The other day a friend who was over from the US asked me: “What’s the story with this new British Conservatism?” Here is my interpretation of our recent history.

The Nasty Party

For close to twenty years the British Conservative Party was tainted by being tagged as the ‘Nasty Party’. The Tories had a “nasty, narrow” image and appeared to be “unrepentant and unattractive”. This harsh assessment was offered up by the then Conservative Chairman at the 2002 party conference. Three big defeats at the polls between 1997 and 2005 proved that the party, which had traditionally viewed itself as being the natural party of government, was no longer connecting with the values of the British people.

The Conservative Party had become a narrow echo-chamber populated by people who were more interested in venting their spleen. It rejected the notion of creating a policy agenda which evolved with society. The 1997, 2001 and 2005 election campaigns were driven by doomsday scenarios and negative messages. There was a distinct lack of desire to embrace the place Britain had become, and as a result, the Tories could not present an uplifting vision for where the country should go next.

Cameron’s arrival

The old instinct of prioritising the need to win power kicked-in at the end of 2005. The Conservative members picked a fresh-faced leader, David Cameron, who was untainted by their previous stretch in government. The party gave him the mandate, and responsibility, of re-energising and re-orientating British Conservative politics. When accepting this challenge, Mr Cameron signalled his intention to modernise the Tories by saying, “I love this country as it is, not as it was”.

Promoting values for everyone

In politics there is an important difference between promoting values and making moral judgements. Pre-Cameron, the Conservatives had the reputation of being castigators of single mothers, scolders of homosexuals and neglecters of the poor. Modern Conservatives have exchanged these judgement-driven attacks for promoting long-tested values in a language that resonates in the current climate. The fundamental principle is that good values and the benefits which flow from them should be accessible to everyone. Strong families, however they are constructed, are important for a stable society which is why gay couples who enter into civil partnerships should be entitled to the same benefits as those in heterosexual marriage. Conservatives should not blindly reject the fact that government has a key role to play in shaping society. Having a positive attitude to what the state can do does not automatically translate to giving handouts; instead the public sector can foster a better environment by giving people responsibility through devolving resources to those who need – or want to – help.

Broadening the message and the messengers

The Winston Churchill quote: “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject” is a good description of the Tory party from the late 90s onwards. The Conservatives were seemingly obsessed by two subjects, integration into the European Union and immigration, at a time when the public’s primary concerns were the economy, education and health. One of Mr Cameron’s first acts as leader was to head off to the Arctic and ride with huskies, putting the environmental agenda at the centre of the party’s platform. The none too subtle message to voters, and just as importantly party members, was that the Conservatives had changed and were in touch with modern concerns. Cameron and his team developed a set of positions to show everyone how modern Conservatism would manifest itself. This included giving decision making powers over the use of resources to locals, promising to protect the National Health Service budget and linking fiscal discipline with creating a stable, sustainable and productive economy.

Political parties that want to win national elections should resemble the nation. If when a political movement looks in the mirror all it can see is one segment of society staring back at them then they have to recognise that they will find it harder to change society as a whole. In 2005 only 9% of Conservative members of Parliament were woman, 98% were white and 60% were educated at private schools. This situation was viewed as being unacceptable by the leadership. To rectify this, the apparently very unconservative method of positive discrimination was introduced into the parliamentary selection process, to the uproar of many grassroots members. Changing the composition gave the Conservatives an opportunity to show that the party was changing by diversifying its face. Of course, the great irony here is that Mr Cameron and many of his tem arrived in Parliament from privileged backgrounds, having attended some of Britain’s most exclusive schools.

A successful transformation?

Different people/groups have differing views as to what success looks like. David Cameron is now Prime Minister, but as the Conservatives failed to win a majority of parliamentary seats he leads a Government containing members from another party. Is there a desirable Conservative influence on the way Britain is governed? That is a whole other conservation, but what is not in doubt is that the Conservative party needed to change to become, once again, a relevant force in Britain.

I have a confession to make. I don’t really have any great interest in what voting system we use to elect our MPs. Shocking, isn’t it. I generally manage to have an opinion on most things, but this…

I know that I ought to have great concern for the various systems – for AV, AV plus, d’Hondt, STV, Condorcet, first past the post or random pulling out of a hat like for jury service… but I don’t.  Conservatively though, I’d suggest that  just having the winner as the person who comes first might be most reflective of how most things in life operate? However, I’m open to persuasion one way or another (so – supporters of all types of voting, feel free to send us an article arguing your case!)

