|
The beginning of a New Year is always a good time to pause and reflect. Six months on from our second devastating defeat, the pausing bit has hopefully been done, our wounds licked, the box ticked. The reflection part is going to take a little longer. Precisely how do we take up the challenge that our new leader handed to us at Blackpool: "Let us keep faith with ourselves...."?
I, for one, found it a powerful message. But then I also found the messages contained in our election manifestos for disabled people and for Renewing Civil Society powerful. They spoke to me about an evolving party with enduring values and radical solutions for tackling social injustice, in some cases exacerbated by the heavy, clumsy hand of the State. So why did they not speak to many other people like that, because judging by the result, they obviously did not? Am I the only person to have been impressed by William Hague's deep personal commitment to disabled people's rights? And if indeed I am alone in this, why then should people be any more impressed by Iain Duncan Smith's passionate plea for freedom?
To be brutally honest, without radical change in how we package our message, there is no reason why they should be. In fact, if we carry on as we are, there is every likelihood that 2005 will witness another violent kick in the teeth for this one-time 'party of Government'. Famed for its radicalism, for the first woman Prime Minister, who literally scraped our country off the floor, who made privatisation our best-selling export, our Party still seems loath to be radical with itself. Small wonder then that in 2001 too many of the messengers failed to reinforce the message that we had 'listened and learnt'.
For if 2001 taught one lesson which we ignore at our peril, it was surely that the messenger cannot be separated from the message, or from its impact. Up and down the country, we asked people to believe that we had changed, that we were less arrogant, more in touch. And up and down the country, we selected the messengers, candidates, who too often communicated inadvertently exactly the opposite. Neither deliberately nor maliciously, some nevertheless reinforced the Harry Enfield 'Tory Boy' stereotypes.
Our society is increasingly multi-racial. So where were they? Where were the candidates that reflected the UK's rich racial diversity? Women outnumber men. Was that why we had such a risible number of women candidates that a visiting Martian might have presumed that in fact women comprised only a tiny minority of the population? How was either factor seriously meant to underscore the message of a party that cared enough to listen and change?
Of course, we can always heap blame on the party leader. Indeed, in many ways, the age of spin has only served to highlight the convenience of that classic 'get-out clause'. The danger of such an approach is that next time it might not be just the leader who gets out; the very real risk is that even more Conservatives could find themselves 'got out' of previously safe seats. Such is the growing resentment of people who find a candidate from a bygone age on their doorstep, an alien messenger peddling a message they do not bother to absorb.
But it is not the leader's fault. The reality is simple, if painful to a dwindling minority. Under our current candidate selection system, there is no ducking our shared responsibility for selecting a slate of candidates, the composition of which was unrepresentative of the people we sought to represent.
Now, in 2002, there is no denying the need to grasp the nettle. For in sharing that responsibility, we also share the huge opportunity to reform radically how we select our messengers, the candidates. Do we want to duck that challenge and make greater central control of candidate selection inevitable? Or do we want to ensure that at the next General Election, the Conservative Party is seen as the model party for the representative mix of its candidates in winnable seats, not for the sake of political correctness but because it is pure common sense?
Only then can we have any real hope of convincing voters that we respect them enough to deserve to be respected ourselves. And only then will we find that people agree: our messengers actually match our message, and both are worth considering. Surely, it is not that difficult for the party that fashioned a radically new, global freemarket consensus to find the confidence to be a little radical in its own backyard. What better way of showing that we are not just keeping faith with ourselves? In 2002, we are determined to keep faith with all the people of Britain.
Related links
Kevin Shinkwin on abortion and disability
| |
