The Tories have an optimistic vision to sell

They can’t outspend Labour, but should turn the PM’S positivity into a ‘take back control’ agenda

It’s official – our politics are bereft of fiscally sensible political parties. A new report from the Resolution Foundation predicts that government spending as a share of GDP will rise to levels not seen since the 1970s – and here’s the rub – regardless of who wins the election.

Sajid Javid, who reportedly re-reads part of Ayn Rand’s libertarian tome The Fountainhead each year and keeps a Margaret Thatcher portrait in his office, is spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave. The Conservative manifesto is yet to be released, but his existing plans would already take expenditure up to 41.3 per cent of GDP by 2023. Labour would take it to 43.3 per cent – no surprise there. But will the Tory abandonment of fiscal responsibility really pay the electoral dividends they expect?

There are dangers to ceding ideological ground to your opponents. Take the climate debate, where the limits of acceptable conversation have contracted disastrously. This is partly because Left-wing narratives have been allowed to dominate, with Tories reluctant to articulate capitalist ones. Now the Government risks repeating this mistake with the economy, unleashing a bidding war it cannot possibly win.

Already, Labour has responded to Tory NHS cash boosts by not just promising to outspend them but to outlaw private sector involvement in health provision altogether. This ludicrous pledge would shut out opticians and private dentistry providers – and even prevent charities like Cancer Research UK from scanning patients. Of course, it’s Corbyn’s evidence-free populism – not the existence of Specsavers – that would be the real disaster for the NHS, but the Tories’ “status quo” narrative has strengthened his crusade.

Perhaps to distract from their confused Brexit position, meanwhile, Labour MPS have engaged in craven scaremongering, accusing the Conservatives of underhand privatisation and “carving up the NHS” in a shady trade deal with the US. Such claims are patently untrue; the NHS has remained a centralised monolith over decades of Tory control.

Equally baseless are the trade-deal smears, though they combine three of the regressive Left’s favourite tropes – Brexit loathing, quasi-religious NHS devotion and anti-american prejudice. Waging war on typical Labour turf forces Conservatives to spend their campaigning energies contradicting such misrepresentations.

But all is not lost. The Tory campaign launches officially this week and it remains an extraordinary opportunity to articulate a vision for the country after Brexit, without giving succour to Left-wing miserablism. In the case of the NHS, for example, they could spend more time telling voters how they would deploy new technologies to empower patients in a health service that is still the world’s single biggest purchaser of fax machines. Or how, freed from the EU’S Clinical Trials Directive, they would revitalise our once-thriving medical research sector.

But there is a bigger prize. The Tories are the only party with anything optimistic to say about the country and its future, and the vote to leave the EU was all about imagining an alternative path for the UK, rooted in national self-belief. As the past few acrimonious years have shown, there is also huge public appetite for big ideas in politics – not merely “bread and circuses” and focus group triangulation.

I’m heartened by a few specific pledges we know about: plans to slash red tape for small businesses and raise the National Insurance threshold to help the lower paid keep more of what they earn. Now, the Tories need to craft them into a coherent and inspiring agenda, focused on empowering individuals and local areas through a tax-cutting, pro-enterprise approach. They could scrap stamp duty, in one fell swoop boosting productivity, getting the country moving again and reviving the ownership society. They could axe HS2 and channel the savings towards the regions to spend on crowded commuter routes and neglected roads.

But whatever the specifics, Boris Johnson’s great strength is his optimism. It would be a tragedy if this campaign inspired nothing more profound than some extra cash for a few pet causes. “Take back control” must start by liberating individuals to take control of their lives.