Only the Tories are election-ready

13 January 2007

The Conservatives are assumed to be in financial trouble. Fraser Nelson reveals that the truth is just the opposite: the Tory leader has set up a successful fundraising machine that will force Labour into abject dependence on the unions

All this explains why the Conservatives are confident that Mr Brown will not call an early election. Opinion polls show that 59 per cent of voters want an election within six months of Mr Blair’s departure. The Chancellor may want to capitalise on a honeymoon period. But elections cost £20 million to fight, and only one party in Westminster can raise this type of money. There will be no snap election because Labour cannot afford one.

Unless Mr Brown manages to find new donors, he faces an electoral nightmare: going to the polls with a campaign that is explicitly dependent upon the munificence of the trade unions, who today account for £3 of every £4 Labour raises. This prospect makes Conservatives salivate. ‘Gordon Brown leading a union-financed election campaign,’ says one shadow Cabinet member. ‘Very Old Labour.’ Mr Brown badly needs his personal mandate — yet he can only seek one by going cap in hand to his party’s union paymasters. All this nourishes the Tories’ core claim: that the Chancellor is a blocker of reform because his heart lies with the producer rather than the consumer, the interests of the unions rather than of the nation as a whole.

This largely explains why the talks on state-funding for political parties, adjudicated by Sir Hayden Philips, are taking so long. The Tories are in an increasingly strong position while Labour is facing deepening crisis. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, live in fear of being asked to repay the £2.4 million donation — the largest in their history — from the convicted perjurer Michael Brown.

At Conservative headquarters, party officials face the unaccustomed dilemma of how best to spend the new bounty. The Tory chairman, Francis Maude, never one to celebrate prematurely, stresses to staff that times are tough and that larger donations are growing less frequent.

Meanwhile, those holding the party purse strings have grown agitated about the impulses of Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron’s most influential lieutenant. ‘If we let Steve commission all the focus groups and polling he wants, we’d be as broke as Labour,’ says one party official. ‘Luckily, David has realised what was happening and sorted things out.’