Unless David Cameron, George Osborne and Michael Gove take their commitment to greater social mobility to extreme lengths by going out and selling crack on the Goldhawk Road in West London, the Conservative Party’s modernizing elite, recently removed from office by the Brexit vote, don’t have a lot to do right now.
Theresa May’s cabinet reshuffle was ruthless. It got rid of the modernizers who nailed their colors to the mast of Michael Gove’s sinking leadership vessel. Out of the Cabinet and onto the House of Commons backbenches went Osborne, Gove, Nick Boles and Ed Vaizey.
A decade ago I covered the rise of the Tory reforming set, the group of driven, young politicians determined to drag their party into the 21st century and usher in a more socially liberal, economically conservative political orthodoxy. I was part of a journalistic team that was asked by our then newspaper editor to uncover stories on the ‘Notting Hill Set’, as Cameron’s clique in opposition was then known, every day.
From the Notting Hill set to the Maidenhead set? May, Greening, Hammond, Milton all unflashy, state-educated MPs for London suburbs.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) July 13, 2016
The most entertaining member of the set was political strategist Rachel Whetstone, now an executive at Uber on the West Coast who, unhappy that I had reported on a job she was taking at Google in 2005, declared, “I’m going to cut up your balls and throw them in the Thames in front of a very large audience!”
Thankfully that never came to pass. But now the Notting Hill Set, having tasted high office for the past seven years and succeeded in much of their reforming ambitions, have more time on their hands than they did in the spring. They have given way to Theresa May’s no-frills style of government but I would be most surprised if it transpires that the modernizers have literally lost the plot.
The new Prime Minister’s decision to completely purge her cabinet of the modernizing influence is not a problem for now but if- when- the political going gets tougher for her, don’t be surprised to see a surge in anonymous briefings and deployment of the dark arts from allies of David Cameron who must still be bitter he never got to serve a full term without being handicapped by the compromise of coalition government.
Michael Gove, of course, backed Brexit- at odds with Cameron- but he has long been a nuanced operator. I remember hearing that Gove had nominated both Cameron and David Davis to run in the 2005 leadership contest. “I’ve no idea how he’s getting away with it”, said a backbench MP. “It’s like the cat in [George Orwell’s] Animal Farm that voted twice.” (Gove later fell squarely behind Cameron).
Most modernizers are not as skillful at applying the rules of political engagement as they would like to think. George Osborne’s gaffes are numerous. And take the recent text message-cum-suicide note that Nick Boles – campaign manager for Gove- sent out to Tory MPs during the party’s leadership contest in which he hysterically advocated tactical voting to ensure that rival candidate Andrea Leadsom did not end up on the final ballot.
It achieved the opposite effect, helping to remove Gove’s slim chances of staying in the race and was followed by an apology from Boles and then a few days later by a bizarre tweet in which he desperately attempted to persuade us all that Leadsom’s ill-judged comments on motherhood had vindicated his initial haplessness.
I have apologised to @Gove2016 for the message I sent. He did not know about it let alone authorise it. And it does not reflect his views.
— Nick Boles (@NickBolesMP) July 6, 2016
Up against a tired and unhinged Gordon Brown-led Labour government, the modernizing crew also should have engineered an outright majority in the 2010 election for Cameron instead of the hung parliament that Britain ended up with. The fact they didn’t was a direct result of their inability to convey an ideologically clear message to voters.
But they became better operators once in power even if the notion of the Prime Minister heading up a gilded set at odds with the reality of much of Great Britain live never quite disappeared.
Cameron would detoxify his ‘Etonian toff’ reputation considerably if he didn’t nominate his aides and friends for knighthoods and peerages in his farewell honors list, one of the most insufferable aspects of British political life. (His meritocratic stock would strengthen if, instead of dispensing peerages to his pals, he gave them out to ordinary people who had assisted him like say, the landlord of The Plough Inn pub near Chequers, where the Prime Minister accidentally left behind his 8-year-old daughter Nancy in 2012.)
That won’t happen. Yet while many of the modernizing faction will soon be enobled, they still have unfinished business and will be watching Theresa May’s performance from behind the curtain waiting for signs that her administration is veering off-script.
Nick Boles recently wrote in Conservative Home: “The modernization of the Conservative Party is a process, not an event, with different phases – and different emphases as it unfolds.” Translation: “We will be back.”
I remember an early encounter with Nick Timothy, now Theresa May’s chief of staff, when we both started out as political researchers fifteen years ago. We did what many young British males do when they’ve just met- talk about football.
Nick supports Aston Villa, I support Spurs. He perceptively noted that the common thread uniting Villa and Spurs was that both our teams often play badly and win matches and conversely play well and lose. (That was truer in 2001 than now but that’s another story.)
The modernizing wing of the Conservative Party, newly bereft of any significant foothold in government, will certainly play badly during the course of the next three years given their mixed track record in political gamesmanship.
But, as surefooted as Theresa May’s start to life in 10 Downing Street has been, they surely won’t have given up hope of winning.
