An election leaflet arrived through my letterbox on Thursday morning, showing its age. It referred to a “strong and stable” British Prime Minister Theresa May and must have seemed accurate at the time of going to press. But week before last’s U-turn over the “dementia tax” has revealed a rather different candidate: One who doesn’t always think things through properly. The first party leader to abandon a manifesto pledge before an election.
Softer and flexible, perhaps, which is no bad thing in a prime minister. But not quite the woman of the original billing. The strategy of stealing Labour voters by adopting Left-wing policies is also not quite going to plan. The prime minister took Ed Miliband’s plans to cap energy prices and to introduce the highest minimum wage in Europe. She wants more tax, spending and debt. Rather than talk about the freedom of the individual, she denounces the “cult of selfish individualism”. All this would be audacious, if it worked. But her advocacy of the Labour worldview has corresponded with a rise in support for the Labour Party, and the steady erosion of the Tories’ opinion poll lead. In fact, it’s not clear who, in this election, is making the case for conservatism. There are quite a few Tories who believe in it, but they’re happy to keep quiet in return for a clean Brexit and a large majority.
As they know, this election was called as a tidying up exercise, to give May a personal mandate and grant her authority over her own Cabinet. Hence the extraordinarily personalised campaign: All about May, not about the party. She wanted to win using her rather Napoleonic management style — where she consults her two chiefs-of-staff and instructs everyone else. It was this — ruling via an inner-triangle rather than a circle — that led to the manifesto debacle. Her failure to consult more widely meant she worked out only too late that she could not defend her (admirable) social-care reforms.
The U-turn dented her own credibility, which had been pretty much all she had been campaigning on. She’s a popular leader, perhaps the Tories’ greatest single asset, but not their only asset. She now needs to move discussion on from her own virtues and towards her party’s principles and — most of all — its recent achievements. She needs to use the most powerful line that Tory governments have ever had at their disposal: Things are going well, don’t let Labour ruin it. It’s hard to think of a time when the Tories had more to boast about. In a continent mired in joblessness, Britain is celebrating the highest employment levels in its history. Why? Because Tories cut taxes and regulation, then reformed welfare.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn moans about the steep corporation tax cuts: Why does no one explain to him that, as a result, corporation tax receipts are at an all-time high? Yes, the 50p top rate of tax was cut. Last week, it emerged that the best-paid 1 per cent now pay 28 per cent of all income tax. No Labour government has ever squeezed more from the wealthiest. Why bang the old drum of grammar schools, when Tory school reform has yielded such extraordinary results in all-ability schools? When food banks are discussed, why not mention that since former Tory prime minister David Cameron came to power, the incomes of the lowest-paid rose faster than anyone else’s?
And that, as a result, inequality stands at a 30-year low? Tory welfare reform also means fewer children than ever are living in workless households. Full employment, a goal of so many utopian Labour manifestos, has been pretty much achieved — thanks to Conservative reforms. May’s unflashy, undemonstrative style is a refreshing change. She is widely admired, and unusually popular. But she too often hides behind Brexit, talking about the negotiations as if leaving the European Union was an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. Brexit is a conduit, not a destination. It is the removal of a constraint: Britain could end up stronger, or weaker, depending on the decisions it then takes. And if May prescribes more tax, regulation and dirigisme, as her manifesto indicates, it really will all have been for nothing.
A general election is a time to discuss the principles that will set government direction through Brexit and beyond. This is not the time to palm voters off with cliches and banalities; there’s too much to discuss. The prospect of Corbyn in No 10 and Diane Abbott as home secretary means two very different visions of Britain’s future are being laid out in front of us. As the prime minister cheerfully admits, there’s “no such thing as Mayism”. But there is such a thing as conservatism, and it deserves a hearing. At a time when so many Tory reforms are coming good, it is madness to move away from them. Indeed, the whole point of conservatism is to keep what works, to build on success and not to jettison successful experiments for ideological (or egotistical) reasons. Her great innovation is to stake out the middle ground between nationalism and globalism. It’s quite possible for Mrs May to claim her own mandate while admitting that her predecessors might have got some things right.
So it’s time for her to accept that all of these jobs were not created by a happy accident. She inherited a radical and successful reform agenda, whose successes are worth boasting about — and preserving. She should let go a little. Her aides have been begging certain Cabinet members to go on television, telling them that they have to stop Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson getting airtime.
This rather confuses them: Surely, they think, it’s best to deploy whatever resources the party has at its disposal? The foreign secretary has perhaps too strong an appetite for publicity, but it’s always to an end: To win converts to the conservative cause. Michael Gove, perhaps the best communicator in the party, still languishes in the sin bin. This makes no sense. When she stood for the top job, her pitch to her MPs (“I’m Theresa May and I think I’m the best person to be prime minister”) was endearingly minimalist.
But this campaign has shown that it is not enough. Happily, her party has a strong agenda and a record of success that is waiting to be called upon. Much can be done in the final six days of a campaign and no one seriously doubts that May will win. But to win it well, she will have to consider running as a Conservative.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2017
Fraser Nelson is the editor of the Spectator and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph.
