What are they up to? Cameron’s political strategy in historical perspective
Ben Jackson |
The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, reportedly warned that the winners of the 2010 general election would be out of power 'for a generation' because of the deep cuts to public spending they would have to implement following the financial crisis. It might therefore seem surprising that the Conservative Party's poll ratings have remained so stable, even as austerity bites. Yet previous Conservative governments - and Conservative-Liberal coalitions - have won elections while presiding over mass unemployment and diminished public services. In the 1930s, the Conservatives led by Stanley Baldwin were electorally dominant in these circumstances. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher repeated the pattern. So how did the Conservatives do it? And what are the prospects of David Cameron following in their footsteps?
Observers of David Cameron often view the Prime Minister through the lens of past Conservative leaders. For commentators on the right, Cameron is a 'one nation' Prime Minister in the tradition of Harold Macmillan, the conciliatory leader who championed full employment and the welfare state between 1957 and 1963. On this reading of his politics, Cameron is either accused of betraying Conservative principles in the name of electoral expediency, or praised for his canny centrism. For observers on the left, he is an unreconstructed 'small-state Thatcherite'.
However, there is a more compelling historical parallel. From the outset, the distributional impact of the government's economic policies has been regressive. Yet Cameron's programme is not presented in Thatcherite terms as 'liberating' the economy and promoting incentives for entrepreneurs. For the time being at least, spending reductions have not been coupled with significant tax cuts. Instead, austerity is presented as a matter of necessity, undertaken with reluctance due to Labour's supposed incompetence rather than with Thatcherite zeal. Rhetorically, however, Cameron generally strikes the consensual tone of Macmillan while substantively governing along Thatcherite lines.
In fact, Cameron most resembles Stanley Baldwin, under whose leadership the Conservative Party won the largest number of seats it has ever held in the modern House of Commons at the 1931 and 1935 general elections. The current focus on reducing public spending, allegedly necessary because of Labour's supposed 'incompetence' and 'profligacy', is strongly Baldwinite in character. Cameron's pluralist willingness to form a grand coalition with sympathetic Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, echoed the political manoeuvring that led to the formation of the National Government of the 1930s. These coalitions marked the start of a period in which the Conservatives adopted a conciliatory stance towards other parties. This conciliation was pursued in high politics but not in economic policy, since regionally concentrated mass unemployment continued to be tolerated. As such, Baldwin's rhetoric was inclusive but his political economy divisive.
Cameron is today attempting not just to implement an orthodox Conservative fiscal policy, but also to present it as 'national' and its opponents as sectional or self-interested. This aspect of his political strategy is clearly Baldwinite and redolent of the National Government of the 1930s. In both the 1931-35 and the 1935-40 governments, the Conservative Party alone had vast majorities over the other parties in the House of Commons. Yet former Labour and Liberal politicians held office in these governments, because Conservative leaders understood that reducing public spending during the Great Depression - and, consequently, tolerating regional mass unemployment - needed to be presented as 'national', not Conservative, policy. Coalition politics insulated the Conservative Party from the accusation that their economic policies were unfair or sectional. It is this ancestral Conservative statecraft that Cameron dusted off in 2010.
While the Cameron government's reductions in public expenditure and restructuring of public services are frequently attacked as 'ideological', it is important to understand that Conservative strategy does not simply reflect a philosophical commitment to a smaller state; party advantage is also in play. 'Austerity' is attractive to the Conservative leadership as a matter of electoral strategy. If the key political challenge facing the country over the long term becomes defined as cutting public spending, then the Conservatives believe they are more likely to prosper at the ballot box. Prolonged austerity actually reinforces this perception, rather than undermining it. The rhetoric of 'living within our means' harnessed by Baldwin in the 1930s and subsequently by Thatcher in the 1980s demonstrates the potential electoral resonance for the Conservatives of a politics organised around who is best at cutting spending.
Historical parallels are never exact, of course. The key difference between politics today and these earlier periods is that during the 1930s and 1980s living standards rose for those in electorally pivotal groups (a point also made by Steven Fielding on this site). Austerity delivered Conservative governments re-election by creating a political economy of winners and losers, in which the Labour Party was associated with the losers. But it is doubtful that there will be enough winners in the British economy over the next three years to make this strategy work by 2015. Unlike today, the recessions that propelled Conservative governments to power in the 1930s and 1980s were not caused by systemic crises in British banks. Such crises tend to produce long, slow and anaemic recoveries. There is little scope for a housing and credit-based boom of the sort overseen by Baldwin and Thatcher. Meanwhile, high commodity prices and a weak pound are leading to imported inflation. The result is an unprecedented squeeze on real incomes. This is the key weakness in contemporary Conservative strategy. There is therefore greater space for Labour than there was in the 1930s and 1980s to garner support by shifting the political argument away from a debate about cutting public spending - the terrain on which the Conservatives want to fight the next election - to one focused on how to deliver jobs, growth and rising living standards. The result of the 2015 election is likely to rest on whether the electorate regards the key test of governing competence as managing austerity or creating growth.
Please note: Views expressed are those of the author.About the author
