Power never works to rule. No leader should ever volunteer his or her termination in office. From the moment last summer that British Prime Minister David Cameron announced he would resign before 2020, energy drained from his office. The Geiger counter over Downing Street fell silent.
It crackled instead over George Osborne, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. One of them is the future for every Tory in the land. Cameron’s “resignation” has turned his second term into one long hustings. It was a terrible mistake.
The leader’s conference speech in Manchester was a classic. Uncannily reminiscent of former prime minister Tony Blair, Cameron offered a great candy floss of cliche, an ebullience of waffle. He can smooth his way through any interview and bring any audience to its feet. Littered among the platitudes so derided by “the new politics” were some undoubted signature nuggets.
An instinctive liberalism showed in references to social mobility, the virtues of (some) migrants, prison reform, gender and race equality. The speech was unequivocally for gay marriage. Such passion against discrimination was unusual in a Tory speech. In all this, Cameron’s agenda is familiar. He does the sob stuff; he makes the promises and leaves the rest to Osborne. George knows what can and cannot be done. George will sort it out. Cameron steered away from the economy, even from public spending. The jobshare — the “Camborne project” — could not have been more explicit. Cameron goes on flights of fancy while Osborne does brute reality.
The double act has worked well — telling evidence that nothing matters in British government so much as the partnership between prime minister and chancellor. This was the real coalition that lasted for five years under the deal with the Liberal Democrats. It gave stability to British government through recession and recovery. It killed the Lib Dems stone dead and delivered the Tories a stunning election victory.
This inner coalition worked because Cameron was clearly chairman of the board and Osborne chief executive, with never an inch of daylight detectable between them. It was helped by Cameron going increasingly offshore, dallying in foreign affairs because they are more glamorous and demand fewer tough decisions. He was happy to leave his friend as de facto governor of England.
Even before his “resignation” Cameron was never a potent leader. He has long been putty in the hands of vested interests. One of his first decisions was to capitulate to the aircraft carrier lobby when he knew it made no sense to. The aid lobby dazzled him, the green lobby talked him into crazy renewables subsidies. He allowed his planning changes to be written for him by property developers, so botched he now has to promise new ones.
Likewise, Cameron’s policy bon-bon to the housebuilders’ lobby. Billions of pounds are now being hurled, not at improving the efficiency of existing residential space, which covers 90 per cent of the market, but at inflating house prices through demand subsidies.
Right to buy and 20 per cent discounts on new homes are state handouts to a lucky few of the not-so-poor. New builds will never lower house prices.
Cameron is right to draw attention to Britain having “the lowest social mobility in the developed world”. But his aversion to renting is an aversion to where most poor people live. The chief reason for his much-deplored social immobility is the burying of personal savings in bricks and mortar, and in their inheritance. Cameron’s policies will make this worse, not better.
Osborne may in many respects be as liberal as Cameron, but he now has a quite separate agenda. While the prime minister’s lens is focused on his legacy, the chancellor’s is on the party. As he gathers ever more power over domestic government, he and Cameron will find their partnership under increased strain.
His determination to reform social benefits, however painful and chaotic in operation, was brave — as some Labour ex-ministers privately acknowledge. But he must note the body of opinion against cutting working tax credits. In addition, Cameron’s “defining moment”, the European Union referendum, will put him out on the pro-EU flank, struggling to hold Osborne to his bosom, while Theresa May and Boris Johnson cavort with anti-EU backbenchers. What will Osborne do?
All power produces antibodies. A check on any chancellor ought to come from No 10. It was never there on planning, on energy policy, on the National Health Service and a dozen other vexed areas of reform. There was no Thatcher burning the midnight oil over her papers to stop her ministers doing stupid things. When Osborne wants to throw baubles at the housebuilders, now drenched in tax reliefs and subsidies, baubles are thrown. His addiction to vanity projects, such as HS2 and Heathrow, grates with ministers whose butchered budgets must pay for it. Whose ambition will decide the outcome?
Where this now leads is intriguing. Cameron obviously wants his friend to succeed him. But if his legacy demands prison liberalisation, social mobility, tolerance towards minorities and EU reform, where will this stand against Osborne’s need to curry favour with the party, especially with May and Johnson likely to prove ever less controllable?
The Camborne coalition is unlikely to break. But if Cameron will offer no check on the power of Osborne, the antibodies will arise from his rivals. As long as prime minister and chancellor were an indefinite unity on the political landscape there was no room for dissent. Downing Street ruled absolutely. As that unity starts to erode, fissures will start to open.
Already in Manchester, Johnson has hinted at opposition to working tax credit. May was far tougher on Europe than Osborne; nor did she show obvious enthusiasm for prison reform. Other ministers are lining up to protest against Osborne’s demand for 25-40 per cent cuts as the parliament proceeds. His ability to resist may well go the way of his capacity to cut public spending.
The chemistry of power is in constant flux. It is astonishing that Cameron should have so curbed his authority in government as to grant his cabinet a three-year open season for the leadership. In doing so he has given Osborne’s rivals a target to aim at, and a timetable. As such he has undermined his own chancellor.
Of course they will declare undying loyalty to their leader until the day he goes. Everyone says that.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
