How she can seize back the initiative
ThereSA May has proved to be one of Britain’s most resilient Prime Ministers, having taken over at a most difficult time and faced a barrage of conspiracies and plots from disloyal Tories.
Again and again, her opponents have predicted her downfall. each time they have been wrong.
Next week at Tory Conference Mrs May faces another jolting test. With the Conservatives sinking in the polls, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn — apparently immune to the growing scandal over anti-Semitism in his party — has just enjoyed his best ever party conference in Brighton.
The Tories seem to have been reduced to gibbering terror. Gutless backbenchers have launched a call to dump universal credit, the bravest and most successful policy of Cameron’s government. What a pathetic spectacle.
So here’s my first advice to Mrs May as she faces the conference in Manchester: Keep calm and carry on.
Mr Corbyn may be riding high in the opinion polls, but is not nearly in such a strong position as he appears.
Crucially, Theresa May commands a Commons majority thanks to her deal with the DUP. even more crucially, there are more than four-and-a-half years till the next General election is due. So Mrs May has the best part of five years to make a success of her government and see off the Corbyn menace. To put it mildly, there’s no need to panic.
And Mrs May should not copy Jeremy Corbyn. She must not conclude that the Labour leader has discovered a magic formula about how to be a leader.
Millions of people in Britain have chosen to support Mr Corbyn because they rightly see him as someone who is completely comfortable in his own skin, and knows exactly what he believes.
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politicians can pull off this trick. Certainly, Theresa May has changed her position on certain issues more than once. She’s the Thatcherite who labelled the Conservatives the ‘ nasty party’. She’s the remainer who backs Brexit.
So it would be foolish for her to portray herself as a politician whose views never change. Instead, she must carefully and analytically expose the irresponsibility of Jeremy Corbyn’s economic plans.
She should demand to know where the money is going to come from for his spending spree on public services and nationalisation. She should warn that the consequence of this profligacy is rampant inflation, and ultimately mass unemployment. And she must bang the drum for the achievements of this government.
employment has risen to a record level under the Conservatives. She should shout it from the rooftops!
It’s almost impossible to wrest back the political initiative in one speech. It requires rigorous argument over a long period.
The Tories failed during the general election campaign to convince voters, with strength of debate and attractive policies, that they are the only party fit to govern — partly because relations had broken down between Mrs May and the Chancellor, Philip hammond.
That is the Prime Minister’s challenge. When it comes to what she says next week, there is one important point on which Mrs May can learn from Mr Corbyn’s success.
The Labour leader would never have enjoyed his current popularity if ordinary people did not agree with him about deep unfairness in modern Britain. Voters’ incomes have fallen in real terms. They worry about job security, and feel that the rich have got richer. The disparity of wealth in society is not just a Labour issue. It greatly concerns Conservatives as well.
Capitalism is the greatest system for creating wealth ever. But it is very bad at deciding how that wealth should be shared.
This issue was an important theme of Mrs May’s early speeches as Prime Minister. She should return to it to show that modern Conservatism has a heart as well as a head. She must remind voters — and hysterical Corbyn acolytes — that under the Tories almost half of Britons pay no income tax
at all, while the richest shoulder the biggest burden on record.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies last year found that 300,000 people pay more than a quarter of the nation’s income tax.
The Tories have also introduced a living wage for the lowest-paid, even while they were doing little to salve the financial concerns of middle-income earners.
One thing that puzzles me about Mrs May’s devotion to ‘caring’ capitalism, however, is her position on the decision by Transport for London — and by extension Sadiq Khan — to ban taxi firm Uber. She said the ruling was disproportionate and threatened jobs.
But Uber is a classic example of how unbridled capitalism destroys communities in the search for private greed. It adapted technology to drive black cab drivers who acquired their skills after long apprenticeships out of work.
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changes do mean cheaper prices for consumers — but only thanks to the cynical use of an unskilled work force paid rockbottom wages for long hours.
It is the job of government to regulate rapacious employers like Uber and send the signal to hardworking British people that their rights will be protected.
I now come to Brexit, far and away the most important issue of Mrs May’s premiership. here, my advice is simple: Mrs May should enjoy herself more. At present she looks frightened of her own shadow, worn down by the duties of her job and the infighting in Cabinet between Philip hammond and the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Mrs May should relish fighting for the opportunities that Brexit can bring Britain.
After being elected Pope in 1513, Pope Leo X immediately declared. ‘ Since God has given us the Papacy, let us enjoy it.’
Mrs May should approach being Prime Minister in the same spirit. She should relish the negotiations with europe, and that means having the best possible negotiating hand. But she should also be ready for those talks to fail. europe must know she will walk away altogether if necessary.
So why hasn’t the Prime Minister ordered a report into how Britain should deal with the consequences if we choose to walk away without a deal on March 29, 2019?
Next week, she needs to announce she is commissioning such a report and that its results will be made public.
Too often in recent months, Mrs May has resembled John Major and Gordon Brown in the dog days of their premierships, both of whom became self- evidently world-weary, bogged down by the burdens of office. She needs to go out, get on, get a grip and, above all, enjoy herself.