Editorial
Tory conference flop
IT WAS widely recognised as a disaster. William Haig’s desperate attempt to rally his demoralised, disorientated and ageing Party was always going to be hard going: but in the event the main message that was banged home was that the Tories are unelectable in the foreseeable future.
Haig’s decision to confront the political divide over Europe, and the single currency issue, proved to be the biggest watershed, and could yet lead to a split in the Party, with the formation of a break-away pro-Euro Conservative party, more akin to Helmut Kohl’s recently ousted Christian Democrats.
The predictable victory in the pre-conference ballot on the single currency issue will raise as many problems for Haig as it solved. Where now are the many major companies and banks which support EMU to place their political allegiance – and donations?
Recent opinion polls have shown that while there is still a popular majority opposed to EMU, support for it is strongest amongst the most wealthy social layers – those earning over £50,000 a year. Historically these have been seen as natural Conservative voters, though Tony Blair’s shameless courtship of them with tax concessions has no doubt won over a few. Since Haig is now cemented into diehard opposition to the Euro, and clearly a prisoner of his party’s xenophobic hard-right, it makes it increasingly unlikely that he can lure this influential layer back into the fold.
The hard-line anti-EMU policy did not even have its expected effect in winning Rupert Murdoch’s Sun and Times back for the Tories, with the Sun’s cruel "dead parrot" front page now firmly etched on the minds of many of its working class readers.
But part of the explanation for this is the extent to which the Tories really are struggling as a party. The defeat of the Major government and the new life as the main opposition has brutally underlined the mediocre abilities and lack of charisma of former ministers and big hitters.
Any conference which looks to a blustering display by Ann Widdecombe as one of its high points, and which winds up staring at the bizarre spectacle of past prime ministers Heath and Thatcher ignoring each other on technicolour sofas is desperately short of excitement, personalities and prospects.
With Michael Heseltine repeatedly stressing that a mass vote of Tory members for Haig’s policy in the ballot was insignificant because it is a party of "a few hundred thousand mainly elderly people", the conference merely underlined how right he was.
Of course the Tories will eventually win back some seats in by-elections and in local government: the Blair government is even now driving protest voters their way.
But with New Labour having stolen almost all of the pro-market ideology and zeal which animated Thatcher, Haig’s unknown, uninspiring bunch of has-beens and deadbeats don’t even have any clear policies to inspire their target audience – except opposition to EMU.
It’s too easy for the workers’ movement simply to brush off the Tory conference as an irrelevant side-show. But the Tory line of Europe is likely to push even more big business sponsors towards New Labour, where they already have far more influence than the unions which built the Labour Party.
The lack of any credible electoral opposition will also intensify the arrogance and dictatorial line of the Millbank mafia. Haig’s conference was a disaster all round!