A new map hangs in George Osborne’s office, showing the latest parliamentary boundaries for the next general election. It could have been designed to soothe the nerves of a Conservative party election co-ordinator, for it is dominated by Tory blue. A few tricks have been used to achieve this optical illusion. There is no Scotland, for example, and marginal Labour seats are painted a faint red. But overall the picture is of a Conservative country, and an election which is eminently winnable.
This is how Mr Osborne sees it — and not, he insists, just to keep morale up. ‘Although I never said so at the time, I went into previous general elections I was involved in — 1997, 2001 and 2005 — with a sense of foreboding,’ he says. ‘I felt it probably was not going to be the triumph we hoped it was and that we said publicly.’ Not this time. ‘I really feel we have a good message, a good campaign and a real prospect of winning.’ And as campaign director, it’s his job to turn this optimism into reality.
Last time the Tories hired Lynton Crosby, veteran of the Australian Liberal party campaigns, to be their election guru. This time David Cameron has turned to his closest parliamentary ally, Mr Osborne, the shadow chancellor, asking him to run the war room. And from the look of things, the war is already on. From Osborne’s goldfish-bowl office we can see rows of Tory workers toiling away. Every desk is occupied. Defaced pictures of Gordon Brown are on the walls. It is hard to think it would be busier at the height of an election campaign.
‘We have had more than enough time to prepare,’ says Mr Osborne, gesturing at the workers. ‘Gordon Brown, this supposed political genius, has taken all the surprise out of an autumn election. We’re all geared up. We have a £10 million election budget guaranteed by our party treasurers for the initial election period. I think people would be surprised to see how we will be able to launch our initial fightback within literally hours, or minutes, of an election being called.’
The mechanics may be in place, but what about the politics? I put it to him that the Cameron project — of which he was a joint architect — has been all about saying, ‘We’ve changed’, but not so clear about what it has changed to. So his problem is that the public, for all its frustrations with the Labour government, have no firm idea about what a Conservative government would do. I wait for an angry rebuttal, but none emerges.
‘I think that’s fair,’ he says, slowly. ‘Over the last 18 months, we have earned the right to be listened to. But now — as you put it — we have got to have something to say. We’ve undertaken our policy review process. You don’t hear any more that the Tories don’t have any policies; people ask how the ideas will come together. So by the time David Cameron sits down on the Wednesday, at the end of our party conference, we want people to be clear about what the Conservative party message is.’
No pressure on Dave, then. After 18 months of failing to make clear what a Conservative government would do, he must now do so by the middle of next week. Mr Osborne says we should expect a mix. ‘I don’t take the kind of über-modernising view that some have had, that you can’t talk about crime or immigration or lower taxes. It is just that you can’t do so to the exclusion of the NHS, the environment and economic stability. I have always argued for a more balanced message, and that is what I hope you would see at this party conference.’
It is interesting to hear Mr Osborne distance himself from the ‘über-modernisers’ who many believe went too far in the early Cameron years. What he calls rebalancing is what Labour gleefully refers to as a ‘lurch to the right’ — a characterisation he would strongly dispute. But there is more to come. Immigration, which has been regarded as the third rail by the Conservatives since the last general election, is slowing entering its campaigning vocabulary.
Mr Cameron last month said immigration had been ‘too high’, a rare intervention. He did not say much more, but Mr Osborne elaborates: ‘I don’t think we were ready for the impact on public services of a very large number of people coming to this country. Immigration from eastern Europe was 100 times, well maybe 50 times greater than the government predicted it was going to be. So there was a complete failure to anticipate the impact on our public services or indeed the impact on our economy.’
Immigration has been a ‘broad benefit’, he says. ‘But it has put an enormous pressure on some of our low-skilled British citizens who have found themselves in some parts of Britain priced out of the job market. I don’t think we have done enough as a country to give these people the right education or skills. It is no good Gordon Brown saying, “British jobs for British workers”, when he has singly failed to prepare British workers for the ten year he’s been chancellor.’
During those ten years, Mr Brown faced six shadow chancellors of whom Mr Osborne was the last. Yet he defied predictions that he’d be swallowed alive. So how does he feel about accusations that he is miscast and that the top two people in the party are both young? He dislikes this description. ‘People like William Hague, David Davis and Liam Fox are just as important as I am,’ he says. Nor does he feel he should be blamed for being in his job. ‘David Cameron decides who is shadow chancellor, not me.’
Initially it was Michael Howard who picked Mr Osborne to be shadow chancellor — on the condition, it is said, that he ran for the party leadership. Is Mr Osborne now glad he didn’t agree? ‘He suggested I think about running, he didn’t want me to be the leader as such,’ he says. ‘It didn’t take me long to work out it wasn’t for me. It was the right decision because David has transformed the fortunes of the party.’
A tieless Mr Cameron walks into the room halfway through the interview to say hello. ‘Ah, so that’s where all the booze is kept,’ he says, nodding to the bottles of Château Village 2003 in the corner of Mr Osborne’s office. There were half a dozen red, a dozen white — but no one had bought any champagne. This is reassuring. For all Mr Osborne’s optimism, he would be the first to admit that there is much more to be done before victory celebrations become a serious prospect. And this realism is one of the greatest assets that Mr Cameron now has.