Mrs May needs to show daring and determination in her manifesto
The catastrophe required to prevent a substantial Tory victory on June 8 is almost inconceivable. The alternative – a coalition led by Jeremy Corbyn and, by remote control from her bunker in Edinburgh, Nicola Sturgeon – need only be imagined for a second for its preposterousness to be obvious. The British people are far from stupid, as they have shown three times in as many years: by turning down Scottish independence in 2014, rejecting an equally absurd Miliband/Sturgeon coalition in 2015, and then voting for Brexit.
However, the near-certainty not just of victory, but of a victory that would enable a Conservative government to get radical legislation through parliament, brings with it heavy responsibilities. Mrs May called the election to ensure she had the authority to carry through Brexit, and so she will. But there is much more to governing the United Kingdom than leaving the European Union, important though that be: and the Tory manifesto that we keenly await must map out a future that will make profound improvements to our country. The chance to effect serious change comes once in a generation, and it is not to be thrown away.
Mrs May faces an important philosophical choice between retreating to a cosy, but enfeebling, Tory paternalism – something worryingly suggested in remarks, since retracted, about the running of businesses in her conference speech last year, but evident from her ridiculous commitment on Friday to a £13 billion overseas aid budget – or developing the sort of enabling state that lay at the heart of Thatcherism, whose roots were in the 19th-century economic liberalism of Gladstone, Cobden and Bright, in which people are empowered to improve their lives.
Mrs May has shown she is not so cautious as we imagined, in calling this election three years early: indeed, she has revealed a ruthlessness in wanting to crush a divided Labour Party and those with contempt for the democratic decision our people made last June. Such determination and daring are needed in the forthcoming manifesto.
Proof of the need for an enabling state can be found in one of the gravest problems facing Britain: the ageing population, and the need for more residential care. It is now six years since the Dilnot report suggested an insurance scheme so every elderly person who needed care would be able to have it. No action has been taken, with the result that we have a crisis in elderly care imposing impossible strains on the National Health Service. These will become worse: by 2039 those over 85 will number 3.6 million, or double today’s figure. No responsible government can ignore this. Instead, an insurance scheme must be developed, using private providers or provident associations, with the state providing the framework for its operation. Not only would this give people more confidence about their future, it would also help take pressure off the NHS, many of whose wards are filled with old people who should not be there.
We can expect Labour to trot out its dishonest and meaningless phrase about being the only safe custodian of the NHS. The Tories will be ready for it, but it is also time to be honest with the public. This is no longer 1948, and the NHS as originally conceived is no longer viable. It would, even in the present circumstances, be electoral suicide to end a service free at point of use. However – and this is where the enabling state comes in – the Tories should consider using the tax system to encourage use of the private sector, and the development of more provident associations. There should also be a debate about what the NHS should provide, about charging people for visiting their GP or for food while they are in hospital (which might well cause standards to be raised), and about narrowing exemptions from prescription charges.
Although unemployment is relatively low there is still scope to reform the welfare state, especially since the end of mass EU immigration will put new demands on the UK labour market. And Mrs May is absolutely right about the need to improve social mobility. Her grammar schools policy would not only give more working-class children the chance to have better jobs, and a better standard of living, than their parents, but the vocational schools that need to be created alongside them would ensure that those who could not have a selective education would nonetheless have one to maximise their chances of success in life. The Government should resist a school-leaving age of 18, when many non-academic 16-year-olds would be better training either for skilled or office jobs. To help older workers, it should cooperate with employers over training schemes to get more people into jobs.
Some constitutional questions must be broached, too. A reform of the House of Lords, cutting its size and its costs, is essential. The Fixed Terms Parliament Act, of which a predictable mockery has just been made, must go: there is nothing wrong with restoring the prerogative powers of the Queen. There are too many government departments. There is too much local government costing too much money, and a tier should go: county councils can do the job, especially if our enabling state removes schools from their control entirely and hands over much residential care to the voluntary or not-for-profit sectors. A national audit of the public sector, and its role, is essential.
In wiping the slate clean of defective Cameron-era policies, the Tories should scrap HS2 and invite private companies to improve existing lines – whether by double-decker trains or reopening lines closed under the 1963 Beeching reforms. And our defences must be improved. Provided a serious review is taken of procurement, more money must be spent on personnel and equipment: and it could found by ending the most grotesque welfare scam of all, the overseas aid budget, or by using that budget to build forces to protect vulnerable countries, such as the Baltic States. And police leadership must be reformed, to encourage them actually to protect the public from serious crime.
The fundamental question is money. We spend too much, we owe too much and we are taxed too much: Philip Hammond should not even contemplate putting taxes up. I see little wrong with our becoming a tax haven, especially at the expense of our corporatist, statist European neighbours. Work should be incentivised by allowing people to keep more of their earnings. The thresholds at which people start paying tax, and pay at a higher rate, should be raised; the 45 per cent rate should be abolished. To make under-performing areas of the country more attractive to industry, and to take the heat off the gridlocked south-east, enterprise zones offering VAT and corporation tax holidays to new businesses should be established. George Osborne’s massive stamp duty increases, which have torpedoed the London housing market and depressed revenues, should be reversed. The idea that lower taxes boost revenues by encouraging economic activity should be on every minister’s lips.
After the election, Labour will get a new leader. There may even be a realignment in British politics that creates a new centre-Left party. This would provide a more robust opposition, so ideas in the manifesto must be thought through and entirely defensible, not just ideologically, but practically.
But it is the Tories who, because of their strength, have this rare opportunity to shift the consensus in British politics and to change not just the face, but the culture, of our lives. With other parties tottering, there is no excuse not to seize it.