Ken, Stand and Tell Them the Truth
There's only one Tory with the authority and wit we all so badly need.
Dear Ken,
Think again. If IDS falls today, stand for the leadership. Your country needs you. I quite understand that at 63, rudely snubbed twice by a party daft enough to choose two duffers in a row, you may not relish another gratuitous slap in the face. Jazz clubs and motor racing may seem more fun than struggling to shape coherent sense out of the Tory shower at Westminster. But please think again.
True, you will have to charm the decrepit blimps and blue rinses from the shires into voting for you. Thinking Tory MPs despair at being in hock to them: they compare it to Labour and Militant. But surely even they must see that a party teetering on the brink of farce needs experience, vision, wisdom and wit?
Michael Howard has a barrister's fleetness of foot at the dispatch box but old "Something of the night" lacks the essentials - trustworthiness, consistency, vision and charm. He'd be another Tory leader in frantic pursuit of elusive power, grasping petty electoral advantage on every issue, like chasing butterflies.
What your party - and the country - needs is a serious leader ploughing a steady course with integrity. No more chasing quick bright things to turn a few votes in the short run. It needs someone who stands by what they think even if it is unpopular and, when it's right, supporting the government. It needs intellectual bottom and political authenticity to present Tony Blair with real opposition - and some mockery.
Why, you might ask, would anyone who has held all the best jobs in cabinet - health, education, home secretary and chancellor - want to fritter away their time on the margins of power? This fissiparous and treacherous party is still infected with the euro-sceptic virus - still the only issue that raises a spontaneous cheer at conference meetings. Yet even the ultra eurosceptic IDS persuaded them that euromania is the mainline habit they must kick to stop boring voters stiff on the subject.
How will you square your own passionate pro-European views? No problem. Joining the euro is out of the question before the election. The constitution may well be killed off by referendums elsewhere. After denouncing the Iraq war, you are best placed to torment Blair on his foreign policy, mocking his alliance with US neo-conservatives who make your blood freeze.
Can you win in 2005? Sorry, not a snowball's chance. Then what's the point, you ask? Life in opposition is a horrible job. The point is this: even a party destined to lose can make a monumental difference to the state of the nation. From a position of apparent powerlessness, much good can be done by someone of real stature and serious good intent. Once you set aside any futile hope of winning the next election, once you decide that things could hardly get any worse, you have the freedom to do and say the right thing for its own sake. It is the great advantage of age and lack of ambition. The paradox is that the more you do not seek to win votes, the more they will flow in, recognising integrity and authenticity. Your voice of mocking honesty will embarrass the ruling party's inevitable daily evasions and mendacities. So you have it in you to raise the tone and inject some trust into British politics. You are also one of those rare politicians - like Denis Healey, Neil Kinnock, Shirley Williams, Mo Mowlam or Chris Patten - who make people smile.
Here is the good you can do without ever setting foot in No 10. Only a Conservative dare assault the grossest excrescences of capitalism. Some say you are contaminated by big tobacco, but your boardroom life puts you in the best position to castigate out-of-control greed at the top. You know there is no global market for our top CEOs, only a tiny British pool over-feeding one another. You know shareholders should be given tougher control over the companies all our pensions depend on. Mock Labour's timidity over this, spur them to action. Similarly, as an ex-home secretary, you can mock David Blunkett's pointless and expensive prison population. Yours was far lower at a time of higher crime.
Take on David Willetts as a key minister: here is a man with a breadth of vision that goes beyond bribing the middle classes with cash vouchers to buy private health and education. Junk that expensive plan and take up Willetts' more radical and popular plan to increase future productivity by maximising the skills of the workforce with universal childcare to let parents work and to rescue children from early failure. That would take the wind out of Labour's too-tentative sails and prompt them to do it.
How to pay for it? Only a conservative dare take up Sir Samuel Brittan's proposals for more capital taxation - taxing legacies as they arrive in the wallets of those who receive them, instead of the almost defunct death duties on the estates of the dead. That would prompt Labour to do it, showing there is real power in creative and intelligent opposition. Each time the government acts on what you tell them to do, credibility and trust flows to you.
A forward-looking modern Conservative opposition sounds like a contradiction. But it is in the gift of a modernised Conservative party to push the country forwards, instead of forever dragging it back. You, Ken, can mock the Mail and the Telegraph, leaving them stranded on the atoll of their 1950s vision of Britain. You have the potential to break the Little England fantasies that have left us behind in the world.
Because we do a regular weekly discussion programme together, Head to Head on BBC News 24, I know the deep things that still make you a Tory. You are not a tax-and-spend man. But then nor are you a slash-and-burn man either. You believe in public services free for all - but often privately provided. You regard public service ethos as no more than producerist posturing. Equality is not in your vocabulary. Your traditional conservative foreign policy would be non-ideological, guided by national self-interest: your Europeanism is pragmatic. You are a Conservative to the marrow.
Alas, I know the chances of your party selecting you are vanishingly small. If they select another unknown europhobic rightwinger of small brain and no charisma like David Davis, it will show they have learned nothing. If they choose Michael Howard, it will show they understand nothing of how the country has changed in the last seven years. The concept of modern Conservatism eludes them: like Labour, the party's retro-name is a handicap.
But you should stand again to give them a last chance to choose a strong moderniser who does not bend to flatter electors - either within or beyond his party. Your supporters in Westminster are despairing: you won't stand and the party won't have you. You will join the great leaders the party never had. This is tragic. I still think you should stand - and tell them the truths they refuse to hear.
