|
TERRY DIGNAN: The nation's adventure parks
are open for the summer season. Meanwhile the Conservatives face their
own version of a white-knuckle ride. And it fills some of them with dread.
Few Conservatives believe that after four largely fruitless years in Opposition,
a general election will turn out to be such an exhilarating experience.
Back in Nineteen-ninety-seven William Hague promised he, too, would set
the pulse racing. He'd excite voters with new ideas and innovative policies.
Some say all he's really done is confuse voters with constant changes in
strategy and endless U-turns in policy. With time running out, Mr Hague
has decided to fight the election on policies which will please diehard
Conservatives but do little, so it's argued, to win over anyone else. Plotting
a route back to power was the biggest challenge facing the new leader.
So he donned his baseball cap and took the plunge. He wanted the Conservatives
to be an inclusive party. Minorities, in particular, would be welcome.
But at Notting Hill, Hague and Ffion were mocked for their efforts. He
sought advice from George Bush about compassionate Conservatism. But the
strategy unsettled the party's traditionalist core.
LAURENCE ROBERTSON MP: I think there was some confusion
caused by using all these inclusive words and I don't think we should have
policies which are just to benefit any one sector of society.
PAUL WHITELEY: The trouble is this strategy
takes time. If you're impatient, and you want to see results within a year
or two, and there's pressure from the grassroots party activists to move
away from it, and you give way to that pressure, you produce the situation
we see now of no clear coherent strategy emerging at all, and the electorate
thoroughly confused as to what the Conservatives are doing.
DIGNAN: On a day out like this
it's possible to please everyone. Which is what the Conservatives have
been trying to do, it's argued, leading to accusations that William Hague
can't resist climbing aboard whichever fashionable cause passes by. He
was quick to support the fuel protestors and policies have been changed
to satisfy the cravings of focus groups.
MICHAEL DOBBS: I don't ever remember Margaret
Thatcher going off to a focus group and saying what should I think or what
should I say. Perhaps she might have gone off and asked how should I say
it, how should I communicate that. But she always knew what it was in the
first place she wanted to say, and that is the art of political leadership.
DIGNAN: And perhaps there's another
party leader William Hague could learn from. Before it became a themed
adventure park, Drayton Manor near Tamworth was home to Sir Robert Peel.
He was the first Tory leader to really define the true nature of Conservatism.
In politics the message is all. That's something Sir Robert Peel understood.
His Tamworth Manifesto set out what the Conservatives stood for at a time
of great political change. A hundred-and-sixty-seven years later and it
appears that many of today's voters have difficulty understanding what
the Conservatives are about. Which is a bit of a handicap for Mr Hague
so close to a general election.
ROBERT WORCESTER: There's almost nothing, that
you can see that's worked. But one of the things they've done is chop and
change. And without carrying on, for a while, the British public doesn't
catch on to what's going on in the Conservative party, or any other party,
unless they're consistent, and they've been very inconsistent during these
past four years.
WHITELEY: Many voters see Hague
as rather weak, not a strong leader at all, rather weak and vacillating,
doesn't know what he wants and so they don't know what the Conservatives
are standing for any more.
DIGNAN: Because of Hague's policy
changes, there may be a danger that the Conservatives and Labour seem too
alike with little to choose between them on issues like taxation and public
expenditure.
DOBBS: One of the problems that
I think that the Conservative Party has right now is that it does appear
to be too much like the Labour Party. It's adopted its expenditure plans,
its taxation plans aren't dramatically or radically different at the moment,
from those that the Government is proposing.
DIGNAN: The Conservatives, though,
have good reason to placate the British electorate following nineteen-ninety-seven
when they received a mauling. Yet they have discovered the voters are not
easily mollified. Changing policies has brought scant reward.
WORCESTER: If you ask the British people
if they're satisfied or dissatisfied with the performance of the Labour
government on delivering public services, they say they're dissatisfied.
Yet that doesn't seem to touch Labour's lead. Why? Because by two to one,
thirty-two to sixteen, the British public say, public services would be
worse, not better, under a Conservative government.
DIGNAN: But on one issue a gap
has been opened with Labour -Europe.
WILLIAM HAGUE MP: "There we are."
DIGNAN: And it's worked. In elections
to the European Parliament the Conservatives beat Labour on a platform
of saying no to Britain joining the single currency. Here uncertainty has
gone.
ROBERTSON: Understandably people were very
confused about what we really believed in. But now we do believe in retaining
the pound, we do believe in running our own economy and running our own
country.
