James Forsyth reviews the week in politics
The Tories go on holiday this summer knowing that it may be the last proper break they get for five years, or possibly longer. Once in government, taking the whole of August off won’t be a possibility for either ministers or special advisers: the pace of events won’t allow it. Indeed, one of the few things cheering people up on the Labour side at the moment is telling their Tory opposite numbers — or their spouses — just how crushing the workload in government is.
No one in the Cameron circle wants to be publicly caught talking like the election is in the bag: complacent talk costs seats and all that. But in private, conversation has moved on to the two ‘M’s: what mandate is the party looking for and how can it make the machinery of government work for it?
Tony Blair is the model, but the model of what to avoid and not what to emulate. The Cameroons are confident they can learn from his mistakes. They point to his failure to act decisively in his first few years in the job, the moment when he was strongest. In contrast to Labour’s post-election Budget, which stuck to Tory spending plans, the Tories are planning one with significant cuts in it.
The Tories are also determined not to make Blair’s error of hoarding a broad but shallow mandate. They know that they need to have clear public support if they are going to take on those vested interests that will try to block reform and cuts. So we can expect a conference speech and a manifesto that are far more explicit than anything we have heard to date about where the axe will fall. Having won the argument that cuts are necessary, Tory strategists say, Cameron will begin to talk in specifics about them at conference.
The second mistake that they believe Blair made was in not getting the Whitehall machine to work for him until it was too late. Those close to Cameron believe the leadership can avoid this trap. They point to the fact that unlike Blair and Brown, Cameron and Osborne have prior experience of government — both served as special advisers during the Major years. They have also picked up tips from veterans of Blair’s Downing Street, a few of whom the Tories consult regularly on policy. The main message of these conversations has been the importance of making sure that civil servants know what ministers’ priorities are.
It is no coincidence that the most successful minister of Blair’s first term was David Blunkett, who took full advantage of the opportunities in opposition to spell out his agenda to his future permanent secretary. Intriguingly, the man Blunkett was talking to then — Michael Bichard — is now running the Institute for Government. This is a new, non-partisan body which is trying to improve governance in Britain. As part of this mission, it is offering advice to the Tories; trying, as one wag jokes, to house-train them pre-emptively.
The Institute is producing some fascinating work on the structure of government. But perhaps one of its most important functions is to act as a safe space where senior civil servants and the Tories can meet and sound each other out. As a sign of what the Civil Service expects to happen at the next election, the mandarinate are eager to attend any event where they have a chance to whisper in Tory ears.
As a recent report by Conservative Intelligence — an offshoot of the influential website Conservative Home — revealed, much thought has gone into how Downing Street will operate under the Tories. It is my understanding that the party has even consulted with New Zealand’s National party about that country’s ‘Beehive’ model of government, where all Cabinet ministers are housed in one building. It is uncertain how seriously the Tories are taking this idea. But it would be a way to avoid the emergence of an inner and outer circle of ministers, something that is already threatening to become a problem — note the recent grumblings about the cliqueishness of the Cameron operation. Some shadow cabinet members feel that they receive little love and attention from the leadership and that they are cut out of the policy and strategy process. However, this cuts both ways. Some green papers are almost exclusively the work of Oliver Letwin and the policy unit because the shadow minister whose area it is has shown no inclination to get involved.
What is certain is that George Osborne will play a key role in the next government; imagine him as a powerful US vice-president. Already, he has input into policy development in all areas: he is the fiscal filter through which everything must pass. In government, he will be, as one insider puts it, ‘somebody who will be ranging across Whitehall checking things are happening’. Indeed, Osborne’s co-ordinating role will be even more important in office than it is now. Letwin is currently charged with tying the whole Cameron policy agenda together. However, it is expected that in government he will shift from that role to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. (Greg Clark, the highly-thought-of shadow energy and climate change secretary, has been pencilled in to head up the putative Department of Social Justice.) Letwin’s move will make Osborne the person looking at the Cameron government in the round.
Some critics ask whether it is sensible for the Chancellor to take on extra work at a time of economic crisis. But the Tory operation is preparing for this, with Philip Hammond being groomed to be the most important Chief Secretary in a generation.
The Tory challenge in government will be complicated by how the internet makes it so much easier to build opposition to government policies. Local and ideological pressure groups will be able to build coalitions to oppose specific cuts for a minimal cost in time and effort. Combine that with the fact that every MP will have to be reselected because of Cameron’s plan to shrink the number of MPs by 10 per cent, and you have a potentially very difficult party management problem. This is yet another reason why it is imperative that Cameron is straight with the country about what needs to be done. Only if he has been so, will his MPs have the standing to reject demands that they object to the cuts that hit their constituencies.
When politics resumes properly in the autumn, we will see the latest iteration of David Cameron. His conference speech will not be the pre-election conference speech that he or his supporters would have expected him to deliver when he ran for the leadership back in 2005. It will not be him preaching sunny optimism, but rather him looking the country in the eye and telling it what it can no longer afford. Quietly confident that his majority is pretty much guaranteed, Cameron is going to start trying to secure a mandate. How bold he is prepared to be in pursuit of this mandate will tell us most of what we need to know about what kind of prime minister David Cameron will be.
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