They’ll call it the Rivers Of Rudd speech – but only the liberal elite were left bleeding
Incendiary. Incisive. In the corridors of power
IN YEARS to come it will be known as the Rivers Of Rudd speech. Our new Home Secretary had been billed in some quarters as the most liberal politician to hold the brief since Roy Jenkins. By the time Amber Rudd sat down on Tuesday afternoon, she was being compared by one senior broadcaster to the author of Mein Kampf.
What should have been the proudest moment of her career could easily have been the last act of it.
A car-crash speech was followed by a three-lane pile-up of a briefing. ‘Shackled’ by the coalition, immigration had spun out of control, she said. Only by reducing levels of immigration could the ‘tide of public opinion’ be turned. To do this she intended to publicly expose those companies employing too many foreign workers, her spokesman revealed.
The repudiation was swift and fierce. Adam Marshall, of the British Chambers of Commerce, said it suggested the Government saw having a global workforce as ‘a badge of shame’. Rudd’s colleague, Education Select Committee chairman Neil Carmichael, said the plan was ‘unsettling’ and could ‘drive compassion’ out of British society.
But one person did not disown her. Theresa May. This week May set herself one task. To lay claim to what she called ‘the new centre ground’ of British politics. She succeeded. And she succeeded because instead of throwing Amber Rudd to the liberal wolves, she picked up those wolves and threw them to the British people.
To understand the scale of May’s political triumph, you need only look at the scale of the backlash against it. The North London intelligentsia. The human rights lobby. Business leaders. Jeremy Corbyn, and his new Shadow Cabinet of all the NW1 talents. Their cries of anguish represented her fanfare.
OVER the next few months those cries will grow louder. Attempts will be made to frame her and Rudd’s speeches as a violent lurch to the Right and critics will comfort themselves with dire predictions of the fate that awaits them: ‘Just you see. When Brexit starts to bite, they’ll be sorry.’
Someone is definitely going to be sorry. But it won’t be May or Rudd.
The only lurch the Conservative party has made is where it needed to – into the political middle ground.
If people wish to claim that the vicar’s daughter who spoke proudly of axeing stop-and-search and tackling school exclusion of black Caribbean children has traded her kitten heels for steel-capped Dr Martens – good luck to them. That might be how it looks from the salons of Islington. But it’s not how it’s going to look from the pubs, supermarkets and school gates of middle Britain.
A day after Amber Rudd delivered her address, an opinion poll was published revealing the public’s view of her proposal: 60 per cent approved. Only 25 per cent opposed the plan.
It’s this lethal chasm between voters and the political class that May is intent on bridging. She’s told friends she sees occupying, and defending, the post-Brexit centre ground as her defining political mission – not for narrow party political purposes but because, if she does not, the entire democratic edifice could collapse.
Two conversations I had with Tory Ministers this week underlined this philosophy. The first was with a Cabinet colleague who described how he went about pitching an argument to his new Prime Minister. ‘With David or George you had to lead with the political case,’ he said. ‘If you want Theresa to engage, you have to make the moral case.’
The second was with a Cabinet secretary who had been discussing with her the Government’s stance on immigration. ‘The key is Merkel,’ he said to me. ‘Theresa’s always had the view that if moderates don’t act, the extremists are going to outflank you. And she’s looked at what’s happening in Germany and thought, “Angela tried to do the compassionate thing. And it’s been a disaster.”’
People who have accused May of ‘dog-whistling’ on immigration are missing the point. She’s said clearly and loudly to the British people: ‘I hear you. I agree with you. I’m going to do something about this.’
As a result, those criticising her absence of a mandate had better watch what they wish for.
It’s become fashionable to construct a 2020 Election scenario that saw the Tories consolidating in the South and Midlands, while Ukip begin to eat into Labour’s Northern heartlands. But May has now reset the terms of the political debate.
With the heirs to Nigel Farage beating each other into submission, and Corbyn announcing Labour will become the defenders of unlimited migration, the theory Ukip represent a threat to Labour heartlands has become outdated. Ukip are now just a political gateway drug, the vehicle by which former Labour voters make the transition to the Tory fold. In the new centre ground there is no room for Labour heartland seats.
This week May and Rudd killed off the British liberal elite.
We can criticise their brutality. Or we can thank them for putting us out of our misery.