Best wishes, Polly
Think again. If IDS falls today, stand for the leadership. Your country needs you. I quite understand that at 63, rudely snubbed twice by a party daft enough to choose two duffers in a row, you may not relish another gratuitous slap in the face. Jazz clubs and motor racing may seem more fun than struggling to shape coherent sense out of the Tory shower at Westminster. But please think again.
True, you will have to charm the decrepit blimps and blue rinses from the shires into voting for you. Thinking Tory MPs despair at being in hock to them: they compare it to Labour and Militant. But surely even they must see that a party teetering on the brink of farce needs experience, vision, wisdom and wit?
Michael Howard has a barrister's fleetness of foot at the dispatch box but old "Something of the night" lacks the essentials - trustworthiness, consistency, vision and charm. He'd be another Tory leader in frantic pursuit of elusive power, grasping petty electoral advantage on every issue, like chasing butterflies.
What your party - and the country - needs is a serious leader ploughing a steady course with integrity. No more chasing quick bright things to turn a few votes in the short run. It needs someone who stands by what they think even if it is unpopular and, when it's right, supporting the government. It needs intellectual bottom and political authenticity to present Tony Blair with real opposition - and some mockery.
Why, you might ask, would anyone who has held all the best jobs in cabinet - health, education, home secretary and chancellor - want to fritter away their time on the margins of power? This fissiparous and treacherous party is still infected with the euro-sceptic virus - still the only issue that raises a spontaneous cheer at conference meetings. Yet even the ultra eurosceptic IDS persuaded them that euromania is the mainline habit they must kick to stop boring voters stiff on the subject.
How will you square your own passionate pro-European views? No problem. Joining the euro is out of the question before the election. The constitution may well be killed off by referendums elsewhere. After denouncing the Iraq war, you are best placed to torment Blair on his foreign policy, mocking his alliance with US neo-conservatives who make your blood freeze.
Can you win in 2005? Sorry, not a snowball's chance. Then what's the point, you ask? Life in opposition is a horrible job. The point is this: even a party destined to lose can make a monumental difference to the state of the nation. From a position of apparent powerlessness, much good can be done by someone of real stature and serious good intent. Once you set aside any futile hope of winning the next election, once you decide that things could hardly get any worse, you have the freedom to do and say the right thing for its own sake. It is the great advantage of age and lack of ambition. The paradox is that the more you do not seek to win votes, the more they will flow in, recognising integrity and authenticity. Your voice of mocking honesty will embarrass the ruling party's inevitable daily evasions and mendacities. So you have it in you to raise the tone and inject some trust into British politics. You are also one of those rare politicians - like Denis Healey, Neil Kinnock, Shirley Williams, Mo Mowlam or Chris Patten - who make people smile.
Here is the good you can do without ever setting foot in No 10. Only a Conservative dare assault the grossest excrescences of capitalism. Some say you are contaminated by big tobacco, but your boardroom life puts you in the best position to castigate out-of-control greed at the top. You know there is no global market for our top CEOs, only a tiny British pool over-feeding one another. You know shareholders should be given tougher control over the companies all our pensions depend on. Mock Labour's timidity over this, spur them to action. Similarly, as an ex-home secretary, you can mock David Blunkett's pointless and expensive prison population. Yours was far lower at a time of higher crime.
Take on David Willetts as a key minister: here is a man with a breadth of vision that goes beyond bribing the middle classes with cash vouchers to buy private health and education. Junk that expensive plan and take up Willetts' more radical and popular plan to increase future productivity by maximising the skills of the workforce with universal childcare to let parents work and to rescue children from early failure. That would take the wind out of Labour's too-tentative sails and prompt them to do it.
How to pay for it? Only a conservative dare take up Sir Samuel Brittan's proposals for more capital taxation - taxing legacies as they arrive in the wallets of those who receive them, instead of the almost defunct death duties on the estates of the dead. That would prompt Labour to do it, showing there is real power in creative and intelligent opposition. Each time the government acts on what you tell them to do, credibility and trust flows to you.
A forward-looking modern Conservative opposition sounds like a contradiction. But it is in the gift of a modernised Conservative party to push the country forwards, instead of forever dragging it back. You, Ken, can mock the Mail and the Telegraph, leaving them stranded on the atoll of their 1950s vision of Britain. You have the potential to break the Little England fantasies that have left us behind in the world.
Because we do a regular weekly discussion programme together, Head to Head on BBC News 24, I know the deep things that still make you a Tory. You are not a tax-and-spend man. But then nor are you a slash-and-burn man either. You believe in public services free for all - but often privately provided. You regard public service ethos as no more than producerist posturing. Equality is not in your vocabulary. Your traditional conservative foreign policy would be non-ideological, guided by national self-interest: your Europeanism is pragmatic. You are a Conservative to the marrow.
Alas, I know the chances of your party selecting you are vanishingly small. If they select another unknown europhobic rightwinger of small brain and no charisma like David Davis, it will show they have learned nothing. If they choose Michael Howard, it will show they understand nothing of how the country has changed in the last seven years. The concept of modern Conservatism eludes them: like Labour, the party's retro-name is a handicap.
But you should stand again to give them a last chance to choose a strong moderniser who does not bend to flatter electors - either within or beyond his party. Your supporters in Westminster are despairing: you won't stand and the party won't have you. You will join the great leaders the party never had. This is tragic. I still think you should stand - and tell them the truths they refuse to hear.
Best wishes, Polly
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