Cameron

The politics of modernisation and manipulation

Timothy Heppell

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526116314
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a new and distinctive interpretation of the political strategy of Prime Minister David Cameron via the themes of political modernisation and political manipulation. In terms of modernisation, the book will examine how Cameron attempted to detoxify the negative image of the Conservatives; how he sought to delegitimise Labour as a party of government by deflecting the blame on austerity onto the legacy of Labour in office, and how he used the Big Society narrative as a means of reducing the perceived responsibilities of the state. In terms of manipulation, the book will evaluate Cameronism in relation to the exploitation of their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, alongside examining the referendums on electoral reform and Scottish independence. The book will examine the end of Cameronism, and why he offered and then lost the referendum on continued European Union membership.

1

Introduction

Enoch Powell once famously said that ‘all political lives end in failure, because that is the nature of politics’ (Powell, 1977: 151). Those words seem most apt when we consider the political career of David Cameron. For all his apparent success as a politician, he will be forever remembered as the Prime Minister who called a referendum on continued European Union (EU) membership, campaigned aggressively for Remain, and was rejected by the people, many of whom were Conservatives (see, for example, Ashcroft and Culwick, 2016; Bennett, 2016; Glencross, 2016; Oliver, 2016; Shipman, 2016; Clarke et al., 2017a; Worcester et al., 2017). This cataclysmic failure prompted his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, thus bringing to an end a political career that until that point had been characterised by repeated success.

Consider the following. First, he won the leadership of the Conservative Party when only 39 years old, and after only four years in Parliament (for academic appraisals of how and why Cameron was elected as leader of the Conservative Party, see Denham and Dorey, 2007 and Heppell and Hill, 2009). Second, he took over a discredited and directionless party, which had suffered three General Election defeats in a row, and led them back into power in May 2010, albeit in coalition with the Liberal Democrats (for the best appraisal of this period see Bale, 2010: 283–362). Third, he confounded expectations again by winning the General Election of May 2015 outright with a majority of 12, when every single opinion poll of the campaigning period suggested that it would be a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives and Labour running neck and neck (Cowley and Kavanagh, 2016: 16, 162). The eventual gap between the Conservatives and Labour was nearly 100 seats (331 to 232), as the Conservatives increased their vote from May 2010 from 10,703,654 to 11,334,576 votes, with the gap between their vote and that of Labour being 1,987,272 votes (Cowley and Kavanagh, 2016: 433).

However, viewing Cameron through the lens of success or failure, according to the terms outlined above, is limiting. Cameron was also a risk taker or a political gambler – for example, forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats was a calculated risk, as was holding a referendum on electoral reform – the Alternative Vote (AV) referendum of May 2011. The same argument has to apply to his willingness to acquiesce to the demands of the Scottish National Party (SNP) for a referendum on Scottish independence (September 2014) (Finkelstein, 2016). It was certainly not low risk for Cameron to choose to pursue legislation on same-sex marriage, or to legally enshrine that 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) should be spent on overseas development aid, given the hostility that was said to have existed towards both within his own parliamentary ranks (Seldon and Snowdon, 2015: 479–80). Cameron engaged in these as calculated risks that he thought would be either directly to the advantage of the Conservatives, or would indirectly create complexities for his political opponents. Cameron was thus a political manipulator – always trying to define or redefine the rules of the political game to aid himself, his faction of modernisers, or the Conservatives more broadly (Heppell, 2013a). In many ways, as this book will try to demonstrate, he was an adept political manipulator, but on the most contentious issue of his time – continued membership of the EU and linked to this the issue of immigration – Cameron miscalculated badly. As Finkelstein noted, it was on this issue that the gambler’s luck ran out (Finkelstein, 2016).

However, notions of Cameron as a political manipulator have not been that apparent when academics have attempted to analyse his leadership. If there is one word that political scientists have used to define his approach then it is modernisation (see, for example, Kerr and Hayton, 2015; Dommett, 2015; Peele and Francis, 2016). What drives this book is the idea that the debates about modernisation – what it is, and to what extent Cameron maintained his commitment to it – are valid, but they are limiting in terms of understanding the politics of Cameronism.¹ This is because modernisation, when used within the context of parties, is predominantly, but not exclusively, an opposition driven concept. It is mostly about analysing what parties do when they are in opposition, in order to address the obstacles to electoral recovery, more than it is about what they do once they regain power. Although parties that commit to modernisation may continue to emphasise it once in power, it has only limited value to us as students of British politics, when we are considering the Conservatives’ transition from opposition into coalition government. For all of the talk of governing in the national interest, the reality of coalition government between 2010 and 2015 was that the Conservatives wanted to exploit the Liberal Democrats and erode their support base. Thus modernisation is only part of the equation in terms of understanding Conservative Party politics post-2005. Once the Conservatives were part of a coalition government Cameronism was about the politics of manipulation. By understanding Cameronism through the analysis of these two central themes – the politics of modernisation and the politics of manipulation – this book makes a significant contribution to the academic debates about the Cameron era in British politics.

