I went to a Conservative Party gathering last week. It was a question and answer session entitled: “Are we getting the message across?” I was a guest of my mother-in-law. Despite being charmed by a fundraiser (and despite various political flirtations throughout my life) I've no particular party loyalty and intend keeping it that way. But my haste to caveat this column with that distancing should surely be an answer to the question they set themselves: no, the Conservatives are not getting the message across.
In fact, I came away deeply concerned. This was a political movement that had lost touch with what it stood for. Even from the panellists (including Tim Montgomerie, the articulate founder of ConservativeHome.com), I found no popular message worth propagating. And I don’t mean that as a disagreement. I mean that as a PR man who spends his day delivering “key messages” to “target audiences”.
To illustrate the problem, let me first state the core Labour Party message as I see it: social justice. Ask any Labour Party activist what motivates them and it will not be long before these two words fall from their lips. It is clear, it has meaning and it is a strong positive message that’s hard to refute: to not agree with social justice is to, presumably, support social injustice – so non-believers are immediately on the defensive. That’s a powerful message.
Yet I listened in vain for equivalent clarity with the Conservatives. Going by the discussion, here’s what this unselective grassroots Conservative gathering (and their “political class” panellists) think about their messages.
1) That “Conservative values” are nothing to be ashamed of (yes, but what are they?) and should be more robustly stated.
2) That the Big Society has no meaning and is a sop to the left (which they were potentially confusing with the majority of voters).
3) That there are too many people on welfare.
That's it (and I’m being generous). The rest of the debate was about the inherent pro-state (and therefore anti-Tory) bias of the BBC (I would agree to claims of it being anti-business) and the fact the CBI (that hugely popular mass movement!) should do more for small business, or maybe not.
The one word I wrote down in the entire “debate” – because it was the only statement delivered with clarity (by Montgomerie) – was “morality”. That here was the Party of Morality, he claimed. This went down well with the audience, but the trouble is, as a message, it is fraught with danger: one person’s morality is another person’s condemnation. Morality can be viewed as a form of judgement upon others that can quickly look and sound (and act) like intolerance. And wasn’t being seen as the “Nasty Party” one of the core problems with the Conservatives’ brand (at least according to Theresa May)?
So what’s all this got to do with fear of failure? Well, apart from the fact fear of failure stopped me from standing up and berating the lot of them for their appalling lack of vision, it’s the fact that my book, What’s Stopping You? is about coping and overcoming barriers to personal progress. It is about “achievement motivation” – the opposite to fear of failure and a goal for High-FFs (those with a high fear of failure). Yet Britain as a society puts up needless and destructive barriers to personal progress. Sometimes these are through prejudicial hurdles such as class, gender and race (although in my view class is the most pernicious as it cuts across gender and racial divisions) – but sometimes through structural ones such as our lowest-common denominator education system and our overly-complicated benefits arrangements that trap people in their current, often destructive, circumstances.
So why isn’t the Tory message one of "social mobility" – encouraging people to take control of their lives and improve their circumstances, not through government handouts but through their own determination and productivity? Certainly, there are some in the Tory party that state this – and some policies that encourage it – but as a unifying message it seems to get lost. And it also seems to be diluted by the obvious air of privilege that permeates the party, as it did the gathering I attended.
As a riposte to the “social justice” message of the left “social mobility” has the same degree of clarity, and is equally hard to refute as a cause. It at least can be claimed as inclusive, which is more than can be said for “morality” as a popular message in one of the world’s most liberal countries.
Yet, despite the efforts of Iain Duncan-Smith, I cannot help concluding that the Conservatives have lost the agenda with respect to social mobility. The party of the grammar school leaders (Heath, Thatcher, Major, Hague, Duncan-Smith, Howard), is now the party of the Eton boys. No less than 15 ministers went to that one school, which led even the Sunday Times to regret the fact “David Cameron has more Etonians around him than any leader since Macmillan”. Unfortunately, my audience also reflected this: I was at a pretty posh gathering with the odd “wide boy” millionaire being tolerated (presumably because of his donation). As activists, this lot were going to have difficulties turning a message of social mobility into votes.
Indeed, most of the entrepreneurs I meet are a long way from supporting the Conservatives (or at least admitting it) because they perceive a party of big business, landed interests and privately-educated privilege – the very elements of society most of them had to overcome for their business to prosper. Small businessmen are the bulwarks of the private sector. They are the very elements producing a net benefit to the UK’s economy – as are ambitious people generally. Yet the ones I meet seem to dislike the very party that is supposed to represent them. This is a disaster for the Tories and yet I see no attempt at trying to address this with respect to their core messages.
These days, the Conservatives advocating social mobility feels like a brewery advocating temperance. And this is a calamity for the Conservative Party in terms of its electoral chances (especially if the country adopts AV). It is also pretty bad news for the country. In fact, this state-educated Essex Boy so despaired of what he was witnessing he would have walked out had he not been required to escort his mother-in-law to Charing Cross Station after the event (which ended early anyway because the panellists all had other engagements, no doubt with their chums within the Political Class).
Yet the low point was to come. Archie Norman (another panellist: the former Tory Chief Executive – now Chairman of ITV) talked of the social mobility aspects of the X-Factor. This made me boil with anger – the previously inherent social mobility of the UK has been so eroded that the best the party of "getting on" could muster was some pathetic reality-TV programme that invites desperados to make total tits of themselves in their squalid attempt to be given the same life chances as the posh kids. Given me a break! Please remember Archie, of the thousands queuing at the auditions one kid makes it into your Magic Kingdom (and is spared the life of the Newcastle council estate) – one! If that’s what counts for social mobility in the UK of today, then we really are in trouble.
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