Tories are losing credibility after so many U-turns
THE Chancellor George Osborne told a good joke against himself at a recent Westminster dinner for journalists. Referring to a fashionable weight loss programme, he explained his own diet plan: “It is called the 5:2. After two out of every five Budgets I eat some of my own words.”
Like so much of the best humour, this gag worked because it contained an element of truth. Despite his success in reviving the British economy, Osborne has developed a reputation for spectacular policy reversals. His last Budget was a classic example when he had to back down over controversial plans for cuts in working tax credits and disability payments, even though he had originally claimed that such measures were vital.
It was the same story with his “Omnishambles” Budget of 2012, his changes to VAT and pensions began to unravel almost as soon as he had finished his Commons statement.
But Osborne is hardly unique. The U-turn is becoming the default mode of the Tory Government. In a climate of irresolution, ministerial policy announcements are no longer declarations of a fixed course but merely opening bids in negotiations. Last week, while attention was fixed on the local elections, there were three humiliating climbdowns.
FIRST, David Cameron limply abandoned his previous tough stance on unaccompanied child refugees into Britain. Bowing to a mix of sentimentality and opportunism from his opponents, the Prime Minister told MPs that the Government will now accept more children from camps around Europe. This measure might be dressed up as compassion but it just reveals again that modern Britain is the softest of touches.
There followed two other U-turns. In one, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said she has dropped plans to turn all state schools into academies, thus breaking the Government’s promise to make “local authority-run schools a thing of the past”.
In the other, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, previously so resolute in the face of militancy, agreed to delay the implementation of the junior doctors’ contract while new talks are held. In the process, he threw away the chance to defeat the reactionary bullies of the British Medical Association, who have long been a barrier to reform of the NHS.
What is so depressing about all these U-turns is that the Government demonstrates no willingness to stand up to pressure. At the first sign of difficulty, ministers buckle.
Some might argue that this is inevitable since the party has a majority of just 12 in the Commons. But it is an unconvincing defence. After all, the official Opposition has never been weaker thanks to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
Moreover this is exactly the time, with the next general election years away, when the Government should be willing to take tough decisions.
It is exactly a year since Cameron’s remarkable triumph in the 2015 general election against all odds. But, through institutionalised feebleness, he is in danger of squandering the legacy of that victory. It is a tremendous irony that, in retrospect, the Tory-Liberal coalition now looks tougher than the current administration. In the face of frenzied opposition, that government of 2010 to 2015 was willing to stick to its guns on explosively controversial policies such as public sector cuts and welfare reform
It is impossible to imagine Cameron’s present Cabinet having the guts to push through measures like the big increase in student tuition fees. On the contrary this Tory Government is constantly reaching for the reverse gear. That is why over the past year we have U-turns over the cuts to legal aid, criminals’ fines, trade union reform and primary school tests.
Ministers trumpeted their opposition to a tax on sugary drinks, then caved in to pressure from the media and the health lobby, just as they abandoned plans to restrict recruitment of overseas nurses and to liberalise Sunday trading.
Most damningly of all, Cameron promised radical change in Britain’s relationship with the EU, only to collapse at the first whiff of opposition from Brussels. The result was his pathetic damp squib of a deal.
The Government’s lack of determination is not a sign of pragmatism or flexibility. It is an indicator of chronic weakness and absence of purpose.
The impulse to retreat is profoundly undemocratic because it gives far too much power to unaccountable self-appointed pressure groups, trade unions and lobbyists, who learn that they can get their way by making a lot of noise.
IT is the same with the unelected House of Lords, where there is an in-built anti-Tory majority eager to expand its influence.
The habit of making U-turns can become ingrained. As authority evaporates, effective governance is impossible. That was the experience of the Wilson and Heath administrations in the late 1960s and 1970s when the endless avoidance of confrontation eventually created a climate of political meltdown culminating in the Winter of Discontent.
The deepening Tory paralysis is bad for the running of Britain. The search for short-term applause is no way to achieve long-term respect.
In a famous editorial in 1956 a newspaper called on the dithering administration of Old Etonian Sir Anthony Eden to show “the smack of firm Government”.
Those words are just as applicable 60 years later.
‘Government reaches for the reverse gear’