What I do have a great interest in and a deep concern for, is, are we actually trying to fix the real problem with changes to the actual voting system, or should we be looking in greater detail at the even less interesting but perhaps more important systems we use to select and whip our MPs?

For example, I absolutely support recall elections. I’m disappointed that the coalition has decided that a recall can only be proposed from the centre – where’s the devolution in that?

I also support open primaries – proper ones – but I’d argue that they should be self-financing and in every constituency, every electoral cycle – so every MP, no matter how safe the seat, has to come back and justify to their voters what they’re up to in the House of Commons.

Similarly (and yes, I know this is a difficult one…) I think there needs to be greater freedom for MPs to say what they actually believe, and fewer whipped votes. There’s a balance to be struck in achieving the agenda of the government of the day, but I can’t see how allowing MPs the freedom to be accountable to their constituents for the manifesto on which they were individually elected can be a bad thing.

Equalising the number of voters per constituency seems an absolute no-brainer, should happen every election, shouldn’t take ten years to implement and should just be got on with. Independent assessment, stop faffing around with street by street appeals – if you’re not happy with being in an area with an MP from X party then get out and persuade your co-constituents to vote for someone else.

Closed lists and related mechanisms are undemocratic – if you’re going to maintain a representative democracy, I want every person elected by whatever means to have a direct link to the people they represent and be fully accountable to them. Simply moving up the list because it’s Buggins’ Turn is not accountable.

More widely, though, I also think that there needs to be a fundamental appraisal of what role we want our MPs to play. Do we want to have 600 (or whatever) glorified councillors, contacting trading standards on our behalf, or do we want people whose intervention really means something, and who hold the government to account?

Basically, we need to remember the experience of reforming the House of Lords. While entirely undemocratic, it did actually function pretty well – there was a huge amount of expertise in the most unlikely areas, and because people weren’t dependant on the party machine, the peers did a relatively good job of ensuring sensible legislation. The mish mash we have at the moment is a nonsense and needs further reform.  We need to remember that softly softly compromise and fudge isn’t always the answer – sometimes we need big bang reforms.

Having spoken to a few MPs since Nick Clegg made his announcement last week (oh and incidentally, I saw him just beforehand, walking along the Embankment practising, which I suppose I really ought to have sent to eyespymp), I suspect that there will be some hefty efforts to change the bill during its passage. Somehow, he seems to have offended everyone in some way – some because they want ‘real’ proportionality, some because they find the very concept of anything but first past the post offensive, and some because… well, because it came from the coalition.

So I’d ask those MPs who are going to take a close interest in this, to ask themselves the real question – what are we trying to fix here? And is this the right way to do it?

Yesterday I was in techno-political geek heaven. The Personal Democracy Forum, with the help of Onalytica, had organised ‘General Election Replay’. The e-glitterati panel which had been assembled were ready to be grilled in Question Time style.

It quickly became apparent that the question of whether this was an ‘internet election’ is a redundant one. The internet is a part of the fabric of our society. It is a tool that is inextricably intertwined with the work that politicians and journalists do. As Mark Pack pointed out, if the internet had suddenly disappeared half-way through the election everyone would have had to completely rethink how they operated.

The Conservatives and Labour had two very different approaches to the technological side of campaigning. Craig Elder told us how the Conservatives e-strategy was decide upon over two years ago. It was based on creating a website that was policy-based and easy to navigate. The goal was for floating voters to be directed towards information that CCHQ wanted them to see. This involved buying space on Youtube’s front page and enabling targetted search engine results. If you were looking for political information during April it is more likely than not that you would have come across Tory-friendly messages. Labour, as Mark Hanson explained, concentrated on energising and organising their base. The internet is a place where people gravitate towards themselves. By exploiting this, Labour managed to mobilise activists then target them at key seats. Compared to 2005, Labour employed one-third the number of staff but had three times the amount of activists.

E-influencing is about the size of the network times the power and tools inside the network. If these three parts are not aligned any impact will be significantly lessened. The Lib Dems did not have the capacity to take advantage of the surge in interest that Nick Clegg generated post TV-debate. Onalytica’s research showed that while the buzz around Clegg himself increased rapidly after the first debate the noise around his party was static. If only they had had an equivalent to Myconservatives. This was an impressive tool but unfortunately for the Tories there was no power/buzz to make it the game changer it could have been.

