The Conservative leader needs to get his mojo back. At least he had some to start with, mojo not being a quality much associated with his predecessors: ‘That often elusive quality that sets a person apart from everyone else. The word “magic” could, almost without exception, replace it in all of its contexts, sentences or applications.’ So says urbandictionary.com and it should know.
Yet something has gone wrong with Dave’s magic. We are approaching the point when the Conservative chances at the next election will either crystallise or begin to break apart. Having risen to 37-38 per cent in the polls, Mr Cameron is drifting downwards — well away from the 41 per cent minimum he needs to contend for victory. Some of this is ‘Brown bounce’ but not all. The end of the ‘phoney war’ with Tony Blair gives the Tories their best chance yet to define their election bid more clearly. It is also the time when weaknesses and neglected opportunities begin to tell.
That is one reason Central Office has a new boy this week, the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as communications supremo (strategy remains firmly in the hands of Mr Cameron’s trusted ally, Steve Hilton). Mr Coulson and I were once guests at a lunch where the representative from Camp Cameron got a general roasting for the inconsistencies of the new Conservatism. As one of the loudest complainants, Mr Coulson ended one argument by methodically banging his head on the table in protest at the spin from the Tory leader’s emissary. I interpret this as a good sign. Being from a different background, with experience of how the new Tories can irritate as well as impress, should be a valuable corrective to too much inbred thinking in the leader’s inner circle. He should also bring a sceptical instinct about some of the ideas from the Cameron factory which sound clever but end up in a retreat or a muddle and eat away at any sense of clarity or priority. If your leader is best known to the public for cycling to work (good) and hug-a-hoodie (bad), there is still some way to go to make him rank in our minds as the next prime minister.
There is lack of connection and purpose in too many of the notions the Dave machine puts out. It wants more individual responsibility, but how does it propose to get it without retreating to the harsher nostrums of Thatcherism? At the same time, it wants less ‘me me’ and more ‘we’. You can see why the satirists are beginning to enjoy themselves.
When an issue arises we cannot guess what Cameron’s instinct will be. Some of his aides now acknowledge this — but they do not consider that their own desire to catch every passing breeze or trend might be part of the problem. On the recent wealth gap rows, the central message of Mr Brown has been straightforward: ‘It’s unfair, but I won’t do much about it.’ The Conservatives have veered between (the former private equity man) Brooks Newmark violently defending the present beneficial tax regime and upbraiding those who consider it unfair and the shadow chancellor signalling that the favourable 10 per cent tax rate should be changed. Which is it? A suggested limit on air travel aimed at controlling our holiday carbon emissions is still seen stubbornly as ‘stimulating debate’ when what it stimulated were lots of doubts among people fretting about Dave’s intentions towards their hard-earned getaways. ‘David Miliband also wanted to do something like that when he was at Environment’ protests one aide. Yes — and Gordon Brown had the sense to stop him.
Having established himself as a likeable presence attuned to modern Britain — no small feat given his party’s tendency to worship the past — Mr Cameron sounds a bit lost about where to go next. A welter of initiatives exudes energy, but also a lack of focus. Interesting pudding: theme hard to find. The notion that everything will suddenly become clear when the policy reviews finally report is wishful-thinking. Direction and a sense of travel cannot be neatly postponed and then whistled up to order.
‘What would Britain be like if you ran it and how would it be better?’ are the questions on which the leadership should focus. Putting family policy at the heart of the next Conservative manifesto, as heralded this week, is a bold move. Not because it is very likely to boost the numbers of vulnerable people marrying, but because it sends a signal to those who do try to structure their lives and prize stable families that the Conservative party is on their side. There has always been a marriage-shaped hole in Labour’s approach to the family and Mr Cameron has seen the potential of exposing it.
He will, however, have to be careful not to lurch into presenting everything as dreadful, or lose the goodwill of the many unmarrieds — with and without children — who saw his arrival as a welcome departure from the right-wing moralisers. The conclusion should be ‘We can change this’, not ‘Look at the state we’re in’.
Break it to Mr Coulson gently, but the overall message is a mess. Say what you like about the Blair–Campbell axis but it projected a consistent body of ideas from 1994 to 1997 — that New Labour stood for modernity and that the old Tories were out of time and out of ideas. Everything else flowed from that relentless idea of newness and the need for change.
Mr Cameron has tried the same trick. It is, alas, hard to preserve your modernising credentials if you end up with a row over selection which results in your internal opponents getting a hit — the leader was forced to retreat on a pledge not to create any more grammars at all — and you then demote the education spokesman whose views you openly embraced and defended at the time. Michael Howard has a reputation for panicking under fire. His protégé should be wary of becoming son-of-Howard in a trendier suit.
The praiseworthy intention of making the Conservatives dominate the argument about social mobility has already been diluted. It is not enough to preserve and magnify the interests of those who are already doing well out of life. This is as much a strategic consideration as a moral one. The Tories badly need to ‘own’ this issue and they have already missed one chance to do so. A key battle with Labour should not be allowed to go by default just because of a badly handled argument about grammars.
Voters certainly ‘get’ that Mr Cameron is not just another Tory leader, but they are not yet sure that he can change his party, as Mr Blair changed Labour. That is still the key to electability. Of course he should not gratuitously insult his ranks. Yet having observed him at party events lately, I do wonder whether the tone is not in danger of morphing from persuasive to a wheedling anxiousness to reassure that he is a ‘Real’ Conservative. They voted for you, Dave: do remind them who is in charge. Strength as well as flexibility and charm will be required for the next big heave. Three terms of Labour and a latecomer PM who is not exactly the public’s darling choice for a fourth: there is everything for the Opposition to play for. They should go hard for the prize with more conviction and rigour and less frippery. Then Dave might find that his mojo is alive and well after all.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor of the Evening Standard.