Conservatives must look beyond Brexit

The single word “opportunity” looms over the Conservative conference venue in Birmingham. It is a good word, since it sums up what the party stands for above all else. And while it may not seem like it, judging by newspaper headlines and political discourse, there is more to life than Brexit. Once the UK has left the EU – as it will next March despite a rearguard campaign by Remainers to stop it – life will go on and the job of any government will be to manage the changed landscape.

Theresa May is attending her third Conservative conference as leader and Prime Minister assailed by Brexit woes but anxious to look beyond; and she is right to do so. She told one interviewer at the weekend: “There’s a long-term job to do because it is not just about Brexit, it’s about the domestic agenda as well.”

Indeed it is, but the sense is overwhelming that this agenda has stalled while the politics of Brexit work their way through the system. It is, however, of pressing importance that the Tories focus on an all-encompassing programme for the country that is being drowned out by the internal feuding.

In the end, after all, most Conservatives are far closer to one another in what they believe to be the right future for the country than Labour MPS are to their activists.

Jeremy Corbyn has set out his hard-left stall for governing the UK, much to the delight of his party’s Momentum members but to the horror of many mainstream, moderate supporters who do not want him as their leader, let alone prime minister. Once Brexit is out of the way, with all the short-term ructions it will entail, the country will sooner or later be asked to choose in a general election what sort of future it wants.

The options will be Mr Corbyn’s fantasy-land socialism or a coherent Tory alternative that emphasises everything Labour opposes – individual freedom, personal aspiration, equality of opportunity rather than of outcome, a belief in country and a respect for the past while demonstrating a willingness to embrace the future and its technological change.

Amid the Brexit cacophony it would be good to hear ministers from the PM down reminding the conference why it is that the Conservative Party has thrived for 200 years as one of the world’s most successful political movements. They have an opportunity to do so over the next few days.