Back from the Brink: The Inside Story of the Tory Resurrection. Peter Snowdon
it was not an overwhelming vote of confidence. If it is assumed that almost all of the hundred or so ministers backed the Prime Minister, then up to half of backbench MPs had failed to vote for him. ‘The message that I would give to every Conservative … is that the time for division is over,’ Major declared on the steps of Number 10 after the result had been announced. ‘It made him seem weaker to the public,’ one leading rebel recalled. ‘It may have bought him some parliamentary time, but the worst thing was that it left us with more stories about a Prime Minister whose party was not behind him.’ Major’s allies were unrepentant. ‘You cannot deal with unreason, and on Europe there was no middle ground, no meeting point with them – they were utterly intransigent and intractable,’ recalls one. ‘Whatever they may have said, most of them wanted us out of the EU, but they didn’t say that because that was beyond the pale.’
It was soon apparent that Major’s victory had not put an end to the government’s problems. A string of further by-election defeats, and the defection of three Tory MPs to Labour or the Liberal Democrats, undermined the Prime Minister’s attempts to show that he was back in command. Fatal for a government struggling to hold itself together was the accumulation of crises outside its control. An uneasy truce in Northern Ireland which Major strove to achieve in 1994 came to an end in February 1996 when the IRA exploded a massive bomb in London’s docklands. Suggestions the following month of a link between BSE, or ‘mad cow disease’, and a form of human brain disease led to a catastrophic decline in the sales of British beef at home and a worldwide ban on its export by the European Commission. The government’s policy of ‘non-cooperation’ with the EU in retaliation became the subject of ridicule.
As the party gathered in Bournemouth in October 1996 for its last annual conference before the election, Major and his Cabinet tried to put on a brave face. Speaking up against Europe and defending the Thatcherite inheritance would almost certainly be a crowd-pleaser. ‘We should be proud of the Tory tax record but [not forget] that people needed reminding of its achievements … It’s time to return to our tax-cutting agenda,’ the new prospective parlia mentary candidate for Stafford, David Cameron, declared in his first speech from a conference platform. Playing to the gallery, he set his sights on the Labour leader, Tony Blair. ‘The socialist Prime Ministers of Europe have endorsed Tony Blair because they want a federalist pussycat and not a British lion. It is up to us in this party, in this country, to make sure that lion roars, because when it does no one can beat us.’52 The audience lapped it up, although Ken Clarke, who was sitting behind Cameron, did not look amused.
After finding himself out of a job when Norman Lamont resigned in May 1993, Cameron had been snapped up by the new Home Secretary, Michael Howard, who appointed him one of his special advisers. If Cameron’s experience at the Treasury had toughened him up, the Home Office under Howard was no place for shrinking violets either. It was one of the few areas of government where a minister was actively driving an agenda, often against the grain of civil servants and commentators – Howard was unapologetic about tightening penal policy, famously saying that ‘Prison works.’ Cameron enjoyed working for Howard, although he considered himself much more of a liberal than his boss. Even so, his fifteen-month spell under Howard’s wing at the Home Office had given him a flavour of politics at the sharp end of Whitehall. Cameron’s eye for detail and flair for words were put to use by his new boss, but more importantly Howard valued his capacity for hard work. Working for Howard also provided an insight into the rapid rise of the Shadow Home Secretary, Tony Blair. In the late summer of 1994 Cameron left the service of a beleaguered government for the private sector, joining Carlton Communications, a media company which owned London’s weekday ITV station, Carlton Television. Under the watchful eye of the charismatic chairman Michael Green, Cameron was soon promoted to be the company’s director of corporate affairs. However, his heart was really set on becoming a Tory MP. In January 1996, when two shortlisted contenders for what seemed to be a reasonably safe Tory seat dropped out, Cameron was called to interview at the last moment. ‘I must admit that my first thought was that, at twenty-nine, he was too young. But then he spoke and it was obvious that he was the best candidate,’ recalled one of the stalwarts of the Stafford Conservative Association.53
While Cameron’s star rose, it seemed that anything that could go wrong did go wrong for the party in power. Major had seriously considered calling an election in autumn 1996, but decided to hold off until March or May 1997, the last date at which it could take place. While the competence of the government had long been called into question, the misdemeanours of a handful of Conservative MPs further damaged the party’s reputation in office. In a speech primarily about education, Major declared that it was time to go ‘back to basics’ by restoring values of decency and respect in communities across the country. Unauthorised briefings from junior staff in Central Office claimed that he was actually talking about personal morality rather than education. Major was incensed. When several ministers were exposed in the press for having extramarital affairs, ‘back to basics’ suddenly blew up in the government’s face. Allegations of ‘sleaze’ also came to haunt the party. Investigations by the Guardian revealed that two Conservative MPs, Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton, had taken cash in brown paper envelopes from the owner of Harrods, Mohamed Fayed, for asking parliamentary questions, while Jonathan Aitken, like Hamilton a minister in the government, became embroiled in damaging allegations about receiving hospitality at the expense of associates of the Saudi royal family. To the public, these matters tarred the whole party with the same brush. There was a firm impression that the Conservative Party was synonymous with a culture of greed and arrogance that had taken root during the Thatcherite heyday of the 1980s.
Outmanoeuvred and Outclassed
While the Major government headed for the rocks, the Labour Party was undergoing a revolution of its own. Neil Kinnock’s resignation following the 1992 election defeat prompted a period of soul-searching for the party. Kinnock’s successor, John Smith, was a capable parliamentary performer, but his strategy was largely to ride the wave of growing discontent with the government. He believed that ‘one more heave’ would be enough to deliver victory at the next election. A small group of Labour politicians were not so convinced. They realised that the party had to change even more drastically than it had under Kinnock. Among them were Gordon Brown, the Shadow Chancellor, Tony Blair, the Shadow Home Secretary, and Peter Mandelson, the party’s former Director of Communications, who had become an MP in 1992. Their ambition to modernise the Labour Party would come a step closer on 12 May 1994.
Cameron was enjoying a pint of beer outside the Two Chairmen pub in Westminster when he heard about John Smith’s death earlier that day. In shock, he turned to a colleague: ‘This means Tony Blair will be leader of the Labour Party,’ he declared. ‘He’ll move it onto the centre ground and we’ll be stuffed.’ It was a sound prediction. The path was clear for the Shadow Home Secretary to emerge as the front-runner to replace Smith, after his friend and colleague Gordon Brown stepped aside (a decision that would haunt Brown for the rest of his career). Blair possessed immense skills as a communicator, and he also had youth and charisma on his side. He, Brown, Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, the former tabloid journalist who became Blair’s press secretary, formed a powerful clique at the top of the party.
‘New Labour’ would extend its appeal across the political spectrum, unlike the old party of the left. It sought to blend the modern economic agenda that had been entrenched by the Thatcher–Major governments with a passion for social justice, redressing the inequalities that had arisen during the 1980s and 1990s. New Labour would position itself as the ‘One Nation’ party of British politics. Rewriting Clause IV of the party’s constitution, stripping it of the commitment to public ownership of industry, was a clear signal to the electorate that the party had changed. Presentation was crucial. While Kinnock had done the heavy lifting in abandoning unpopular policies, it was now for a new generation to take a symbol like Clause IV and rebrand Labour for the wider electorate. By accepting aspects of the Thatcher revolution, including the sweeping reforms of the trade unions, restructuring of the economy and a tough stance on law and order, the party manoeuvred itself onto fertile electoral territory. Learning the lessons of the disastrous ‘shadow budget’ in 1992, Labour pledged