"Why get rid of IDS?" Author: amcguinn Date: 2 November 2003
"Why get rid of IDS?" Author: amcguinn Date: 2 November 2003
The Conservative Party have removed their leader, Iain Duncan-Smith, in a vote of confidence by Conservative MPs, which he lost by 90 votes to 75. At time of writing (2 November), it appears that Michael Howard will be unopposed in the election to succeed Duncan-Smith. Why has this happened?
The leader of the Conservative Party is really the leader of the Conservative Party in Parliament. He has to appoint a shadow Cabinet from Conservative MPs and manage its activities. The bulk of Conservative MPs never liked, respected or trusted Iain Duncan-Smith. He got 54 votes in the leadership election, less than a third of the MPs, and that was up from 39 in the first round. There was some very confusing tactical voting in the "pick-2-from-3" final round in which Michael Portillo went from first out of five to third out of three. If one MP had voted differently, the vote of party members would have been between Clarke and Portillo.
Having had this leader imposed on them against their wishes, the Conservative MPs tolerated him for as short a time as they could get away with. As he was lacking in vote-winning charisma, heavyweight allies, or visible successes, they dumped him at the first excuse. whatever the facts of his wife's employment, it is clear from the events surrounding it that a substantial number of those he was supposed to lead didn't want him.
He was a poor performer in the media and in parliament, and he was hobbled from the start by his lack of support from his own MPs. During his leadership the party appears to have done a reasonable job of building a set of policies they can agree on and fight the next election on, which is an achievement he can take credit for. IDS also brought Michael Howard back onto the Conservative front bench, so if Howard proves to be a good leader, IDS can take credit for making it possible.
The media seem to be prepared to take him seriously, where both Hague and Duncan-Smith suffered from being presented by the media as lightweight or ridiculous. As a former Home Secretary he commands more respect. He is acceptable both to Tory MPs and to the party; the other experienced candidates have too many enemies. He is capable in debate. He is not at either extreme wing of the party.
In 1997, a break was needed from the Major administration which was associated with incompetence and sleaze. Howard was at a particular disadvantage because his right-wing tenure as Home Secretary had been very unpopular. Since then, both the sleaze of the Major government and the authoritarianism emanating from the Howard Home office have been dwarfed by the subsequent Labour government, while memory of the disorganisation and apparent incompetence of the end of the Major government has faded behind the later shambles of Hague and Duncan-Smith opposition.
It is difficult to say. Given the disarray of both the party and their public image in 1997, what the party most needed was time; a rapid recovery may not have been possible at all. Labour had come to power on a platform not sharply differentiated in policy terms from that of the Conservatives, and left them with the choice of moving to an unpopular extremist position in the name of "Clear Blue Water", or being hidden in the shadow of a popular Labour party with a charismatic leader. They did a bit of both.
What they mostly had to do was wait for the Blair government to develop policies and a personality that could be meaningfully opposed. The job of Hague and Duncan-Smith could be seen as keeping the seat warm during that process (or, less charitably, to be ineffective enough to make Michael Howard look good).
It seems obvious that a good leader should be able to build a policy platform for his party, but perhaps the business of constructing a consensus is so messy and damaging in terms of public image that a successful leader needs to have it already in place and ready to take to the country. In 2003, the party seems united behind a set of policy positions, which was not the case in 1997 or even in 2001, when disagreements over the importance of the Single Currency and tax cuts produced public arguments within the party througout and after the unsuccessful general election campaign.The 2001 leadership contest between Clarke and Duncan-Smith was enormously destructive to both of them and to the party. No Prime Minister has had to face a serious public campagin by a member of their own party before a general election. Iain Duncan-Smith correctly told the MPs they had to unite or die, but they cannot be expected to unite behind a leader they have not chosen themselves.
Not necessarily. The "confidence vote" rule worked well in allowing the Parliamentary Party to rid itself of a leader that it didn't support. The popular vote can be valuable if it is seen as a safeguard or last resort rather than as the normal way to choose a leader. In future, as on this occasion, the MPs will privately decide which of the likely candidates will go forward, and only in the case of a really serious party split will the main choice be passed on to the whole party.
This way, the parliamentary party gets to choose a leader it can support, but it has to be aware of the sensibilities of the party members. The advantage of leaving the party members this power is that it gives stability to the party. In the past, Conservative governments have lived for years under threat from senior rivals of the leadership; Michael Hestletine in particular. As the membership of the party can be expected to be steadier in its opinion over the long term than a changing Parliamentary party adjusting to electoral conditions, rivalries such as this are more likely to be settled, and the settlement accepted as not subject to change in the near future, allowing for more stable and confident leadership.