New Labour still casts a long, ruinous shadow
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the election that put Tony Blair into office with a landslide, an event as catastrophic for Britain as it is widely misunderstood – especially by the Conservatives. The myth, promulgated by academics and the liberal/left media, is that Britain was never that comfortable with Thatcherism, that the Tories only dominated politics till the 1990s because Labour was perceived as divided and far-Left. With the election of Mr Blair as party leader, pragmatic and fresh, the country breathed a sigh of relief that it could join its European neighbours back on the path to social democracy.
In reality, many middle-class Britons only felt they could afford to vote for New Labour because the Thatcher revolution had turned the economy around; Gordon Brown promised to imitate its “prudence”; and the Tories had grown shockingly tired and complacent. Sleaze had reached epidemic proportions. John Major was punished for being weak and insufficiently conservative on crime and taxes.
Though culturally liberal, Mr Blair ran to the right of the Conservatives on several key issues, and, superficially, the new government looked more reformist than some of the Tory administrations that would follow; it was willing, for example, to tinker with the NHS. But appearances were deceptive. Gordon Brown spent vast sums of money creamed off rising tax receipts, expanding the size and remit of the state thanks in part to an unsustainable property and financial services bubble, which ended in the financial crisis. Mr Brown guaranteed a larger, apparently permanent role for the government by revolutionising welfare – he expanded tax credits so fast that they would rise to around £30billion per annum by 2015, greatly increased the top rate of tax and massively expanded the scope of stamp duty.
New Labour remade Britain. Mass migration was encouraged at a speed with which many voters of all parties were uncomfortable. The constitution was scrambled, introducing human rights laws that still bedevil home secretaries today. Far more people derived a greater share of their income from the state. Devolution was meant to save the Union but severely undermined it, and created not competitive laboratories of best practice but socialist fiefdoms, of which the most destructive is the London mayoralty. Critical decisions, such as encouraging a private care sector were dodged. New Labour dragged its feet on expanding nuclear power.
This was socialism with better PR, and there was plenty for the Tories to oppose on a philosophical basis. The centre-Right did flourish in Canada and Australia.
But the Tories lost their nerve. Overwhelmed by Mr Blair’s charisma, a new generation of MPs concluded that the only way to beat the Blairites was to join them – and they became more obsessed with reforming their own party, and its image, than in reforming Britain. The 2010 government of David Cameron was handcuffed to the Lib Dems, it’s true, and yet did still manage some important reforms. But the essential tenets of Blairism and, crucially, its institutional control via the public sector blob went unaltered.
Brexit should have been the moment for a reset. The Red Wall rejected Blairism; the voters asked to “take back control” on the explicit understanding that much would change.
But rather than seize upon this historic opportunity to roll back the frontiers of the state and build a new coalition rooted in popular capitalism, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak did the opposite. One can blame the pandemic and lockdown for the revival of Brownite socialism, but the choice has also been taken to raise taxes rather than go for growth – and after 12 years in office, the tax burden is now at its highest since the aftermath of the Second World War.
Where the Conservatives have challenged the Blairite status quo, such as their Rwandan migration plan, it has proven popular – but they remain prisoners of their own misreading of the past, convinced that only by reaching out to a pseudo-centrist consensus as defined by a fusion of Blair/ Brown and a more contemporary woke technocracy, which is really somewhere firmly on the Left, can they win.
But where are the rewards? The Government has worked from the Blairite playbook devoutly since 2016, adding a dash of net-zero fundamentalism and introducing endless bans and rules. Yet Labour is now ahead in the polls – overall, and on tax, the economy, the environment, crime – and the local elections, taking place this week, look dire. Given the renewed tawdry atmosphere of sleaze, the price of aping Mr Blair has been to recreate the Major administration.
With the economy in the doldrums, inflation rising and the cost of living unbearable, many Tories fear they have little legacy to run on – and by refusing to cut spending, that they also have no room to cut taxes in the future. But they cannot afford to wallow in defeatism, let alone to give up. They must regroup and win. History shows that trusting that Labour has moved sufficiently back to the centre to govern wisely is a huge mistake, that a leopard doesn’t change its spots and Sir Keir Starmer, given half a chance, would once again transform this nation in ways we dare not imagine.
The Conservatives must rediscover those essential points of principle that make them electable in their own right, namely the promise of liberty, prosperity, security, mass property ownership and free enterprise.