A massive Tory majority must be put to good use
The local election results must not, pollsters tell us, be taken as an indication of what will happen on June 8. In one sense they are right: they don’t include London, an increasingly counter-cultural city that will return various barking mad Labour MPs and, even more eccentrically, perhaps even Liberal Democrats. But the rest of the picture is clear. Voters regard the Labour Party as so unfit to govern that even some of its tribal supporters can take no more. And with Ukip having little point now that it has achieved its historic aim of Brexit, and Mrs May’s superb impersonation of Mrs Thatcher in standing in Downing Street and wielding the full handbag over the bullies of Brussels, Ukip’s former vote – four million in 2015 – is heading for the Conservative Party.
Thus a massive Tory majority is likely on June 8, possibly on the scale of 1983. The only thing to fear from this is not complacency – the prospect of the Corbyn-Sturgeon coalition will bring out the Tory vote – but that it will not be put to good use. It represents, as I noted a fortnight ago when writing of the need for a radical manifesto, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to sniff out what is wrong with Britain, and to fix it: a state that is too large, spends too much, taxes too much, has the wrong priorities, is afraid to confront vested interests, and whose structures require hauling into the 21st century.
Mrs May has, like all sensible prime ministers, said she wishes to govern in the interests of everybody. However, that does not mean governing according to a harmful consensus. Successive French presidents have made this mistake, building up public resistance to essential reform over decades, which is largely why that country is in its present sclerotic mess. Sometimes, the public fear change because it seems to threaten their comfort and expectations: in those circumstances governments have to explain that, after the change, the country will be better governed, necessary public services will be delivered more efficiently and effectively, and money will stop being squandered. In most elections in living memory the Tories have been afraid to broach contentious matters for fear of breaking the consensus and giving Labour an advantage. It need have no such fear in this campaign.
One such serious problem – of many – is the National Health Service. It requires a fundamental reform not so much in how it does things (though there is plenty of scope for improvement there) but in what it offers to the public free at point of use, and how it is staffed. In recent elections the Left has crowed (entirely dishonestly, when one considers the amount of money Tory governments have spent on the NHS) that it is safe only under Labour. Since there is as much chance of Kim Jong-un bowling leg-breaks for England as there is of Labour forming the next government, the opposition can say what it likes. The Tories, meanwhile, should start a frank conversation with the public about how best to ensure a state health service that delivers essential care to those in need without breaking under the strain.
That means an insurance system for elderly care, which is one of the main causes of that strain. It means an audit of every post in the NHS, removing those non-medical staff whose jobs are not essential but who were brought into the NHS under Gordon Brown to help massage the then rising unemployment figures. It means stopping many non-essential treatments on the NHS, making inpatients pay for food, charging for certain GP services and reducing the massive exemptions from prescription charges, which should be meanstested. And this rethinking of the NHS should initiate comprehensive welfare and fiscal reform to improve the incentives for people to take responsibility for their families.
It must also stop rich pensioners enjoying needless state benefits that are annually uprated, often subsidised by younger people who cannot afford to fund their own pensions.
The question of what the welfare state does or does not do should not be regarded as untouchable. If the present opportunity is not seized to deal with the NHS and elderly care in particular, the whole system will collapse within 20 years. Such a series of reforms would not, though, be an end in itself. It would represent a transfer of resources from the unproductive sectors of the economy back to the productive ones, which is the key to supercharging prosperity and ensuring the aspirations of all those prepared to work hard can be met. The Tories need to champion the small state and the low taxation that encourages enterprise, and this is their best chance to articulate such feelings since the Eighties.
They appear to have only encouragement from their rivals in seeking an overwhelming mandate. Every time Jean-Claude Juncker, drunk or sober, opens his mouth about Britain a few more seats turn Conservative. No further proof was needed of Labour’s unfitness to govern, but then Diane Abbott came along and provided it anyway, with her catastrophic interview about how much it would cost to recruit policemen – the numbers of whom changed from sentence to sentence – and terrorist-loving shadow chancellor John McDonnell was filmed at a May Day parade in front of Hamas banners and the hammer and sickle. With a month to go before the election, it is safe to afford ourselves the luxury of finding these people simply comical.
Mrs May, by contrast, has a chance to develop the Thatcher-style approach to leading our country that she demonstrated last Wednesday. This election is not just about Brexit, and about standing up, with Thatcherite resolve, for Britain. It is about resuming a programme of essential reforms that the Iron Lady herself would have seen as essential to the prosperity and freedom of our country. Mrs May will have the mandate to transform Britain: and she can create opportunities to show she has the guts and the will, too.
This is a once-in-ageneration chance to sniff out what is wrong with Britain, and fix it