The Tory Party at Prayer

I am always interested when people are prepared to make a prediction (and put the best in the first post of the year) and the more precise the better. So I was intrigued by an article in the Guardian’s Comment is free by John Ross, The Tories will get 30.3% at the next general election. Here's why. Ross has calculated that since the 1930s the Tory vote has declined at 0.2% a year. Superimposed on this long-term secular decline are upticks in popularity when there has been a Conservative majority at a general election, but:

Typically, the Conservative vote, each time the party won a general election, was lower than the one it won previously, and each time it lost an election its vote fell to a lower level than the previous defeat.

Because of the long-term decline Ross forecasts:

… if the Tories won the next election, they would get 34.6% of the vote, and if they lost they would get 30.3% of the vote. As there is no doubt at present that the Tories will lose, they will get 30.3% of the vote. As always there is a bit of statistical noise in any calculation, so 29.3% to 31.3% would be a reasonable range, but 30.3% is the central figure.

Ross has used this approach before. In the Guardian in May 2010 on the same basis he predicted:

If this trend were extrapolated to the current election the Tories would receive a maximum 39% if they were to win and 33% if they were to lose.

In fact the Conservative share was 36.1%. Ross is Visiting Professor at Antai College of Economics and Management, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, and his blog, Key Trends in Globalisation, is, perhaps unsurprisingly, subtitled "Seek truth from facts - 实事求是 Chinese saying originally from the Han dynasty". However, extrapolation is one thing, explanation another. In his recent Guardian article Ross identifies:

a social process – the progressive collapse of the Tory party back into its south-east England heartland. The Tories have declined from a "one nation" to a "half a country" party.

It seems likely that underlying this observation some deeper social changes are taking place. Previously on this blog I have mentioned the fact that:

The educational experiences of different age groups reflect the continuing expansion of opportunity over recent decades. Among the over 55s, about half finished full-time education before the age of 16, whereas about a third of the under 35s had finished under 18.

But another perspective stems from the observation by a suffragette, Maude Royden, in 1917:

"The Church [of England]* should go forward along the path of progress and be no longer satisfied only to represent the Conservative Party at prayer."

which led to the often-repeated jibe of the Church of England being the Tory party at prayer.

But is it still? Looking round for some relevant statistics, I discounted church attendance, which has a marked seasonal (ie Christmas) variation and is probably enhanced by parents wanting their small children to enter C of E primary schools. Instead I selected Figure 6 from the publication Church Statistics 2010/11 the numbers being confirmed, (the upper chart below) as indicative of a deeper commitment to the C of E. The lower chart is from Ross’s Guardian article with the timescale stretched to align with the upper one.

I was surprised by the extent of the match, for example the temporary revival of both the Tories and the C of E in the 1960s - somewhat at odds with that decade’s reputation, though perhaps the Sixties started for most people after 1970.

I can’t help feeling that the other prediction which caught my eye this week is somewhat optimistic. Tim Montgomerie told readers of The Times (£) on 4 March in the wake of Ukip’s good showing in the Eastleigh by-election that:

Conservative strategists are confident that Labour support can be capped at about 35 per cent once the big guns are pointed in Mr Miliband’s direction. If Mr Cameron can use the next year to rebuild relations with the once loyal Tory press, Mr Miliband will face the biggest demolition job since Neil Kinnock was destroyed in 1992. The central Tory message at the next election will be that middle Britain will face huge tax increases if Ed Balls gets back into power and is allowed to finish building Gordon Brown’s sprawling welfare state. But the problem for Mr Cameron is that, because of Britain’s electoral geography, Mr Miliband can become Prime Minister on the back of 35 per cent of the national vote if the Right of British politics is divided — and it is.

Is it really Ukip, whose support may well be much smaller in a general election than in Eastleigh, that is the Tories’ problem, or is it something more fundamental? David Cameron’s recognition of the need to modernise the Conservative party and widen its appeal has been in the face of a long-term decline which makes more sense to me.


