The PM’S road to uniting the nation is paved with pitfalls

From high immigration to a green revolution, the PM’S road to uniting the nation is paved with pitfalls

Boris Johnson’s position appears unassailable. He won a crushing election victory. He got Brexit done. He has brought the Imperial Treasury to heel, and is indisputably in command of his Cabinet. His party is at almost 50 per cent in the opinion polls. Wise heads caution that nothing lasts for ever. Margaret Thatcher led the Tories to success in 1987, and was removed three years later. Tony Blair took Labour to three successive victories, and his party booted him out. The soothsayers have prophesied the probable causes of Mr Johnson’s eventual destruction, from overmighty advisers to the inevitability of destabilising events, but many have also questioned the durability of his new electoral coalition.

It is almost a tautology to argue that the lifespan of a government will depend on the lifespan of its alliance of voters. When the alliance falls, so will the government. It is also true that many who doubt Johnson’s electoral coalition can last are those who argued it could never be formed at all. None the less, Mr Johnson should beware the issues that might drive a wedge between his provincial and working-class converts and more prosperous traditional Tory voters.

First, though, there are good reasons to believe the Tory coalition can hold. To begin with, as pollsters explain, there is little difference, when it comes to things like social class and profession, between the new provincial Tories and the party’s longer-standing working-class supporters in the south. In other words, there were local cultural reasons why voters in so-called Red Wall seats had previously refused to vote Tory. Now they have done so, not only will they be more likely to vote Conservative in future, but the social stigma that prevented others from voting Tory will weaken.

Secondly, cultural issues are becoming increasingly salient. Of course, the economy will always be an important factor in any election, and provincial and working-class voters know better than anybody about the importance of job security, the cost of living and getting on to the property ladder. But what Brexit exposed – and, as political elites failed to respect the referendum result, hastened – was a sharp divide in cultural values between elites and the mainstream. The delivery of Brexit will not mark the end of this cultural divide, and issues such as immigration control, the integration of newcomers, law and order, human rights, disruptive direct action by anarchists, transgender rights and militant identity politics will remain live issues.

And this brings us to the third reason for the likely durability of the Tory electoral coalition, which is Labour’s willingness to put itself on the wrong side of all of these cultural questions. Increasingly, the Left seems to view any attempt to control immigration in any way as evidence of racism. They don’t back the lawabiding public, but anarchists who in the name of “climate justice” illegally disrupt public transport and vandalise green public spaces.

All three remaining Labour leadership candidates want to restore free movement, even from outside the EU. Lisa Nandy, the candidate who supposedly “gets it” most, wants to scrap the monarchy and let male rapists identify as women and serve their sentences in female prisons. Keir Starmer, the frontrunner, is a human rights lawyer who cannot hide his trauma over Brexit.

And yet, Boris Johnson cannot afford to become complacent, because there is a line of issues that could cut right through his electoral coalition.

His new immigration policy, for example, landed well last week. But while it ends free movement and takes back control of our borders, the number of people coming to Britain under such a system is likely to be at least as high as in the days of unrestricted European immigration. The profile of migration will change in that it will become higher-skilled and more ethnically diverse, but the overall numbers are unlikely to come down. Time will tell whether this is what the Red Wall converts, or the majority of voters who say they want sharp reductions in immigration, expect from the Government.

Similar tensions lie in other areas of policy. The Conservative manifesto promised to reduce the cost of living, but the aggressive target set by ministers to go “carbon neutral” by 2050 – and the probable carbon budgets needed to meet the objective – risks huge increases in energy bills, hikes in petrol prices and the enormous cost of refitting boilers and central heating in all our homes.

Mr Johnson’s Government has called time on the age of austerity declared a decade ago by David Cameron and George Osborne. But we have yet to see what that means in practice. If it amounts to huge investment in infrastructure, funded by borrowing, and increases in resource budgets only for the police, schools and hospitals, we are likely to see austerity continue for public sector budgets that the PM’S voters value, from prisons to the provision of skills and training. A half-in, half-out austerity programme is a real danger.

And this brings us to one of the most meaningful choices Johnson’s Government will face. With the end of austerity, a programme to “level up” the country, and an ageing population that will draw more on welfare, health and social care budgets, somebody will need to pay the bill. We can borrow more, and economic growth brings greater tax receipts, but the overall tax burden will have to rise. The question of who pays how much in what taxes will test Mr Johnson’s voter coalition more than any other.

If the tax burden increases, Tory economic liberals will be quick to call for “supply-side reforms” – usually deregulation and tax cuts – to get growth going. Certainly, the laws and regulations that underpin the planning system need to be reformed and reduced, but many supplyside reforms needed today, from infrastructure to skills, require active government, not deregulation. And the PM’S new voters will expect him to do something, not nothing.

From immigration to energy, and austerity to taxation, these are the fault lines in the new Tory coalition. It will require an obsessive focus on the values and interests of his new voters for Boris to keep his coalition together.