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An open letter to Michael Howard Samuel Brittan: The Financial Times 07/11/03 Dear Michael, I know you well enough – just – to send a personal note of congratulations on becoming leader of the Conservative party. On the other hand, I cannot forget your tenure as home secretary – remember when the British prison reform group considered changing its name to "The Penal League for Howard Reform"? Time, and the advent of two increasingly illiberal Labour home secretaries, have taken the edge off such strictures, but not removed them. So I shall compromise with an open letter of advice – a form of journalism I normally avoid. A relation of yours, who happened to be the local rabbi in the days when I was forced to go to the synagogue, used to begin his sermons with: "What is my message to you today?" My message to you is simple: tell your colleagues to enjoy opposition and not to get too hung up on forming the next government, let alone agonising over whether it will be the next or the next but one. Britain is almost unique in having a constitutional role for an opposition party with a paid leader. Whenever a minister makes a policy statement, it is the opposition spokesman who gives the first response, often after a preview of the text. In television discussions, the government spokesman is nearly always matched by someone from the opposition. This provides an excellent opportunity to take a part in public affairs that many commentators, academics and others would give a portion of their anatomy to have. I had better not name the Conservative spokesman who has made most of this opportunity. This is a role worth having for its own sake. Why not enjoy it and treat an election victory, if it comes, as a bonus? My message is encapsulated in Mao Tse Tung's slogan: "Let a thousand flowers bloom." My own guess is that relaxing centralised control would cost you nothing on election night. The main example to the contrary is your friend Tony Blair, who overhauled the Labour party when it was in opposition. But the point about the Labour left was not that it split the party but that voters were understandably put off by talk of nationalising the 1,000 largest companies, imposing a siege economy and a general catalogue of jealousy and envy. Mr Blair was right to change the image of his party; but he has remained a control freak after the need has gone, and this has done him no good. There are three things you must do. First, ignore the almost universal advice you are receiving to occupy the centre ground. The whole left-right spectrum is a hangover from the days of the French Revolutionary Assembly of 1789, when the most extreme republicans, who could not wait to see the king's head come off, sat on the left and supporters of the ancien régime sat on the right. Anyone who insists on being at the centre, paradoxically, leaves the terms of the debate to the extremists. For if anyone moves the goal posts at either end, the centre moves with it. A recent unfortunate example is the immigration debate. Second, forget a few of the shibboleths about party unity and discipline. The need for everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet may be a regrettable necessity in government - although, even then, the roof has not fallen in when ministers have said slightly different things - but quite unnecessary elsewhere. The concept of shadow ministers is a postwar invention. Winston Churchill, who was a much more effective leader of the opposition in 1945-51 than those who wanted to hustle on his retirement appreciated, hardly knew who his shadow ministers were. Once you have survived a few headlines about "splits", the media will have to find something else to go on about. Third, do not worry about "gaffes". These are statements slightly different from, and often ahead of, the conventional wisdom of the moment, which journalists and broadcasters pillory, usually because they do not understand them. Remember Keith Joseph, who was accused of a gaffe whenever he opened his mouth. Many of his gaffes have now become conventional wisdom, for instance his concept of the cycle of poverty. Last, we are both too old to pretend to have just arrived. I admit that I am recycling some advice I offered, also in a published article, to Edward Heath when he was leader of the opposition, and when I thought that he was far too disciplinarian and missing many fruitful opportunities to criticise the Harold Wilson government. Of course, he took no notice; and I must admit that he won the 1970 election by a hair's breadth, largely because the arrival of some imported aircraft and ships bloated the monthly trade deficit when such short-term indicators were still taken seriously. But look at the fate of the government that followed. Regards.
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