Theresa’s manifesto offers UK a new kind of Toryism

Theresa May’s manifesto reveals more about her plans to refound the Conservative Party than her plans to run the country. Her programme for the Tories would read as a heretical document to many in her party, brought up on a diet of state-shrinking, me-first Thatcherism. Instead, May talks about rejecting the “cult of selfish individualism” and says her party does not now believe in “untrammelled free markets”... In many ways May is swimming with, not against, the political tide. No classical liberal party is contesting this election. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have moved leftwards...

There’s a mood afoot in the country against free markets and a cultural change in favour of a politics that combines greater economic justice with more social concord. May taps into this when she talks of the NHS as part of a system of solidarity that is more than mutual self-interest...

In May’s Britain, certain events galvanise brief intense interest and political engagement. One of these is Brexit. The most powerful driver of her support is the false perception that Britain is under attack by either internal or external enemies. It drives May to openly promote the worst possible outcome for Brexit Britain: walking away from the EU without a deal...

Like Tony Blair in 1997, May is where the majority of voters are: to the left on the economy and to the right on social issues...