It’s time for the resurgent Tories to puncture the myths of Corbynism
The Budget has given a glimpse of what a properly functioning Conservative party might look like
The search is on for the City financiers who have been encouraging John Mcdonnell to press ahead with nationalisation. The shadow chancellor insists that he has been speaking to asset managers who tell him that they “want certainty”, and if this means having their assets confiscated by the state, so be it. When pressed for their names, he gets rather cross and asks if anyone seriously believes he’d make it up. Such meetings are confidential, he says, and anyway: is his story so hard to believe?
If you like that one, he has more. He says his vast spending plan will somehow “pay for itself ” and when asked for details, he says that he’d need an ipad or an adviser. He talks about reversing a corporation tax “giveaway”, when corporation tax receipts are at a record high. With a little bit of probing, Corbynite arguments fall apart quite quickly and tend to do so in those rare moments when Conservatives pull themselves together.
Mr Mcdonnell ended up in the limelight because Philip Hammond’s Budget does not seem to have ended in disaster – which is more than can be said for the Tory conference, the general election and the March Budget.
This time, the Chancellor’s statement seemed a work of compromise, even collaboration. Sajid Javid’s lobbying for more house building paid off, badly needed money was sent to Universal Credit and Theresa May was granted her wish on protecting the green belt. And yes, there will be more debt, but this is to be expected. A successful Budget nowadays is one that doesn’t fall apart after a week.
Perhaps more importantly, Mr Hammond is getting better at telling the Conservatives’ story. Cutting stamp duty for first-time buyers will be popular, a much-needed overture to the young. The railcard offer might be no more than a sweetener, but is welcome, nonetheless. He even remembered to talk of the progressive effect of Conservative reforms, how they are helping millions back into work and sending income inequality to its lowest in a generation. At times, he even sounded like a Chancellor on the front foot.
The Conservatives have only been taking Jeremy Corbyn seriously for six months, and even then not really focusing. Since the general election, the party has been consumed with itself, its lost majority and its general failings. Questions about Theresa May’s survival, hard vs soft Brexit and tawdry scandal have dominated. Corbyn’s success was spoken of as incomprehensible and his mastery of social media as some kind of digital witchcraft. In fact, Labour’s greatest weapon was Tory disarray
– a commodity that seems to be in plentiful supply.
But this week, Budget aside, we had a glimpse of what a properly functioning Tory party could look like. Brexiteers and the Remainers have agreed a truce: offering more money to Brussels, but this time not as a negotiating gambit. The plan is to seek approval from Paris and Berlin first, and only if they accept will the offer be made to Michel Barnier in the formal Brexit talks. If it’s a “no”, then a lot more money will be spent preparing for the failure of talks and the fallback option: trading with the EU on the same terms as we trade with the United States.
It’s quite a risk. Angela Merkel is still trying to work out if she needs another election to form a government, and the Irish Taoiseach is doing his best to destabilise Mrs May’s government ahead of her final offer. But, rightly or wrongly, there’s optimism in London that next month’s Brussels summit will be a success – and Ireland’s young prime minister will be asked to fall into line. If Britain is prepared to offer the money, which has always been the main concern, Mrs May might be able to claim success. And this could be a far bigger deal than any Budget.
Allies of Philip Hammond are more optimistic still. They say that 2017 may be remembered as the annus horribilis: the year where inflation peaked, where Brexit uncertainty hit its height, a year of lost majorities, chaotic conferences and sex-free sex scandals. The hope is that the Government might enter the new year without a feeling of being under siege, with a Prime Minister who has recovered some of her confidence (and grip) and a Conservative party whose members are looking out for each other.
This week has also offered glimpses of how easily the Corbynite argument crumbles. Labour’s narrative is fairly simple: that capitalism is failing, FOLLOW Fraser Nelson on Twitter @Frasernelson; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion leading to monstrous unfairness and societal breakdown. That the richest pay no tax, the poor are getting poorer and socialism is the remedy. Mr Corbyn has been saying this with admirable consistency since the Seventies but his argument is now back in vogue, as the Tories have now realised. A counter-argument is needed.
Mr Hammond could have gone a lot further in his Budget – he might have released unpublished figures showing that the best-paid 3,000 workers contribute, on average, £2.4 million a year in income tax. It’s a figure to warm the heart of the most ardent Corbynista. The Tories are actually quite good at social justice, it’s just that they hate to admit it. The Labour Party is pretty bad at fighting poverty, but talks about it non-stop.
By refusing to fight on the social battleground, the Tories have needlessly ceded territory to Labour. Tories never complain when their opponents say, for example, that income inequality is rising fast or today’s young people are paid less than their parents were at the same age. Such myths end up being repeated so often that they are accepted as fact. But they are also easily punctured, if the Tories can pull themselves together long enough to do some puncturing.
For now, Mrs May’s Government still has enough of its own battles to fight, and all too much that could still be lost. But it has become easy, this week, to see how the party might regain its coherence and momentum. If the Prime Minister gets through the next few weeks, she’ll probably get through the next two years. And then, perhaps, Tories might start to focus on an opposition that really is in need of the attention.