May, a new kind of Tory, junks ideology

Never has the Conservative Party been more confident about winning a general election. Theresa May’s popularity ratings have broken all records; her aim in this campaign is not just to defeat the Labour Party but to destroy it. The Tory MPs who talk about 10 years in power are the more cautious ones; some talk about staying in government until the 2040s.

The party’s name is seldom mentioned in this campaign. We instead hear only about “Theresa May’s team”, and voters seem to approve. As to what the Conservatives stand for, they’d rather not say. At times it seems they’re not even quite sure. The Tory messages revolve around Jeremy Corbyn and not much else.

Just two years ago the Tories were denouncing ideas such as an energy price cap as “Marxist”. Trying to fix prices, they said, was as naive as trying to legislate for the weather. Now price caps are Conservative Party policy.

The Ed Stone, the muchmocked slab of limestone on to which Ed Miliband inscribed his agenda, was smashed up soon after the election. He ought not to have been so bashful. Within months, several of his ideas — a national infrastructure commission, grandparents sharing parental leave, that national living wage — had been adopted by Conservatives. The idea of taxing employers to fund apprenticeships was discussed before the Labour manifesto but didn’t make it in because Miliband thought it a step too far. It is now Tory policy.

May’s embrace of the energy price cap was significant because it had been the flagship Miliband idea. And while Osborne could have been accused of raiding the old Labour manifesto, May has gone one better and seems to be actually running ahead of Jeremy Corbyn. The cap on executive pay was a policy she ran past her own (horrified) Cabinet colleagues last year. Corbyn’s plan to make it harder for foreign companies to buy British firms was also floated by May, and blocked by Philip Hammond. The disagreements between Prime Minister and Chancellor have been frequent, but they were initially kept quiet — not least because Hammond was worried about what the City would make of her interventionist instincts. But in recent weeks, the secret seems to be out and reports about Hammond’s screaming matches with May’s aides are surfacing. Strikingly, he doesn’t deny them. She, for her part, has refused to say that his job will be safe after the general election.

Many of Hammond’s colleagues admire his courage in defending free-market conservatism but wonder if it is politically wise — specially if the PM doesn’t really believe in it. The tension between them has become a theme of the May government: she wants to move to the left, but has been unable to do so because her Chancellor has positioned himself as a Thatcherite roadblock. He suspects Nick Timothy, May’s chief of staff, is behind this what might be crudely described as Trump-style, Britain-first economic policies.

Just as Nigel Lawson resented the influence of Alan Walters over Thatcher — and ultimately resigned in protest at being second-guessed — Hammond has refused to yield to the PM’s ideas. But there is no denying that her main interest has seemed to be in committing the Tories to dirigiste policies that her colleagues had thought defeated.

So what is going on? A snap election means there is little time to discuss much — and anyway May’s Cabinet has learnt not to expect to be privy to her thinking on many issues. They have three theories. The first is that her “Red Theresa” act is a ruse: she’s out to win Labour Party seats so she has to sound different. She’s only adopting pointless or harmless Labour pledges. May was a Remainer who is now posing as

There is a belief that conservatism’s strength lies in being opportunistic, and ideologically flexible. So if the public want some pick-and-mix, a bit of banker-bashing with their Brexit, then Tories will cheer May as she delivers it...

the Brexit champion: electionwinning Tories are nothing if not flexible. If she is bringing former Labour voters into the Tory fold, it’s natural for the party’s centre of gravity to move a little to the left.

The second theory is that she is seeking to consolidate her personal power and so she is cooking up her own agenda, which includes ideas (such as the energy price cap) that no other Tories are advocating.

There is a third theory: that she is, in her way, a moderniser, and that we are witnessing Thatcherism leaving the Tory bloodstream. The cause of smaller government and low taxes has been a hard sell since the crash, and today voters don’t seem to be buying it at all.

The case for what is being done by May (and, for that matter, Donal d Trump) is simple: globalism has overreached itself, and needed to be dialled back. The Brexit vote was a reminder of that.

So in many important regards, May is the most left-wing leader the Tories have had in perhaps 40 years. In normal times, this would set her at odds with the MPs on the right — the ones Sir John Major once referred to as the “b ****** s”, he sort of people for whom regicide is a form of relaxation. But now, they’re happy — even loyal. This is because the Thatcherite MPs are also those who are most committed to Brexit. For years, they regarded the whole idea of leaving the EU as a dirty fantasy and even today they cannot quite believe that it is coming true. For them, the national question — leaving the EU and crushing t h e Scottish Nationalists — matters more than economics, or arguments about gas bills.

There is a belief that conservatism’s strength lies in being opportunistic, and ideologically flexible. So if the public want some pick-and-mix, a bit of banker-bashing with their Brexit, then Tories will cheer May as she delivers it.

The irony is that the Tories are going cold on free-market policies just at the time where their old reforms are being vindicated. What John F. Kennedy called the “paradoxical truth” of taxation — that lower rates can mean higher yields — has been proven time and time again. Look at the few cuts that George Osborne did make: corporation tax rate was lowered, but corporation tax receipts are at an all-time high. When the top rate of tax was cut from 50 per cent to 45 per cent, the richest paid more than ever. Today, the highest-paid one per cent pay 27 per cent of all income tax collected, a statistic that should warm the heart of the most ardent class warrior. The lowest-paid 50 per cent of earners contribute less than 10 per cent to the total.

Perhaps the most spectacular success has been in cutting tax for the low-paid, a move designed to encourage more people from welfare into work. This policy, along with tax cuts for employers, has resulted in jobs being created at the fastest rate in British history.

It’s an odd election: a Labour Party that doesn’t know where it’s going wrong is pitted against a Tory Party that doesn’t know what it’s getting right. When income inequality fell to a 30-year low, May said nothing about it. Her focus is and must be Brexit. But must that mean ignoring such victories?

Many Tories backed Remain because although they didn’t care much for the EU, they worried that Brexit would obsess their colleagues, and that all of the reforms would stop. So far, their fears are being confirmed. But perhaps the great shift in Tory priorities might have happened anyway. The Conservative Party has always changed its priorities, to suit the changing national conservation. The Tories have been the party of the Anglican Church, the party opposed to Irish secession, the party of Empire, then of liberal economics. Now, it is becoming the the party of the nation — which it defines as keeping the UK together and delivering a clean Brexit.

And also, for the great many Conservatives who think that the party’s historic role has always been the un-ideological mission of keeping the bad guys out of power, things could not be going better. When Lord Salisbury was PM, he said that Gladstone’s existence was the Conservative Party’s greatest source of strength. Now it’s Jeremy Corbyn who is the great Tory unifier.

So the Conservatives are mutating from being the party of low taxation to the party of Brexit. They may regain their love of free enterprise when Britain has left the EU. Either way, it seems likely that in 10 years’ time there will still be a clear Tory majority. And for now that seems to be all that matters.

By arrangement with the Spectator