Conservatives must offer a clear message

Once again, the Conservatives have been thrown on the defensive by the leak of confidential documents that are being used to question the very basis of capitalism – wealth creation. Just as during the general election campaign, there is little in the way of a full-throated defence of enterprise and profit against the forces of faux progressive outrage.

The Government’s supporters are perplexed that there has not been a more robust rebuttal of the principal accusation behind the Paradise Papers leak, that too little has been done to plug the loopholes allowing the wealthy to shelter their income from the taxman.

In the Commons, on Monday, Mel Stride, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, put in a stout performance by pointing out that the Tories (and the Lib Dems in the Coalition) tackled avoidance and evasion in a far more effective way than Labour ever did, securing an additional

£160 billion of compliance revenue since 2010.

But though he is a busy man with his Budget looming, perhaps the Chancellor himself should have taken on his opposite number, John Mcdonnell, and exposed Labour’s synthetic indignation for what it is.

Philip Hammond could have pointed out that the wealthiest 1 per cent now pay more than a quarter of all income tax. The upshot of Labour’s anti-rich rhetoric will be to reduce the revenues needed to pay for public services. Cuts in higher rate and corporation taxes have generated more money, not less.

The economic weather is being made by the Left, not the Right. People say they are clear about what Jeremy Corbyn stands for, even if they do not like it, but are confused about where the Tories are coming from. If they want to confront and defeat the Labour Party’s hard-left ideology, they need to articulate one of their own, or at least a set of values that voters can understand.

The last time that the Left held sway in the Labour Party, the alternative to the Tories was clear: less government, lower taxes, more wealth creation and the spread of ownership of both shares and property. The idea was to increase the size of the national cake so that everyone got more, not to share out a smaller cake in equal measures.

The Conservatives may have lost their majority in the general election, but they need to remember that they are still Conservatives. There is a coherence to their message that they need to rediscover. All we have now is mush and muddle, made to look more disorderly by the various sex scandals and ministerial gaffes. Ministers praise free markets with one breath, only to propose price controls with the next. They dance to the Left’s tune when once they were the pipers.

Clarity, simplicity, optimism, vision and passion are required and the Budget two weeks from today offers an opportunity to set out the Tory stall once again. A Labour chancellor is more interested in spending, income redistribution, higher taxes for the better off, public sector pay, price controls and increased benefits.

A Conservative Chancellor should be focusing on wealth creation, personal tax incentives, help for businesses and measures that produce jobs and reduce welfare dependency. One consequence of the brouhaha over the Paradise Papers is that it feeds the populist narrative of envy at the expense of enterprise. With the Government in such difficulties, Mr Hammond will need to show character and nerve. He will need to acknowledge that a large number of voters have not done well since the crash of 2008 and that young people fret that they will never be able to buy their own home.

But the policy answers are Conservative, not Labour. Convincing young people in thrall to the Corbyn cult that a Left-wing government would bankrupt the country and make their lives infinitely worse must be the Government’s overriding mission. Arguably, they lost their majority in June because they were too timid in standing up for what Conservatives believe. If Labour is to be stopped, that diffidence must end.

The upshot of Labour’s anti-rich rhetoric will be to reduce the revenues needed to pay for public services