 

The Blue Angel: Talking up Gove again

Not quite what Marlene Dietrich sang* in The Blue Angel:



but it seems to be the tune coming from the UK commentariat. For example, Toby Young, in the first Sun on Sunday on 26 February:

… Up until now, the only other senior Conservative identified as a potential successor to Cameron is George Osborne and all the talk has been of a Boris v Osborne bun fight in the next Parliament. But could Michael Gove be emerging as a dark horse candidate? We learned on Friday that more than 300 volunteer groups have applied to set up free schools next year, adding to the 96 that have already been approved.
… It's precisely because the policy has been such a success that Michael Gove is now being talked about as a future Prime Minister. Of course, it won't do him any favours with his Cabinet colleagues – he might as well paint a big fat target on his back. …
… in a three-way contest between Boris, Osborne and Gove, my money would be on Gove.

The day before, Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph had heaped praise on Gove (“a highly intelligent and resilient man”) and his education reforms, but had made only a very oblique comment on his political prospects:

Mr Gove offers an attractive combination – complete loyalty to the Cameron modernisation, but a Thatcher-era conviction politics as well. It is extremely powerful. Unfortunately, in the present Cabinet, it is virtually unique.

Anyway, Young wasn’t right to say “Up until now”. Another Gove enthusiast, John Rentoul in the Independent, seems to think that a Bagehot article last summer in The Economist marked the start. It was, apparently, written by Janan Ganesh, familiar to some from BBC1’s Sunday Politics. But August is a difficult time for commentators to find something to write about, and “what if the PM went under a bus” is a long-established column-filler. As August, so early January, but, nonetheless, Rentoul sees Patrick O’Flynn’s piece in the Daily Express, Michael Gove has suddenly become the heir apparent to David Cameron, as another straw in the wind.

Since then the wind has turned into a gale. Iain Martin headlined an interview with Gove for Standpoint magazine, Will Michael Gove Go All the Way to No 10?, and then, on 22 February, followed it up with a post for his blog, The Rise of the Iron Laddie Can Gove get to Number 10? (Ironically, Private Eye had made the same pun about Cameron nearly a month earlier: Issue 1306 page 22). At the same time, John Rentoul blogged Michael Gove could be prime minister, describing Iain Martin’s post as “a superb write-up”. Another Rentoul post, surrealistically titled Why Gove must be reincarnated as an olive, followed on 26 February, together with his column in the Independent on Sunday. The latter took a slightly less hyperbolic view, drawing attention to the deficiencies of the other leading Conservative members of the Cabinet, and concluding that:

Compared with all these, Michael Gove is the most successful minister.

A clue to his appeal to Rentoul (Blair’s biographer) follows:

In a virtuoso speech to the parliamentary press gallery last week, without notes, he said he was proud to be a Blairite, a species that could survive only in the hothouse of government, and which was "now extinct in the wild – that is, in the Parliamentary Labour Party".
Against all that, he has one weakness. He is not a retail politician on television. But if he goes on doing a good job of government, that is the kind of perception that can be turned round, and his peculiarities of manner could become strengths of "a character".

and Rentoul concluded:

… The other day I suggested that Gove should be moved to sort out the disaster of NHS reform. But that may not be the limit of what he can achieve.

Playing to the gallery seems to have paid off, with conservativehome’s Left Watch in the form of Paul Goodman leaping to Gove’s defence, The Left's next target is Michael Gove, after an article in the Guardian, also on 27 February, by David Leigh: The schools crusade that links Michael Gove to Rupert Murdoch, "The education secretary has close ties to Rupert Murdoch and would be a key figure if he attempts to move into the UK schools market".

Most people recognise Murdoch’s astuteness about the possibilities of innovation, and would want his advocacy of new technology in the classroom to be considered, but the teachers among the Guardian’s readership may be less enthused.  Whether Gove is wise to have got as close to Murdoch as the article suggests is another matter. Then, as David Davis’ article, Crony Capitalism, in the current Prospect Magazine shows, this has been habitual behaviour at the top of the British political class.  Goodman concludes:

Guardian and New Statesman journalists would be asleep on the job were they not criticising Tory Cabinet Ministers. So this is not a complaint but an observation. It is also, in its way, a warning. Gove is currently what the Australians called "a tall poppy". While Andrew Lansley trudges on with his health bill, the Education Secretary seems to soar skywards. There is no shortage of those who would like bring him down.

And by later in the day things had been cooled down a bit, with Fraser Nelson on the Spectator Coffee House explaining that Gove had told him in 2008 “I’d never run for leader”, and Tim Montgomerie, back on conservativehome’s ToryDiary, assuring his readers that “Michael Gove rules out leadership bid, concluding he doesn't have "right sort of character" for the job”. Apparently Gove was going to give a major speech on 1 March “on social mobility. However, he cancelled it because of the growing leadership chatter. He didn’t want this.” according to “his closest adviser”.

