Politics

8 September 2007

The odd thing is that it is left-wingers, not Cameron, who have lurched to the right

Whether it is market forces in public services or multiculturalism, the Left first successfully demonises right-wing policies and then, when its own ideas fail, it adopts them without apology. The Left’s great triumph has been to remain credible after adopting policies that it had demonised; the Right’s failure has been to win the arguments but lose the debate.

A crisis of intellectual confidence on the Left would, at first glance, be a boon to the Conservatives. But the opposite is true: it is easier for Labour to change policies than for the Tories to scrape off the mud thrown at them.

Tony Blair could show Labour had changed by ditching Clause 4. But Clause 4 was a matter of great indifference to voters and utterly intellectually discredited. Losing it was a win-win situation. The problem for Cameron was that, whether on immigration, crime or Europe, he had no flagship Conservative policies to ditch which were both manifestly wrong and utterly unpopular. So he remained silent about them, leading to the bizarre position that Brown was outflanking the Tories to the right on traditional Tory territory.

Last week, Cameron broke that silence. But was it a lurch to the right? Not in any meaningful sense, since there was no change in policy, and Cameron was just playing catch-up with Labour. It was more a rebalancing — the public are concerned about hospitals, schools, crime and immigration, and now Cameron has talked about all four.

But if voters want right-wing policies, should they go to the political tribe that pioneered them, or the one that demonised them and then had a change of mind? The answer to that will decide the next election.

Anthony Browne is director of Policy Exchange.