Thatcher and Blair could have taught May the art of persuasion

Former British PM Margaret Thatcher. Picture: Getty Images

On the day after this week’s great defeat the very first query in British parliament’s question time had a hard Brexiteer, John Baron, ask Theresa May about no deal being better than a bad deal. Yes, replied the British Prime Minister, no deal is better than a bad deal, but I want to leave with a good deal.

She said these words the day before the second anniversary (as calculated by my colleague Matt Chorley) of her first deployment of the phrase “no deal is better than a bad deal” in the Commons. But they had originally leapt fresh into the world during her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, the beginning of what seems now like a purgatory of iterations.

Anyway, it was all she said in reply to Baron, and then it was time for a lifeless, pointless exchange with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. At no point did it seem to occur to May that one of her jobs might be to persuade anyone of anything. It was enough that the girl stood coughing on the burning deck, whence all but she had fled.

Since her largely uncontested elevation in 2016 I have been reluctant to hammer May. One reason has been my perception that commentators and the public are tougher on women than they are on men. Another is that the alternative in that election was Andrea Leadsom. A third factor was the intractable nature of Brexit. I did not, however, fall for the old trick of blaming the Queen’s evil advisers.

But I watched that exchange and (name drop alert) I remembered something Tony Blair once told me that Bill Clinton had once told him: that a leader should “never stop arguing”. And by arguing he meant seeking to persuade. In an interview in 2010, Blair had expanded on this thought. “Politics,” he told his interviewer, “is a business of constant persuasion … Yes, it’s about ideas. It’s about programs. It’s about manifestos. But above all else, it’s about people. And if you don’t understand that or don’t enjoy actually trying to understand it, then don’t go into politics.”

Blair in opposition saw himself as having to argue for social change in an essentially conservative country that was in need of modernisation. He faced inwards to persuade the Labour Party about the best way of getting that change, and outwards to the country to persuade people that they wanted it. The “focus groups” jibe levelled at Blair was never true. Nor that he invariably spoke in soundbites.

Of course, persuading people who already agree with you is not much of a talent. I recommend looking up the speech Blair made to the house in 2003 before the vote on the invasion of Iraq. It is persuasive oratory founded in having listened to and in taking on the best arguments of his opponents. There’s not a slogan in it.

A year later, after 12 months of consultation and debate, Blair took the huge risk of seeking to introduce top-up tuition fees for higher education. His party loathed the idea and the Tories (including those who later hiked fees to £9000 a year) opposed it tooth and nail. Despite having a majority of 161, he scraped home by only five votes. He might easily have lost but — as I know because I saw him doing it — he never stopped arguing.

Perhaps May absorbed her idea that implacability is a virtue from the Legend of St Margaret Thatcher. Yet however much Mrs T enjoyed the idea of being the Iron Lady who was not for turning, her acolytes loved it more — particularly after the Tory debacle of 1997. But Thatcher too had come to power in 1979 believing she needed to persuade reluctant voters of her program. It was less than five years since Edward Heath had been defeated partly because of what had been seen as his stridency and divisiveness. Hence her St Francis of Assisi “may we bring harmony” quote on the steps of No 10.

Mostly she argued. “I love argument,” she said in 1980. “I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.” Where she thought she could prevail, she went ahead. When she thought she wouldn’t — as in her first encounter with the miners and NHS reform — she backed down. On matters such as privatisation and union restrictions she proceeded incrementally. It was never just a matter of willpower. And then, I think, she began to believe her own myth, and the results were the poll tax and cabinet alienation.

But May does not like argument. She does not like debate. She does not relish explanation; she resists it. In 2016 she inherited a country that had voted narrowly to leave the EU. In Stephen Kinnock’s clever phrase, they had voted to leave the house but not the neighbourhood.

Yet from somewhere, in her Lancaster House speech, she revealed a version of Brexit that rested entirely on an arbitrary and untestable claim of what the Brexit vote had really “meant”. This claim was then codified into slogans such as “Brexit means Brexit”. And no attempt was made then or subsequently to explain this development and its desirability to the divided public.

“Brexit means Brexit” and “no deal is better than a bad deal” gave way temporarily to “strong and stable” and (sotto voce) “at least I’m not Jeremy Corbyn” in the 2017 election. And if some politicians’ rhetorical weapon of choice is the knife or the sabre, Mrs May’s turned out to be the mallet. Thunk, thunk, thunk. and never think, think, think. Like the head prefect at a dour, not-quite-first-rate ladies’ boarding school in the mid-1930s, what seems important to the Prime Minister is order, duty and eating your greens. Because I say so.

May’s predecessor but one, Gordon Brown, also wanted to be prime minister without being a politician. As his friend Will Hutton said of him: “Witty, sharp and insightful in private, in public he is wooden and defensive … his taciturn moods, brooding silences and endemic secrecy winning him enemies aplenty.” Who, as someone might ask, does that sound like?

But even the naturally charismatic — as French President Emmanuel Macron has discovered — can never forget that democratic politics is about people who have to be listened to and persuaded. Particularly if you have something very difficult to do. And you have to enjoy doing it. Otherwise, what the hell are you doing there?

The Times