It’s the principles, stupid

“It’s the economy, stupid”, was how Clinton’s strategist James Carville defined the key message of any electoral victory.

He therefore thought that people voted not so much their hearts and minds as their wallets. This is an utterly cynical view of the American electorate and, like most other cynical views of humanity, it’s by and large correct.

Moreover, this concept easily crosses the Atlantic and goes to work in England’s green and pleasant land. A strategy based on the economy wins almost every time, but ‘almost’ is the operative word. This time around, the Tories floated their economic record before voters and were shot down in flames, giving Labour a landslide hardly ever seen in Western politics.

Such a crushing defeat means a change in leadership, and contestants are off the starting blocks. At present, Shadow Security Minister Tom Tugendhat is the favourite, and he rejects Carville’s prescription.

Mr Tugendhat is a general good egg boasting perfect Tory credentials. He grew up in Westminster, where his father was a High Court judge. St Paul’s School for boys, Cambridge, Master’s in Islamic Studies, journalism, military service in Iraq and Afghanistan (terminal rank major), MP for Tonbridge, good age (51).

He is seen as someone in the centre of the Tory Party, meaning that under Mrs Thatcher he would have been seen as loony Left. But Mrs Thatcher hasn’t been around for a while, and things have changed. Let’s accept that and hear what Mr Tugendhat has on his mind.

It’s not filthy lucre that matters, he says, or rather implies, but principles. And here is the good news: while Labour are “squabbling” already, the Tories stand united on their core tenets.

To be fair to Labour – and I never thought these words would cross my lips – they have 411 seats in the Commons, to the Tories’ 121. Numerically speaking, it’s much harder to establish a common ground among 411 MPs than among 121.

Still, such base calculations aside, every Tory heart should rejoice. All God’s children love principles, and having a parliamentary party boasting such cohesion and uniformity is a good start on the road to regaining power.

Or rather would be, if Mr Tugendhat was speaking English. But he was speaking political, and in that language seemingly the same words mean something else. In this case, the word ‘principles’ as Mr Tugendhat uses it isn’t just different from its dictionary definition but the opposite of it.

Now in opposition, the Tories will concentrate on regaining trust with voters, not on policy debates, says Mr Tugendhat. Out of interest, how can such trust be regained if not by offering promising, realistic policies that would appeal to the electorate?

You see, in the language of politics, ‘sound principles’ stand for sound bites. Never mind policies, never mind issues – just tell voters anything that caresses their ears. That’s how you win their trust.

Mr Tugendhat helpfully listed the issues that are off limits for discussion:

“The ECHR. Gender. Tax rates. Defence spending. Net zero. These are things that aren’t up for debate in this leadership election. Why not? Because politics is about principles and all Conservatives are guided by our basic principles here.”

If we stubbornly insist on words meaning what they are supposed to mean, one is expected to applaud Tory unity on all such issues. What’s there to argue about if they all agree?

Yet I for one would like to see what it is that the rump Tory Party agrees on. Let’s look at the list cited and slide our finger all the way down.

The ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) is one of the key documents of the European Union, of which we are no longer a member. More Britons voted to leave that organisation than have ever voted for anything else.

Mr Tugendhat, however, voted Remain, and so did most of the high-ranking Tories, who thereby parted ways not only with over half of all Britons but, more ominous, the majority of their party’s rank-and-file. This, along with his dual British-French citizenship, probably means he has a warm spot for all European institutions, including the ECHR.

He now says that, if the ECHR stopped serving British interests, he’d be prepared to leave it. That commitment isn’t especially binding because it presupposes that, under normal circumstances, the ECHR is a good thing to keep.

It’s not and never has been. To begin with, Britain’s historical record on human rights stacks up favourably against every major member of the EU, emphatically including Germany and France. Hence we need neither lessons nor diktats from them on this subject. And nor do we need the ECHR.

It lists free movement of people as an essential human right, which is fine in theory. But in practice it makes controlling national borders much harder, and that’s one issue on which the Tories have lost voters’ trust, leaving us at the mercy of Labour’s open-door policy.

Ditching the ECHR should be one principle the Tories qua Tories should agree on – it should be obvious to anyone other than a rank Remainer that the ECHR can serve British interests neither in theory nor in practice. Instead, Mr Tugendhat joins the chorus of wishy-washy waffle we are used to hearing from politicians.

Next on his list is “gender”, and I assume he isn’t talking about grammatical categories. If he means transsexuality, then I’d like to know what it is that the Tories agree on.

The only proper Tory position is that transsexuals should enjoy all the same Englishmen’s rights, as they used to be called, as everyone else.

But they should have no rights specifically reserved for them: not to puberty blockers, not to surgery at public expense, not to their own pronouns, not to be legally or institutionally recognised as belonging to any other than their chromosomal sex. If the Tories agree on this, fine. But if they don’t, some debate would come in handy, if only for the public to know where they stand.

“Tax rates” is next. Under the Tories, the tax burden on the populace was the greatest ever suffered in peacetime. If Mr Tugendhat wishes to imply that the Tories are now uniformly committed to lowering it, he should say so outright. Otherwise, voters may think he means more of the same.

Then comes “defence spending”, and here Mr Tugendhat commendably campaigns for raising it to 3 per cent of GDP. However, having been in government for 14 years, the Tories had ample opportunity to do so. Instead, they chose to degrade defence of the realm to a risible level. Have they now seen the error of their ways? Do they all now agree with Mr Tugendhat? Somehow I don’t think so.

And finally, “net zero”. There’s nothing I’ve ever heard from any Tory frontbencher about this economic suicide that might suggest they regard it as such. On the contrary, every pronouncement makes it clear they agree with this basic policy and only wish it were pursued fervently, rather than fanatically.

In fact, this commitment to net zero reflects an explosive combination of scientific ignorance and ideological zealotry. Is that what the Tories are united on? Or do they merely hope we’ll agree to cut our collective economic throat inch by inch, rather than with one quick slash?

There’s something to discuss there, but not as far as Mr Tugendhat is concerned. This and all other vital issues “aren’t up for debate”. Nor is the issue of the Tories’ electoral chances for the next generation.

After all, of the potential leaders, Tugendhat really does seem the best. The parliamentary Tory Party is indeed united – in its mediocrity, absence of any principles (much less conservative ones), amoral powerlust. United they fall, and we are stuck with Labour.

Can we please have some “squabbling”?