DIGNAN: At Drayton Manor the residents
are restless. Will the voters feel as excited over the Conservatives' plan
to make Europe a big election issue? The polls have the Conservatives ahead
of Labour on Europe. But in a general election some doubt voters will respond
readily to a diet of Eurosceptism.
WORCESTER: If you ask the British people,
"Is Europe an important issue to you in determining how you're going to
vote in the next election?" Only twenty-six per cent say that it is. And
when you ask those twenty-six per cent, "Which party has the best policy
on the issue of Europe?" there's level pegging between Labour and Conservative.
ANDREW ROWE MP: I'm not sure that saying other
than, let's keep the pound or whatever it is that that the party wants
to say, just keep it quite simple, but to hammer hammer hammer on Europe,
will I think be a mistake because I think that although the party activists
are pretty solidly behind the party line, I'm not sure the country is as
solidly behind the party line as, as we might think.
DIGNAN: But having scored a direct
hit in the European elections, the leadership has tried to ambush Labour
on so-called populist issues like crime and asylum. Caring Conservatism
has made way to a more, some might say, gung-ho approach.
So, when all else has failed, William Hague has decided to concentrate
on those policies which he believes have Labour on the defensive - Europe,
crime, asylum. It's a risky strategy. It may warm the hearts of traditional
core Conservatives but what about all those other voters Mister Hague has
yet to convince and without whom he can't win.
ROWE: I believe it would be best
if the party made itself out to be a rather kinder party. I think that,
I just have an instinctive feeling that people don't like Conservatives
yet very much, even if they respect what they must stand for and, and admire
what they believe in and so on. They're not, we're not perhaps very likeable.
ROBERTSON: Mass immigration actually threatens
race relations, actually makes the situation worse and it makes the country
more difficult to manage. That's what people want to hear, they, they do
not want to see bogus asylum seekers coming into the country, they don't
want to see mass immigration because they know that these cause problems
for the country. We are a crowded island and we also have the right to
retain our Britishness and to speak up for Britishness - we have the right
to do that.
DIGNAN: Some Tories can't banish
memories of the last election. One, Michael Portillo, believes the Conservatives
came across as harsh and uncaring. And he still wanted to put that right
as recently as last autumn.
MICHAEL PORTILLO MP: We are for all Britons. We
are for Black Britons, we are for British Asians, we are for White Britons.
Britain is now a country of rich diversity. We are for people whatever
their sexual orientation.
DIGNAN: So caring Conservatism
has attempted a comeback - confusing the voters, some say. Many in the
party aren't having it.
ROBERTSON: We don't have to stomp around
the country saying, oh we're very compassionate and we're very caring.
That's not to exclude people who don't have families or may be homosexuals,
but it is to say that the vast majority of people would support us when
we say the family is the cornerstone of society.
DIGNAN: But some argue that William
Hague has ended up overlooking the voters he needs most. Not core Conservatives,
but those whose pressing concerns aren't Europe and asylum.
WHITELEY: One strategy stretched
over the lifetime of the Parliament would have been to establish loyalty
from the core vote by being strongly Conservative, at the beginning of
his leadership, establishing support among core voters, but also party
activists. Motivate them and then shift to the middle ground to capture
the wider electorate. Now it seems to me what the Conservatives have done
is the exact opposite.
DIGNAN: Like the lions of Drayton
Manor the needs of Tory MPs are simple. They hope to gorge on Labour's
enormous majority. But according to speculation some Conservative MPs are
plotting to topple Hague should the party perform badly.
ROBERTSON: I do understand that these reports
in newspapers that can be very unsettling, particularly for our workers
on the ground who work so very hard for the Conservative Party, and to
them it is very, very annoying.
DIGNAN: At Drayton Manor there's
a hint as to what may await the Conservatives. This ride requires nerves
of steel. And that's what many voters appear to think William Hague lacks.
WHITELEY: It's very important to
be seen as a strong leader. Actually Mrs Thatcher was an interesting case.
She was seen as being a very strong leader by a lot of voters, even though
many of them didn't like her. But it was much more important to be seen
as strong than to be liked. Now the trouble is, is with William Hague is
that he's not liked, and he's not seen as strong either.
DIGNAN: Four years ago William
Hague, to the surprise of many, reached the dizzy heights. Since then he's
given the Conservatives an experience some of them would rather have done
without. Both on strategy and policy he's veered one way, then the other,
leaving many voters confused as to where he's taking the party.
|