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STEPHEN CRABB interviews the former Health Secretary who argues that the Conservatives must match Labour's adoption of modern communication techniques if we are to win the next Election. Highlighting Mr Blair's scare stories on VAT on food and pensions Stephen Dorrell predicts that Labour's duplicity will reap a whirlwind of dissatisfaction born out of unrealistic promises.
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Stephen Crabb: You have spoken recently about the need for the party to escape from the arguments that dragged it down in the last Parliament Just how is this to be done?
Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell MP: There are a number of things that have to be done. There is an urgent need for us to restructure the party organisation - to bring in new members, to rebuild the party with active roots in the community and members who have an active role and a voice within the party organisation. That by itself will help to encourage us away from a private argument going on within the party that didn't respond to the concerns of our supporters.
Secondly, the party has to look forward. It's no good looking back and refighting the battles of the early 90s. We have to focus on the choices that the electorate are going to make in the coming Euro and local elections and most importantly the General Election in 2001 or 2002. We have to ensure we respond much more directly to the specific concerns of our members and supporters.
Issues for recovery
SC: So what do you think are the key issues around which the party can unite in the next five years?
SD: Well I think that there are three basic issues we have to address.
Firstly we have to continue to be committed to a competitive liberal economy. It's the foundation stone upon which much else is built.
Secondly, we should be in favour of an explicit programme of reform of the European Union with two basic elements: to make the economic structures of Europe more flexible so that the European economy becomes more competitive; and to make the political structures more flexible, to that there doesn't need to be the same political relationship between every single member state of the Union.
I'm not in favour of us continuing to entertain a single currency project when we clearly have not got convergence between our economy and the continental economies. I'm not in favour of saying 'no, never' but I am in favour of recognising that convergence doesn't exist and that we must have other priorities in European affairs.
The third set of issues beyond liberal economics and Europe is that we have to reclaim the 'One Nation' epithet for the Tory Party. We have to show that we will deliver effective health and effective education on the basis of need, and that our priorities are the same as the priorities of people voting for us. The most damaging thing of all in this election was on the doorsteps when people asked 'How are you going to make life better for us?' More often than not they were thinking about things like class sizes and hospital waiting-times. We had lots of big concepts and they listened to the concepts and said 'That's all very interesting but what about waiting times?' We didn't have the answer.
SC: Why do you think Conservatives have such a credibility problem when addressing issues of social injustice? How do we bury the notion that the party is uncaring and narrow?
SD: Partly it's about the way we approach health and education. We have to carry conviction as people who have the same commitment to high quality health and high quality education as the voters have. They doubt that at the moment. That's why they don't trust what they hear. We also have to show that a more successful economy delivers the means for improving health and improving education. What we shall find with this Government is that the economy will progressively perform less well because of minimum wage and tax rises. These will inhibit the effectiveness of the economy and reduce its capacity to deliver decent social services or improvement in individual living standards. What we must show is that we will deliver decent social services and that we're committed to allowing individual families to raise their living standards by their own means.
SC: Do you think that lower taxation has lost its force as a winning message?
SD: I think it has a reduced force now compared to what it had in the 1970s. But I don't think that we should move away from it because it's quite clear to me that if we're to be a successful economy in the world in the next decade then sharp incentives and a flexible economic structure are an absolute precondition. If we don't have that we shall simply be outperformed and the economic failure will lead, as it always does, to social frustration and social failure.
SC: Did Labour trump us on traditional community and family values?
SD: Yes, I think they were seen as having done so. I'm not sure that there was any substance to it, but we need to underline the sense of individual responsibility - which I spoke about when I came to the CCF dinner last September - that individuals must be responsible for providing a framework for their own lives and for their families' lives. We have to find language which allows us to express it without becoming preachy and moralising.
SC: Do you think Back to Basics could ever have been a winning theme?
SD: Not in the way that it was launched, no.
SC: The manifesto commitment to a tax-break for any married partner who chose to 'stay at home' was a welcome recognition of the importance of the family. How important should family life be to Conservative tax and welfare policy?
SD: I think that the strengthening of family bonds and family responsibility is the cornerstone of a successful society. That's partly about the parent's relationship with the child. But one of the things I feel very strongly about is that it's not just the parent's responsibility for the child. It is also the child's responsibility in later life to look after the parent. It's the relationship between siblings. Do we now have a notion of family that is so water-tight that the success of one brother means that another brother elsewhere is left on his own? One of the things that has gone wrong with the whole family argument is that the word 'family' has become synonymous with the nuclear family of husband, wife and two children. A family properly understood is a much broader connection.
