by Atul Hatwal
Jeremy Corbyn is busy with his reshuffle but the reality is that its a sideshow. The main event this week was in Birmingham with Theresa May’s first conference as Tory leader.
Party conferences share an important characteristic with Chancellors’ budgets – the better the immediate headlines, the worse the legacy.
Last year, George Osborne’s post-election budget was heralded as a masterstroke the day after it was delivered, only to unravel over tax credits.
Ed Miliband’s commitment to fix energy prices at Labour’s 2013 conference was viewed as a game-changing moment on the day. But in reality, it fed the public’s mistrust of Labour and markets contributing to disaster at the general election.
Gordon Brown’s 2007 conference debut as leader won instant plaudits (“Brown dressed to kill after emptying Cameron’s wardrobe” proclaimed the Guardian) that subsequently dissolved. Rather like his last budget as Chancellor earlier in 2007 when he abolished the 10p tax.
Or for those with longer memories, the glowing reports of Norman Lamont’s 1992 budget foreseeing the green shoots of recovery the best part of a decade before the public agreed.
The headlines this morning following Theresa May’s big speech were all that she would want. But she’s actually had a disaster.
Long after the conference bubbles have gone flat, two bitter flavours will linger on the palate: hard Brexit and the Tory obsession with foreigners.
It’s unlikely that Tory conference will have substantively cut through to the public; few pay sufficient attention though the notion that Tories really don’t like people from abroad might have seeped further into the public consciousness thanks to Amber Rudd and Jeremy Hunt’s interventions.
The problem for the Tories is with the media.
A clear narrative has formed about Theresa May’s Tories as people who will sacrifice almost everything – the economy, living standards, whatever – to get rid of migrants.
It will be the prism through which journalists seek to explain the government to their audience and shape what the public sees and reads about the May administration. A prism which casts an image that vividly brings to life the prejudice and aloof indifference encapsulated in Labour’s most potent attack on the Conservatives: same old Tories.
In 1996, Ken Clarke’s budget gave the NHS one of the biggest boosts in spending since it was founded. Remember that? No, didn’t think so. At the time they got zero credit for it because the narrative about the same old Tories was firmly set in reinforced concrete.
It was impossible for them to communicate a message at variance with this basic premise.
The cloying breathlessness which afflicts many journalists covering a new PM means May will continue to receive good personal coverage for a few months.
But as her sheen of newness fades and the ineluctable economic consequences of Brexit begin to felt in people’s pockets, this narrative – formed clearly over the past few days during their conference – will provide a ready and plausible explanation.
In the 1990s, Black Wednesday was the equivalent of Brexit. It provided the inflection point where a huge economic event was perceived by the public to have crashed the economy and wrecked the government’s reputation for competence.
In 2008, the equivalent was the crash.
Once this happens, and is understood to have happened, the public want someone to blame. No matter how much they might dislike the EU or migrants, no-one wants to be poorer. Recent research by the LSE found that 62% of the public were unwilling to pay anything to reduce the numbers of migrants.
In the 1990s, the Tories initially reverted to their old standard of cutting red tape to boost business before switching to Ken Clarke’s mid-90s public spending largesse. None of it made any difference.
Following the 2008 crash, Labour’s stimulus programme did much to save the economy, but by 2010 public anger was mounting, spending was being reined in and once again, the party on the bridge when the ship hit the iceberg, was ejected from office.
Theresa May is lucky in that Jeremy Corbyn is her opponent. She won’t lose to him in any scenario, no matter what he does with his shadow cabinet reshuffle or how badly she performs.
But at some point he won’t be leader. She, however, will still be the PM who made everyone poorer because she hates foreigners.
That’s quite a brand.
Atul Hatwal is editor of Uncut
