It’s all in the delivery as Boris Johnson faces
worried Tories at conference
Analysis: The prime minister needs to shake a sense of
national paralysis and reassure his party before a daunting winter
Sources said Boris Johnson would acknowledge the
pandemic has exposed some severe weaknesses in society.
Jessica
Elgot, Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason
Sat 2 Oct
2021 06.00 BST
When
preparations began for this year’s Conservative party conference, what most
struck Boris Johnson and his senior aides was research suggesting voters feel
the country is paralysed – that valuable time has been lost to the pandemic and
that everything else is at a standstill.
Above all,
Johnson’s aim for the conference will be to try to shake that sense of inertia.
He will characterise himself as the delivery prime minister, even if his own
MPs complain there has been precious little delivery so far.
To
symbolise that idea, he will take to the stage at the Tory conference next
Wednesday in Manchester quite literally surrounded by his ministers and party
members. Reminiscent of an ancient Greek theatre, the stage set-up will be
almost entirely in the round.
As well as
the ubiquitous “build back better”, the Conservatives’ other slogan at
conference will be “getting on with the job”.
Johnson
famously writes his speeches last-minute. But sources said he would acknowledge
the pandemic has exposed severe weaknesses in society which had been allowed to
persist for too long.
His plan to
tackle social care, though much criticised, will be held up as a move to
address that. There will be announcements that some programmes of pandemic
support might become permanent fixtures, such as volunteer programmes or school
tutoring.
His
opponent Keir Starmer used his conference speech last week to frame Johnson as
trivial. But the prime minister will cast himself as someone who does not
wobble like a shopping trolley – as his adviser-turned-nemesis Dominic Cummings
put it – but is prepared to take tough decisions.
That was
the way he framed it when he told the country he would raise national insurance
to pay for the NHS backlog and overhaul social care funding.
Johnson
will reframe his party as a Conservative government like no other, one that is
“activist” and believes in the power of the state. Levelling up requires
intervention, he will say.
“It’s going
to be about three things: firstly, fleshing out the vision about levelling up
and a centrepiece around that. Then a series of post-Covid policies
demonstrating the country is getting back to business as usual, pushing the
‘build back better’ slogan with a sense of immediacy. The third thing is
‘deploy Boris’, with a contrast to Starmer about how he can emotionally connect
to the public,” said Giles Kenningham, founder of Trafalgar Strategy, who is a
former No 10 press secretary and Conservative party director of communications.
To the
party, a sign of the prime minister’s renewed focus on the value of delivery
was his reshuffle, where he promoted Nadhim Zahawi, the face of the vaccine
programme. This is Johnson’s favourite example of delivery exceeding
expectations, combining the ingenuity of the private sector with the power of
the state.
After his
reshuffle, Johnson flew to New York and Washington, where he exuded his
customary boosterism, brushing off Britain’s food and fuel shortages as the
short-term effects of an upturn in the global economy. The “guy ropes are
pinging off Gulliver”, he told journalists en route.
Events have
a way of intervening however. His advisers hoped for a return to “politics as
usual” after the rolling crisis of the pandemic, but within days of landing
back in London, the prime minister was taking the extraordinary step of
ordering in the army to help deliver petrol.
Ministers
are confident supplies of fuel are slowly beginning to flow again. But
Johnson’s autumn appears likely to be almost as difficult as his last. Energy
bills are rising, furlough has ended, claimants will see cuts to universal
credit and the NHS is expected to come under strain from Covid and winter flu.
MPs tend to
think in “crisis cycles” – so queues at the pumps will particularly hang over
the conference. “If a crisis lasts for four or five days, people will blame
media hype or each other, but if it’s more than that they will think: why can’t
the government get a grip?” one predicted.
Robert
Halfon, a senior Tory MP, said his feeling was that voters appeared to be
blaming the media rather than the government for now, though there would still
be nervousness at party conference over the winter ahead.
