For the first time since the election, the Tories were shown the way

The PM offered solutions to Britain’s problems and a sensible dividing line with tax-and-borrow Labour

All week, delegates attending the Conservative Party conference searched high and low for inspiration. What is the Tory vision for the future? And who can articulate it?

The answer, to the surprise of many, came not from a rising star from the backbenches, nor an ambitious Cabinet minister, but a 62-year-old woman from Maidenhead called Theresa May.

Of course, her speech yesterday could not answer every question. She did not, for example, explain what will happen to Brexit when the Chequers Plan inevitably unravels. And it was, after all, only a speech: the detailed policies and their funding and implementation must follow the promises. But, for the first time since the election was called, the Tories were shown the way forward.

She did not disown the Conservative record: she lauded the efforts to deal with the budget deficit. She did not abandon Tory principles: she defended the free market and praised business for generating wealth.

But her accuracy in identifying the country’s challenges was pinpoint, and her willingness to embrace “the good that government can do” was pragmatic, and right.

In even discussing these challenges, some critics allege, the Tories have brought about the crisis of public confidence in capitalism, and made Corbynism popular. But this is to believe that political narratives matter more than people’s lived reality.

The public do not need politicians to tell them that wages are stagnant. The average wage in Britain is no higher than it was 10 years ago, and the people affected know this better than anybody. Those working in the gig economy – 1.3 million people – know that they have fewer rights than their friends in more traditional employment.

People working for the NHS and the military do not need graphs to tell them that austerity is affecting their ability to do their jobs. Those living in the English regions do not need to be told that London gets more in infrastructure spending than they do.

None of us need to be told that the energy firms abuse their broken market to rip off customers, or that the train companies use opaque pricing structures to charge us more.

And young people unable to get onto the property ladder do not need official statistics to tell them it is getting harder, every year, to buy a home of their own. If the Conservatives stood back from these problems, it would be a bizarre abdication of responsibility.

It would also set a disastrously bad dividing line with Labour, leaving the Tories to defend the erosion of workplace rights, justify the inability of young families to buy homes, and explain away rip-off practices in dysfunctional markets, as if that is how capitalism must naturally work.

The alternative, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, is targeted reform: “Fixing markets not destroying them, helping with the cost of living, ending austerity.”

Then the dividing line can be between the Tories – who understand there are problems and want to fix them – and Labour, who, in order to nationalise sectors that need not be nationalised, will hike up taxes and let borrowing get out of control all over again.

But it was not just the identification of the challenges that made yesterday’s speech a success. It was the pragmatism of the solutions. If the private sector is not building the houses we need, then the state must play its role. If markets are not working, they need to be reformed. If the regions are not prosperous enough, they need to be supported through an industrial strategy to help them to grow.

This approach requires a more active role for government than modern Conservatives have tended to support. And it requires, as the Prime Minister said, the end of austerity. This, too, is sensible and pragmatic: after eight years, we now have a current budget surplus. Pursuing an overall surplus for reasons of ideological purity would only starve the economy of the investment it needs to grow.

But this prompts the most important question raised by yesterday’s speech. The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has previously blocked many of the policies the Prime Minister announced. He had hoped to increase fuel duty in the Budget. He dislikes the idea of councils building houses. He is sceptical about market reform, industrial strategy, and free schools.

It is possible that he is going along with these policies in return for the further concessions to Brussels that a supposedly “soft” Brexit will demand. But it is equally possible that he will stymie Theresa May’s announcements in the coming months, just as he has over the last two years.

Time will tell, and with the Brexit negotiations ongoing and no parliamentary majority, it will be difficult to get things done. But yesterday we not only saw Theresa May as the Prime Minister she always wanted to be, we were given a vision of pragmatic conservatism and good government that will serve the Tories well, whoever leads them into the future.