Harness Thatcher to beat Corbyn, Tories told
THE Conservatives are losing the “battle of ideas” against Labour and must harness the “zeal” of Margaret Thatcher to “save Britain from a Corbyn government”, two Tory grandees warn today.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Lord Saatchi, a former party chairman, and Graham Brady, who chairs the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, say that the Conservatives are being portrayed as the “defenders of a discredited status quo”, and need to “fight back”.
The pair, both of whom are regarded as highly influential figures in the party, add that the Tories today, like Baroness Thatcher in the Seventies, must work to “not just propagate the right policies” but “secure their acceptance”. They are spearheading an initiative by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the think tank founded by Baroness Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph in 1974, to draw ideas from the 2015 and 2017 intakes of MPs, in order to “showcase the talent, the energy and the ideas on the centre-Right.”
The project, called New Generation, is to be launched at an event tomorrow at which Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, will give a keynote speech – a move likely to be seen as part of wider efforts by the potential future Tory leader to ingratiate herself with a broad spectrum of MPs.
Initial ideas floated by Lord Saatchi and Mr Brady, the chairman and deputy chairman of the CPS, include a “pre-Budget proposal” by Rishi Sunak, 37, for the creation of a bond market to help small businesses raise the capital they need to expand.
In an unusually frank endorsement of the New Generation project, to be read out at tomorrow’s launch, Theresa May acknowledges that it was thanks to groundwork by the CPS that the Conservatives “successfully made the case for free markets and won the battle of ideas in the Seventies and Eighties”, and says: “Today we must win that argument again for a new generation.”
In a letter sent to Mr Brady last Wednesday, the Prime Minister states that she wants to “encourage fresh thinking” and writes that she “look[s] forward to hear the ideas” of “our brilliant 2015 and 2017 intakes”.
The letter, sent on the day Mrs May lost a second Cabinet minister in the space of a week, highlights her anxiety to reassert control over her party ahead of next week’s Budget and crunch Brexit talks in December.
In their joint article for The Telegraph, Lord Saatchi and Mr Brady state that the “new voices” of recently elected MPs will be coming up with “fresh thinking” while the Government is “engaged on the monumental, and necessary, task of steering Britain through the Brexit process”.
They write: “At the moment, the wrong ideas are winning. The British people think that business can’t be trusted. That the free market isn’t working. That the rich get richer, and the rest get screwed.
“That is why, rather than being terrified at the prospect of a hard-Left government, many of them actively welcome it – to the point where at the
‘The British people think that business can’t be trusted. That the free market isn’t working’
last election, Jeremy Corbyn was only 2,227 votes from power”.
They add: “The challenge facing the CPS, and others, is to meet the challenges of the 21st century with the same zealous spirit that Joseph and Thatcher did back then. To show the public that we know how to fix the problems they face. To explain why Conservative solutions can help. To come up with solutions that are as appealing, and encapsulate our principles as perfectly, as the sale of council houses back in the Eighties.
“If we are to save Britain from a Corbyn government, the case for the market needs to be made once again. Not just with slogans, but by the kind of concrete, practical, aspirational policies that these politicians, and the many others who are engaging with this project, are producing. Conservative ideas and Conservative policies have helped make Britain a better place. Now is not the time for us to lose faith in our beliefs – but to show why, and how, they can meet the challenges of this turbulent era.”
Lord Saatchi and Mr Brady
‘To save Britain from Corbyn ... now is not the time for us to lose faith in our beliefs’
disclose that a series of MPs from the 2017 and 2015 intakes are working on policy papers that would help “move the political agenda forward into the 21st century”. They include Mr Sunak’s proposals for a new bond market and work on technology policy being carried out by Matt Warman and Alan Mak.