RIP the hoodie huggers: Tory modernisation is dead. Its cheerleaders have NOT detoxified the Conservative brand, they've simply made it unrecognisable



The Conservative Party is in one of its panics. Its leadership fears losing office, and MPs fear losing their seats

Tory modernisation is definitively dead. It is no longer a project: it is an historical curiosity. It is now possible to pronounce the last rites.

The reason is simple. The Conservative Party is in one of its panics, and no one does panic quite like the Tories. The party leadership fears losing office, and MPs fear losing their seats.

In such conditions, they throw out anything that weighs them down. The gunwales are already low in the water, and modernisation has been pumped out of the bilges.

Unfortunately, parties cannot be so easily shot of their egregious mistakes.

Making an about-turn, and doing the precise opposite of what the leadership has been urging for as long as people can remember, looks ridiculous — and the Conservatives look ridiculous now.

The obvious instance is Europe.

It was a central part of the Tory modernisers’ thesis that Conservatives had become obsessed with Europe — continually ‘banging on’ about it, as David Cameron complained in his first conference speech as leader.

‘Banging on’ hardly now begins to describe the belligerent drumbeats pulsing from Conservative headquarters. Not a day goes by without Mr Cameron striving to appease Eurosceptic opinion in his party with some half-baked, improbable, transparently tactical initiative.

Similarly, immigration was another of those vulgar topics that the modernisers were determined to downplay. Negative attitudes were, they claimed, at the root of the Conservative Party’s ‘toxic’ image which made it unelectable.

Yet the latest Queen’s Speech was, of course, all about immigration control.

The modernisers also said that Tories should speak about the poor, not seem to pander to the rich.



Nowadays, though, curbing abuse of benefits is central to the Government’s political strategy.

That once-fastidious moderniser, George Osborne, has even linked welfare to the crimes of a convicted child killer, Mick Philpott, who was found guilty of manslaughter earlier this year after six of his children died in a fire he had started.

But the most unlikely transformation is of Theresa May, who has changed from sea-green moderniser to eye-popping populist.

Mrs May, it will be recalled, delivered the most damaging speech ever made by a Tory party chairman when, in 2002, she described Conservatives as ‘unchanged, unrepentant, just plain unattractive’ — and christened them ‘the nasty party’.

The reinvented May is now threatening to abandon the European Convention on Human Rights, berating pussy-footing officials and chastising the judiciary in a rhetorical war with illegals, terrorists and assorted softies.

The once-fastidious moderniser, George Osborne, has linked welfare to the crimes of a convicted child killer, Mick Philpott, who was found guilty of manslaughter after six of his children died in a fire he had started

A simple test will do. Can we imagine how David Cameron, or George Osborne, or Theresa May, would react if an older-generation Tory, like Michael Howard, say, were doing what they are now doing? They would protest that such ‘toxic’ policies were at fault for the party’s abysmal ratings in the polls.

The modernising heroes have fled the field. Blue-sky thinker Steve Hilton, Cameron’s former director of strategy, has retired to California. Chief pollster Andrew Cooper has gone off to make money.

Instead, Lynton Crosby, a political strategist whose every instinct is at odds with modernisation, has been called in to save the Government’s bacon.

It might be objected that this is the sort of thing each new generation of politicians does. It criticises its predecessors — and then it follows in their footsteps.

But these Tory modernisers cannot get off so lightly. They did not just claim to bring new policies: they claimed to stand for a different kind of politics.

Lynton Crosby, a political strategist whose every instinct is at odds with modernisation, has been called in to save the Government's bacon

By the time of the last days of the Major government, the Conservative Party was clearly narrow-based and unrepresentative. The party no longer represented success, so successful people kept away. But the modernisers only made things worse when they kicked the party as hard and as often as they could. They were right to want more women and members of ethnic minorities in winnable seats. But they got sidetracked by political correctness. They should also have wanted to see more successful businessmen and experienced professionals, but they were obsessed with youth, novelty and the opinions of the BBC.

Candidate-selection was soon corrupted and discredited by cronyism. The damage to relations between the centre and the local parties proved irreparable.

