The real father of Cameronism

24 June 2006

Success has many fathers, and there are several claimants to the David Cameron phenomenon. But should Mr Willetts launch a paternity suit, he can point to a small library of his own publications spelling out ideas which have now become official policy. Civic Conservatism came out in 1994, and could easily pass itself off today as a Cameron speech. His smile grows steadily broader as I put this to him — he’d expected to be asked about his job as shadow education secretary but is happy to discuss his unsung role in the party’s ideological odyssey. It turns out I know only half the story.

‘I’m so pleased you think it still strikes a chord because the dilemma is, I think, the same one we face today: what do you add to free-market economics?’ he says. This preoccupied him when he was in Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit from 1984 to 1986. The Tories had fixed the economy, but needed to add a social agenda. But his message, he suggests, was picked up by New Labour first. ‘Oddly enough, I think some of the Blairites read something I wrote even before 1994 saying it’s “markets plus communities”. In Blair’s language, this became “combining economic efficiency and social justice”.’

So Mr Willetts can see a reflection of his own thinking in Mr Blair’s ‘third way’. And that is by no means all. The tax credit system which Gordon Brown claims as his own was also, he reveals, one of his. ‘In social security, I helped persuade Margaret Thatcher of the case for what became the family credit. So when I hear Ed Balls saying ‘the Tories don’t believe in tax credits’ I find it hard to swallow. I worked with her in implementing the original family credit to boost low income. But we learnt earlier than Mr Brown did that it was a mistake to deliver it through the pay packet.’

When he entered Parliament in 1992, Mr Willetts had the kind of reputation which Mr Balls enjoys today: an intellectual whiz-kid with a first from Oxford who went into the Treasury and dreamt up flagship government ideas. But Mr Willetts also moved on to No. 10 when its policy unit was at the peak of its influence. He is credited with drafting the National Health Service internal market which has been revived by the government now. That, he assures me, is not the limit of his achievements.