In 1992, not long after the Tories’ unexpected election victory, a freshly promoted cabinet minister told me: “We can do what we want now.” Five years later, the Conservative palace lay in ruins, swept away by Hurricane Tony.
So – even as they celebrate, justly – the Tories should beware triumphalism. And, to be fair to David Cameron, he has long been aware that a second term, if secured, would almost certainly be harder than his first. The Tory campaign was all about finishing the job, securing the “good life”. But the Tory ship of state is heading for choppy waters.
However Cameron governs – with his own narrow majority or a second alliance with the nearly extinct Lib Dems and others – he will face a progressive opposition made freshly muscular by scores of new SNP MPs. The global newsflash is that Britain is self-federalising, and Cameron must fast present a plausible response to that ferocious dynamic.
Platitudinous declarations about his love of the union will not do: it is time to make an offer that is more than a defence of English rights. Senior Tories are now preparing a “major intervention” in this debate – the details of which we shall have to await.
Looming over one fragmentation is the prospect of another: before the end of 2017, there will be a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU – a vote that will dramatically trump this general election in significance. Assuming that the PM campaigns for Britain to stay in on the basis of renegotiated terms, he will find himself at odds with the backbench right – for whom “Brexit” has long been the historic prize, more important even than general election victory.
All this, and cuts, too. Do not forget that the grim work of austerity is far from over. The voters have not rejected the medicine, but that is not to say that they will welcome its continued administration – in particular, the potentially horrendous cuts that the welfare budget now faces. The British voters have long oscillated between love of competence and a deep sense of decency. This election was a vote of confidence in Tory economic management – not the bedroom tax.
All of these trials lie ahead of Cameron, a political cat with many lives. Some detected in his ebullience on the campaign trail a man who was privately demob happy, secretly longing to get out of the game. This never rang true. He told me in mid-April that he had known since 2010 that this would be a two-term mission and conducted himself accordingly.
The Tories have been spared a slide down the snake and even climbed a small ladder. They have been spared a horrendous civil war for the leadership between Boris Johnson, Theresa May and our old friend, The Candidate From the Right (don’t laugh: he or she sometimes wins). Tony Blair famously said that when he sat in the garden at Chequers “and the sun is on my face, I know who is the prime minister”. This morning, whatever the weather, Cameron will be feeling that sensation, too – enhanced by the warming knowledge that, whatever happens now, he has fought his last campaign.
