David Campbell Bannerman has been in the news a great deal recently as a cheer leader for Boris Johnson. He is chair of the self-styled Conservative Democratic Organisation, a body loud in its criticism of Rishi Sunak’s premiership and its insistence that Johnson is innocent of all findings of the Commons’ Privileges Committee. Campbell Bannerman’s chequered political career has been built around a deep loathing of Brussels and enthusiastic support for chancers like Farage and Johnson. In the heady days of UKIP he defected from the Conservative Party, only to rejoin post-Brexit. As a parliamentary candidate he’s a serial loser from whom Sir Keir Starmer has nothing to learn when it comes to planning and implementing an electoral strategy. The same, however, can’t be said of an earlier member of the Campbell Bannerman family, as I suggested in a piece which appeared on the New Statesman website last autumn and remains topical:
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman led the Liberals to stunning success in the 1906 general election and a majority of 125 in the Commons: six years after a catastrophic election result the Liberals gained 216 seats, including that of former prime minister Arthur Balfour. It would be nine years before the Conservatives and their Liberal Unionist allies returned to government and seventeen years before they again ruled alone. Like Clem Attlee in 1945, ‘C.B.’ was singularly lacking in charisma, and yet he engineered a historic victory for his party. Keir Starmer points to Attlee, and to a lesser extent Wilson and Blair, as his role models. Yet he could learn a lot from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s success in reuniting his party, silencing dismissive criticism on both sides of the House, and creating what in due course would prove one of the great reforming administrations.
Starmer’s reputation for competence rests on his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions, and within Whitehall Campbell-Bannerman was similarly seen as an instinctive reformer and an able administrator. The four decades preceding the First World War saw the question of Home Rule for Ireland prove every bit as divisive as Brexit. Prior to the 1906 election Campbell-Bannerman neutralised Irish Home Rule in the same way that Starmer steers clear of detailed debate over the UK and Northern Ireland’s future relationship with the EU. The Liberals’ political enemies were starved of ammunition, in the same way that hard line Brexiteers are denied tangible evidence of Labour seeking a rapprochement with Brussels over current trading relations. Although Campbell-Bannerman left Ireland on hold, he recognised the advantage a large parliamentary majority gave him in exploiting a demoralised opposition. The newly elected Liberal Government swiftly seized the initiative, pushing through a raft of welfare and foreign policy reforms. At home, trade union and employment rights were extended, building regulations were strengthened, and the penal system reformed to separate young offenders from adult criminals. While short-sightedly the question of votes for women was still off the agenda, ‘New Liberal’ plans for old age pensions and national insurance were well advanced when terminal illness forced Campbell-Bannerman to resign in April 1908. Overseas success included formation of the Union of South Africa, détente with Russia and a deepening of the Entente Cordiale. Admittedly, C.B.’s vision of Britain’s future relations with France and the Tsar was very different from that of his Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey – Campbell-Bannerman was almost certainly kept in the dark about plans for military collaboration, although he more than held his own in talks with Clemenceau, another radical prime minister: a Francophile and a free trader, Sir Henry prioritised Britain’s prominence in European power politics over the extension or consolidation of its already overstretched empire.   A priority for Labour in its honeymoon period – whether ruling alone or supported by the Liberal Democrats – must be to restore membership of the single market, or to secure an equivalent status.
The Liberals’ electoral strategy embraced a progressive alliance with the then Labour Representation Committee. In January 1906 the pact bore fruit, ensuring the future Labour Party a foothold in the House of Commons. Few anticipate Labour candidates standing down for Liberal Democrats, and vice versa, but Sir Keir can learn from Campbell-Bannerman the value of talking to your natural allies.
Above all, Starmer should embrace Campbell-Bannerman’s systematic exploitation of a demoralised government’s bitter infighting. By 1905 Balfour’s administration was riven by factionalism, his Tory-dominated coalition split over Joseph Chamberlain’s Empire-based vision of protectionism, Tariff Reform. For eighteen months prior to polling day the Liberals ruthlessly publicised their opponents’ divisions, portraying Tariff Reform as a direct threat to the material well-being of families already hard hit by rising prices and deepening inequality. Party strategists identified a select number of salient issues, all seen as illustrative of government incompetence and inertia, and all portrayed as evidence of the need for fundamental change.
In the 1906 campaign Liberal propaganda was simple, easy to comprehend and devastatingly effective. By then Campbell-Bannerman had one big advantage over Starmer, in that he was already in office. When Balfour’s cabinet imploded in late 1905 the Liberal leader had ignored the reservations of his party’s big beasts and accepted the King’s invitation to form a minority government. Come the new year he went to the country. Campbell-Bannerman had a keen sense of timing, shrewdly managing risk and sensing exactly when to seize an opportunity.  Keir Starmer needs to hone these qualities and be ready to run with fresh ideas as they become available. The release of Gordon Brown’s constitutional review will be one such moment. As a keen advocate of parliamentary reform Sir Henry would be the first to embrace an ambitious blueprint for reshaping a malfunctioning British state.
Campbell-Bannerman secured an astonishing reversal of fortune for his party within a single parliament. An Edwardian politician may not be Sir Keir’s default choice for inspiration, and yet Sir Henry’s credentials as a role model remain unexpectedly relevant in an era no less turbulent and polarised than his own.
