Cameron: the Tories’ best bet since Thatcher?

By Editorial staff Simon Wilson Dec 09, 2005

Reports of the Tory party’s rebirth have been somewhat exaggerated this week, said The Times – so let’s get a bit of perspective.

Many of the Tories who backed David Cameron did so on the back of an “amorphous hunch” that he’s a “winner”. Fair enough: within the party itself, their suspicion turned into a self-fulfiling prophecy.

But in the country at large, things will be very different. The Tories have been remarkably steady in the polls for the past 12 years – flatlining at 30%-33%. So while the new leader seems a pleasant-enough young chap, Downing Street is hardly beckoning just yet.

Maybe not, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. But we can still allow ourselves to get a bit excited. Much like Tony Blair, Cameron offers “plausibility lightly dusted with charm”. Agreed, he could “win an Olympic title for platitude”. But there’s nothing wrong with all that if it means he can win the trust of voters.

His tools will not be manifesto commitments and policy details, but “a pleasant face, a winning smile, some eye contact and cheeky repartee”. All those factors get to “parts of the body politic that mere words cannot reach. Only losers underrate them. Winners let others deal with policy.”

All in all, David Cameron cuts an impressively vital and nimble figure opposite his rival at the next election, the lumbering and complacent introvert Gordon Brown. The new guy might be inexperienced, but he’s the Tories’ best bet since Margaret Thatcher.

Calm down, said Jonathan Freedland, also in The Guardian. Yes, the man can speak in complete sentences without notes. Yes, he’s fit and young. And yes, given the procession of “baldheads and retreads that have preceded him in the post”, you can forgive the Tories for feeling perkier.

But let’s put an end to the Cameron media love-in right now. Look at the record: four years of voting against every kind of progressive policy and new investment in public services. Look at his henchmen: George Osborne, Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey – the nearest thing Britain has to loony US neo-cons. And look at the election manifesto he wrote last May. Yesterday, nice Dave wittily told us that “everyone is invited” to his shiny new party.

But a few months ago, nasty David purposely played on “fears of immigration and asylum in a way that could only make” race relations more tense. For sure, it’s a tribute to Labour’s success that the Tories “feel they have to walk and talk like centrists to stand a chance of power”. But while “Cameron may talk left, he remains a man of the right”.

Let’s hope so, said Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph, since Cameron’s Tory party faces a stark choice. On the one hand, it could submit to an Edward Heath-style drift towards the Labourite tax-and-spend agenda. That’s a genuine prospect, given the pitifully unambitious manifesto the Tories presented at the election. On the other hand, the Tories could offer a genuine alternative, with a radical tax-cutting and cost-saving agenda that refuses to accept Britain’s present slow, managed decline. Here’s hoping.

In the meantime, said Matthew d’Ancona, also in The Daily Telegraph, Labour will attack the new leader with a ferocity not seen since this Government came to power. The assault will be “personal, savage, unremitting” – something that tells you all you need to know about Labour’s attitude to Cameron. “Namely, that they think he can win.”

Published in Economics | More articles by Simon Wilson

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