The Conservatives in Opposition, 1997-2007 (AQA A Level History: Component 2: Depth study): Revision Note

Conservative leaders: Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard

• Three leaders took the Conservatives through the 2001 and 2005 election defeats

  • Each was chosen for different reasons, and each faced the same basic problem: how far should the party change after 1997?

The party after 1997

• Labour's landslide victory in 1997 left the Conservatives with 165 MPs, their lowest total since 1906

  • The MPs who survived were generally more Eurosceptic and more Thatcherite than the party had seen before the election

  • Several leading figures, including Michael Portillo, lost their seats

• Conservatives disagreed over what the defeat meant

  • Some expected voters eventually to return to the Conservatives as the "natural party of government"

  • Modernisers argued that the party needed to change its image and policies to appeal to a wider electorate

Approach: This was an internal strategy paper written by Conservative modernisers Andrew Cooper and Daniel Finkelstein after the 1997 defeat, so it is useful for showing what this wing of the party thought had gone wrong and what needed to change

It identifies three main problems: the party’s image, its economic credibility and public distrust over services such as schools and hospitals

It still represents one side of an internal Conservative debate, rather than agreed party policy, so its arguments should be compared with how the party actually campaigned under Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard

William Hague, 1997-2001

• William Hague became leader in June 1997, aged 36

  • He defeated Kenneth Clarke in the final ballot of Conservative MPs

  • Many MPs opposed Clarke because of his strongly pro-European views

• Hague changed the leadership election rules

  • Party members would have the final vote in future leadership contests

• He tried to reduce Conservative divisions over Europe

  • He ruled out joining the single currency "in the foreseeable future"

  • The Conservatives won the most seats in the 1999 European Parliament elections

• Hague initially tried to make the party appear more socially inclusive

  • His 'Listening to Britain' campaign aimed to show that the party had changed

  • After 1999, he increasingly focused on issues that appealed to the party's existing supporters

• He resigned after the 2001 general election defeat

Hague's strengths and weaknesses

Iain Duncan Smith, 2001-2003

• Iain Duncan Smith became leader on the 13 September 2001

  • He was the first Conservative leader chosen by a ballot of party members

  • He defeated Kenneth Clarke with about 61% of the members' vote

    • Michael Portillo, the modernisers' candidate, had been knocked out in the final ballot of MPs by one vote

    • Many members voted against Clarke's pro-European views rather than for Duncan Smith

• Iain Duncan Smith promoted compassionate conservatism

  • He argued that the party should take poverty and social justice more seriously

  • His visit to the Easterhouse, a deprived housing estate in Glasgow, in 2002 helped shape this approach

• He gave strong support to the Iraq War in 2003

  • This left the Conservatives unable to exploit Blair's growing unpopularity over Iraq

• Duncan Smith struggled to command the loyalty of his MPs

  • He lost a Conservative vote of no confidence on 29 October 2003, by 90 votes to 75

Duncan Smith's strengths and weaknesses

Approach: The source is useful because it shows how serious divisions inside the party had become. His warning to MPs to “unite or die” shows a leader struggling to control his own parliamentary party

As Duncan Smith was defending his own leadership, the source gives only his side of the dispute and places responsibility mainly on those who opposed him

Michael Howard, 2003-2005

• Michael Howard became leader unopposed on the 6 November 2003

  • He was backed by both modernisers and traditionalists

  • He had served as Home Secretary under Major and was associated with the right of the party

• Howard brought greater stability to the Conservatives

  • He was experienced and effective against Blair in the Commons

  • Party organisation and morale improved

• He led the Conservatives into the 2005 general election

  • After the defeat, he announced that he would stand down

  • Before leaving, he promoted younger modernisers, including David Cameron and George Osborne

Howard's strengths and weaknesses

Cameron's election, 2005

• David Cameron defeated David Davis in a ballot of party members

  • The result was announced on 6 December 2005

• Cameron was 39 and had only been an MP since 2001

  • A confident speech without notes at the 2005 party conference helped his campaign

