[this article points up an interesting fact: the Tories are unable to play on the traditional Atlanticist theme tunes which have served them so well in the past, and hence are trailing by 20+ points in the polls. Why is this? Behind electoral cynicism and apathy, a sea-change has happened: now the British want more taxes, not less, and despite residual fears of European engagement (the EU is relatively unpopular in Britain) they have switched off from Churchillian bulldoggery, and from notions of national independence which are actually rooted in a traiditonal sense of Angloo-Saxon camaraderie and instinctual, atavistic and now evidently anachronistic pro-Americanism. The Tories claim that if Labour wins Britain will be dragged into the Euro-zone and the Pound Sterling, most charged of all national symbols, will disappear. No-one seems to care, much to evident relief of Blair, Gordon Brown et al who are at least, very timidly, beginning to talk about their true agenda for the future: the end of Sterling, and British inclusion in a federal Euro-state. This, of course, will amount to a tectonic shift in the structures of global capitalism. Mark] --------------------------------------------- The Independent Steve Richards: Mr Hague is doing rather better than his party 'In reality, the Tory leader is only ridiculed because of the policies he is presenting to the voters' 24 May 2001 A senior official at Conservative Central Office has a candid take on this general election. "The voters," he tells me, "are not listening to us. They are getting on with their own lives. We press the buttons and nothing happens." Presumably his colleagues share this gloomy analysis. As they scrutinise the stubbornly unchanging polls at the end of each long day of button pressing, they conclude that no one is listening. To some extent the official is making what Basil Fawlty would call a "statement of the bleedin' obvious". Media organisations are spending a lot of money on the polls, yet the gap between the parties hardly changes. If the plot changes slightly, it is only a variation on the same theme. For example, in Scotland the polls suggest the Conservatives are performing terribly. Mr Hague's party does not have a single member of parliament in Scotland. Somehow or other it is contriving to do even worse this time around than it did in 1997. No, the voters are not listening. Yet there is more to it than that. Voters have chosen not to listen to the Conservatives' message. They are not entirely passive creatures. Their indifference to Mr Hague's populist tunes is in itself an act of defiance. They are being offered a menu that, in theory, they should be feasting upon. The tasty dish comprises lower taxes, and opposition to the euro and most things European. At yesterday's news conference they were presented with a double whammy: Europe would put up our taxes. Still the voters are not listening, still they are choosing not to listen. In my view, it is the dish they are rejecting, and not the chef. William Hague is only ridiculed and derided because of what he is presenting to the voters. Take away the feast and the chef is almost superhuman in his good-humoured resilience. He admitted in one interview this week that the leadership had been pretty tough at times. That must be something of an understatement. Leading his party, in fact, probably has been tolerable most of the time. His party is still pretty malleable. However, it is reading those opinion polls and the newspapers that would test the sanity of any individual. There must be a limit, surely, to how many times you can read that voters do not rate you, that they do not take you seriously. Mr Hague has not reached his limit. At yesterday's news conference he was witty and authoritatively evasive. Conservative strategists have made a big mistake keeping him away from most of these Westminster gatherings. He is good at them. He can handle himself. Mr Hague has been contaminated by his policies and not the other way round. The policies of lower taxes and hints of much lower taxes do not resonate any longer. Anti-European rhetoric does not play especially well when juxtaposed with New Labour's own caution on the issue. It is not as if Mr Blair and Mr Brown, their heads held high, are striding self-confidently towards the single currency. Nor are they travelling around the country with wads of money to hand out to the public services. They are offering more than Mr Hague and Mr Portillo and a lot more than Oliver Letwin. But compared with other modern European countries, they are still offering a lot less, which is why they are turning to the private sector to fill the gap. There is a big lesson in this, the experience of the election campaign and indeed the last four years. New Labour has been attacked relentlessly from the right by the Conservatives since the last election. No one, from Mr Hague downwards, has managed to land a single punch. From the beginning, the Conservatives have fallen into the trap of affecting outrage at policies they would quite happily have implemented themselves had they stayed in power. These perverse contortions began in 1998 when Gordon Brown announced his first set of public spending plans. It was a desperately tight settlement at a time when the public services were crumbling. The Conservatives themselves would have thought twice before imposing such a squeeze. How did they respond? Francis Maude, the Shadow Chancellor at the time, described Mr Brown's plans as "reckless and irresponsible": there would be no such imprudent generosity from his side, he implied. The voters chose not to listen to Mr Maude. Out there in the real world they knew about the decaying trains, the long waiting lists. They know that the only question was whether Mr Brown was spending enough. The Conservatives are doing it again in this election campaign, hinting at bigger tax cuts or what they call their "aspirations" to cut taxes. They are doing it by allowing Lady Thatcher to speak of never joining the single currency. On both issues New Labour has the ground more or less covered � Mr Blair and Mr Brown are not big spenders and they are offering a referendum on the euro. New Labour, with its complex and in some cases contradictory mix of policies � higher public spending, tax cuts, deification of the private sector, pro-Europe and pro-George Bush � demands a more subtle response than Mr Hague's much-amended Common Sense Revolution. To some extent that response is being articulated by Charles Kennedy, who is having a good campaign, his first as leader of his party. I have been struck by the number of Labour people, including one or two Blairite ministers, who have told me that privately they agree more with the Liberal Democrats' manifesto than their own. Some of them are keeping their fingers crossed that the Lib Dems perform better than they did four years ago, so that Mr Blair has some pressure on him from the left. Not that Mr Kennedy will acknowledge that he is coming from the left. He needs as many disaffected Tories as he can get. Still, that does not change the reality. On every single policy, the Lib Dems are to the left of New Labour. The problem with the Liberal Democrats is the Liberal Democrats. They are not weighty. They look and sound as if they have not been troubled by government for many a decade. Perhaps that is because they have not been troubled by government for many a decade. This makes the future of the Conservatives, the party that ruled over us for much of the last century, especially interesting. Behind the scenes there is already an intelligent debate raging about the party's future. I have spoken separately to two senior figures on the right of the party in recent days who are rethinking their uncritical support for wholesale privatisation. Both accept, for example, that the privatisation of Railtrack has been a failure. Both question also whether private finance initiatives and public-private partnerships, much loved by New Labour, are good value for money. Now these are interesting questions, privately posed by many within New Labour's big tent. The Conservatives have got nowhere attacking New Labour from the right. On a range of issues, from constitutional reform to the provision of public services, a new Tory leader would make more progress by mounting an onslaught from slightly to the left of New Labour.