Twitter created the most heated part of the debate. Samuel Coates described Twitter as a giant echo chamber, which generated a huge amount of heat but not a lot of light. While this is spot-on those who think it proves the futility of tweeting have missed the point that Twitter’s power is derived from this analysis. Energising your base and channelling its power is a crucial part of election strategy. This is how Obama successfully used social media; to enthuse then direct supporters. During the campaign I downloaded both parties I-Phone apps. The Conservative one gave me useful information while the Labour app asked me to join in. It had a local news and local events section which encouraged supporters to spread targeted messages to applicable audiences.

Twitter has made spinning a naked art. In Harry Cole’s view twitter gave the parties an extra thousand spinners. Mick Fealty rightly pointed out Twitter radically changed how spinning works. For example, I follow Alastair Campbell. During the leaders debate he tweeted the prepared line that while Brown was losing on style he was wining on substance. Forget the spin room or political operators having a word in correspondences ears; Campbell was directly spinning at me. Both Toryites and Labourites do do their master’s spinning but it is completely transparent that you are being fed biased views. If you are on Twitter and want to get a flavour of the grassroots debate, but don’t want to follow thousands, I can highly recommend @HouseofTwits. It is the best grassroots political aggregator out there.

What about the future? Joe Trippi believes we will end up in a place where it will be impossible to control information. I think we are already half-way there. Anthony Painter suspects that the Internet and social media are helping to create a much more fragmented electorate. If progressive politics is about engagement then the tools we have today make interaction so much easier. Stella Creasey, Labour MP, kept making the strong point that it is not about the forums you use but how you use them. In some ways the Labour Party has a more natural fit with social media. It has always seen itself as a movement and the internet is a Darwinian battle of competing movements all trying to get the maximum momentum. Will Labour be able to regenerate itself through e-debate or will this easier interaction allow the loud shouting loons to dominate sensible instincts? We shall see.

From the coalition government’s perspective how will social media allow supporters to interact with this new politics? On Tuesday politics changed but how we have the political conversation has yet to catch-up.

All the parties had e-successes and e-failures, which I’m sure they all learnt from. This will undoubtedly help to advance e-campaigning BUT if the next election is in five years it is probable that the influential platforms of 2015 have yet to be invented.

If the Liberal Democrats cannot reach a deal with Conservatives now, then when? The answer to this question must be never.

• The Conservative manifesto was liberal. It contained an honest commitment to protecting civil liberties. The ‘Big Society’ idea is all about empowering those who have been left behind. Lib Dems may think the idea unworkable but the sentiment, that all of us in society need opportunity and protection, is one we both applaud.
• The Labour Government is on its knees. During 13 years of power they over-borrowed, lead us into numerous wars and increased the reach of the state. Those Lib Dems who believe that they are philosophically a lot closer to Labour should look at ALL the legislation passed.
• The parliamentary arithmetic makes a ‘rainbow coalition’ at best unwieldy and at worst unstable. The amount of negotiating and bartering that will have to go into every piece of legislation is the stuff of civil service nightmares.

The British electorate is a sophisticated beast. The current predicament reflects the will of the nation. If a Lab-Lib pact is formed we will be living in a two party state. A vote for the Lib Dems will be a vote for Labour. The Conservatives will offer the only alternative choice of Government. The price of having a coalition including nationalists is not ideological but financial. Will Lib Dem voters in Sutton, Carshalton, Cambridge ect be happy to subsidise a ‘progressive’ coalition? A Lab-Lib coalition would unite the Conservatives in a fight against a perceived injustice. As soon as any deal is done the Tories will start campaigning for the next election. The narrative will be “Vote Liberal, get Labour. Get Labour, get economic hardship.”

The Labour Party will not necessarily embrace the Lib Dems. Many members are bitter towards the ‘Liberals’. Bitter about the SDP split in the 80s. Bitter about joining forces with those who try to undermine them in election battles and local government. Bitter that the Lib Dems are now trying to call the tune. Gordon Brown has not yet tried to sell any deal to his party. Those who think that there will be unanimous agreement are living in fantasy land. There is probably a significant minority who would defy a party whip and vote against any form of PR. Labourites on the left of the party will be fearful that any deal today will usher in a permanent Lab-Lib pact in the future.

With power comes responsibility. Governing is about making tough choices. When Nick Clegg next meets his MPs he should say: “Those of you who want to join Labour, join Labour. Those of you who want to join the Conservatives, join the Conservatives. Those of you who want to be in a centrist party that will act flexibly for the national interest, stay with the Lib Dems.” Otherwise it won’t take the electorate long to realise that the ‘new politics’ image was just old politics spinning.