• He presented himself openly as a moderniser

  • His aim was to widen Conservative support beyond the party's traditional base

• By 2007, Cameron had begun to "detoxify" the party's image

  • He stressed the environment, public services and social responsibility

• Some on the right resented his rejection of parts of Thatcherism

  • Even so, by 2007 the party was more united than at any time since 1997

Reasons for Conservative divisions

• The Conservatives remained divided after 1997 over Europe, Thatcher's legacy and whether the party needed to modernise

Europe

• Europe remained the deepest division carried over from the Major years

  • Most Conservative MPs were Eurosceptic

  • Senior figures such as Kenneth Clarke still held strongly pro-European views

• Clarke's appearance alongside Blair at a pro-European event in 1999 increased suspicion of him inside the party

• Hague tried to reduce the argument by ruling out joining the single currency in the foreseeable future

  • This calmed the issue for a while

• Under Iain Duncan Smith, strong Euroscepticism brought the argument back to the surface

  • The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) also competed for anti-European voters on the Conservatives' right

The legacy of Thatcher

• Conservatives still disagreed over how closely the party should remain tied to Thatcherism

  • Some MPs continued to resent those who had helped remove Thatcher in 1990

  • Leadership candidates were still judged partly by where they had stood during Thatcher's fall from power in 1990

• Attempts to move away from Thatcherite ideas could provoke strong opposition

  • In 1999, Peter Lilley argued that voters did not want further market-style reform of public services such as health and education

  • His speech was widely read as a rejection of Thatcherism

    • Hague was forced to restate his support for Thatcher's legacy

"Mods and rockers"

• The press increasingly described the party as divided between "mods" and "rockers"

  • Mods, such as Michael Portillo, were more socially liberal and wanted the party to broaden its appeal

  • Rockers, such as Ann Widdecombe and Iain Duncan Smith, were more socially conservative

• Social issues exposed the divide

  • Duncan Smith's leadership opposed the repeal of Section 28

  • The party also opposed allowing unmarried couples to adopt

• In November 2002, some Conservative MPs rebelled against the party line on adoption

  • Duncan Smith responded with his warning that the party must "unite or die"

Approach: Widdecombe was a leading Conservative social conservative, writing in 2001 after the general election defeat

The source is useful because she accepts that the party was divided, but argues that the bigger problem was policy weakness, especially the failure to develop convincing positions on health and education

Because Widdecombe was associated with the “rocker” wing, her argument can be compared with modernisers who blamed the party’s image and social conservatism instead

Approach: The source is useful because she openly criticised the party for appearing narrow, divided and hostile to some groups, using the phrase “the nasty party”

That criticism came from a senior figure inside the party, which makes it strong evidence that the leadership itself believed the Conservatives had a serious image problem. The speech was also intended to push members towards change, so it was not a neutral description

Electoral failures in 2001 and 2005

The 2001 election

• Labour won a second landslide on 7 June 2001

  • The Conservatives won 166 seats, only one more than in 1997

  • Their vote share was 31.7% compared with Labour's 40.7%

  • Turnout fell to 59.4%, the lowest since 1918

• Hague focused heavily on core Conservative issues

  • The Keep the Pound campaign opposed joining the euro

  • The party also took a tough line on asylum, including proposals for secure reception centres

• Labour attacked the Conservatives' links with the past

  • A Labour poster showed Hague wearing Margaret Thatcher's hairstyle and earrings, under the words "Be afraid. Be very afraid"

  • Thatcher's own appearance at a Conservative rally reinforced the sense that the party was still tied to the 1980s

Approach: Hague wrote this in the Conservative manifesto Time for Common Sense during the 2001 election campaign

The source is useful because it shows how the Conservatives wanted to frame the election: Labour as the party of government control, and the Conservatives as the party that trusted individuals

Its value is limited for explaining the result, because the manifesto sets out the party’s message rather than showing whether voters found it convincing

The 2005 election

• Labour won a third term on 5 May 2005, but with a much smaller majority

  • The Conservatives increased their seat total to 198

  • Their vote share rose only slightly to 32.4%

  • Labour still won 355 seats on 35.2% of the vote

• Howard's campaign again focused on issues designed to appeal to existing Conservative supporters:

  • immigration

  • crime

  • lower taxes

  • the slogan "Are you thinking what we're thinking?"