The background to the Tory modernisation project was, of course, the shattering defeat of 1997.

For the previous two years — in an atmosphere reminiscent of today — the Tory Party under John Major had raged and revolted. When the election results came in, Conservatives further lost their collective senses.

And into this mad maelstrom the modernisers plunged.

First, they gathered around Michael Portillo. Then, after his withdrawal, they briefly supported, and later destroyed, both William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith. Then they shrewdly used Michael Howard to promote one of their own, the pliable David Cameron.

Politics is a brutal game. But for sustained personal unpleasantness, the Tory modernisers deserve some kind of award. In private, and in print, their long campaign was carried out in a tone of consistently venomous contempt.

Several distinct strands of Tory modernism emerged.

One strand, prominent in the early phase, were the neo-Thatcherites. These were social liberals who, unlike Margaret Thatcher herself, saw the Thatcher project as one of pure liberalism.

This group’s agenda focused on sexual liberation, where the Same Sex Marriage Bill is proof of their success (at a price), and on a permissive policy towards drugs etc.

More important, however, were a group who had never supported the Thatcher government, who had quickly given up on Major and who were now completely smitten by Tony Blair.



Neo-Thatcherites were social liberals who, unlike Margaret Thatcher herself, saw the Thatcher project as one of pure liberalism. This group's agenda focused on sexual liberation and permissive policy towards drugs

They sought to apply Blairism to the Conservative Party. The assumption they made was that the real problem of the Conservative Party was, in a word, its conservatism. That is, the propensity to resist change — not just within the party, but within society.

Its advocates talked in millenarian tones about the dreadful future unless ‘change’ was embraced. Conservatism must be discarded by the Tories, just as socialism was discarded by Labour, as a condition for winning an election.

And conservatism regarding the fundamental institutions of society, including marriage, should equally be purged from the system.

The formation of a Coalition Government, back in 2010, at first seemed a tribute to the foresightedness of the Tory modernisers. Prominent exponents of the project, like Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin, had always hankered after links with the Liberal Democrats.

Coalition particularly appealed to David Cameron because Liberal Democrat votes offered a buffer against the Tory Party’s unreconstructed Right, who could be rendered impotent and then gradually shunted out of the Commons.

Some modernising policy commitments linger on, because no one knows how to reverse them. Each will drive a nail into the Conservative coffin

But it has not worked out as planned. The public justification given for the Coalition was the need to avoid economic collapse. But their own skewed priorities meant they were incapable of applying it.

The modernisers had always believed that Conservatives in the Thatcher era were too preoccupied with economics. Cameron himself said as much before becoming leader, and still believed it even after the financial crisis hit.

The modernisers thought that the economy would run itself, or at least mend itself, and that they could concentrate on softer, more appealing issues, like health and the environment.

So, despite the facade, the Tories entered the Coalition with no sense of urgency about cutting public spending.

It is now too late. The strategy has failed. The deficit is still swollen, debt is rapidly increasing, taxes are high, and growth remains absent or anaemic. There will be no economic gains by 2015 great enough to claim victory at the election.

There is worse. Some modernising policy commitments linger on, because no one knows how to reverse them. Each will drive a nail into the Conservative coffin.

The obsession with alternative energy will push up household energy bills, madden country dwellers, and disadvantage industry.

Increasing overseas aid, while eviscerating defence spending, will give the Right-wing Press a field day.

Above all, the legislation to redefine marriage, which encapsulates the profound contempt which the party leadership has for the values of its supporters, will inflict bitterness up to the next election and beyond.

Of course, nothing in politics is certain, but defeat clearly beckons. The modernisers have not detoxified the Tory brand. They have simply made it unrecognisable, even to Tories.

Before refashioning its image, the party will need to re-find itself.

It must re-create its membership, which has collapsed. It must establish a working relationship with UKIP, those ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’, who are now, in truth, the Tory Party in exile.

All this will take time.

The Tory modernisers have charged down their own eccentrically chosen route, trampling opposition, belittling critics, insulting supporters, only to find themselves in a cul-de-sac.

They can hardly expect not to be bruised by those they insulted and abandoned when they finally double back.