Juliet Samuel
No10’s preoccupation with Brexit has left the Right with a strategy vacuum. At last it is starting to be filled
It’s better late than never. Judging by her speech yesterday, Theresa May finally has support from her Cabinet for the idea that Britain should not be subject to EU law after Brexit, even if this would buy us better access to European markets. This clearly encapsulates the essence of Brexit.
It is very unclear, however, what Brexiteers or the Tories want to do with this sovereignty. We know precisely what Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour would like to do: nationalise, tax and spend. One of the fall-outs from the June election, however, is that the Conservatives no longer have any policy platform at all. “I’m optimistic,” might make for a good speech, or even a 4,000-word newspaper article, but it is not a policy.
We are now seeing the beginnings of a serious attempt to fill this vacuum. Tim Montgomerie, the Conservative activist and writer, has started a new website to examine the big problems of the day. Dan Hannan, Tory MEP, is setting up an Institute for Free Trade. And yesterday, Tory MP George Freeman convened an event in the Berkshire countryside called the Big Tent Ideas Festival to discuss what exactly the Right’s offer is.
The festival, dubbed the “Tory Glastonbury” by Westminster clever-clogs, was a genteel affair. Mr Freeman did not jump onto a stage, like Jeremy Corbyn, and rouse everyone to a passion. There were no glitter bras or crowd surfers. It seems to be damnably hard to get Rightwingers to stop wearing suits, even when they’re told to dress down. The vibe, in the words of one participant, was rather “Steve Hilton’s wedding”.
You can mock all you want, but at least there was a genuine attempt to bring people together and grapple with the big issues of the day, and in more concrete terms than Mr Hilton ever achieved. Capitalism, skills, productivity, technological monopolies, housing, automation, and so on: raising some of these topics at Right-wing gatherings in Westminster is rather like being the embarrassing uncle at the wedding.
It’s understandable that Number 10 is preoccupied with Brexit. But it cannot expect others to leave the policy vacuum empty. It is overkill, for example, that Tory whips were calling around before the event to try to vet every word their MPS said. The Right’s response to wage stagnation, the global debt bubble and intense technological change cannot be worked out in a pre-vetted slide pack. We are at the start of a new ideological era. Telling voters that Mr Corbyn will make a mess of it is not a sufficient response.
Sitting in a café this week, before the Florence speech, I overheard one office worker ask her companion: “What do you think of that Theresa May?”
He chewed his lunch a few times before answering. “I think she’s lacking human emotion,” he said. “She’s lacking that brain function.”
Mrs May’s brain function is, I would hazard, perfectly normal. But she suffers from a similar excess of reserve as the character Jane Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Early in the novel, Jane is falling in love, but is restrained in showing her affection. This, remarks her sister Elizabeth, ought to be a good protection from gossip. Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte Lucas responds, presciently: “It is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded… there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of 10, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.”
Mrs May, like Jane Bennet, suffers from a surfeit of caution. This does not mean that she does not feel things very deeply. It’s just the speaking part she finds difficult. Except when it comes to the big set-piece events like her Florence speech yesterday. Watch her major speeches on a screen, face to face, as it were, and you see great depth of feeling, gravitas and conviction. When she has time to sit down and think about her words, she usually gets them right.
It is admirable to take words so seriously, but it’s rather a shame if it stops you using them effectively. Mrs May is heavily reliant on the big set-piece speech to shore up her power. This is important, and she does it well, but it can’t do everything and it is during the long gaps in between that her authority tends to wane.
It’s not all about passion, but a politician needs something – a dry wit, perhaps, or an intimidating, forensic style. Pathos, logos, ethos – any will do, just so long as it’s not the one rhetorical style whose persuasive power no one has ever lauded: robos.
Walking down a London street with some friends recently, we ducked into a shop to buy water. The place didn’t accept cards and none of us had any cash. I took out my wallet to find it full of euros from a recent trip to Brussels.
Imagine my surprise, then, when the man behind the till, seeing my wallet, said: “You have euros? That’s OK.” Sterling’s fall has been painful and the exchange rate he offered was poor, but we were thirsty. I’ve never felt so integrated into the EU economy.