• The Conservatives gained ground, but not enough to look like a convincing alternative government

  • The Liberal Democrats gained more from opposing the Iraq War

  • Support for the Conservatives remained weak among women, younger voters and voters in the North

• Some modernisers criticised the campaign

  • Michael Portillo called it the "Victor Meldrew" manifesto, suggesting that it sounded too negative and grumpy

• The party also struggled to prove that it had changed

  • Howard Flight was removed as a candidate after comments suggesting that a Conservative government would cut spending more deeply than it admitted

Approach: Howard wrote this in the Conservative manifesto Are You Thinking What We’re Thinking? during the 2005 campaign

The source is useful because it shows the priorities the party wanted voters to notice: hospitals, school discipline, policing, immigration and lower taxes

It also shows the tension inside the party. The campaign focused strongly on core Conservative issues, while modernisers argued that the party first needed to convince voters that it had changed

Why did both campaigns fail?

• The Conservatives still struggled to widen their appeal beyond their traditional supporters

• The party's image remained closely tied to Thatcherism and the 1980s

• Campaigns focused heavily on Europe, asylum, immigration, tax and crime

  • These issues appealed to many existing Conservative voters but did little to attract enough new ones

• Labour remained electorally strong

  • Blair had a much broader level of support

• The first-past-the-post system made Conservative weakness look even worse in seats

  • In 2005, Labour won 157 more seats on a lead of under three percentage points

Why did the Conservatives fail to win power, 1997-2007?

• Several factors explain why the Conservatives remained in opposition throughout the Blair years

  • Some evidence for each factor is outlined below

Leadership

• Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard all struggled to match Blair's popularity

  • Hague was mocked as young and inexperienced

  • Duncan Smith struggled to command authority

  • Howard was closely linked to the Thatcher and Major years

• The party also changed leader repeatedly

  • Hague and Duncan Smith were both chosen partly as alternatives to Kenneth Clarke, suggesting party divisions as well as electoral strategy

Party divisions

• Arguments over Europe, Thatcher's legacy and modernisation repeatedly broke into the open

  • The 2002 adoption rebellion and the 2003 confidence vote in Duncan Smith exposed divisions

• Disputes made the party appear divided and distracted

  • Ann Widdecombe argued that the deeper problem was policy weakness, not simply factionalism

Image and policy

• Many voters still saw the Conservatives as uncaring, intolerant and old-fashioned

  • Theresa May's warning about the "nasty party" showed that senior Conservatives recognised the problem

• Election campaigns often focused on issues such as the pound, asylum, immigration, tax and crime

  • These appealed strongly to loyal Conservative voters

  • They did less to win over voters in the political centre

• The party also struggled to rebuild trust over public services

  • Health and education remained important areas of weakness

Approach: Cameron gave this speech during the 2005 leadership contest, presenting himself as a moderniser

The source is useful because it shows what Conservative modernisers believed needed to change: the party had to look more forward-looking, inclusive and socially concerned

As Cameron was campaigning to become leader, the speech also had a clear purpose. It shows the modernisers’ diagnosis of Conservative failure, rather than proving that all voters agreed with it

Labour's strength and the electoral system

• New Labour occupied much of the political centre

  • It remained popular with many voters and was trusted on the economy for much of the period

• The Conservatives therefore had difficulty finding issues on which they could clearly outflank Labour

• First-past-the-post also turned relatively small differences in vote share into much larger differences in seats

  • Tactical voting against the Conservatives helped Labour and the Liberal Democrats in some constituencies

• In 2005, after eight years in opposition, the Conservatives still won fewer seats (198) than Labour at its 1983 low point (209)