When assured by a parliamentary colleague that a properly led Liberal-Conservative party was guaranteed his vote, Canadian prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald exclaimed, ‘Anybody may support me when I am right.  What I want is a man that will support me when I am wrong.’

David Cameron may be harbouring similar thoughts as the general election draws nigh.  Will dissenting party members and former voters come out to the polls in support of his Conservative parliamentary candidates?

The Conservative party has long been a mix of laisser-faire, limited-government adherents and advocates of Disraeli’s One Nation Toryism, for whom State action on behalf of the least advantaged is a virtue.  But this complementary composition—around which most fault-lines lie—broke down completely following the 1997 defeat, with each faction distrustful and suspicious of the other.

Life in the political wilderness has had a sobering effect, however, and in the end, the Conservative ‘appetite for power’—in John Ramsden’s felicitous phrase—triumphed over tribal rivalries.

Cameron won the leadership based on his charisma and promise to heal old wounds, campaigning to reconcile the country with his progressive conservative programme. (Commentators often write of his efforts to ‘detoxify’ the party, but that seems too harsh, given that the putative toxic Thatcherite economic policy was the partial platform upon which Tony Blair’s New Labour won the trust of the British electorate.  Cameron’s objective was to address the social concerns Britons felt were unappreciated, and has done so with his pledge to fix the ‘broken society’. )

By-and-large the rifts were soothed and the Conservatives have faced this election as a united party.  Yet the last two years of economic recession and uncertainly about how to bring about recovery have occasioned a simmering disgruntlement.

The MPs’ expenses scandal, which left no party unscathed, has added to the unrest:  critics argue that in view of the appalling record of the Labour Government, Conservative fortunes ought to have soared.  That they have not is cause for muted enthusiasm and second-guessing of the party’s performance.

But if Marc Anthony did not come to praise but to bury Caesar, my inverted purpose is not to cast aspersions upon the Conservative party, but to acknowledge the lay of the land and to look to the future.

‘The complaints of a friend are things very different from the invectives of an enemy,’ wrote Edmund Burke.  ‘It is our duty rather to palliate his errors and defects, or to cast them into the shade, and industriously to bring forward any good qualities that he may happen to possess.’

Though the conservative-minded voter may likewise have legitimate complaints with the Conservative party—for what honest political organisation can be all things to all citizens?—the point at issue is not personal pique, but the national well-being, and whether other contesting parties, with the potential to form government, can advance a conservative agenda.

·         If this voter ridicules the Conservative deficit-cutting timetable and its programme for promoting economic health and prosperity, do either Labour or the Liberal Democrats offer a path toward financial salvation?

·         If this voter is exasperated with the Conservative posture toward Europe—as too obsequious,  or insufficiently accommodating, or just plain unintelligible—what can be said in defence of parties that seek greater European integration, adoption of the euro, and a blurring of British sovereignty?

·         If this voter laments irreverent Conservative attitudes toward time-honoured constitutional conventions (plans for House of Lords reform comes readily to mind), what can be said in favour of changes which include the Alternative Vote and Proportional Representation?

No doubt this list could be lengthened, but to no purpose.  Omitted are those Conservative proposals around which there is general consensus:  decentralisation of power from Whitehall; returning autonomy to individuals and their communities; making cherished public services accountable and cost-effective, whether in education or the National Health Service; and rebalancing the roles of MPs in Westminster with the constituents they serve.

Suffice it to ask that, for each article of perceived failing in the Conservative party outline for office, whether or not any possible alternative government can do better or, indeed, does it threaten more of the same and worse.

This is the question before the friends of Conservatism; as for Burke, he knew when it necessary to rally round his allies.  Only when the danger had passed was it well to seek amendment:

When his safety is effectually provided for, it then becomes the office of a friend to urge his faults and vices with all the energy of enlightened affection, to paint them in their most vivid colours, and to bring the moral patient to a better habit.  Thus I think with regards to individuals; thus I think with regard to antient and respected governments and order of men.

Such recourse can be had when the election has passed, when there is ample opportunity and the hope of restored trust to effect the amelioration of shortcomings within a Conservative government.  But now is not the time.

Now is the time for all good Conservatives to come to the aid of the party…

Stephen MacLean’s research website is focussed on Organic Toryism