It’s NOT ‘so funny how we don’t talk anymore’

It is 1917 and Cpt. Edmund Blackadder is sat in his British trench dug out when he answers his field telephone: 

EB: “You’d like to book a table for three by the window for 9.30pm – not too near the band – in the name of Ober Leutnant von Genschler? Yes, I think you might have the wrong number. Yes, that’s all right” 

 Lt George: “Another crossed line, eh, sir? 

 EB: “…no one is more anxious to advance than I am, but until we get these communications problems sorted, I’m afraid we’re stuck” 

I stumbled on this scene, from Blackadder goes Forth, whilst indulging in a nostalgic rewatch of one of the UK’s great comic episodes (for aficionados it’s the episode with the “the Flanders pigeon murderer!”) 

It stuck with me, because widespread miscommunication across the Conservative ‘army’ is currently hobbling it’s advance, and to misquote Cliff Richard it’s ‘not so funny how we don’t talk anymore. Or at least that is the rather one sided feeling, since each group that complains about it, claims they are talking, but nobody is listening.

To stay in the realm of TV comedy, there’s an equally good skit from “Smack the Pony” where an English tourist tries to talk to some ‘foreigners’ to get directions and they can’t understand each other. The joke being both are speaking completely comprehensible English to each other. 

So is that what’s going on, with the Tories? I think so and the danger is it festers into something worse than just talking past each other.

ConservativeHome said it, and I think most of us knew it, that post local elections the party, the leader, MPs, and members were in for a collectively bumpy ride. So it has proved, and when one opinion poll put the party in fourth behind the Liberal Democrats recently, the talk has got louder and more agitated.

In the last week, no point denying it, there have been media articles talking about plots against Kemi Badenoch and even quotes from a couple people saying, “she has to go”. At the same time we are fed “the inside track on Boris’s plans to return”

Couple of things to bear in mind.

Newspapers spent the last four years absolutely devouring ‘blue-on-blue’ drama, and one of the Tory’s biggest flaws was we gave it to them, in spades. They want more. Recess is the time I find most MPs reflecting on current moods and talking amongst themselves. I’ve said here before there is a restlessness amongst them, but insurrection? I’m not so sure, but some will talk not just to each other but, oops, journalists.

It’s a classic of politics to outline something you want to happen in the hope that it being repeated far and wide stimulates that thing to actually happen. Evelyn Waugh used it in Scoop, with the character of Wenlock Jakes, doyen of foreign correspondents who, packed off to cover a revolution, gets off a train in the wrong, and peaceful, country. He files days of blood and thunder from “the frontline”, and within a week there is a genuine revolution in the country he had accidently arrived in.

Are Conservatives worried about the party’s position right now? Of course they are, they’d be mad not to be but I don’t think palace revolt is what they are craving, yet.

Despite talk in the Times of some form of grassroots procedure to threaten Kemi, it’s MPs that trigger such revolts and they can’t move on her until November at least. Also it has become obvious that the party hasn’t really, honestly assessed, within the context of the current position what exactly the problem is. So, they are picking and choosing where to pin the blame.

Some of the electorates’ attitude to the Tories, would be the same whoever was leading right now. Let’s not pretend that had it been Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride, or Prit Patel that the wave of distrust, disappointment and yes, anger at the party over its time in Government would have just vanished. You can argue about better or worse, if you want to, but a number of problems facing Kemi Badenoch are not about her, but about us, as Tom Harris wrote in the Telegraph last week.

That voter anger patently hasn’t gone, and it would have been very optimistic to assume it would by now. Seven months ago I wrote on this site about a friend who said to me, “Giles, I don’t think the party is done burning yet”. Well that turned out to be quite right, and that was before the leadership election.

However if it’s mad not to be concerned at how far back we are right now, there is still, and this is not just my view but one still holding in Parliament,  that ‘pulling the trigger’ on another leader, right now, after the party’s recent history has an equal sense of madness about it.

Armando Iannucci, the comedy writer, used this in a recent BBC podcast, to suggest that accepting it’s mad, and that ‘people think Tories are mad’, they might just think well then let’s do the mad thing. I thoroughly disagreed with the analysis but it stressed that the counter argument for saying it’s time to change, again, is the sheer distraction and destructive impact it would have.

The equation is always (whoever is at the top): is the cost of removal bigger than the cost of not doing so. I hear the talk and I note the sources but so far begrudging or insistent the answer still seems to be yes, doing that would be worse than holding our nerve.

So what needs to change to change this narrative.

From our survey, and I don’t think the top team should dismiss so easily the views of a group who are very often predicting what actually happens, after all they predicted the outcome of the leadership election very accurately, members want the policy teams to show more leg, and they want a vision and concept they can sell on the doorstep.

Kemi and her team say alternately that, ‘it is coming be patient’ and that they have ‘already been outlining such things in speeches, visits and some policy announcements’. The hard truth is it’s not enough for many. How satisfied they’ll be with more remains to be seen but that’s the demand I hear all the time.

It doesn’t help the leadership that sources within the party repeat a similar complaint, that they don’t have the plan, the strategy laid out to them, and find Kemi’s team too isolated and difficult to get information from. I can imagine being told by one of her team that this simply isn’t fair or true, but I’m saying it’s being said at lots of levels of the party. Arguing against that doesn’t help. Take it on board. Talk to them.

Our new MPs are itching to go and take on Labour, to make the case that The Conservatives are the only conservatives, and that the party is very far from finished (which I still believe). They are a little frustrated at not having marching orders for where to fight, what to fight on and not being asked “what are you willing to do? Ok go and do this”

The Lib Dem threat is real, but they’ve been on a decade long journey where post 2015 and the coalition, the same people predicting our extinction were saying the same about them, then. Even Labour were staring at it in 2019. Recovery takes time.

What’s not helping, counter-intuitively, is the bad start Labour made in Government which hasn’t ended but become the default. It feels like everybody who isn’t  Labour should be benefiting, but we aren’t. That’s not actually surprising given it’s less than a year since we took a drubbing from voters.

Not having a real vision or plan, or thought through policy under Starmer has brought Labour real and growing difficulties in Government, and the time to build such a plan for the Conservatives is just what Kemi and her team insist is what’s needed. That still seems logical, even if it requires patience and calm.

What’s needed from them is to communicate better with everyone who isn’t in their team. Communicate, not talk. That involves listening, not hearing.

They know they need to. I hope they know how to.

We said the month past the locals would be bumpy, but how the top responds for widespread calls for clarity, purpose, direction and vision, will define whether bumpy becomes ‘driven into a ditch’.

A stubborn determination to push on and ignore the flak can be a quite admirable trait, but listening to your own troops at the same time is real top class leadership.