A new Tory awkward squad is forming. Can it save conservatism?
Red Wall MPS are worrying that Johnson has rejected the low-tax message that won them their seats
For years, Boris Johnson will have dreamed of wielding the kind of power he holds today. He enjoys strong popularity, a stonking majority and – thanks to the emergency Covid powers – minimal parliamentary scrutiny. His Cabinet will rubber-stamp whatever he brings them and, in Sir Keir Starmer, he has a gofer rather than an opponent. Rarely has a prime minister had a better opportunity to shape politics and the national debate.
This makes it all the more baffling to see him re-enacting the Blairite agenda he was lambasting 20 years ago, on these pages and in The Spectator. He held Nhs-worship up to ridicule and pilloried Tony Blair for raising taxes when he had promised not to. He argued, quite persuasively, that the most vulnerable in society are badly let down by a naive assumption that every problem can be solved by throwing money at it. His words, read today, have lost none of their force.
Where, he asked, is the evidence that “taxes, if taken and spent exclusively by the Government, will deliver a better health service”? Countries with a far better record of healthcare provision, he said, spend less and deliver more because they “do not rely exclusively on a top-down monopolistic health service”. It is all very well to treat the NHS as a religion, he said, “but it is legitimate for some of us to point out that, insofar as it is a religion, it is letting down its adherents very badly”.
This is precisely the point troubling his party right now. Breaking its manifesto pledge on tax is just about survivable if the cash genuinely “fixes” the NHS backlog and care-home crisis. But as things stand, it will be swallowed up by the same top-down NHS system. Any debate about this system – or the insurance schemes used in other countries – is heresy to a religion in which Tories pose as the high priests. As the Prime Minister now puts it: “This is the party of the NHS.”
Over the past few days, I’ve spoken to a number of Tory MPS who have been stunned by the recent events. As befits the regal nature of Johnson’s No10, even his Cabinet were not given advance warning of his plan – yet all MPS were asked to vote on it the day after the announcement. The evening before, a few dozen of them gathered in the private room of a Westminster pub, ordered pies and compared notes.
The mood was one of bewilderment and disorientation. Important questions were raised: what about the experience of Catalonia and Canada in care homes? Both have used new technology to look after the elderly in their own homes, in a way that’s doable here – and would make private insurance more viable. What about exploring such reforms in Britain, rather than expanding the old NHS model? What about asking the wealthy to insure against the costs of their own care, rather than tax the working poor?
They weren’t going to vote against. There was no time to organise (No10 had seen to that) nor was it clear what they’d be rebelling against, given how vague the Government’s plans were. They knew the politics: blame the pandemic and talk about the NHS backlog, even though the real aim of the tax rise was to further nationalise social care. They also knew the internal politics: Conservative whipping has improved, and those who defy the government can expect an indelible black mark against their name.
But it was interesting to see who abstained. Jake Berry, chair of the Northern Research Group of MPS, Lee Anderson (Ashfield), Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) – all from Red Wall constituencies. Dehenna Davison, perhaps the best-known of the new Northern MPS, listed her concerns: why should the wealthiest qualify for an £86,000 cap on care costs? Why raise tax via National Insurance, when there are fairer ways of doing it? You might see, in this, the beginnings of a new awkward squad – who have a vested interest in keeping Toryism alive.
One of the new MPS there spoke about his problem: he’d been elected after selling conservatism to his constituents. He told them about the power to choose, the right to own and the moral case for low taxation: strengthening communities by letting people keep more of the money they earn.
As Sebastian Payne argues in his forthcoming book on the North that the Red Wall turned Tory largely because of rising prosperity. Labour’s message of grievance and victimhood was out of date. Towns like Consett, near Durham, might be famous for steel closures but are now as affluent as many in Buckinghamshire or Surrey.
For such voters, Brexit might have marked the end of the old tribal allegiance with Labour, but they have for some time been ripe for the traditional, low-tax, pro-growth conservative message.
This a point that Boris Johnson makes with some passion. The North, he tells allies, was won by Thatcher not lost by Corbyn. This is why he rejects the idea of North-vs-south split in his party: Tory voters from all over Britain, he says, have bought into the classic One Nation conservative mission.
But how to square all this message with his decision to increase taxes to the highest level in British peacetime history? This is what worries his new MPS: that they end up looking like frauds, having sold a conservatism that they were unable to deliver and in which even their prime minister did not really believe. Five years might go by without a palpable difference. But we now have odd Tory quirks, such as upping tax on care home workers to safeguard the assets of millionaires who might one day need personal care.
Demolishing Labour’s Red Wall is Johnson’s proudest achievement, so he ought to take the discomfort of his Northern MPS seriously. If they are to become a new awkward squad, they might have more power and influence than the usual Tory suspects – and if they can’t back his new agenda, he has a serious problem.
They stand a better chance than perhaps anyone else of reminding him of his own critique of tax-and-spend Blairism – and persuade him that he really was right the first time.