Cameron’s back is against the wall – now he must fight

Given that David Cameron will have a tougher fight than perhaps any postwar Prime Minister other than Thatcher, it’s a bit unfortunate that his team doesn’t like political combat. Losing to Rachel Johnson over forests last week exposed major weaknesses, and sent a message to the government’s enemies: that these guys have pretty poor political combat skills. Now word is out, the cuts protests in Liverpool today will be the first in a series of challenges. Cameron, too, is stung by the avoidable mistakes of the last few weeks – and is reshaping No.10 to account for them. Some changes are great, some less so, others downright worrying. Here’s my overview:

1. The Big Society. Cameron has started from first principles. Everything his government says or does is put in the context of cuts by the media. He’s bang up against the perennial conservative problem: if we cut the state, do we leave people to perish? Nope: more state means less community. The reverse is also true. His ‘Big Society’ narrative is an attempt to talk about the flip side of cuts. If you give power to people (and let them keep more of the money they earn), then society grows stronger and fairer – more so than from any government effort. Progressive ends, through conservative means. This explains the BS blitz: Cameron is trying to spell out that he has come to rejuvenate, not destroy. BS is, to put it mildly, not without its problems. But it is a good idea, albeit convincingly disguised as a bad one.

2. The Councils vs Cameron. As Ross Clark brilliantly argued in our cover piece in the last issue, town hall fat cats are protecting their own pay, perks and privileges – while inflicting pain on libraries, lollipop men, etc. And when people protest, they say ‘Blame Cameron!” Having devolved more power to the councils, Cameron feels he is better able to criticise them for bad decisions. I gather that, soon, he will start to criticise councils.

3. Paul Kirby: sorting the U-Turn Problem. A fortnight ago, I compared Cameron to a cook who goes around the tables taking food back saying it’s not properly cooked. “The best place to do this is the kitchen,” I said. Paul Kirby of KPMG (who worked for Osborne in Opposition) is being hired as a Whitehall warrior, to implement policy and make No10’s presence felt across Whitehall. He will be the bloke in the kitchen, making sure it’s cooked before it’s seen out.

4. But why is Kirby to have the title ‘head of policy’? When I first heard about Kirby on Thursday, it thought it was a wind-up. Cameron’s problem is lack of political heft. Why on earth would you hire an accountant to be policy chief? I later found that Kirby’s job, as it has been described to me, is a Michael Barber-style delivery enforcer. Job titles tend not to mean much in the Cameroon world (Osborne, for example, was not general election co-ordinator – no one was, really, hence the problem). His credentials are pretty strong, and as implementation tsar he should be fine. But policy sets the political narrative, and you need someone with strong nous doing that.

5. The alarm over Andrew Cooper. He was a hardline ‘moderniser’ in the days where the Tory wars were raging, and this was a meaningful term. The ironic thing about the ‘modernisers’ is that the agenda is at least 10 years out of date. I daresay it would have worked, in Blair’s first term where the economy was doing fine. It was about the primacy of style: how the party looked, sounded etc. In 2002, Cooper was advocating that the Tories should say they’d outspend Labour on NHS, etc – not because the NHS needed the money, but because of the political positioning. But the crash changed everything. Cooper was a combatant in a civil war that many in the party had believed was over – his return has led many in the party to wonder if the Tory Wars are back. As one minister put it, ‘it would be bad to think that No10 is captured by a faction of the party. But even worse to think it’s captured by a defunct faction of the party’. There is concern that, rather than broadening his team, Cameron is narrowing his focus and being advised by a handful of sectarians who are still – in their heads – at war with the wicked “Tory right.”

6. Reasons to be optimistic. The language of the Tory Wars means a great deal to its remaining veterans (some of whom are still fighting it). But the 2010 intake of MPs, who make up half the party, have no interest in all of this. Very few would describe themselves in the sectarian language (like ‘moderniser’ or ‘traditionalist’). They vary on the political spectrum, as all MPs do. But not in a factionalist way. There is no civil war in the Tory Party waiting to erupt.

7. Steve Hilton. As Tim Montgomerie said, he is not a hippy. He places a lot of value on branding – but the differences between him and the mainstream of the party are stylistic rather than ideological. The Big Society has, at its heart, sound and radical conservative ideas. I wrote a cover piece about the California Tories a couple of years ago, and about how these zeitgeisty American books with one word titles are the new Tory bible. A massive intellectual downgrade from Hayek, you might say, but the ideas are not dissimilar. It’s about power to the masses.

8. David Cameron. He is not a Tory Wars veteran, and he certainly would not describe the party’s grassroots members as “vile” (as Cooper has). CoffeeHousers often despair of him, but I’d say in response: look at what he’s up to. Radical welfare reform, radical school reform. He appointed Gove and IDS to do their things – and has given them freedom and backup. He’s tough on immigration, and is cutting spending (albeit by only 1 percent a year more than Labour would have.) I’m a great believer in judging governments by what they do, not what they say. And this government is about as active, bold and radical as you could reasonably expect.

9. But still no anti-Balls. The coalition has no one person to match Balls. To think and act as politically, as Balls does. As I say in my News of the World column (£) today, one of the main weakness of the government is its inability to fight in this way. When Ed Miliband was practically operating alone, they didn’t have to worry about this. But now Miliband has Ed Balls, with his formidable media contacts and destructive agenda. Tom Baldwin and Bob Roberts are two first-class media advisers. Labour’s political skills have not been decimated after defeat. Coalition has made it hard for No10 to have a political operation – but it needs to. Because the other side are good, and getting better. I wonder if Cameron is sufficiently concerned about this.

10. It’s time to start winning some arguments. It’s not the case that, if the economic policy goes well, then events will speak for themselves. John Major thought that. No one remembers his incredible post-ERM recovery or the 1.3 million jobs created. He is remembered as a plonker. It is cruel and unfair, but true: if your political skills are not up to scratch, you lose.
 
A radical reform agenda, rampant cost of living rises, militant unions and an emboldened Labour Party – quite a lineup. Cameron performs best with his back against the wall. Just as well, because this is the position from which he will have to govern.