The leader piece in The Times yesterday was wrong. For me, Cameron’s Conservatives do have a clear view of what we would like to achieve, the vision we have for our country, and the narrative by which we would achieve it. It is a vision very different from the course which Brown is currently, chaotically, pursuing, and it is far more holistic than that which Blair espoused in 1997. But what I think doesn’t matter, I’m hardly one who should need to be convinced about where we’re going…the fact that The Times published such comments is a timely wake-up call that suggests we are not effectively communicating the vision which we are actively pursuing.
Some will use The Times’ piece to call for a far more radical approach to policy-making – they will argue that we need a more distinct approach to education or taxation or the NHS – and probably all three. That is rubbish – The Times is not asking for more radical policy, it is asking for a clearer idea of something much more important than that – the glue which holds it all together. In my view, this does not need developing, but it does need communicating… it’s the vision thing…
I warned in one of my early posts on this site that if we became too focussed on policy, we would neglect much of what made Cameron so successful in the first place. Voters will not reward us for pursuing the Wisconsin model of welfare reform or the Swedish model of school management – they will however reward us when we lift their eyes beyond the bleak situation that our country faces right now, and offer them the hope, indeed the conviction, that things can be so much better. Of course, after they’ve elected us, they will demand that we do make things better – so ‘policy preparation’ and ‘practical implementation’ are vital for our long term success and we should be paddling away at them right now below the surface, but ‘vision communication’ must be, and stay, our top priority in the way we address the electorate before the General Election. It might appear neat to plan a path to power based on numerous phases of development, and this outline is important to tracking our internal progress – but we can never afford to move on from the fundamental task of communicating in broad terms what a Conservative Government would stand for.
At the moment, if you read Shadow Cabinet members’ speeches, they are ‘Policy Speeches’ – with a section that links them into our broader narrative. Perhaps we need to change the focus – perhaps we need ‘Vision Speeches’, with selections of policy introduced to show how we would make that vision a reality. We should not fear being too broad brush, nor should we fear being too boldly aspirational. Voters make their decisions based on how they feel about our Party, not on one policy prescription or another. We can win if we raise their focus beyond the tired machinery of government, and address their hopes and dreams. Yes, we can!
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