Charles Martin is an award-winning business student with political experience. He is reading Law at the University of Exeter.
The dynamic between former Prime Minister David Cameron and former Chancellor George Osborne was a political partnership the Conservatives thrived on, however is now a concept completely alien to the party.
The constant quarrels and infighting has made the Tories similar to an ITV drama, a completely different image from the power pairing of its previous leadership from 2005, which portrayed the possible unity between the two most powerful positions in government – what we can draw from their pairing can be the answer to get the Conservatives back into government.
The successes which did come from the Cameron premiership can be largely down to the trust that the Prime Minister had in his Chancellor, George Osborne. The relationship between the two positions has historically been rocky, such as Sunak’s resignation in 2022 to down Johnson, and how Lawson’s resignation eventually toppled Thatcher in 1989.What the country got with Cameron and Osborne was an exception to this trend; a number two who was trusted not to backstab his number one.
In politics, where everyone is itching to move up the hierarchy of their party, this is an exceptionally rare sight to see. It was clear that Cameron always held Osborne in high esteem, describing the former Chancellor in his memoir For The Record as, “Five years younger than me, he was my partner in politics: urban while I was more rural, realistic where I would sometimes let my ideas run away with me, and more politically astute than anyone I’d ever met.”. Cameron understood the advantage of actually being able to trust your Chancellor of the Exchequer.
So how did the Conservative Party end up losing this sense of unity, especially since it was such a prominent feature of the 2010 and 2015 governments?
An obvious contributor to the lack of unity within the Conservative Party since 2016 are the constant Cabinet reshuffles. You cannot expect a team to work in tandem if they are constantly being shifted between departments – which has an immense sense of irony behind it as the reason for a reshuffle is usually to shift the government’s political fortunes. In reality, Cabinet reshuffles stimulate instability in government, and you are suddenly presented as a political outfit that is unsure in its personnel.
Of course a Leader needs to think about who they are appointing into each position, but more importantly, maintaining the intention of transferring that team, as seen in opposition, straight into government – as Cameron intended from 2005 .
This has immense benefits; such as the Conservatives once again being seen as that unified party, with conviction and coherence from each Shadow Secretary of State on their respective policy areas. It can be argued that there was no love from the electorate towards Labour, they were discontented with the lack of unity from the Conservatives. With this element of the Party machine restored, the polls – which have already shifted – will tip all the more on the Tories side.
In his memoir, David Cameron spoke of his direct intention to ensure that as little cabinet reshuffles were done as possible, and when they were necessary it was actually to make government function better.
This philosophy has to be adopted by Kemi Badenoch – not doing so will only keep the Conservatives in opposition. George Osborne had recently made a remark on his podcast he co- hosts with Ed Balls, Political Currency, on the topic of his relationship with David Cameron saying,
“I don’t think you can [replicate the relationship between Osborne and Cameron] because that was just a particular thing about us two and our friendship, and that time in political history.”
If he’s right the Conservative Party will have no choice but to find unity in the traditional ways, such as building a concrete team.
The issue the outgoing Conservative government had was the dynamic between Cameron and Osborne would have been an absolutely alien concept which would have looked out of place in the Cabinet, which is obviously not sustainable.
In previous articles on ConservativeHome, I have explained certain elements missing from the previous government, such as a lack of focus on the youth; this subject of unity is another central issue. If Kemi Badenoch adopts just this one part of Cameron’s philosophy of having a stable shadow cabinet, they will be on their way to fixing the Conservative’s fortunes.
This also means extending this fixed team to the task of holding the government to account. This means on top of using PMQs every week to land the blows on the government, but ensuring each shadow department continues to apply the same pressure in other question times and on the media.
Kemi Badenoch has already told staff at CCHQ that she thinks the next general election can be won. Applying the pressure and doing the job of opposition from a united shadow cabinet is one of the fundamentals of making a one term Labour government, a reality.
