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The aim of politics is to get into power. David Cameron’s duty is to propel himself and the Tory party into government. In the first days of this year he has focused unblinkingly on that objective. He has wasted no time in junking policy positions that made the Conservatives unelectable. In a few short weeks he has jerked the party onto the centre ground. His ruthless pursuit of office should have convinced any doubters in his party that the Tories have done exactly the right thing in electing him. Instead, his shrewd moves have provoked a chorus of wingeing from political commentators. Lord Tebbit does not want to see any rubbishing of Thatcherism. Irwin Stelzer, a writer who enjoys a close friendship with Rupert Murdoch, recalls how Margaret Thatcher despised the muddle of political consensus, and cites Ronald Reagan as a figure who managed to combine charisma with distinctly right-of-centre policies. But we are not in the 1970s and this is not the USA. By comparison with Americans the British are socialistic. They believe in the National Health Service, progressive taxation and the welfare state. When Thatcher became Tory leader in 1975 the country was plagued by strikes and feared a slide into social chaos and economic disaster. Exceptionally in those circumstances it was conceivable that British might vote for unusually sweeping measures. Even so Thatcher did not propose them. Before being first elected she promised only cautious reform, and the word “privatisation” did not pass her lips. Once in office, she gradually evolved a more radical approach. Even so, after eleven years in power she left Britain’s education and health systems essentially unchanged. I remain a supporter of what Thatcher achieved, but based on what she actually did, not on the myth created after. By contrast with 1975, today there is no sense of crisis in Britain. Most people are comfortably off and expect life to get better. Naturally, they would like public services to improve. After almost nine years of Labour they may now be sceptical that more public spending will do the trick. But they certainly do not think that revolutionary change would be the answer. The public may well be wrong. Perhaps more grammar schools and more private money in health are good ideas. But there is no future for any British politician who stuffs such radical ideas down such unwilling throats in such placid times. Some of those who comment from the sidelines still don’t “get it”. They do not grasp how unpopular the Tories were until Cameron was chosen nor how much reassurance people need before they can trust the party. Visionaries in metropolitan think tanks have fine theoretical solutions for our public services, but voters sees things differently. It seems that unworldly commentators would rather the Tories were ideologically pure than electable. Not that the commentators are the only ones to blame. It has taken many years for the penny to drop amongst Conservative MPs. Just a few months ago the party thought that offering the better-off minority a way to escape from the horrors of the National Health Service would win it votes. Michael Howard displayed the memory of a goldfish when in 2005 he campaigned with the same attitudes that had brought the party crushing defeat in 2001, and then looked surprised when the result was repeated. It is not cynical to say that Cameron’s duty is to get elected. For democracy to work, voters must have a realistic choice. The Conservatives’ mean-spirited stupidity in the last two elections has denied the public an alternative to Labour. Tony Blair has won by default, and we have the sort of government that you would expect in those circumstances: arrogant and power-drunk. The point was proved by Blair’s reaction last week to the plight of Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary. When it emerged that ministers had allowed people listed on the sex offenders’ register to work in schools, the welfare of children should have been the prime minister’s priority. Instead he asserted that Kelly would stay in post even when there is a reshuffle. Whether or not she has been in error, what most worries our beleaguered premier is that he might lose another Blairite from the cabinet. John Prescott gave us another example last week of the arrogance of office, when he was forced to pay thousands of pounds in council tax arrears on his official residence. Power corrupts. Once it has done so, those who have been corrupted must be removed from power and replaced by others who have not been corrupted yet. In time they will fall victim too, and the process can be repeated. If Cameron made himself unelectable by adhering to rightwing shibboleths, he would be failing in his duty, not to the party, but to the nation. Some Tories lament the lack of clear blue water between them and Labour. I fear that I am largely responsible for inventing that silly phrase back in the 1980s. If in the political circumstances of today the Tories put clear water between themselves and the middle ground, they will simply drown in it. That does not mean that people will perceive no difference between the parties. The plan is that they should see the new challenging the old, fresh faces jostling against old ones, altruism battling with vested interest. Those who attack Cameron for majoring on tone and style misunderstand that those are the weapons with which you defeat a government that now wearies the public and has grown weary of itself. Some Cameron critics want to judge him by whether he wins the next election. They are setting a trap. If the parties look much the same, they argue, then the voters will choose the experienced Brown over the boyish Cameron. That is indeed likely. After years of pursuing clear blue water the Tories have not enough few seats in parliament to return to office in one electoral leap. Cameron should be judged not by whether he achieves the impossible but by whether he does much better than his predecessors. He will. Even I am staggered by how quickly modernisation is working for him. A few months ago people were half as likely to support any statement if told that it was a Tory policy than if it was left unattributed. Last week new polling showed that in some cases people were more inclined to agree with a viewpoint if they knew that it came from Cameron than if it was anonymous. I was worried that Cameron had populated his shadow cabinet with reactionaries like David Davis and William Hague. Fortunately, it seems that they are being ignored. Cameron made a plethora of policy announcements while the House of Commons was in recess, which suggests that he is bypassing the shadow cabinet. The kitchen cabinet rules. Cameron makes decisions with his clique of like-minded modernisers, some of whom are not even in parliament. Bravo. The mayhem inside the Liberal Democrat party provides further evidence of Cameron’s success. He threatened to undercut the Lib Dems’ support and even to attract parliamentary defectors. That precipitated their leadership crisis. Those MPs who moved mercilessly to oust Charles Kennedy were right to do so because he could not go on. But whichever of the four declared candidates replaces Kennedy will be less popular than he was. The public is not looking for a radical shift to the left under Simon Hughes, nor the dull worthiness of Menzies Campbell. The other two have still less to offer. A few months ago the question was whether the Lib Dems would replace the Tories as the second party. Now we are asking whether the Lib Dems will throw away much of the advance made under Kennedy. Die-hards and nostalgics who cannot deny Cameron’s early achievements are driven to predict trouble ahead. He is Tory Blair just when Blairism is passing from fashion, they say. I accept that many people are indeed disillusioned with Blair. But that does not mean that the public wants instead to be frightened by an incarnation of the Thatcher myth. Blairism is partly an easygoing, optimistic style. Blair himself now finds it harder to conjure it up in the midst of his difficulties, but the approach remains attractive. Blairism was also a method. He unsentimentally identified all the attitudes that set the public against his party and ditched them. Blair understood his duty to get into power. Rightly Cameron is not ashamed to copy him.
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