Tories: Not Dead Yet
One suspects Hague is more a scapegoat for anti-Tory animus than its cause.

June 6, 2001 12:25 p.m.

adbroke's, the rather grand British bookie, took the unprecedented step the other day of paying out winnings before a race had even been run. The race in question is the British general election tomorrow, in which a landslide for Tony Blair's "New Labor" government is so taken for granted that betting on it counts as a sure thing.

Still more remarkably, the focus of interest for public and pundits is not the New Labor thoroughbred cantering toward a comfortable triumph but the battered old Tory nag that is struggling to stay in second place with about 30 percent of the popular vote. As Matthew Parris of the London Times points out, people are voting for a government they do not love in part because they want to inflict a second catastrophic defeat on a Tory opposition they seemingly despise.

The main result of this is likely to be a very short honeymoon for Blair, as the electorate, having indulged its anti-Tory spleen, wakes up to realize that it still has long waiting lines for surgical operations, declining educational services, the prospect of absorption into a European federal state, and a government that prefers public-relations "spin" to public debate over its actual policies.

For the moment, however, it is the Tories' plight that invites analysis. After all, the Tory party that lost office in 1997 had great historic achievements to its credit. It had helped to win the Cold War and transformed the British economy from an over-manned, inflation-ridden, state-controlled basket case into the fourth- or fifth-largest and most vibrant economy in the world. Nor has it wandered onto the wilder shores of radicalism in opposition — as Blair has inadvertently demonstrated by quietly stealing the Tory policy of using the private sector to deliver public services when the public sector fails. So why are the voters apparently determined to punish them?

Some pre-packaged explanations already are being unwrapped. "They're out of the mainstream on the euro," claim the government, the Brussels bureaucrats, and the dwindling band of left-wing europhiliac Tories. Unfortunately for this argument, both the opinion polls and the experience of doorstep canvassers make plain that keeping the pound is almost the only popular policy the Tories have. If anything, they are discrediting it — rather than being discredited by it.

"William Hague is bitterly disliked by the voters — he looks like a fetus in a suit; he's got a funny accent; he's too elitist; he's too short" goes another argument from, among others, supporters of rivals for his Tory leader's job. Polls suggest there's something in this argument, even if voters have only a hazy grasp of detail. (Hague is in fact a tall man from a middle-class background who went to a state-financed school.) Even so, the revulsion toward him is disproportionate to his supposed faults. As he enters the race's final lap, he's winning admiration for the gallant, unself-pitying way he faces a humiliating defeat. One suspects Hague is more a scapegoat for anti-Tory animus than its cause.

The Tories have never been loved. When all is said and done, they are the party that specializes in telling unpleasant truths and dealing with intractable problems. Like the Republicans in the United States, the Tories are the stern "Daddy" party as opposed to the indulgent "Mommy" parties of Labor and the Democrats.

Though not loved for their compassion, the Tories have traditionally been respected for their competence. The electorate seems to regard them as a tough CPA to be called in to restore the failing family finances and dismissed when solvency has been achieved.

In the last 100 years, there have been four occasions — 1915, 1931, 1951, and 1979 — when the Tories were brought into office to deal with grave national crises. They have entered government from opposition in tranquil and prosperous times only once: in 1970.

Two obstacles prevent them from playing this role today. The Tories lost their prized reputation for economic competence under John Major when they inflicted a disastrous recession on the British economy by sticking rigidly to a fixed European exchange rate (a sort of precursor to the euro), were humiliatingly forced out of it by the currency markets on "Black Wednesday," and were accordingly unable to gain credit from the economic boom that followed this financial liberation.

That boom continues today. The British are enjoying a tranquil prosperity. So even if Hague had restored the Tories' reputation as the competent party — and the memory of Black Wednesday is too recent for that — there is no grave crisis for them to solve. Hence the British voter can indulge in the luxury of despising a party he once regarded with awe.

Another crisis will surely come along — perhaps, indeed, a replay of Black Wednesday if Britain joins the Euro. When it does, Labor will lose its recent reputation for competence. And the Tories will again be available to restore the family finances. Whether Hague will be around is another question.

This originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.