Just how genuine is the Tories’ ideological shift to the Left?

Can we stop talking about Boris Johnson’s survival now? Short of an apocalyptic scandal – which is not beyond the bounds of possibility – that matter is settled. There is no longer any question that he will lead the Conservatives into the next general election.

To a great many members of the party this is not good news. There is now an entrenched view in Tory circles that the Prime Minister is scarcely a Conservative at all: that on the grounds of either genuine conviction or political opportunism he has become a convert to soft Left, centralised, tax-and-spend government, and that so long as he remains leader, it will never be possible to establish free market economics or individual liberties at the heart of national life. There is certainly a great deal of evidence for that interpretation.

Almost everything that the Prime Minister and his captive Cabinet utters seems to substantiate it. The rhetoric of Brownite fiscal policy runs through the Chancellor’s budgets and spending reviews, even when they conclude with a bizarre insistence that this is not what he personally would wish to be doing.

This notion – that higher taxes and more intervention in the economy are simply unavoidable – was not a difficult call during the Covid pandemic when virtually the entire wealth-creating sector was put into an induced coma. It was arguably imperative that government agencies create an alternative system for supporting people who could not go to work, and that they pay for this with unlimited printed money, the value of which had no basis in reality.

This was, as it happens, an uncanny replication of communist East Germany where there was a popular standing joke: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” When Germany was reunified, the cost to West Germany of buying up all those worthless Ostmarks at the value of its own currency was staggering. That is the trouble with handing out phoney money to replace real wealth creation: you cannot let the bottom fall out of the fake money without pauperising the population.

So one fairly charitable explanation of the Tory government’s infatuation with state intervention and endless fiscal support is that it cannot find a way out of this trap. But the money supply policies had a much wider impact. It was not just a parallel economic reality that the Government had created: it had, accidentally, brought a whole new form of collectivism into the public consciousness.

The pandemic and the regulations that were devised to contain it initiated a sense of communal responsibility and mutuality which were morally attractive. From casual neighbourliness to organised programmes of voluntary assistance, the population rose to the demands of the moment with a spirit that was unquestionably inspiring. And that benevolent resourcefulness became linked in people’s minds with the assistance and support systems provided by the Government.

It was, like the wartime experience to which it was often compared, a genuinely proud moment in the country’s social history. Once again, we were all in this together. And what followed that wartime experience? The creation of the welfare state, of course: the mechanisms of social responsibility and public virtue were officially handed over to the state which would embody the national duty of care we had to each other.

Is that the social mood which this Tory leadership thinks it must accept? Do they believe that the popular imagination at this moment is really quite tolerant of what might otherwise appear to be selfish indolence (working from home) and a casual attitude to the real value of money?

More to the point, if this is what they do believe, are they serious about adopting it as a practical political philosophy? Or have they simply decided that this is the way they have to talk until the population emerges from its sentimental fog and is ready to do business again?

Boris Johnson, having been a newspaper columnist, is profoundly aware of the power of words. Is he quite consciously appropriating the language of Left liberal forces in order to leave them nothing to say – while, in fact, not intending to implement the actual policies that would be expected to follow? Is he, in other words, talking Left while planning to act Right?

I can hear you dismissing this as wishful thinking. You may be quite right. Even if this were the plan, how could it work? Once you set up government support systems which lead people to believe that the state will take over responsibility for what used to be known as the need to make a living, isn’t it politically impossible to dispense with them? (Just as it is now electorally suicidal to suggest dismantling the funding model of the NHS.) But hear me out.

There is a credible logic to adopting the vocabulary but not the actions of democratic socialism. It would require taking back the meaning of the words that are most potent in their armoury. (Make no mistake, modern politics is very largely about language and its social implications.)

For example, the word “fair” as used by the Left means equal shares for everyone, otherwise known as wealth redistribution. But what most real people mean by the word “fair” is that you get out of life pretty much what you put in. “Social fairness” as Gordon Brown used the term, seemed to mean everybody getting a roughly equal share of wealth, however much (or little) they had contributed. Again, that is not what most people would support – except perhaps when they are being questioned by opinion pollsters.

Could there be a plan to present the Conservatives as the true party of social conscience – with a moral message that uses the vocabulary of the Left in ways that more honestly reflect what voters actually regard as just? Is this why they avoid co-opting talented figures from the backbenches into the Cabinet who might speak too robustly in favour of the market economy and personal freedoms? Who knows? If this is what they are doing – and it is sincere – it just might work.

There is a logic to adopting the vocabulary but not the actions of the liberal Left – and Boris is only too aware of the power of words

One explanation of the Tories’ infatuation with state intervention is that it cannot find a way out