Studying Cameronism: the rationale for the book

What is the rationale for the book? The answer to this question comes from the condition of the Conservative Party when Cameron became their new leader. Between 1997 and 2005 the Conservative Party, the supposed natural party of government in twentieth-century British politics, had suffered three electoral reversals in a row. In doing so they had lost roughly one-third of the support that they had when John Major led them to victory in April 1992. Their vote share had collapsed from 41.9 per cent in 1992 to 30.7 per cent in May 1997, and then improved slightly to 31.8 per cent in June 2001 and another small increase was evident in their 32.4 per cent vote share in May 2005. In terms of actual votes cast the 14,092,891 supporters in April 1992 had contracted to successive returns of 9,602,957, 8,357,622 and 8,772,473 (with their returns in 2001 and 2005 reflecting a decrease in the turnout from 71 per cent in 1997 and then down to 59 and 61 per cent in 2001 and 2005) (Cowley and Kavanagh, 2016: 432–3).

This decline reflected the enduring impact of the governing failure; party divisions and sleaze associated with the Major administration (see Dorey, 1999), alongside the success of New Labour as a party of government (see Driver and Martell, 1998, 2006; Hay, 1999; Heffernan, 2001; Ludlam and Smith, 2003; Hindmoor, 2005; Seldon, 2007a; Beech and Lee, 2008; Diamond and Kenny, 2011). The scale of the Conservatives’ problem was identified by Michael Ashcroft in his report on the 2005 General Election defeat. Entitled Smell the Coffee, Ashcroft’s report identified a series of assumptions that the electorate had towards the Conservatives, all of which were immensely worrying to whoever was elected as their new party leader. In addition to showing that Labour had a lead of 40 per cent in terms of governing competence, the research also asked voters to identify the three parties in terms of a series of descriptions. On this the Conservatives came first in terms of being ‘negative’, ‘aggressive’, ‘confused’, ‘sloppy’ and ‘depressing’, and they came last in terms of being ‘positive’, ‘moderate’, ‘clear’, ‘professional’ and ‘uplifting’ (Ashcroft, 2005: 79–97, 102; see also the following literature on the Conservatives in opposition 1997–2005, Garnett and Lynch, 2003; Bale, 2010; Snowdon, 2010; Dorey et al., 2011; Hayton, 2012).

Any doubts that the electorate did have about the governing capability of Labour was translating itself into increased support for the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrat vote share had increased from 16.8 per cent in 1997 to 22.0 per cent in 2005, and the number of votes cast for them had gone up from 5,242,947 in 1997 to 5,595,454 in 2005 (Cowley and Kavanagh, 2016: 432–3). The gap between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was now only 2,372,168, as opposed to the 8,493,623 gap between them in 1992. The Ashcroft findings showed that the Conservative Party had a severe image problem, and that they had made virtually no progress in terms of addressing this problem since losing power in 1997. Constructing a strategy that effectively critiqued the record of Labour in government, and stalled the rise of the Liberal Democrats, was the objective for Cameron when he became leader of the Conservative Party in December 2005 (Bale, 2010: 283–362).

