Mr Blair could have his own problems with the liberal
elite
BRUCE ANDERSON
It was a cynical attempt to manipulate the most backward elements of public opin- ion. But with an election coming up, this is a politician who will try any stunt to distract attention from his party's failures in vital policy areas. A lot of high-minded persons were dismayed, including members of his own party, but he is quick to dismiss such elitist views. No, Tony Blair is determined to play the fox card and to go on playing it right up until polling day.
So will it prove to be the ace of trumps, or only the two? The PM may find, as William Hague could also do on crime, that silent majorities are easier to identify than to mobilise. For years, Tories canvassing the rougher areas of their constituencies have found that they can guarantee an enthusiastic response if they are seen with the party's favourite stand-in girlfriend, Laura Norder. Working-class Labour sup- porters always warm towards Laura. But most of them go on voting Labour.
Mr Blair might have a similar experience over fox-hunting, for he could face three related problems. The first is that most of those who want to ban hunting do not regard it as an important question and are more concerned about health, transport, crime, et al. It seems unlikely that those issues will play well for the government over the next few weeks, and if Labour ministers seem to be devoting all their energies to hunting while the NHS cannot even bury its dead, there could be trouble.
The second is that many of those who support hunting do care passionately about their sport. They may be outnumbered in the opinion polls, but they will turn out at the polling-booths. When Liam Fox was a Tory candidate in the Borders, some of his younger female supporters were keen to make plays on his name. Dr Fox thought that he had better keep an eye on them, lest over-enthusiasm be carried to excess. He allowed badges saying 'I am a Foxy lady', but banned `For Fox sake vote Tory'. In the hunting shires, they will be less fastidious. They will be happy to proclaim their love of the fox, as they try for the twentieth time to explain to some ignorant townie that if foxes had never been hunted, they would now be an endangered species. If there had been no incentive for farmers to con- serve foxes over the last four centuries, the fox might now be as rare in the countryside as the wild cat or the pine marten. That brings us to Mr Blair's third prob- lem: the liberal elite. A reassuring number of people in this country still believe in the liberty of the subject. They might never dream of going hunting; they might suspect that they would not enjoy fox-hunters' com- pany — there they would almost certainly be mistaken — but they think it wrong to criminalise the pleasures of others unless there is an overwhelming reason for doing so. Anxious about the countryside's future, they are ready to entertain the hypothesis that those who live and work there might understand it better than outsiders do. They are particularly unimpressed by out- siders in leather shoes who have just con- sumed a battery-chicken burger while the family moggy is out hunting for songbirds.
There are plenty of such hypocrites on the Labour benches, eager to reassure their constituents that there is no threat to coarse fishing; why should there be? It is not a toff's sport. Over the next few weeks, the Labour party will be displayed at its worst, full of MPs who are not interested in the arguments because they know that they have got the votes; full of class hatred. This could be exploited by the Countryside Alliance. Over the past few years, it has evolved into a formidable campaigning out- fit which could give the Tory party lessons in propaganda. It should be well within the Alliance's powers to convey the impression that the decent and thoughtful people are on its side, while the ignorant and bigoted are on the other.
It may all come down to tone of voice. This is something which Tony Blair under- stands instinctively; it is virtually his only asset. But William Hague does not under- stand the importance of tone of voice. This is partly because his intellect has got in the way. He is used to winning debates with his forensic skills rather than his body lan- guage. That said, the Tory leader not only finds it easy to persuade elite audiences; he can also amuse and charm them. But he finds it harder to connect with the mass of the public.
He and his party ought to remember Gordon Reece's dictum. Sir Gordon is one of the few PR men who actually knows how to relate to the public, and in the days when he used to run the Tory party's media train- ing, he would always emphasise one point. `When they are watching television,' he would say, `ordinary voters do not follow arguments in detail. But they do ask them- selves one question: "Is this a nice person or a nasty person who has come into my liv- ing-room?" If the answer is "nasty person", you may be winning the debate but you will be losing the votes.'
Mr Hague's comments on law and order have been much more measured than most media reports would suggest, but he made two mistakes. The first was to fail to give sufficient emphasis to the humanitarian aspects of his policy. He knows that the poor are the main victims of crime and he did make that point, but he should have tried to do so in soundbite fashion. He should not have allowed himself to be por- trayed as illiberal.
It was also unwise of him to use the term `liberal elite'. No Tory should ever use the word 'elite' in a derogatory context. Tories ought to believe in elites and should insist that a healthy society will have large num- bers of different elites in many diverse areas, including penal policy. In Britain, however, that has not been the case. To describe those who have been in charge of penal policy in recent decades as an elite Is to pay them a wholly undeserved compli- ment. 'Clique' or 'junta' might have been more appropriate, but it would probably have been better to refrain from calling them names and to concentrate on excori- ating the failure of their policies. Mr Hague still has time to return to that theme, and to adjust his rhetoric. When Tories talk about crime, they can rarely resist the temptation to salivate about pun- ishment, but William Hague should try to do so. He should remind his audiences that criminals ought to be caught and punished not only for society's good but also for their own. The criminal is often his own principal victim, so the earlier he is dealt with and deterred, the better it is for him too. The Hague speech contained some sound pro- posals on work-based imprisonment which received no publicity, but which won com- mendation from a true liberal elitist, Dou- glas Hurd. There would be no harm in repeating them, no harm in sounding gen- erous as well as tough, no harm in insisting that imprisonment must cease to be an expensive way of making bad men worse. If Mr Hague can do that on crime, while Mr Blair is sounding nasty and mean-spirit- ed on hunting, who knows? The Tory partY might win some unexpected elitist votes.
Previous page
