Well, if you’re a Remainer you might like that. Off we go towards free movement of people as a price for membership of the market.
For the government to negotiate Brexit against the possibility of fundamental change is, of course, far from satisfactory. Such a change would bring complete confusion, not to mention the effective shortening of the article 50 period, and it is important that mechanisms are put in place to reduce the potential damage. We are not at war so there is no argument for a coalition between parties which represent different factions within the electorate, but it is important that there should be some common ground between the main parties as to the way in which the Brexit negotiations should be carried out so that, if the need arises, one can take over from the other. To begin with, they need to understand each other’s positions. If, for example, the Governments reference to “no deal being better than a bad deal” is more about negotiating stance than about where they want to end up, it should be something of which the opposition parties are well aware. If Labour’s comment that there “will” be a deal is actually conditional on there being a deal which does not require free movement of labour, the Government should be aware of that too. It is not unusual for leaders or prominent members of opposite parties to discuss the main issues of the day. The Labour leader John Smith was said to enjoy a late-night whisky with John Major, and Harold Wilson gave unofficial advice to Margaret Thatcher. Probably there are many other links too. At the moment that sort of liaison is badly needed but it is hard to imagine that it is quite Mrs May’s thing. That is the first reason why she needs to go.
There is another reason to why we need a softer Prime Minister. The election results seem to show a generational split with the young feeling disenfranchised over University Fees, a shortage of homes and cutbacks in school finance. These are important issues on which new thinking is badly required, but the resetting of the balance between taxation and these needs will need some flexibility. Again it is probably time for a new broom at the top, a leader who listens to what Labour and SDP voters had been saying and seeks common ground with the other party leaders of those reforms on which everyone can agree.
If these are the practical points, the psychological points are stronger. The electorate clearly lost confidence in Mrs May during the campaign and it is hard to see how that confidence could ever be rebuilt. But more important than the psychology of the electorate is Mrs May’s own mindset. She is said to have told the 1922 committee that having got them into the mess she would get them out again. That is brave thinking but not very practical. Any commercial organisation will tell you that if somebody gets something badly wrong the first thing to do is to get someone else to take charge of the issue. That is not a matter of blame but simply that when there has been a disaster the person clearing it up needs to be clear-sighted. If they created it, their vision will always be warped by a feeling of guilt, by a tendency to justify their past actions. There is no room for that at the moment. Clear-sightedness is everything and just as Mr Cameron did not regard himself as the right person to follow through after the Brexit vote, Mrs May needs to hand over the running of the country to her successor.
That is not intended as a criticism of what Mrs May has tried to achieve. Much is being written about how she should have taken more care not to alienate her core supporters. Some point to the loss of the triple lock on pensions, others to the means testing of the winter fuel allowance; then there is the ill-fated dementia tax. Judged by narrow interest those changes may have been foolish but there is a different perspective to them too. I suspect that Mrs May would tell us that the grey-haired generation are being given more of the available resources than the country can afford and that it is necessary to push the balance back. She must have known that this was risky but have believed that it could be done on the back of her own popularity. That was hubris if you like but it was honourable and principled hubris.
Still, look at it in the round. We have an alienated younger generation and that is bad. The country is divided 50:50 between parties saying very different things. Yet pull away the rhetoric and the problems for both are much the same. How do we balance immigration control with the need to participate in European markets? How do we split limited resources between services? If taxes are to increase, how will that effect GDP? In the end these questions are practical as much as political. No one has a monopoly of wisdom on any of them. From the public’s point of view we need some pooling of ideas and a movement towards cooperation. Labour, on the back of its gains, will quite understandably not start that. The first move, then, must come from the Conservatives. Now that Mrs May is back in office, the whispering in the committee rooms should begin. Then the party should present a more consensual leader to the public.
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