We must sell capitalism to under-40s says Theresa

The Tories must do more to resell the benefits of capitalism to under-40s, Theresa May said.

The Prime Minister said she had thought arguments over economic models were ‘done and dusted’.

But she added that a whole generation appeared to have forgotten about the advantages of free markets – and it was the Tories’ duty to remind them.

She also said Labour’s performance in June’s election proved her party needed to do more to win youth support.

Yesterday in a speech at the Bank of england, she insisted the free market economy, under the right rules and regulations, remained the ‘greatest agent of collective human progress’.

But her intervention came as a Populus survey showed there was far greater support among the public for nationalisation than free enterprise. Mrs May’s remarks also follow Jeremy Corbyn’s pledge of ‘21st century socialism’.

The Prime Minister told bankers the Labour leader was adopting ‘ ideologically extreme’ policies which would hit the poorest hardest and lead to higher taxes.

She told house magazine: ‘I think in a sense we thought those arguments [on free markets] were done and dusted … I think now we see we do have to go back to them … because there is a generation who have grown up in a difficult environment and perhaps haven’t seen the problems that can occur when you don’t believe in free markets and sound management.’

She said that when Tories used to talk about young people not supporting them they meant under-25s but ‘now it’s under the age of 40’.

The PM said some behaviour by big business had given globalisation a bad name, but she added: ‘Socialists believe in holding people down, and we believe in pulling people up.

‘I’ve always believed Conservatism is about freedom … that’s why we are a lowbeen tax party.’ At an event to mark 20 years of Bank of england independence, Mrs May said some ‘use the imbalances that are now apparent as a justification for the total rejection of the free market economy’.

In a reference to Mr Corbyn, she added: ‘ Instead, they advocate ideologically extreme policies which have long ago shown to fail and which are failing people today in places like Venezuela.’

Mrs May said abandoning the market would ‘ risk a return to the failed ideologies of the past’ which would not protect the poor and vulnerable but ‘would surely hurt them the most’.

Matthew elliott of the Legatum Institute, which commissioned the Populus poll, said it was ‘concerning for anyone committed to the principles of free enterprise’ and suggests the public is further to the Left than commonly thought.

It found 83 per cent backed public ownership of the water industry, 77 per cent energy and 76 per cent rail. Many saw capitalism as ‘corrupt’.

MORe than 70 Tories have joined a cross-party alliance of 192 MPs calling on Theresa May to deliver a promised cap on rip-off energy tariffs.

ex-ministers and senior MPs across the party signed a letter urging the PM to protect 17million families on Standard Variable Tariff deals.

AS the Mail pointed out at the time, the Tories failed miserably to trumpet their economic record in the election campaign.

Weeks went by with no mention that Britain had the highest employment rate since records began, or of their success in turning around the public finances.

But worse, ministers seemed incapable of spelling out just how disastrous Jeremy Corbyn’s outdated Marxist policies would be, or of defending the basic principles of a modern market economy.

As a result, they won support from older voters who remembered the union militancy and economic sclerosis of the 1970s, but – in the absence of a convincing argument against – many under- 40s embraced socialism’s superficial allure.

Theresa May acknowledged this mistake yesterday and, in her Bank of England speech, showed her determination to confront Mr Corbyn’s deranged manifesto for national ruin.

In a spirited defence of free markets, she praised their capacity to create wealth, fight poverty and raise living standards.

At the same time, Mrs May sensibly accepted that the economy isn’t working ‘as it should’ and made clear there are ‘genuine problems’ she will address.

Pointedly, she turned her fire on Labour for its ‘ideologically extreme’ policies which had ‘long ago been shown to fail, and are failing people today in Venezuela’.

The speech was well timed, in a week when Labour’s emboldened Marxism was on full show, with plans to nationalise swathes of the economy, scrap anti-strike laws and impose 1950s-style rent controls.

Hers is the model the Tories must now follow. Without resorting to cheap pointscoring, they must spell out with deadly seriousness the catastrophe Corbynomics would inflict upon Britain.