The Tories’ revolutionary schools and welfare policies are the way forward

13 October 2007

AFTER a disastrous three months, the worst is finally over for David Cameron and his Conservative Party.

Mr Cameron’s proposed increase of the threshold at which inheritance tax becomes payable from £300,000 ($612,000, E432,000) to £1m will rightly be hugely popular, as will be his policy to exempt first-time buyers from paying stamp duty on homes of up to £250,000. The wisdom of his proposed £25,000 per annum poll tax on non-domiciled workers who choose to live in Britain is more debatable; while equality in front of the law is a key principal in any liberal society, Mr Cameron needs to tread carefully if he is not to chase away those who have made the City the great financial centre it is today.

There can be no doubt Britain is in desperate need of fresh ideas. Among the biggest challenges facing the country are a broken society with 5.3m adults on out of work benefits; a National Health Service which continues to lag way behind the health systems of other rich countries despite massive injections of cash; a gridlocked transport system; an education system unfit for purpose in an age of globalisation and technological change; an increasingly uncompetitive, over-leveraged and over-taxed economy propped up by a super-charged City of London; a muddled anti-terror and security policy; rampant crime and disorder; a constitutional crisis that will be further exacerbated by the latest EU treaty; and armed forces being forced to fight two wars on a peacetime budget.

Mr Cameron, his shadow chancellor, George Osborne, and his education spokesperson, Michael Gove, were at their most encouraging in Blackpool when they addressed how to tackle Britain’s broken society and failing schools.

Under questioning, Mr Cameron stressed that people on benefits who were found jobs but refused to take them would have their benefits stopped. The importance of this is that it means the Tories are finally sold on moving the welfare state from being a passive donor of benefits to a transition mechanism for work; they also agree that those who refuse to play by the rules need to be penalised.