Rentoul went so far as to put a meme on Twitter, #MG4PM, but it seems to be a long way from trending and we will just have to wait and see whether Gove-mania gets a second wind. The man himself may well be left wondering if, with friends like these, he needs enemies. In the meantime, it might be worth rereading Bagehot/Ganesh’s conclusion about Gove:

The last politician to mix conservatism and cosmopolitanism so vividly was Michael Portillo, the former Tory minister who, neatly, was the subject of a sympathetic biography by Mr Gove in 1995.  That book was called “The Future of the Right”; there are some who see Mr Gove as the inheritor of that mantle. They worry that other candidates to lead the Tories one day, such as Mr Osborne and Mr Johnson, share with Mr Cameron a patrician incomprehension of the striving classes. But Mr Gove forswears any such ambition. Even if he did not, his conspicuous intellectualism and uncompromising worldview might count against him. Some politicians are just too interesting to reach the very top.

Harking back to a post here last August on birth order in top politicians, it may be worth remembering that the the last first-born child to lead his party to win a general election was Harold Wilson in 1974. According to the Economist: “Mr Gove was adopted when he was four months old. All he knows about the woman who bore him is that she was a student.” It isn’t clear whether there was an older child in the family. Gove worked as a journalist, which might help explain the enthusiasm of the commentators for one of their own.  But as far as I can tell, the last PM to have been seriously engaged in journalism was Winston Churchill!

More seriously, it’s worth considering one of the points made by Toby Young:

I'm a big believer in free schools, having led the efforts of a group of parents and teachers to set one up last year. The distinctive characteristics of our school – strong discipline, small class sizes and traditional subjects – have proved a winning formula, with more than 2,000 parents applying for our next 120 places. It's precisely because the policy has been such a success that Michael Gove is now being talked about as a future Prime Minister.

Well, up to a point Lord Copper. The fatal problem with the grammar schools was their 35% or less participation rate. Of course this didn’t mean 65% disappointment – some parents wouldn’t have been concerned and anyway didn’t “apply” in Young’s sense. But his data suggests that there will be over 1880 disappointed applicant parents, ie about 95%. Raising large-scale expectations which can’t be met might be regarded as a risky undertaking for any politician, even one so "highly intelligent and resilient".

*In Josef von Sternberg’s first talkie, Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1930), Marlene Dietrich plays Lola-Lola, a cabaret singer at the eponymous nightclub who causes the downfall of a hitherto respected schoolmaster at the local gymnasium (academy).  A plot which is very unlikely to appeal to the Education Secretary.  In the English version of the film, The Blue Angel (1930), Dietrich sings:

Falling in love again
Never wanted to
What am I to do?
Can't help it
etc

ADDENDUM 4 March 2012

Now here’s a strange thing in the form of a Tweet on 3 March from John Rentoul. I will use the method the Modern Language Association recommends for citing a tweet:

Rentoul, John (JohnRentoul). “"Being somewhat peculiar myself, I sympathise with people who are a little bit odd" Toby Young http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100106034/yet-another-attempt-to-smear-michael-gove-by-his-nemesis-on-the-ft/” 3 March 2012, 5:19 p.m. Tweet.

Gove has been in an argument with the Information Commissioner about the release of emails under the Freedom of Information Act, following a story in the Financial Times on 20 September 2011. Their education correspondent, Christopher Cook, was the subject of Young’s post on his Daily Telegraph blog (as Rentoul’s Tweet) later that day. A month earlier Cook had written a profile of Young in the Lunch with the FT series. Young’s comment quoted by Rentoul was about Cook, (not Gove!) and his blog ended:

I met Cook at last year's Conservative Party Conference, an encounter that led to him penning a profile of me in the FT. I have to confess, I find his weird, stalker-ish obsession with Michael Gove almost endearing. Being somewhat peculiar myself, I sympathise with people who are a little bit odd. But his journalism should be taken with a large dose of salt.

Something Young wrote interested me:

Cook abandoned his fledgeling political career soon afterwards, joining the FT in 2008, but he remains close to Willetts and worked on The Pinch, his book about the baby boom generation published in 2010.

because David Willett's The Pinch was the subject of a post here last year.