The Tories surprised even themselves at the local elections. Yet if the party is still breathing, a question hangs over its future: will William Hague be the next victim claimed by the nuclear fallout of Peter Lilley’s now infamous speech? And how exactly did that near-disaster come about?
It was the triumph of the focus group that led Hague to the brink. For some time, Andrew Cooper, Hague’s rotund strategy chief, had been concerned by the baleful consistency of swing voters’ comments on the Conservatives and public services. On trip after trip to Windsor, Basildon and other bastions of Middle England, he heard fears that the Tories wanted to privatise schools and hospitals. The party’s reputation on public services was even worse than the inner team had thought. “We knew that people had absorbed the Labour message that we were not to be trusted on health,” says one source. “But the results on education, where we began the drive for higher standards in the state sector, were no better.”
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