“I think
the mood will be a mixture,” he said. “It’s the first proper conference since
the election. You shouldn’t underestimate Boris’s skills to get people geed up
and happy again, which he is very good at doing. So I think most people will be
hopeful but there’ll be a little bit of apprehension because they will be
worried about the economy and the cost of living – how we’re going to get out
of this.”
He
suggested the prime minister take “a fireside chat” approach: level with the
public that “it’s going to be tough for the next 18 months to two years” while
the economy gets back on track after Covid, but then present a “roadmap” for
cutting the cost of living after that. “Then the public will feel that it won’t
go on for ever,” Halfon said.
A former
cabinet minister described their colleagues as “very grumbly”, with some
frontbenchers privately complaining they are embarrassed to have to defend the government.
“It’s a
complete shambles. There’s no leadership. Very, very few of them can run a
whelk stall,” the MP said, citing supply shortages and the national insurance
hike. However, they suggested voters had not yet fallen out of love with the
prime minister. “It will take time. He’s still being given the benefit of the
doubt and people still love the theatre.”
Few in the
party feel reassured by the solutions proffered on the HGV driver shortage,
with fears the three-month visa for hauliers and poultry workers will leave a
pre-Christmas cliff-edge. “It suggests there isn’t a grip about how to handle
this. Nothing has been suggested to me that anything will be different in three
months when it takes six months to train people,” a senior MP said.
There is
also a significant wing of the party who, like Johnson, believe the balance
must fundamentally shift post-Brexit towards higher wages for British workers,
even if the transition is painful.
The other
key issue is a desire for MPs to see tangible commitments towards levelling up.
“Boris’s speech in the summer didn’t land,” one said.
Michael
Gove’s appointment to the newly renamed Department for Levelling Up, Housing
and Communities signalled a desire to flesh out the idea – but many MPs remain
unclear what it is really about.
No fewer
than 20 fringe events at conference are dedicated to examining the concept of
levelling up, with one asking: “What does it actually mean?” Other fringes are
looking at the identity crisis for traditional conservatism, and the prime
minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, is appearing at a drinks reception to give a
speech on the importance of LGBT+ rights in partnership with Stonewall, which
has been at odds with some ministers as part of “culture wars.”
Before
recess, MPs met Rishi Sunak for briefings on the economic climate in
preparation for the budget this month. Many left chastened. Sunak has warned
that further expenditure may have to be paid for with another rise in income
tax.
One “red
wall” MP said it was necessary to loosen the collar for working people in the
budget and a number have called for a reduction in business rates to help boost
the high street. Another said they would like to see a VAT cut – something
Sunak is likely to resist.
There is also
nervousness at the top of the party about what Sunak will say to conference,
particularly as he and his aides have been keeping their cards close to their
chests even with No 10.
Cabinet
ministers, some getting to grips with new departments, know the next six months
will be rough, but also believe the public will give them some leeway.
“The truth
is the economy is so distorted,” one said. “We’re about to see a million people
come off furlough, we don’t know how food shortages might play out. By February
the public will be more ready to make an assessment of how the government has
handled this. Which is lucky for Boris [this] week.”
The
Conservatives’ conference always follows Labour’s, and MPs have been watching
Starmer’s performance in Brighton closely to see if they should be worried
about the threat from Labour. So far, they are not. “It doesn’t seem like he
blew the doors off anything: I think that’s the general view,” an MP from the
2019 intake said.
One theme
that united all Conservatives speaking before conference, was that they hope
Johnson will not call a general election, even though his allies had briefed
that his new team was chosen to get election-ready.
The new
Tory chair, Oliver Dowden, is more cautious and has told his team “you can’t fatten
a pig on market day” – a phrase first drummed into Tory aides by elections guru
Sir Lynton Crosby. But the party has put up a job ad for a slew of campaign
managers – with a special requirement that they “represent the diversity of our
voters”. But the main obstacle to an early election is an important one: the
voters. “Can you imagine if we called an election in May [after a tough winter
and further energy price rises]? They’d kill us,” one MP said.
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