WHO'S ON THIRD?:

Tories fail to make capital: With Labour on the ropes, why has the Conservative Party failed to provide an effective opposition (Anatole Kaletsky, 12/16/04, Times of London)

WHAT IS wrong with the Tories? At a time when the Government is on the ropes over David Blunkett, when Tony Blair is universally loathed and distrusted, how is it that the Tories’ highest hope for the general election is to reduce the Labour majority from 159 seats to about 100? Why, when the Prime Minister is hardly on speaking terms with his Chancellor, are the media full of stories not about Labour strife but about internecine warfare in Conservative Central Office?

The answer is simple: the Conservative Party has the wrong tactics, the wrong policies and the wrong leader.

Tactically, the Tories have been making the same unforced error since 1997, and then added a second one. The first blunder was to assume that Mr Blair would be swept out of office, like every previous Labour prime minister, by an economic crisis. Until then, all the Tories thought that they had to do was jeer from the sidelines at Labour’s manifest economic incompetence. [...]

The tactical error on economics could at least be explained by the Tories’ arrogant belief that they have a superior understanding of money. Their second tactical blunder was more surprising. Why on earth did the most oppositional Opposition in living memory support the Government on the one policy which was most obviously going wrong — Iraq? [...]

These tactical blunders, while serious, might not have been fatal if the Tories had some positive alternative policies to offer voters disillusioned with Mr Blair. The failure to develop any strategic vision has been the Tories’ besetting sin. Given the rose-tinted light cast by history over the Thatcher period, and the stunning electoral successes of conservatism in America, even under a leader as flawed as George W. Bush, a successful Tory strategy could be built on the three pillars which have sustained Conservative ideology for the past 300 years: property, nationalism and freedom. These abstract-sounding concepts can be expressed in terms familiar to devotees of both Karl Marx and Karl Rove: to create a governing coalition, Conservatives must appeal to the economic self-interest of the rich, to the resentment of government bureaucracy among the bourgeoisie and to the patriotism and social conservatism of the working class.

The problem, of course, is that Tony Blair is more conservative than the center of the Tory Party.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 16, 2004 12:51 PM