SC: In your article in The Times you called for an 'open and inclusive' party. Can the libertarian wing of the party continue to coexist with moral and social conservatives?
SD: Yes it can, as long as we understand that what we're seeking to do is create a party with a shared set of values - in which there will be differences in nuance and tone - but with the purpose of the party being to win and retain power. A party that simply provides a framework where the libertarians can debate with the social conservatives but both remain out of office is, no doubt, an interesting thing to belong to but it's not a political party.
SC: Does it worry you that so many Christians no longer seem to support the party?
SD: Yes it does because I don't think we've succeeded in expressing the commitment of a Conservative to a moral framework and to use the organs of the state and the political ideas we have to deliver a result which reflects Christian teaching. I think it says something about the Christian Church as well. There are too many churchmen who instinctively think of the collective solution rather than the individual's responsibility.
Local renewal
SC: Moving on to local government, the party obviously needs to rebuild its base there. Does it also need to change its attitude to local government?
SD: Yes it does. We need a set of principles to carry through in local government which are much clearer and which are embraced by Conservative councillors. Local government and the Conservative Party have got into something of a vicious circle over quite a long period. There's been a sense that power has been filtering away from local government so more and more people have wondered why they do it. That's led to a sense that the people who still remain doing it are not all committed to the same set of values. We need to turn that round. There needs to be a clear commitment within the Tory Party to reform the structure of local government to reinvent local government as the enabler, as the purchaser of services and very much less as the provider of services. Those were ideas that I sought to carry through in social services when I was at Health.
Modernising
SC: Can we draw any lessons from the unsuccessful fightback of Republicans against the Clinton administration in the USA?
SD: Yes I think we can draw one or two lessons. They tried two models. For the first two years they tried a radical right-wing agenda and then for the second two years they tried 'same old firm'. Neither of them worked. What we need is a well thought out properly structured agenda that will pick up the disappointment that will be felt when Labour fails to deliver on the expectations they have aroused, and shows people how the Conservative agenda, against the background of that failure, will deliver decent health, decent education, rising living standards, and a society they want to live in rather than a set of abstract ideas.
SC: The Conservative Party has had a terrific problem with communication in recent years. This is something you picked up in your Times article. Were you suggesting that we 'Mandelsonise" the party?
SD: Yes. Our opponents at the next election will be the Labour Party with a media operation which will be slick, quick on its feet and articulate. But it's not just about media. It's about the capacity to ensure that the party has material that is being disseminated which is effective, properly researched and well-produced. All of that is what the Tory party needs too. The fact is that we have been out campaigned by 'Mandelsonian' techniques but there's nothing terribly original about these techniques. All he's done is take modern campaigning techniques from other countries and apply them here. We should not bemoan the fact that we didn't see the need for them and not seek to get on our high horse about it.
SC: How would you as leader go about tackling a Labour Prime Minister who is presented on the one hand as youthful and charismatic and on the other as austere and puritanical?
SD: It's important to show first of all that while he may be youthful, austere, charismatic or whatever, he's also hypocritical and dishonest. The claims he made during the election campaign were clearly dishonest. I think the stuff about putting VAT on food and the stuff on pensions were straightforward dishonest. And I also think it's dishonest for him to go round the country creating the expectation that all you need to do is to vote Labour and it will mean the end of all problems with NHS waiting lists, the end of problems with school class sizes; so creating a general picture of a new nirvana with no bills attached at all. I think that there is a whirlwind coming when people will recognise that this isn't being delivered. The laws of arithmetic are still the same.
I think the most effective thing we can do at this stage is to point out the inconsistency between what people believe Blair promised and what Blair will actually deliver.
Related links
Read more about Stephen Crabb
The 1997 Conservative Leadership Interviews: Ken Clarke
The 1997 Conservative Leadership Interviews: William Hague
The 1997 Conservative Leadership Interviews: Michael Howard
The 1997 Conservative Leadership Interviews: Peter Lilley
The 1997 Conservative Leadership Interviews: John Redwood
The 1997 Conservative Leadership Interviews: moral issues questionnaire
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