Now for the good news: the Tories aren't as hopeless
as the press makes out
STEPHEN GLOVER
With a single voice the press announced that last week's by-election results represented a terrible setback for the Tories. Supposedly Conservative newspa- pers were short on sympathy. In the Times Tim Hames wrote two columns lamenting the Tories' pitiful showing. The Daily Mail on Monday devoted most of a leader col- umn to running down the Conservatives. Unsurprisingly, the left-wing press was cock- a-hoop. New Labour was said to be planning an election — 3 May 2001 is put forward as a likely date — in the sure and certain knowledge of a comfortable victory.
I wonder whether the boys at Millbank are as confident as they make out. The results in West Bromwich West and Preston were far from brilliant for the Tories, but they were a lot better than has been gener- ally assumed. (The by-election in Glasgow Anniesland was essentially a Labour/Scot- tish National Party fight, and I won't consid- er it here.) Newspapers were not interested in the nitty-gritty of swings, and most com- mentators, rather than looking carefully at the figures, were happy to accept at face value that the Tories had done appallingly. As for the Tories, they have mostly them- selves to blame. William Hague and Michael Ancram, the party chairman, were hopeless at seizing the microphone and get- ting over their version of events.
Labour won in Preston, as you would expect it to do, since this is a core Labour seat. The Tories came second and the Lib- eral Democrats third. There was a 9.1 per cent swing from Labour to Conservative in comparison with the 1997 general election. There was also a 8.4 per cent swing from Labour to the Lib Dems. Actually, the Libs had high hopes of coming second in Pre- ston, and have quite a strong traditional presence in the constituency. So the result did not bear out prophecies of the Liberals supplanting the Tories in Labour-held urban seats. But the most interesting aspect of the affair is the size of the swing from Labour to the Tories. If the Conservative party were to repeat a 9.1 per cent swing at a general election, it would win 106 seats from Labour, and there would be a hung parliament.
West Bromwich, another core Labour seat, tells a similar story, though not quite such a good one from the Tory point of view. Labour won, the Tories came second and the Liberal Democrats were third. No compari- son with the last general election is possible, since this was the seat of Betty Boothroyd, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and neither the Tories nor the Liberal Democrats contested it in 1997. Comparing last week's by-election with 1992, and discounting the boundary changes that have taken place since then, we find a 2.1 per cent swing from the Conservatives to Labour. But the 1992 election was quite a good one for the Tories, and they won by 21 seats.
A terrible setback? I hardly think so. We should enter the caveat that at both Preston and West Bromwich there were extremely low turnouts. It is a dangerous game extrapolating to general elections. On the other hand, it is certainly possible to argue that a higher turnout could benefit the Tories more than Labour, a greater propor- tion of whose core voters may stay at home. On the limited figures we have, particularly those at Preston, there is no basis for the despair of the Tory newspapers or the euphoria of the left-wing ones.
Since this is a media column I have to ask why the press reacted as it did. The liberal newspapers, I think, wanted Tony Blair to be rewarded for standing up to the Eurosceptic tabloids and Margaret Thatch- er. So they rushed to judgment as, in its dif- ferent way, did the right-wing press, which has a fragile belief in William Hague that can be very easily shaken. Certainly the low- key, almost apologetic, manner in which he responded to these by-elections lays him open to criticism. But the results do not sug- gest to me that the Tories are heading for a wipe-out at the next general election under his leadership. Far from it, I would say.
And so to the Express. Readers may have noticed that it has been sold, which I have been saying for months it would be, though I failed to identify the buyer. Richard Desmond reportedly objects to being called a pornographer but, since his company pub- lishes magazines such as Asian Babes and Forty Plus, I don't think he has a leg to stand on. On the face of it, he would seem the last person in the world to be put in charge of a once-great national newspaper.
But the villain of this story is not Mr Desmond but Lord Hollick, chief executive of United News and Media. Ever since he won control of the Daily and Sunday Express and the Daily Star in 1996, he has run the titles badly. Hollick's main, perhaps his only, philosophy has been to cut costs. For a long time he denied that he wanted to sell the newspapers, though it was obvious that he would do so. He ignored interest from Asso- ciated Newspapers (publisher of the Daily Mail, for which, I should mention, I write a column), Hollinger (which owns The Specta- tor) and the Barclay brothers in favour of a bid from Desmond, though he could have got more money from any of these parties. The explanation that he could not afford to endure months of regulatory hassles — bids from Associated or Hollinger would have been referred as they are existing national newspaper owners — is hardly sufficient. Lord Hollick, who claims to be a Labour supporter, has behaved like the worst sort of third-rate businessmen who can't see beyond next month's bottom-line.
And Mr Desmond? A little voice in the back of my head warns me not to write him off. All the great proprietors who started or built up newspapers — most obviously Northcliffe and Beaverbrook — were out- siders and buccaneers, much sneered at in their early days. Desmond may have some- thing of their energy and ruthlessness. On the other hand, he disavows any interest in politics, and knows little or nothing about national newspapers. The young Northcliffe was a newspaperman to his fingertips and a politician manqué; Beaverbrook was engrossed by politics from an early age. To mention the porn merchant Desmond in the same breath as these men seems incongru- ous. His company is also heavily borrowed and does not possess enormous sums of money to wage war on the much richer Daily Mail, which he has said he intends to do.
But I don't think he will fail by his own lights. I expect he will find costs to cut in the more conventional areas of journalism which do not interest him. The Daily Express will be taken downmarket, and its pages filled with pictures of celebrities taken from the pages of OK! magazine, also owned by Mr Desmond. I slightly wonder whether there are enough celebs to go round, but I leave that to him. Yes, in his way I imagine he will make something of the Daily Express, but I don't think it will be the kind of newspaper I want to read.
Previous page