Before we proceed it is important to emphasise the mountain facing Cameron in terms of initiating an electoral recovery (Curtice, 2009: 182; for a wider historical assessment of the Conservatives in opposition, see Ball and Seldon, 2005). This is best achieved by considering the impact of Leaders of the Opposition since 1951 (Heppell, 2012a). By impact we mean the following – the increase in seats secured at the next General Election under the new party leader, relative to the number of seats acquired at the last General Election, when the party in question is in opposition. Such an exercise demonstrates that to win power in 2010 Cameron needed a significant shift in public opinion. This was because he inherited a Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) made up of 198 members. This was 128 short of the number required to form a Conservative majority administration, and that would make a majority of just one. There is only one post-war example of an opposition leader making gains on such a large scale. The impact of Conservative opposition leaders in terms of seats gained is as follows: Winston Churchill 1945 to 1950 (+86) and then 1950 to 1951 (+22); Edward Heath 1965 to 1966 (-51), 1966 to 1970 (+77) and February to October 1974 (-20); Margaret Thatcher 1975 to 1979 (+62); William Hague 1997 to 2001 (+1) and Michael Howard 2003 to 2005 (+32). The impact of Labour opposition leaders in terms of seats gained is as follows: Clement Attlee 1951 to 1955 (-18); Hugh Gaitskell 1955 to 1959 (-19); Harold Wilson 1963 to 1964 (+59) and 1970 to 1974 (+14); Michael Foot 1980 to 1983 (-60); Neil Kinnock 1983 to 1987 (+20) and 1987 to 1992 (+42); Tony Blair 1994 to 1997 (+147); Ed Miliband (-26) and Jeremy Corbyn (+30) (data updated from Cowley and Kavanagh, 2016: 432–3; Denver, 2018: 16; see also Heppell et al., 2015).

Of those who had failed to lead their party from opposition and back into power – i.e. Churchill in 1950; Attlee in 1955; Gaitskell in 1959; Heath in 1966 and October 1974; Foot in 1983; Kinnock in 1987 and 1992; Hague in 2001; Howard in 2005; Miliband in 2015 and Corbyn in 2017, only Hague and Howard started from a weaker parliamentary base than Cameron. The best comparison in terms of parliamentary arithmetic would be the situation that Kinnock inherited in 1983. He had a parliamentary base of 209 members and it took the Labour Party, first under Kinnock (1983–92) and then John Smith (1992–94) and Blair (1994–97), 14 years and three parliamentary terms to return to power (Thorpe, 2008: 230–56). Cameron, in comparison, achieved the same ends – regaining power, albeit only in coalition – in five years as opposed to 14, making gains of over 100 seats; increasing the number of votes cast by 1,954,082; and securing a 3.7 per cent increase in their vote share. Given the toxicity of the brand that he inherited in 2005 this was an achievement that Conservatives, and non-Conservatives, need to acknowledge (Bale, 2012a: 236).

When we factor in the 2015 General Election result as well then the scale of the Cameron effect is more evident. During his leadership tenure the Conservative vote increased significantly. They added 2,549,661 votes between the General Elections of 2005 and 2015, they increased their representation from 198 to 331 seats, and they added 4.5 per cent to their vote share. In comparison the Labour vote share declined by 5.1 per cent over the same ten-year period and they lost the equivalent of 123 seats. The Cameron era also coincided with the collapse of the Liberal Democrats. Their vote share would shrink from 22.0 per cent to 7.9 per cent (down 14.1 per cent); their parliamentary representation fell from 62 to eight; and their vote base went from 5,985,454 to 2,415,661 (Cowley and Kavanagh, 2016: 432–3).

When examining the Cameron effect two other considerations need to be emphasised. The Cameron era may have run parallel to the erosion of support for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but it also coincided with, first, the rise of the SNP and, second, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). The SNP secured a significant increase in terms of support with their 412,267 votes and six seats in 2005 transformed into 56 seats and 1,454,436 seats in 2015, with their gains being at the expense of Labour (Mitchell, 2015: 89). Meanwhile, although the rise of UKIP was not as evident in terms of parliamentary seats gained, it was in terms of votes – as they went from 603,298 in 2005 to 3,881,129 in 2015 (Goodwin and Milazzo, 2015: chapter 12). Their representative success was more evident in terms of the European elections. Their second-place finish in the 2009 elections, on a 16.5 per cent vote share (2.5 million votes) and 13 MEPs, was transformed by 2014 into a 27.5 per cent vote share (4.3 million votes) and 24 MEPs. This placed them first ahead of Labour on 20 seats and 25.4 per cent with the Conservatives languishing third on 19 seats and 23.9 per cent (Curtice, 2014: 78–80).

That volatility, and the rise of multi-party politics, would run parallel to wider political and economic turbulence. Whilst the Conservatives were in opposition the third term Labour administration, by now under the prime ministerial leadership of Gordon Brown, were rocked by the dual cr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The politics of detoxification: restyling and reconstructing Conservatism
• 3 The politics of delegitimisation: apportioning blame and establishing risk
• 4 The politics of depoliticisation: the Big Society narrative
• 5 Controlling the coalition agenda: limiting Liberal Democrat influence
• 6 Political binding: coalition unity and the exploitation of the Liberal Democrats
• 7 Managing political dimensions: the rise of multi-party politics
• 8 Conclusion
• References
• Index