Charismatic Conservatism

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

A day or two after David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative Party last week, I arrived late at a party in Notting Hill – the fashionable London district with which Mr. Cameron and his circle is associated. As I ascended the steps, the front door suddenly flew open and I found myself exposed to the full glare of Mr. Cameron’s charisma. As he emerged with his wife Samantha – glamorously pregnant – the new leader beamed at me and remarked confidentially: “It’s a damn good party in there!” With that the Camerons swept past, trailing clouds of glory.


Like most people, I still need some persuasion that Mr. Cameron is destined to lead the Tories to the promised land. He has certainly hit the ground running, though it is too soon to say whether he is a sprinter or a marathon man. It is undeniable, though, that in his first week he has already altered the political landscape in Westminster.


Polls show the Tories neck and neck with Labor for the first time in many months. Mr. Cameron is forcing Prime Minister Blair, who has promised to step down before the next general election, to raise his game in order not to look like a lame duck. Mr. Cameron is already more popular than Mr. Blair’s likely successor and the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, who has also been galvanized into improving his image.


Most striking of all has been Mr. Cameron’s impact on the third-largest party, the Liberal Democrats, who were snapping at the Tories’ heels in recent elections and aspire to supplant them as the main opposition. Mr. Cameron has turned the tables on the Lib Dems, and there is talk of a putsch to replace their leader Charles Kennedy – widely derided as lazy, dissolute, and directionless – with someone of higher calibre.


Finally, Mr. Cameron has picked a fight with his own party over its failure to select more than a handful of women or ethnic candidates. His plan is to draw up an “A-list” of the “brightest and best” candidates, on which 50% of the names will be reserved for women and a smaller but substantial proportion for ethnic minorities. Local parties in constituencies where the Conservatives have a chance of winning will have no choice but to select from this A-list.


The effect would be similar to the policy adopted by Labor a few years ago of “all-women shortlists,” which was outlawed by the courts after disappointed male candidates sued. Mr. Cameron says he intends to make the Tories look more like the people they represent while not falling foul of the law.


The trouble with prescribing such strong medicine is that the diagnosis may be faulty. Local Conservative activists have had it drummed into them for years that they must not discriminate on grounds of sex, race, class, or religion. If anything, there is a prejudice against white, middle-class men. I have heard men complain that they have little hope of finding a winnable seat because the odds are stacked against them.


No, the problem is not with the demand for women candidates but with the supply. Conservative politics just does not attract enough energetic, able, opinionated women, despite the Labor Government’s attempts to make Parliament more “family-friendly.”


Politics is no longer a vocation, as it still was in Margaret Thatcher’s day, but a profession. Mr. Cameron has only ever had one job, as director of communications for a large media corporation, outside politics. He has been a speechwriter and adviser to several previous leaders; he lives and breathes politics. Political obsessives tend to be male, and a party in which they and only they thrive will be male too. If Mr. Cameron is to discover the next Thatcher, he may have to change more than the system of selection: he will have to abolish the political culture of which he himself is an outstanding product.


He could make a start by following President Bush’s example. The effect of surrounding himself with strong women, some of them from outside the Beltway, has been to soften the president’s robustly masculine image. The Democrats are following suit. Mr. Cameron is well aware that that America could even witness an all-female presidential contest, perhaps between Secretary of State Rice and Senator Clinton.


Mr. Cameron has too small a pool of women in Parliament, or even in local politics, from which to choose his high-flyers: there is unlikely to be a Conservative Condi as yet undiscovered. He knows, too, that the effect of “positive” discrimination is highly negative, if it means promoting individuals to senior positions beyond their experience or ability to handle. So he has opted to draft in new talent in the same way that business and the professions do it: using head-hunters to identify and fast-track women who may not be members of the party but who have the right profile.


Transforming the corporate culture and image of the Tories is going to be unpopular with the rank and file. That won’t worry Mr. Cameron. He is eager to be seen by the public battling with what Mr. Blair calls “the forces of conservatism” in his party. It is, however, harder to fight conservatism if you happen to be the leader of the Conservative Party.


This focus on the composition of his party carries a risk. If Mr. Cameron takes his eye off the real dangers facing the country, he will not acquire the gravitas that the British expect from future prime ministers. Women seem to like him, but he will have to offer them substance as well as image. Mr. Cameron talks of compassionate Conservatism, but all he has offered so far is charismatic Conservatism.


The New York Sun

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