Mrs May needs a new Cabinet of radicals to stop Labour now
Corbyn is selling a fiction, but do-nothing ministers like Philip Hammond are incapable of fighting back
One of Philip Hammond’s first decisions as Chancellor was to move the Budget to the autumn, but this is proving trickier than he imagined. He was going for November but then worried that it might interfere with Brexit talks. So he went for October 31 – until his civil servants pointed out that this was Halloween and might invite unflattering headlines about “Hammond’s house of horrors”. He sulked for a while, then decided to outwit the tabloids by holding it two days earlier. So for the first time in a half a century, we’re having a Monday budget, on October 29.
But don’t cancel any plans. I’m told that it will be a non-event, devoid of bold ideas or any original thinking. Which is probably a mercy, given that Hammond’s ideas tend to involve surreptitious tax rises or expensive new spending projects. His relationship with Theresa May has not recovered from her ordering him to abandon his last wheeze – a National Insurance hike – and he hasn’t dared do anything since. The result: an immobile Chancellor in a stalled government, run by a paralysed Prime Minister at a time when the Labour Party is moving at speed.
It’s hard not to admire the way that Jeremy Corbyn is toying with the Tories. He comes up with an idea: nationalising the railways, and waits to see if there is a serious Conservative response. If not, he comes up with something else. A power grab over the press, for example, which would see a government minister dictate how newspapers are run. And if there’s no real pushback, he goes further. His latest plan is to part-nationalise every single large company in Britain, confiscating a tenth of their shares. It would be the biggest pension fund raid since the days of Robert Maxwell, all dressed up in the language of Thatcherite popular capitalism. He dares, he wins. Meanwhile, the Tories barely stir.
Mrs May was always going to be preoccupied by Brexit, but her Cabinet colleagues have no excuse. Take Corbyn’s latest plan: to strip 2,200 secondary schools of the independence granted under the Academy scheme, forcing them back under municipal control. So the reforms – that have seen former sink schools transformed and outperform private schools – would be destroyed in an assault on social mobility. And what was the response from the Tory Education Secretary? Indeed, can you even name the Tory Education Secretary? His name is Damian Hinds, and he isn’t saying very much.
Right now, Labour is leading the political conversation. Take Corbyn’s latest political film, Our Town, a moving portrait of urban decay. We see streets left to rot by Tory austerity, oppressed citizens waiting for a Labour renaissance. “These streets were once full of spirit and hope,” the narrator says over a picture of Mansfield. “We lost the jobs. We lost control.” Mansfield has seen 4,300 jobs created since Labour lost power, up by almost 10 per cent. In Glasgow, which also cameos in the film’s disaster zones, unemployment has almost halved. Corbyn is selling a fiction, but at least he has a story. It’s not clear that the same can be said about the Conservatives.
The are signs of intellectual life in the Tory party, just not in the right places. Earlier this month, for example, Mrs May held a special Cabinet meeting to discuss what to do if her talks with the EU failed and she ended up implementing a no-deal Brexit. If the economy wobbled, how best to help? There were plenty of suggestions from Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary and Claire Perry, the energy minister. They proposed various tax cuts, getting rid of notorious obstacles to growth, cutting wasted government spending and red tape. But the Chancellor himself seemed to have no ideas, and kept quiet.
More worryingly, in two years of Mrs May’s Cabinet meetings, this was the first time they had a proper discussion about how to grow the economy. It left ministers present with several questions: why would “grow the economy” be seen as an emergency button, to be pushed only if Brexit talks collapse? And if Mr Hammond is so bereft of ideas, why is he still in his job? The answer is that, after last year’s disastrous general election, Mrs May doesn’t feel strong enough to move anyone. Hence the paralysis, which now emboldens the Corbynites. Every week that the Tories stay silent, they lose ground.
This is why Theresa May needs to reshuffle her Cabinet. If Brexit will FOLLOW Fraser Nelson on Twitter @Frasernelson; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion occupy her every thought, she will need others to do more thinking. She likes loyalists, but she needs radicals. For example, if she meant what she said last year about dedicating her premiership to fixing the housing problem, why entrust the task to the famously cautious James Brokenshire? He is loyal and charming but, like her, a safety-first technocrat. When Sajid Javid was in the job, he was all set to create a housing agency that would borrow billions and start building. A fairly drastic move, but it would have moved the dial.
Javid’s ideas are needed in the Treasury, where he used to work. He was a star financier before entering politics, and would save us from more of Mr Hammond’s non-budgets. Liz Truss, a natural fighter, was known as “Miss Dynamite” when she was a junior education minister for her refusal to let things get in the way of progress. Why not put her in the top job? As Environment Secretary, Michael Gove has again showed he can set the agenda in any department he is put in charge of. If he can increase the supply of houses in the same way he did Academy schools, the party’s biggest headache might be cured.
Jacob Rees-mogg is wasted on the backbenches, as is Kemi Badenoch. And why not send Daniel Hannan, an MEP, to the Lords and make him an international trade minister, or make better use of Tom Tugendhat, a former army lieutenant colonel? There is no shortage of Tory talent anxious to wake the Cabinet from its current vegetative state – and stop Corbyn’s march.
In 2010, the Tories had an argument but no achievements. Now they have achievements, but no argument. A very dangerous problem, but far easier to remedy.