David Cameron doesn’t convince all Tories, but they are on-message for now

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/08/labour-needs-good-slogan-needs-it-now

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One Tory MP merrily shouted: “Bye, bye!” at the sullen Labour benches as prime minister’s questions drew to a close last week. The session had gone very badly for Ed Miliband and his troops had gradually hunched up into sad, defensive positions as he struggled to land any punches on David Cameron. The Tories were thrilled they had managed to emerge from a session where their leader had faced a grilling on hedge funds, tax and donors with a clear victory. “What a disaster!” another one of them shouted at their opponents as they scuttled out. But even though the Conservatives were thrilled with Labour’s seemingly endless clumsiness, they are also acutely aware that the polls just aren’t shifting at all.

The two parties are locked together in the low 30s, sometimes a few points ahead before sinking behind a day later and then polling neck and neck the day after that. Indeed, one of the saving graces for Labour last week was that the party was mostly a few points ahead in the polls. But what all MPs are obsessively scouring every single poll for is the sign that they’re properly pulling out in front.

Many cabinet ministers don’t think the polls will change at all until the last few weeks of the campaign. One says: “We could end up in the same situation as 1992, where Labour were ahead right up to polling day.” Those working on the Labour campaign agree, with one telling me he doesn’t expect to believe the exit polls, let alone the numbers on the day. But I understand that Lynton Crosby has been holding briefings with MPs in which he predicts that the Tories will start to move ahead of Labour either this month or in March. Some say they have seen a graph by the Tory strategist that he claims backs up this prediction.

Crosby has also been running private polls in marginal seats since the start of the year that apparently suggest the Conservatives will do better than previous surveys have suggested. Indeed, many MPs in those seats are finding a better reception on the doorstep than they’d expected and some who were looking for jobs outside parliament now think they have a chance of holding on after all.

This, and Labour’s habit of repeatedly tripping over its own shoelaces, means that the Tories are in a surprisingly good mood. They have already reconciled themselves to the most likely result being a hung parliament, rather than a Tory majority. The confident way in which Crosby conducts his briefings gives them confidence too.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t concerns. One prominent cabinet minister complains privately that there’s “not enough energy, not enough vision” in the Tory campaign and that its much-mocked poster of a road to a stronger economy was “just boring and didn’t tell us anything about why you should vote Conservative”. A number of MPs are also frustrated that Cameron is still having to answer questions about the TV debates in broadcast interviews where he should be talking endlessly about the economy. “It’s a classic procrastination failure on the part of Dave,” complains one MP.

Many are also grumpy about the way the Conservatives are handling Labour attacks on the NHS. They think their party should be highlighting what it has improved in the health service, but instead the NHS doesn’t even figure in the six priorities the party says it will campaign on. “We really do have a good story to tell, but at the moment we’re just waiting to go on the defensive against Labour,” argues one minister.

This is felt particularly by those MPs whose local NHS services are running quite well and who think Labour’s national message about privatisation and accident and emergency seems out of place in their own constituencies. But at a recent meeting, Crosby told Conservative special advisers they must bring everything, whether on international development, health service or education, back to the economy. If you thought the phrase “long-term economic plan” had already been shoehorned everywhere it possibly could be, just wait until you see the way the Tories intend to campaign over the next few weeks. Number 10 has become so fixated on the long-term economic plan that anything that seems at all extraneous is considered a distraction. One secretary of state was despondent after delivering a speech that gained no coverage at all, until the minister received a note from Downing Street praising no coverage as “excellent”.

Backbenchers now robotically chant “long-term economic plan” in every Commons question and every broadcast. Press releases relate everything to it: if the export figures are bad, it shows the need for a long-term economic plan to improve them again. If the figures are good, it shows the long-term economic plan is working.

Hansard records 119 mentions of that tedious phrase in the 39 days since the start of the year. As well as crafting an easily recognisable Tory message that focus groups are noticing, “long-term economic plan” has become a team chant that unites the troops and makes them feel as though they are working together for a common purpose.

Since saying “long-term economic plan” is doing such wonders for Tory morale at present, I thought I’d ask Labourites what their special tedious phrase was. “Um, er… well, I know for the Tories it’s long-term economic plan,” said one shadow cabinet member, looking worried. “I’m not sure,” says another, suggesting it should be: “An economy that works for working people.” Other ministers and senior Labourites agree this is the best chant, as “cost-of-living crisis”, which did work very well for a while, is rather less effective when the Tories can produce data showing the crisis is easing. (Though most Labour MPs still insist cost of living is a key complaint on the doorstep.) Every Labourite I’ve spoken to since the New Year accepts a lack of a catchy phrase is a serious problem for the party, though they also think they are slowly tightening their message around an “economy that works for working people”.

Ed Miliband’s aide Torsten Henricson-Bell has been encouraging Labour advisers to use it. They’ve got a way to go, though: this saying has only made its way into Commons debates twice since the start of the year, while the cost-of-living crisis gets 16 mentions. One aide wonders whether this tighter messaging is just too late in the day.

Even if Labour has finally decided what to programme its MPs to chant, it’s still talking about too wide a range of issues. I was recently forwarded a press comment on mangoes by a disgruntled Blairite who muttered: “Nice to see we’re focusing on all the important issues which are going to decide the election” and recently Ed Miliband launched a campaign on voter registration, which, though important, is also not a core issue. Worse still, the party is still trying to decide what its tuition fees policy is, which means a major debate is taking place with the short campaign just weeks away.

Some mutter angrily that this isn’t about proper policymaking at all but Ed Balls “putting out via various journalists that he wouldn’t be handling things the way they have been”. Balls also played a major part in making Labour’s battle with Boots chief Stefano Pessina much worse with his Newsnight interview about “Bill” the mystery businessman.

The party rapidly embarked on a clean-up operation, sending MPs a hefty list of business leaders who are sympathetic to Labour’s policies. There are more supporters than a casual observer might assume, partly because Labour has refused to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, which many businesses are deeply worried about.

But the damage was done, indeed, some think it had already been done by Ed Miliband turning what was just a robust response last Sunday to Pessina’s criticism into a prolonged battle. “The problem is Ed is too keen to define himself through battles and that doesn’t work,” complains one Labourite.

Because Labour then failed to follow up its spat with Pessina with photocalls with friendly business leaders, it left a space for its opponents to pile in and accuse Miliband of being inherently “anti-business”. It is certainly true that the leader’s office doesn’t put much time or manpower into business engagement, but it could have done better job of defending the party’s overall relationship with enterprise than it did.

Because the Tories are ready with their robotic messages, while Labourites are still dithering, it is much easier to get a sense of what David Cameron and his party stand for and to believe that the Conservatives are working well as a team. And when a Tory party so badly split on Europe, immigration and whether it likes its own leader appears more united and disciplined than a naturally tribal Labour party, that’s a seriously bad sign.

No wonder Tory backbenchers are alternating their “long-term economic plan” chants at the opposition with taunts of: “Bye, bye!”

Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of the Spectator