Tory Stories across the country are as compelling and relevant as they ever were

By Jeremy Cliffe and Joe Laking

It is said that the difference between being Leader of the Opposition and being Prime Minister is that the former must ask “What do I have to say today?” and the latter “What do I have to do today?” We have had over four years to hear what David Cameron has to say, but what he would do as PM remains – for the Tories at least – an electorally propitious grey zone.

However, perhaps because of the decline of local newspapers and the centralised nature of British politics, many underestimate the extent to which Conservatives in local and regional government are a barometer to the state and mindset of the party at large – including those of its leadership. This can be beneficial to Cameron: the ‘Turnip Taliban’ debacle of late 2009 arguably helped define his leadership, by contrast, as moderate and enlightened. It characterised the reactionaries in the Conservative Party as an isolated provincial anachronism, stubbornly resisting the metropolitan mores descending on them from Notting Hill. But their attitudes are no isolated boil, lanced in the work of a moment. They permeate the party to such a degree that it is on them that Cameron depends for his mandate to implement change nationally. Insofar as he has forged a tacit, shut-up-and-put-up-till-we-get-elected deal with the grassroots, this dependence has been astonishingly apparent over recent months.

No party leader, particularly one still courting the electorate, would have made a decision as ludicrous as pulling the Conservative Party out of the EPP unless he truly felt that the party faithful permitted him no alternative. The same applies to Cameron’s electorally (and socially) illiterate policy on Inheritance Tax. On PR matters he may be his own man, and a skilled one at that, but on questions of policy he is craven to a party whose views on public services, crime and society resemble those of the US Republican Party far more than they do those of Nicolas Sarkozy or Angela Merkel. Daniel “the eccentric” Hannan is, after all, a political pin-up for vast swathes of Cameron’s base.

And in the same way that Hannan is less of an isolated eccentric than Cameron would have the public believe, in local and regional government the likes of Barnet’s slash-and-burn easyCouncil are far from exceptional. Often spared the glare of the national media, these councils incubate nationally implementable policies. Indeed, in 2007 Cameron told his councillors: “You demonstrate Conservative government – your values, your achievements, represent our party in action”. Just last year George Osborne said “I want the Conservative Party to learn from what local Conservative councils are doing right now.”

Earlier this week, Jon Cruddas and Chuka Umunna launched Tory Stories, a website that will act as a depositary for evidenced information on what the Conservatives are up to where they are in power. These individual stories tell us more than statistics, each case allowing us to examine concrete policies and that most important political tool: judgement; the ability to make the right calls. At national level Cameron is yet to retreat from an economic position that put him at odds with the entire body of mainstream international opinion. And, as Tory Stories reveals, at local and regional level too his party pursues a dogmatic approach to government predicated on means rather than ends.

The latest Tory Story – published today – puts the spotlight on Southampton City Council, whose ‘revolution’ accords ‘priority attention’ to the recruitment of new media staff whilst cutting spending on family crisis intervention, city bus services and care for the elderly. Over to Conservative Council leader, Alec Samuels:

“We do not in principle favour “free this and free that”, eg swimming or transport, school means or computers or whatever it is […] For ideological reasons we are going for outsourcing, externalisation, privatisation, wherever possible and sensible […].”

Southampton’s objection to public provision extends to the £56,000 of government money it was offered to fund free swimming for the under 16s and over 60s. The council was eventually pressured into taking the money. 49 other Tory councils turned it down.

Most pernicious of all is that such councils consistently target their cuts at the most vulnerable, those least able to defend their interests: the poor, elderly and disabled. Choice is conflated with quality, rights conflated with frills and the result is an opt-out system in which any resemblance of a local safety net is gradually whittled away.

It’s true that, when last in power, the Conservative Party spent eighteen years devastating Britain’s social fabric and reducing the country’s manufacturing industry to a shell. But thirteen years is a long time in politics and now there is another story for Labour to tell, one just as compelling but even more relevant to today’s voters, nine million of whom were not even old enough to vote the last time the Tories were in government.

We know what the Tories say, we know what they did in the past, but it’s what they do in power at the present that offers the best guide to what a Cameron government would do in the future. It is with this that Labour must engage.

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Tory Stories welcomes the submission of evidenced articles on Conservatives in local and regional authorities. Please send them to [email protected].