DOWN WITH EXTREMISM
Norman Tebbit is sick of the dogmatism that
drives the modernisers and Eurofana tics in the Tory party
NOT all my collection of political cartoons is hung in the downstairs loo, but one published in the Evening Standard in June 1995 has pride of place there. Contemplating John Redwood's resignation from the Cabinet to accept Prime Minister Major's challenge to 'back him or sack him', it is titled 'Redwood's Monstrous Cabinet'. I am there in Draculaesque garb, and so, too. is Bill Cash armed with a cut-throat razor. Most of the others are sporting handguns, but immediately behind Redwood, almost as prominent, there is a brutally countenanced Portillo. Many, including Portillo, I suspect, had expected that hardline. extreme right-wing, Eurosceptic, 'Who Dares Wins' Thatcherite to challenge the nice modernising Major — but in the end he suffered a testosterone failure and Redwood stood instead.
Now deep in LibDem political pinkness, Portillo joins such luminaries as Chris Patten in destabilising the Conservative leadership. Having both lost their own safe seats, they now offer to instruct the party in electioneering skills. Portillo is at least entitled to do so, but Patten, as a civil servant (perhaps fonctionnaire is a better word), should keep out of party politics. What is more, the oath he has sworn requires him to put the interests of the European Union above those of his own country and, it seems, his own party. Alongside Portillo and Patten, all the other usual suspects within and without Central Office who undermined William Hague are now busy briefing against lain Duncan Smith. Some are prominent recidivists like Heseltine, the serial political assassin, others are more riders on the coat tails of better men looking for preferment even in a mere rump of a party.
So why has the Conservative party all but lost its instinct for survival, let alone its hunger for office? At the root of the problem is an unnatural alliance between two extremist narrow fanatical groups, the Europhiliacs and the modernisers.
The modernisation cult appeals only to a group of extreme social liberals, cut off from the wider world. In my experience voters would prefer nostalgia to modernisation. They want the peaceful streets, traditional policing and disciplined schools of
yesteryear, not women-only shortlists. The modernisers may applaud Tony Blair's social policies, but in a lifetime of grassroots politicking I could count on the fingers of the right hand of a Finsbury Park Muslim cleric the number of voters who have asked me to support the legalisation of sex in public lavatories or instruction in oral sex in schools. As for women-only shortlists for candidates, just as I might have become converted to the idea for the choice of a London mayoral candidate, I find that the moderniser Steve Norris has changed his mind, too.
The 'modernisers' oppose policies to favour stable family units — and marriage, in particular — as unwarranted interference in personal choice. But they are vital to social stability — a proper objective of government. The American sociologist Robert Sampson has shown that in poor neighbourhoods the level of violent crime is strongly linked to family breakdown. Other studies show that American young people in 'father-absent' families are twice as likely to be in jail as those in two-parent families — and stepfathers do little to improve that unhappy statistic.
The modernising agenda is far from modern. It grows from the rotting corpse of the 1960s permissiveness that infected a once stable and law-abiding society. The Eurofanatics, like their French equivalents, see themselves as the new European political elite that would guide Europe to its destiny. They will never accept a Eurosceptic leader. They brought down Thatcher, undermined Hague and will never forgive lain Duncan Smith for standing against the Maastricht Treaty. Europe is their country, and it is there that their patriotic loyalty lies.
This alliance argues that Euroscepticism and traditional Tory policies would take the party into the laager. They see LibDemiNew Labour policies as the way forward for the Conservative party. That flies in the face of the facts. In most polls, almost as many voters say that they want to leave the European Union as now say they would vote Conservative. Even more are Eurosceptic. More detailed polling shows that while the 30 to 35 per cent hard core will vote Conservative at the next election almost whatever comes, significantly the 10 to 15 per cent of swing voters the party needs to attract could not care less about women-only shortlists and the modernising agenda. They want tax cuts, and radical structural reform of education and health services, and burglars to be locked up, not commissioned to write poetry for judges. To widen support the Tories must offer a radical Right, not a leftish alternative to New Labour.
The critics of Lain Duncan Smith have focused on some less than elegant management of staff changes at Central Office. In my view Mark MacGregor should never have been appointed chief executive in the first place. I dissolved the Federation of Conservative Students of which he was a leading member 16 years ago because its extremism and hooliganism were turning young people away from the Conservative party.
The new rash of dogmatic extremism among the so-called modernisers and the Eurofanatics has come as the Conservative party has begun to close the gap with Labour, because the dissidents fear that lain Duncan Smith might succeed, leaving them stranded. The government is one big open goal for the opposition, but the shadow Cabinet has become more like the Manchester United dressing-room, with members kicking boots at each other rather than using them to score against the other team.
It is time the parliamentary party understood that a general election between a Conservative LibDem party, a LibDem LibDem party and a New Labour LibDem party would leave a vast swath of the electors with little choice but to opt out or support extremist parties. If Tories really want to save their seats and defeat those modernising Europhiles, Blair and Kennedy, they should reflect on the defeats of Portillo and Patten and the swing of 8 per cent from Mrs May to the LibDems at Maidenhead, and that of 9 per cent from Labour to Conservative for the traditional Eurosceptic Andrew Rosindell at Romford. There is a lesson to be learnt.
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