Political consensus will be bad for Britain if we swing Left again

Labour is unlikely to propose anything to May that doesn’t involve more laws and less freedom

Theresa May wants consensus. Her supporters say crossparty agreement is the grown-up approach to politics, though they would not have been so eager to reach out to their opponents had the Conservatives won a thumping majority at the election last month. Maturity is a function of weakness, it seems.

Yet our political system is set up as a deliberate obstruction to consensus. Parties encourage tribal loyalties; the winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post electoral system delivers (usually) single-party administrations; internal dissent is ruthlessly suppressed, even when it is in the right – especially when it is in the right. Our parliamentary chambers are even architecturally configured to encourage dispute, with parties facing one another as though about to embark on a medieval pitched battle, separated by the width of two drawn swords. The Westminster structure is shared by only one other major democracy – that of Canada – while all other legislatures are horseshoeshaped or circular.

However, despite this almost ingrained resistance to harmony we have, historically, achieved far greater consensus than is often appreciated. The only problem is that more often than not it has involved agreement around policies that have been bad for the country,

For 35 years after the Second World War, the Conservatives and the Labour Party fought like cats and dogs at the superficial political level but on everything that mattered they shared a common world view. So much so, indeed, that a word was coined by the economic journalist Norman Macrae to describe it – Butskellism, a sardonic amalgam of the names of Rab Butler, the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, and Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour Party.

Essentially, this post-war consensus entrenched cross-party support for nationalised industries, trade union power, Keynesian economics, central government interventionism and a Beveridge-style welfare state funded almost entirely from direct taxation. Until the model began to break down spectacularly in the 1970s after the oil price shock, few thought to question it and those who did were considered mavericks or extremists.

But the power grab by the unions in the 1970s and the national humiliation of having to call in the IMF to bail out the economy broke the consensus. Margaret Thatcher is credited with – or blamed for – smashing it; but it had already foundered on the rocks of economic reality. By 1997 a new accord had developed with the Labour government of Tony Blair effectively accepting most or all of the privatisations and union reforms introduced by the Conservatives.

Now we are at another crossroads. Jeremy Corbyn wants to dismantle the consensus that has held for 20 years by pushing the case for renationalisation, higher taxes and a revived central role for the state. So when Mrs May urges her political opponents to help the Government deliver its programme, what is she suggesting? Since she does not have a majority in Parliament she is in no position to insist that they adopt Conservative policies. Far more likely, therefore, that a new consensus will start to develop around a Left-ofcentre economic and social agenda.

In truth, Mrs May is a setter of this trend. One reason she called the election was to break free of David Cameron’s manifesto and introduce some ideas of her own. Despite the debacle of June 8, she may be able to salvage those parts of the 2017 manifesto that Labour has also championed, such as a cap on energy prices. Ironically, if Mrs May wants to pursue policies that she favours but other Tories don’t, like workers on company boards, she may be able to call on Labour to back her up, rather than fight her Thatcherite wing, for which she needed a big majority.

In addition, any regulatory implications of Matthew Taylor’s report on the “gig economy” should also be easy to agree, as new rules to restrict flexibility and heavier costs on enterprise are the very stuff of modern political consensus. Indeed, in her speech to mark the first anniversary of becoming Prime Minister, Mrs May invited Labour to come forward with ideas on what to do about the growing number of self-employed people working for companies that do not offer paid holidays or paternity leave. Since it is unlikely to suggest anything that doesn’t involve more laws and less freedom, the direction of policy seems pretty clear.

The Tories are in danger of losing their nerve even though they actually got a bigger share of the vote than at any time since the 1980s. They risk giving up the fight to shape the next consensus because they no longer believe strongly enough in their ideas. Even if the economic winds blew in their direction throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the social and cultural trends were defined by the Left and still are. So-called “compassionate conservatism”, David Cameron’s Big Society, Red Toryism – all represented an acceptance by some on the Right that the consensus needed to shift in a more progressive (ie Left-wing) direction.

The time has gone when the consensus was moving towards a belief in greater individualism and more self-reliance – an internet-savvy world of people less inclined to trust politicians telling them what was best for them. Tony Blair only won in 1997 because he embraced this zeitgeist but did nothing to follow it through with the necessary public-sector reforms, not least on welfare and the NHS.

The 2008 crash brought the prevailing mood to an end, leaving people vulnerable to those selling big-state solutions and the avuncular arm of government around the shoulder. Egalitarianism, just rewards, the distribution of wealth to “deserving” people – these are the watchwords of the new consensus, now adopted by many in the Conservative Party who fear electoral oblivion unless they match the Left’s self-regarding moral outlook.

Calling on Mr Corbyn to help shape the country’s future is a clear sign of the Prime Minister’s political frailty and of a Tory crisis of confidence. As Mrs May observed ruefully yesterday, these are the new realities. But if she sups with the Devil, she should take care to have a very long spoon.