News from the New Party

Cameron pays the price

If the leader of the Conservative Party were not the author of many of his own misfortunes, it might just be possible to feel sorry for David Cameron.  Just as one or two opinion polls are emerging which indicate that perhaps Gordon Brown is starting to lose his bounce, his own party seems to be losing its marbles.  There may yet be an election this autumn, so why should Michael Ancram choose this week to launch his pamphlet bemoaning Cameron's trashing of the Thatcher legacy?

Some commentators have already concluded that the reason Tories are starting to rebel can only be that they have already conceded defeat in the coming election.  The inference is that the Cameron project has already failed: the Conservative leadership has completely underestimated the sheer political ruthlessness of Gordon Brown, whose hilariously cynical "big tent" approach of inviting disgruntled members of opposition parties to become semi-detached members of his gang - an adviser here, a commission chairmanship there - has made both Sir Menzies Campbell and more importantly David Cameron look foolish.

Cameron has today hit back at his critics, deriding them as "blasts from the past", and has reiterated his determination to lead the party back to the centre ground.  The problem is that Cameron is losing support to his left even faster than to his right.  The resignation of Conservative deputy treasurer Johan Eliasch, who will henceforth advise Labour on green issues, is accompanied by a complaint that Cameron is leading his party to the right.  The defection of Quentin Davies MP to the Labour Party was ostensibly a response to Cameron's "PR agenda".  Cameron's critics on the right of the Conservative Party may be stick-in-the-mud grumblers but at least by and large they are staying put.

What has David Cameron done to deserve this?  How can a leader so determined to drag his party to the centre ground manage to have offended both wings of his own party?

The reason is simple enough: he can't be trusted.  He has apparently abandoned all his own and his party's principles in order to adopt a series of demonstrably un-conservative policy positions for the purpose of conveying the impression that his party has "changed".  And then, under pressure last week, by apparently reverting to a "core vote strategy", focusing on immigration, Europe and tax, he has alienated some of those new supporters, who, understandably enough, feel that they have been taken for a ride.  The exasperation of the Conservative Party as a whole is inevitable.  Generally speaking successful leaders have some idea of where they are going, and manage to communicate this to their followers.  A large part of David Cameron's problem is that his party have no idea which way he will jump next.  Worse still, they are beginning to suspect that he does not know either.

From this whole sorry story, one very obvious lesson stands out: there is more to politics than positioning.  Style may win out over substance temporarily, but it will always fail in the end.  Ultimately success in politics depends on vision, principles, and ideas, and a coherent framework in which to set them.  Ideology may be unfashionable, but it is indispensable.