Make no mistake, the Tories plan hegemony

By David Talbot

A year on and the Conservatives can scarcely believe their luck. The general election plunged the country into electoral uncertainty, but last Thursday saw the Prime Minister and his chancellor emerge the undoubted victors. The Lib Dems have been emasculated. Clegg has no leverage. He can’t even threaten to walk out, knowing that in an early general election only annihilation awaits. The AV referendum was soundly defeated, putting electoral reform off the political agenda for a generation. And, to top it all, the local election results show the Conservatives can win votes even as they slash Britons’ living standards. The last 12 months have been an object lesson in how to exercise power, and when it comes to acquiring and retaining power, British Conservatives are amongst the most ruthless and shrewd operators on the political scene.

The Tory performance last Thursday was even more impressive given what is happening to living standards. You have to go back to the early 1980s to find a time when the spending power of the average Briton fell from one year to the next. But with the results last week, and the remarkable durability of Conservative polling in general, it would suggest that the voters gave Osborne a tentative thumbs up. This is all mightily convenient for the chancellor. Long cast as the soon-to-be most reviled occupant of the treasury, his political ascendancy has left the Labour ranks in hushed awe.

Last week’s election results suggest that his strategy is paying off, politically at least. The fact that he took an economy that was growing at an annual rate in excess of 4% last spring and within six months managed to bring it to a standstill is impressive. Britain’s recovery from recession is painfully weak by historic standards, and there is a clear risk of a double-dip recession. But the voters are not listening to Labour on the economy. They believe that Labour’s decade of boom was built on the unsteady foundation of excessive debt and it mismanaged the banking crisis that left the country on the brink. Labour remains unforgiven, and it is the Conservative narrative that is etched in the public conscience.

Through their long years in the electoral wilderness the Conservative Party never once challenged the first-past-the-post electoral system, even if it then exaggerated Labour’s representation in parliament. They knew full well that they must never undermine the legitimacy of a voting system that conferred on them power for most of the 20th century. Cameron will soon have everything he wants electorally. The number of commons constituencies will be cut, with the boundaries redrawn in a way that strongly favours the Conservatives. Thanks in part to his powerful intervention he has destroyed any possibility of electoral reform. And the lords has been promptly packed with an astonishing 117 new peers to ensure sufficient Conservatives. Even the decimation of his coalition partners will have secretly pleased Cameron; the Lib Dem vote collapsing to Labour will paradoxically yield more Westminster seats to the Tories. Labour regained its northern strongholds but until it besieges the Conservatives in the south Cameron can be confident of a solid majority come the next election.

The Lib Dems now fully appreciate the Conservative lust for power. The coalition agreement was not so much a power-sharing arrangement as a blame-taking one: a role to which the Lib Dems are playing perfectly. Many Tories were profoundly uneasy about the coalition concession, but without it they would lack two vital props to Conservative rule. The first was crucial votes in the Commons to sustain power; the second a crucial step in the detoxification of the Conservative brand.

The past year has been a tumultuous and historic period in British politics. Cameron tottered last May, momentarily weak after failing to gain a commons majority against an appallingly unpopular Labour government. Since then he has slipped into power effortlessly, subtly reconfiguring the entire British political landscape as soon as the opportunity presented itself so that it could once again deliver one result – Tory hegemony.